Friday, May 29. 2009
 I'm not sure what to say to my Republican friends anymore.
I honestly thought all the pearl clutching paranoids pulled the lever with the D next to it, but I guess I was mistaken. You ran the least attractive candidate possible for President and lost by a little and you're ready to commit suicide in your Ayn Rand bunker after you're finished homeschooling your kids.
It's tiresome stuff. I'm going to try to explain it to you one more time. Obama, and all his accomplices in his co-prosperity sphere, are not "secret" anythings. Not secret muslims, socialists, communists, antichrists or Illuminati. He'd adore it if you spent the next eight years looking for his birth certificate, because he knows it's a colossal waste of his enemies' time, and that's a natural born fact.
It's a straight plunder economy. Why are you so confused and surprised about this? You keep talking about all sorts of ill effects that are going to appear in decades and verify your wild hypothesis about the guy. But the effects are always immediate and visible. He's not playing a deep game here.I take that back. Maybe he is. He's confused a lot of people into thinking he's confusing.
Poor Rich Moran. He's all shocked that maybe car dealership closings under the watchful eye of Democrat mandarins are going to fall along party lines, and figures it's earthshaking.
This story is about ready to explode. All the ingredients are there for a gigantic political scandal that would shake the Obama administration to its foundation and perhaps take down several high ranking officials. All that's needed is one connecting piece of evidence that would tie the White House Automotive Task Force to some political arm of the Democratic party.
Continue reading "Obama Thanks You For All The Free Advertising"
Volokh asks:
Property Rights in Web Sites:
Check out Conwell v. Gray Loon Outdoor Marketing Group, Inc., decided May 19 by the Indiana Supreme Court. Is a custom-designed and designer-hosted Web site a good or a service? Who owns the site? Can the deletion of the site by the host (for nonpayment of the bills) constitute tortious conversion of the supposed owner's property? Not the sexy sort of cyberlaw, just the practically important sort.
 Did you need the lyrics for the Pancho and Lefty YouTube we posted yesterday? Here they are.
The oxytocin receptor and prosocial behavior. It would be interesting to see whether bloggers are low in these receptors.
The shot that changed Germany. It should be a big story in Germany - and in all of Europe.
Wilkinson on Sotomayor: People going crazy on cue
The Hugging Crisis in our schools.
Are we ready for Men's Studies yet?
Iron Laws of political economics, including:
There is no form of market failure, however egregious, which is not eventually made worse by the political interventions intended to fix it.
 Maybe we should get rid of all of those terrible crosses at Arlington, too. Meanwhile in Euroland, French author faces jail for offending Islam. They are trying to re-live the Dark Ages. Thus far in the US, still no laws against offending religions.
California pols refuse to explain why their state needs hysterical spending growth
How did Socialist Nazy Germany pay for their Social Security programs?
Insty:
PEOPLE TEND TO REBEL AGAINST EXCESS NANNYING, EVEN WHEN THE NANNIES ARE RIGHT: Healthy Lifestyles On Decline In United States. Then, of course, there’s the way the advice tends to change over time.
From Gaghdad Bob (h/t Dr. Sanity's Leftism Aims Low)
Liberty is not a built in -- much less universal -- value, and I think you can see how this is a major part of understanding the motivations -- or shall we say, the deep structure -- of leftism. Classical liberals wonder why leftists don't value freedom, but they shouldn't.
Rather, the question is why we do value it, because it is an obvious aberration in the human race. Most humans value security over liberty, predictability over change, conformity over individuality, and authority over self-rule. So when we see that leftists hate freedom and progress but love authority and comformity, we shouldn't be the least bit surprised, for it is true of most rank-and-foul humans. Political correctness, statism, micromanagement of our lives -- these are all the natural consequences of a dread of liberty.
To finish up with Prager's thought, he noted that it was God who wanted humans to have freedom, not humans. For the vast majority of human beings, liberty is not a particularly important value, much less the most important one. They would just as soon barter it away for security, as they have done in western Europe.
Can you spot the billionaire? From Boudreaux:
Nora ____ e-mailed me earlier today; she was terse: "How do you sleep at night justifying policys [sic] that make incomes more unequal???"
My first response is to say "grow up." As long as Mr. Smith earns his income rather than steals it, Mr. Jones ought not care. Envy is an ugly sentiment, and becomes ghastly and dangerous whenever it is manifested in government policies.
But my more measured response is here.
Thursday, May 28. 2009
Sheesh, Obama. We just aren't that into you.
And definitely not as into you as you are into yourself.
Your Wall of Bacon brekky above brought to you by Mr. Free Market. Too bad he doesn't deliver, because I could go for some blood sausage, bacon, and runny eggs right about now.
Judicial empathy for whom?
Sotomayor is a racist. neoneo. Could be, but it's the "right kind of racism."
Sotomayor's "struggle." Private schools all the way. Nice.
More evidence on the politics of the Chrysler dealerships
There is only one current head of state who served in uniform in WW2
ACORN, Soros, and the Census
Check out some things you may have missed at the new, improved NAS site
Do you know who the Ladies of Arlington are?
The world is run by crazy people.
When a pol has nothing to lose. Betsy on Dr. Tom Coburn
Wednesday, May 27. 2009
 Websites like ours and AVI's have a deep respect for the power of tribalism in the human psyche.
For better or worse, it seems like an inevitable human force for birds of a feather to flock together regardless of our basic biological similarities.
Early Colonial America had very few tribes: The evangelical and intolerant Protestants, the crazy Dutch entrepreneurs, the various warring Indian tribes, and the small handful of welcome Jews in Rhode Island and Catholics in Maryland. And African slaves in both the South and North (and some free Africans in the North).
Today, we have all sorts of tribes all over the place, from all over the world. In a way, I can view the Sotomayor affirmative-action nomination as a nod to the tribalism that we acknowledge here as being a powerful force.
The "progressive" identity politics of the Dems meets primitive tribalism. Politics gets very strange when the shape of your genitalia and your ancestry determine your career and power. Full-circle to primitivism.
The national fusion facility will be dedicated this week. Nobody knows whether it will work. I hope it does. Endless fountains of clean energy sounds good to me, as does any free lunch.
This should be a huge scandal, if true.
It's all about me! Kristol on Obama's character and the presidency.
Related: Obama and the I word. Roger Simon
Princeton reinstates tough grading standards. Let's hope it's a trend.
MIT panics despite global cooling. Al Gore continues to panic about his investments in indulgences. Meanwhile, the Greenies are becoming subjects of humor on TV.
Seven bad ideas for medical reform: Cato
Krugman: Blame Repubs for California's mess. Huh?
Did you read the hilarious story of the Europeans who went to join the Taliban in Paki?
The tyranny of our FICO scores is just a measure of our addiction to credit.
Jules on the O:
...power hates a vacuum.
Put another way, geopolitics hates a wienie. So does history.
OK, so is Obama another Jimmy Carter? We get to watch this history unfold before our eyes, and it seems to unfold a quicker these days. My quick take. Not exactly. What we’re seeing is really a more aggressive Carterism.
Indeed, the O's manhood is being tested all over right now. Norks threaten military strike on S. Korea
Rotterdam update: It's a Muslim city now.
Phony grassroots for Health Care
The death of literary studies. Protein:
To return to my original point, where has the pleasure of the text gone? It’s been sublimated into pleasure at one’s own superior ability to wrest unauthorized meaning out of the text by passing it through an ideological meatgrinder. Congratulations! You’re now ready to deliver papers to at any number of conferences with clever titles about “firing the canon.”
What if Bush had...
Related: Media bias, golf edition:
Imagine what the media would be saying if John McCain were president and he didn’t cancel his golf game on the day North Korea launched missiles and tested a nuclear bomb. They’d roast him.
The attempt to link the recession with medical costs was everywhere last week. Makes no sense.
Quoted at Thompson:
Those who prize social unity and order will tend to believe that people’s deepest feelings and beliefs should be accorded respect. But respect for ideas is never an entitlement. It depends on their intellectual resilience in public debate. No free society can treat people’s deepest beliefs as sacrosanct. They are fair game for hostile and derisive criticism. That is how knowledge advances. […]
No one has a right to the protection of feelings. If politics concerns itself with mental states, there is no limit to how far legislation can intrude on people’s lives. The task of progressive politics is to protect liberty, not least by attacking the accumulation of bad ideas. Yet to many on the Left, the individual, inquiring mind is of far less importance than the representation of designated groups.
Tuesday, May 26. 2009
Please do not peruse these Tuesday morning links until you have caught up on our posts over the past few days, as I just have done on my return from the sea to hard reality (drove a boat up from Cape May to Rhode Island with a few stops for gas and beer - including one at good old City Island for fried clams and another at Northport for more fried clams and fried oysters). The posts are jam-packed with inneresting stuff.
Poster above from Atlas' collection of fine old posters yesterday.
Photos of peoples' refrigerators. h/t, Neato. Sheesh. It's more private than photos of their genitalia. Too revealing and embarassing.
Brit public rebels against EU taxes and control. Yo, Cousins. Been there, done that. We can tell you how, but it involves firearms...
Quit lamb and beer to save the planet. Sure, OK. But not right now. Later, maybe, if I lose my taste for these things.
"It's a thumbsucker's playpen" now. Kaus
Wind farm kills Taiwanese goats. Pinwheels or goats: it's your choice.
Frank Lloyd Wright Legos. You cannot hate Legos. h/t, Marg. Rev
Korea, Iran, etc. Must be time for more diplomacy.
The UN speaks, and people listen. Are we nuts?
Millionaires flee Maryland
Pols love to present Straw Men, but the O specializes in them.
Libs wonder how they lost on guns and Gitmo. Welcome to America, where we are not quite a dictatorship yet.
What lady would not want to be a MILF, despite the crudeness of the appellation? And what red-blooded male has not a filthy mind? To my eyes, MILFs are a dime a dozen around my neighborhood. Photo borrowed stolen from Tiger's piece:
When things get too hot in the kitchen, pols run away. Pelosi picked China for her Memorial Day weekend. Nice. Hope they taught her something about Capitalism.
Dr. X on the Irish abuse scandal
Media still lying abut the Swift Boat Vets
Armed and Dangerous says it better than we usually do, re California:
The politics of the modern redistributionist state is founded on the assumption that politicians can buy votes by promising voters ever more munificent entitlements - from federal deposit insurance against bank failures to government-subsidized medical care - with the money for these things always somehow being painlessly extracted from somebody else.
Once voters have agreed to forget that every single dollar of tax revenue is extracted from the productive economy by threat of force (including corporate taxes, which are then passed along as higher prices), there is no incentive for any politically favored interest group to do anything but eat subsidies as fast as it can, before all those less deserving other interest groups get a snout in. The demand for entitlements, income transfers, and subsidies will, accordingly, rise without limit. And why not, when “somebody else” is paying?
For this con game to continue working on the suckers voters who buy it, there always has to be a “somebody else” from which more money can be painlessly extracted. It’s “the rich” or “corporations” or (when governments borrow money against future tax revenues) ourselves in the future.
But what happens when there is no “somebody else” left?
Related, The NYT gets California completely wrong - Driscoll. They are right on the Dem talking points but wrong on the facts.
Two dish washers carry their towels home after a hard day discussing uranium:
Sunday, May 24. 2009
 Journalism: From profession (?) to commodity
CSI and friends with benefits. Bad news.
WalMart Auntie of the Year
Waxman: I know nothing. I rely on the scientists. Maggie's readers understand the issues better than he does.
California voters may be forcing their pols to act like adults. Wow. In 8 hours I could reduce their budget 25% with a Sharpie pen and have no meaningful impact on life in that gigantic and pleasant state. Related: The press was totally on board with the failed scare campaign.
Brit banks rebel against Obama tax plans. Why should foreign tax collection be their job?
What nations are the worst polluters? More on PT Obarnum at Dino
Kevin Jackson:
I received an email from a black man who was attempting to convince me that, though I am completely black, I have no experience growing up black in America. The bulk of his theory on my ‘blackness' was based on the fact that I constantly lampoon Obama in my blog. He counseled me to embrace Obama, as Obama could help me to "rediscover the black experience." He warned that "whites would never see me, as I see me."
Touting Obama as the poster child for blackness is a ridiculous notion. Further, the idea that Obama can teach me "blackness" is equally ridiculous.
Steele says MSM didn't vet Obama because of race. I disagree. They didn't want to vet a Lefty. They do colonoscopies on black conservatives.
Parents objecting to having gay propaganda shoved down their kids' throats at age 5
I knew nothing about Gypsy culture and Marime. h/t, AVI
Youtube: A very brief History of Weed. h/t, Thompson. Pot is America's #1 cash crop. Sheesh. I never figgered out what was so great about it, compared to beer.
Ths brief ad by CatholicVote gave Kim goosebumps
Powerline: Obama's incoherence on detainees:
Perhaps the solution is to release the dangerous detainees and then follow and kill them.
Great idea. Could make for good fun at the local rifle range, but that would be mean, and Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Dr. Sanity is not impressed by the O:
Understand that I listen to people for a living. I hear various degrees of honesty, sincerity, and real emotional pain being expressed on a regular basis. I also hear some of the most self-serving, dishonest and completely irresponsible utterings that it is possible to imagine. Yet, in my professional career, I have to freely admit that I have heard nothing like the deceitful and self-aggrandizing utterings of Barack Obama, which seem to get more and more pathological with every speech he gives. His most recent scam, in the National Archives in front of a fake copy of the U.S. Constitution just about takes the cake. This is not irony, so much as it is the grandiosity of tyranny.
Besides his smarmy condescension, what bugs me most about listening to the O is how self-referential he is. He never just talks about a thing: he always talks about himself and the thing. Perhaps he believes his hype.
Related: A forensic lit expert asks Who wrote Dreams of my Father? Forensic lit sounds cool, sort of like handwriting analysis on a larger scale.
Saturday, May 23. 2009
 Nantucket summer rental prices are getting reasonable this year. Recession pricing. Places that were $55,000/week now $45,000/week.
Polpis cottage in upper photo now available for only $20,000/week in August.
Lower cottage only $2700/week and available now in August. Seems a lot more reasonable to me, and less pretentious. But outdoor shower "not enclosed"? What? OK, watch me shower in the sun if you want to.
Once you have showered outdoors, you never want to shower indoors again.
How to get your spouse to quit overspending. h/t, Marginal Rev
How to survive a job you hate. Many links.
If China, India and Russia don't care about CO2, what good can we do?
Dying malls and ghost town malls. Good riddance.
Roast baby Neanderthal? Why not?
You might not like ObamaCare
"The Germans could not kill Walter Gibson. But Britain’s National Health Service was up to the task."
Does Colin Powell belong in the Repub Party? Of course. All welcome, in my view. I am a Big Tenter. I think of us Conservative/Libertarians as just a part of that Party. Party factions come and go, rise and fall, over time. That's why it works.
America's Christless Christianity.
Krugman: Bush destroyed our food. Is he insane? I mean, of course Bush tried to destroy our food. That's what evil, sadistic Repubs do for fun, right?
What's with Jihad in the Bronx?
President Above-It-All. Rich Lowry. Yes, a figurehead. Riehl sees him as a weak man with a big image. Well, he has never done anything difficult yet, but he has his chances now.
Joe Biden: "I'm out of the loop." It's a life-long affliction. I feel sorry for the guy.
Jules was pretty amusing about the Great Debate.
Voters sick of bailouts.
Has America really turned Left? Neoneo
Let's legalize counterfeiting. Brilliant!
Friday, May 22. 2009
 Race and IQ. There's a provocative topic for ya.
Speaking of IQ, a Suckers and Morons Tax for MA
The Prof takes on "Lost." It's a mystery to me.
Recruiting kids to spy on adults in the UK. Unrelated: Brit cops claim sex change operations. Still some humor over there.
The dueling speeches yesterday. Related: The ten punches Cheney landed on the O's jaw.
Related: Legal Aid for Jihadists and thoughts on the dueling speechs at Hugh Hewitt. Related: O forced to play defence. This will happen more and more now.
Where's the only employment growth in Michigan? You guessed right, didn't ya?
Women less happy than they used to be.
Megan takes a deeper look into that victim of the greedy bankers. Live beneath your means, friends.
The Jihad virus in American jails
Despite ten years of global cooling, Congress acts.
The Jacksonian says:
The primary duty of the President is Commander of the Armies and the Navy, which is also the seat of the Admiralty power and this the President Commander in Chief of our armed forces. He is not given the spot to remedy economic ills, or other woes of the financial sector - in no place is this given as a Presidential duty. Indeed, that primary responsibility calls for the thing the Left bemoaned over the last few years: sacrifice. Yet this President has decided to fight on the cheap by removing funding for weapons systems that have either been demonstrated as effective (such as Ballistic Missile Defense) or which went into final testing after acceptance (like the Non-Line of Sight Cannon). Such systems are meant to protect the Nation and our soldiers in the battlefield and make them more effective. By cutting back on systems, support and equipment, President Obama is the first President in quite some time to actually cut back on military systems during two Congressionally Authorized wars.
In Australia. With excellent video. The end of the video is the best part.
Thursday, May 21. 2009
I will be boating to celebrate summer's global warming, and out of intertube range for a few days. Will burn many gallons of gas to help prevent global cooling. Life is short, but I want to do what I can to help.
Leaving these links for you landlubbers:
 Re the California tax vote (h/t, Surber)
According to the Tax Foundation, officials in Sacramento have been on a wild spending spree since 2000, the last time California’s budget was balanced without borrowing or resorting to one-time accounting gimmicks. Between 2003 (when Schwarzenegger took office) and 2007, state spending ballooned 31 percent – far beyond inflation (12 percent) and population growth (5 percent). Californians have seen this train wreck coming for many months.
Why should I pay California's bills? I have my own problems and, frankly, I don't give a damn. Related, at Betsy.
Time to clip up those credit cards and go to cash.
BA is still cool, and everybody speaks English.
Knife death good; gun death bad. I prefer my killing when I use a baseball bat. The skull crunch is so satisfying.
Unions are fraudulent children. They want money and goodies without responsibility. UAW doesn't want Chrysler stock. How could they complain? Who would they negotiate with? How would they sell their unwanted products? Thus the lameness of modern unionization is exposed for what it is.
A spy reacts to Pelosi's attack on the CIA
A serious book critiquing multiculturalism. (h/t, Gay Patriot)
Even the Germans refuse those Gitmo scum. Where's the terrible Swine Flu when you need it?
Guaranteed: you will be deeply disappointed in Obamacare...if it ever happens.
Max Borders: How can Conservatives compete with Free Stuff? TCS
Related, from Villainous:
Read my lips: I'm not asking for national health coverage. I don't want it. So don't tax my "risky lifestyle choices" to pay for something that's going to break the federal piggy bank as a back door means of giving the Nanny State carte blanche to tell me how to run my life.
I stopped smoking when I was 14. Idiocy like this just makes me want to start up again.
I suggest Merit Menthol Lights. They won't kill ya, but they are pleasant enough. But, of course, there is nothing sexier than a gal smoking a ceegar.
Pubs figger out how to get around the UK pub smoking bans. Haha.
Jesse Jackson Jr. - a chip off the old block. Chicago loves their con men.
Netanyahu: Not impressed by Obama.
The New New Deal, at RCP:
If you believe President Barack Obama, he's working overtime to save American capitalism.
"I strongly believe in a free-market system," he told reporters in London, "and...in America, at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that's good." The market, he declared, "is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth...that history has ever known."
GOP identification increasing - but you wouldn't know it.
The O admin and the NYT not on the same page - for once. Must have gotten their wires crossed.
Released Gitmo jihadists and their recidivism: Report suppressed
Good piece on newspapers at Driscoll, who quotes:
Which would you say was more responsible for the death of American newspapering? The “descent into tabloidization”? Or the dreary monarchical deference of American liberalism’s insipid J-school courtiers? The king rode in the park. He was riding his videographer in the shrubbery, but you don’t need to know that.
I do not want Susan Gill protecting my home and family. The blogger notes:
Let us for a moment look past her sincere ignorance and the fact that there have been precisely two murders documented with legally-owned machine guns since 1934, that children are already barred from purchasing all manner of firearms, that "harmonious living" never stopped a hardened criminal, and that criminals should not circumscribe your freedoms. We'll look past all that to focus on what all too many outside of her moonbeams-and-unicorns world view also misunderstand about what our nation is, and the role firearms were intended to play.
The climate-industrial complex. What it is. Related: Sociologists ask "Where's my global warming $?"
Defining defamation down: The UN is insane.
Also insane:
SHOCKING NEWS: This Just In: U.S. Obesity “Epidemic” Due Solely to Overeating! “So the implied solution seems to be that food industry must be forced to make their products tasteless and unattractive.”
A good dose of poverty ought to solve that crisis easily, especially if everybody quits their credit cards.
Light rail: pretty idea, but not practical. We never should have gotten rid of the trolley cars, which every town in the USA had until the 1950s - when the gummint began subsidizing buses and put the trolleys out of business.
I am tired of reading about Narcissism at Dr. Sanity and Shrinkwrapped, but I must admit that the topic is relevant to our decadent, spoiled, entitled "Gimme" society. As Shrinkwrapped says:
The Utopianism inherent in Socialism appeals to those who feel that life is unfair and that it should be more fair. What child hasn't, at one time or another, uttered that immortal phrase that so many parents have so much troubling resisting, "Its not fair!" By the time the youngster begins to support him or herself, in modern Western cultures usually by the age of 30 or 40 (pardon the mild hyperbole, though there are efforts afoot to increase that age to never) they begin to recognize that the world is, in fact, not fair. The Universe does not care if you are a good person or a bad person (leaving religion out of the mix) but only whether or not you can support yourself and those who depend upon you. Modern liberal capitalist states have become so incredibly wealthy over the last century that we can now afford to support a growing dependency cohort which naturally evokes the infantile wish among the dependent to be treated more fairly, ie, that to each according to his needs should be the rule. The upshot is that there is an inherent tension in our society between those who pay and those who are dependent. This can and does create cognitive dissonance among those who have incorporated the ethos of Socialist compassion without spending time and energy understanding the far greater moral imperative of personal responsibility and freedom (tow inextricable values.)
The last century's grand experiments in Communism and Socialism led to the impoverishment of millions, authoritarian and totalitarian rule and the deaths of millions. History has rendered its verdict and Communism and Socialism have failed. This has led to a crisis for the Left.
Yeah. The crisis is what do you do after you crush all of the producers? Where does the money and wealth come from? The sky?
The perennially optimistic Larry says:
The communists were put to rout in the Indian elections. This suggests that India will take new steps to liberalize its economy, including foreign investment, free trade, privatization, and tax cuts. This is a big plus for global economic recovery. And the Indian elections may well have triggered the stock rally right from the opening bell this morning.
Plus: Morgan Stanley will probably de-TARP, along with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and perhaps others. No one knows for sure, but I think of de-TARPing as a kind of falling of the Berlin Wall. Let economic freedom ring. Let banks get out from under the yoke of government controls.
Yes, there will be shareholder dilution as the banks raise new equity capital. But the thought of banks freeing themselves from Team Obama way offsets any near-term dilution issues.
And out on the Left Coast, California voters look set to deny big state-government taxing-and-spending initiatives in tomorrow’s election. It’s a Prop 13-like vote. And it suggests that the Tea Party movement is in fact indicative of a tax-and-spend revolt going on around the country.
Why is everybody always shooting at Joe Biden?
Krauthammer is Obama's most effective critic
Good news: gun control on shelf
Car crazy. A quote:
We wish these folks luck "working together" with the Obama auto-design team. One thing seems certain by 2016: Taxpayers will be paying Detroit to make the cars Americans don't want, and then they will pay again either through (trust us) a gas tax or with a purchase subsidy. Even the French must think we're nuts.
Would somebody please explain to me how electric cars reduce fossil fuel use? Since, thanks to the enviro-nazis who block nuclear power, our electricity comes mostly from coal...
Insty:
REASON TV: All The President’s Newsmen: Should Obama Bail Out the Press? Why not? They’ve done it for him already, and he no doubt figures he’ll need their services again. . . .
Related: Dems seek rescue of minority newspapers
Via Theo:
'It doesn't matter if the planet is cooling and plants need it to live. We still have to ban carbon dioxide.' - Henry Waxman
"Ban carbon dioxide"?
Via Mr. Free market: Why I drink.
Rush resigns leadership of GOP; hands reins to Colin Powell
The report on the Irish Catholic gulag. This is beyond shameful.
MIT: We're all gonna die. Despite 10 years of global cooling, computers insist on apocalypse. Doesn't direct observation trump computer modeling? I guess not. How come nobody is paranoid about Hal living in those MIT computers?
Wednesday, May 20. 2009
 Pay your credit card on time - and suffer anyway. John at Powerline asks Who is subsidizing whom? Since when is a credit card a right? It's a loan.
The people spoke: California must cut budget. Schwartzenegger went to DC to say "We need help." Help yourself, tough guy. Don't be a pussy-man. From the link:
Schwarzenegger joined with liberal Democrats and the California Teachers Assn., the group that helped defeat a 2005 ballot package championed by the governor. Foes of Proposition 1A, meanwhile, included several unions, which didn't like the effect spending limits could have on the state workers they represent, and anti-tax groups that hated its extension of tax increases.
The Gaia Dogma coming to a school near you. Grammar, math and chem are so annoying anyway.
The NYT-ACORN story is still untold. More from Kaus on the game-changer question
Gummint to hand GM to the unions. Brilliant. That means the gummint forced me to buy GM debt - something I never would have done. Thanks, geniuses. And yes, I do know that it's a political union pay-off. Chevy, I hardly knew ye. Chevy - and GM - is DOA.
Happiness is being old, male, and Republican. Sorry, gals. h/t, Neptunus
What does Russia want? It wants its own interests. Duh. Hudson Inst
Should the unemployed go back to school? No. It's a dumb idea.
Signaling and conspicuous consumption. Overcoming Bias
Biden needs just two things - a speech-writer, and somebody to deliver the speeches. Sheesh
Via Protein:
In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: “They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do.”
Yep, that pretty much sums me up. How did he know me that well?
Tuesday, May 19. 2009
It is truly a conspiracy to keep them poor and stupid.
There are a number of sites to visit to keep up with the totalitarian joke of a tin-pot dictatorship that Venezuela is turning into, but we still rely mainly on Venezuela News and Views. He retains some sense of humor about it all, despite the unfolding tragedy of a once-fine and hopeful nation.
It's a damn shame to watch them head down the Zimbabwean path to disaster while Fidel, Hollywood, and Ahmadinejad cheer Chavez on.
Samuelson via Attack:
Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he’s labeled “irresponsible”?
Via Commentary:
Congress, ever more a re-election committee for incumbents of all parties rather than a legislature, has shown scant relish for either cutting spending or raising taxes on the middle class, both of which create instant voter resentment. So it is likely to borrow still more in the bond market.
Of course one way for a government to get out from under an unsupportable debt load is to inflate its way out of it. The national debt is dollar-denominated, so a raging inflation would make it worth less as a percentage of GDP. In the inflation-ravaged 1970’s, the national debt nearly tripled in dollar terms (from $370 billion to $909 billion) but it fell as a percentage of GDP from 39 percent to 34 percent.
The Federal Reserve’s number-one job is to maintain price stability. If the Fed — despite what will be enormous pressure from politicians desperate to avoid having to take responsibility for their folly — does that job, I don’t think the present debt course will be sustainable.
How that will play out is anyone’s guess, but it will be ugly, to put it mildly.
George Will:
The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of “economic planning” and “social justice” that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail.
The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.
Via Mr. Free Market, Why kids yell:
How they sell Buicks in China
The UK wants to monitor your energy use. As we always say, 1984 was not a government handbook. Related: Brit schools to ban regular neckties. Too dangerous.
Missing link: A lemur-monkey. Cool.
Related, at Insty:
STATE OF SURVEILLANCE: Ross Clark’s The Road to Big Brother gets a very positive review in the Wall Street Journal. I wrote the introduction, and I think it’s an important book.
Did you read about that "green house" in Michigan that froze? They should have tried an igloo.
When violence works. AVI
Allstate refuses to take the bait.
Race in Jamaica. Strange.
How come the Dems never run real men for national office? Am Thinker
How ya gonna pay those grad school debts? Especially for medical school, if the gummint wants to control your income...
"Well-heeled class warriors." Thompson
Blaming the banks for helping him? Megan McA
Notre Dame is unofficially in the pro-abortion camp
Monday, May 18. 2009
 The giant garbage dump in the Pacific. What a shame. h/t, Cons. Grapevine
Pelosi first heard of 9-11 attacks in late 2003. Scrappleface
Jail for not holding those filthy handrails? I thought they were there for the old folks.
How to land an F-16 with a spinal injury. (h/t, Neptunus)
MA: Let the frail die. The best way to save $ is to refuse treatment for anybody over 45. Ted Kennedy too old for brain surgery in Canada.
Related: CBO estimates on Obamacare top $1 trillion.
What's happening to the piano?
How uncertainty is affecting investors
High state taxes lead to job loss and population loss. Duh. Related: NY taxpayers vote with their feet.
The pork inside cap and trade.
PBS' war on religion will cut "Mass for Shut-ins." How progressive.
This letter from Congress is unbelievable. Don't they realize that they are our servants? h/t, Cafe Hayek
The "snarl of hatred" from the Pro-lifers. Related: Waterboarding terrorists bad; infanticide good. Go figger. Related: Is abortion "murder-lite"?
That porkulus package did a lot of good, didn't it? Well, everybody knows it was pure political pay-off.
American Thinker is up to 1 million unique visitors/month. They deserve it. They want your support, though.
Excuses, excuses. Breitbart, "I Jerk", and Dowd
Finally, Honda produces a crappy car
Sam Huntingdon eulogies
Those climate ocean buoys must be defective. Science must be required to fit the narrative. So, just for some cruel fun:
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