Thursday, May 6. 2010
 I surely do not blame Obama for Islamic terrorism and jihad, but I also suspect that he and his admin imagine that love and appeasement are effective strategies for dealing with hateful killers. Shiver agrees.
Yes, Shahzad was Taliban-trained
Jammie:
The Democrats and their lapdog media love having it both ways. In the span of 24 hours they went from hinting it was evil right-wingers that left the bomb in Times Square to warning about the right being racist toward Muslims.
I wish they'd get their narrative straight.
Why such special solicitude towards Moslems? As compared, say, to Christians or Jews?
Medved: No Political Future for an All-White G.O.P
Similarly, from Hawkins: What the GOP has done for decades to reach minorities has not worked, and will never work.
Conservatives say they want constitutionally limited government - not no government.
A commercial website: How to Profit from Global Warming. Or you can just ask Al Gore.
Related: Is there global cooling?
Graduating from Yale is like leaving Paradise? Well, graduating from any college (or high school) is like leaving the womb - unless you are somebody who is eager to take on the world and to test yourself against tough reality.
Volvo town bans plastic water bottles. Talk about meaningless gestures. If they really cared, they would ban all use of plastics, heating oil and auto fuel.
Statistically, do Liberal men tend to be girly men? Perhaps in San Francisco and in academia, but, in general, I am not convinced.
Blaming Wall St for selling "sh-t" reveals a deep misunderstanding of what Wall St. does. I even hear Conservatives bitching about the "crooks." One quote:
There is no such thing as a financial package or instrument that is inherently "good" or "bad," "better" or "worse" than any other. These packages simply offer different profiles of risk and return. They can be "better" or "worse" only for a particular client, based on what the rest of the client's portfolio looks like and thus what kind of additional exposure to risk and return is optimal for that portfolio. The exact same financial instrument could be a very good investment for one party and a very bad investment for another. It all depends on the desired risk exposure.
At NRO:
A Post poll shows that 61 percent of opponents of the tea-party movement believe “racism has a lot to do with the movement.”
Now, where in the world could that perception have come from?
Wednesday, May 5. 2010
Some of those opposed to Arizona’s new illegal immigrant enforcement law, which by the way is consistent with federal law that those not citizens must carry proof of legal entry, want the MLB All-Star Game to be moved from Phoenix.
Commissioner of major league baseball, Bud Selig, is in a difficult position. As is Arizona’s population, about 30% of MLB players are Hispanic.
If any player wants to express an opinion, that’s their right. If Selig wants to express an opinion, however, that is his right but not his job.
Any player from another country who wants to play in another country should try that, but otherwise is bound to play where they are told. Bud Selig, as well, should find another job if he is not up to avoiding the politicization of baseball.
Even this sports analyst, opposed to Arizona’s law, says:
Selig’s job, as the commissioner of baseball, is to help protect his players. When a player signs with an organization, he has a legitimate reason to be in this country. That doesn’t take away the reality that he may be forced to carry proof in his pocket.
I’m afraid Selig’s only potential response to that is, “Sorry, fellas, it’s the world we live in.”
And, this is the United States of America, with legitimate borders and laws. If Selig wants to open the gates at all baseball games to unrestricted free entry, that would do more for the sport.
Bud Selig’s phone number is (212) 931-7800.
From his piece at RCP:
Currently, the U.S. has the highest legal immigration in the world. Every year, we allow 750,000 immigrants to enter the country legally and make them eligible for citizenship within five years. Two hundred and fifty thousand aslyees are also permitted to enter annually. Those legal immigrants have the right to work and earn a living; the asylees are eligible to work six months after applying to work. If we need more immigrants, as many think we do to expand the workforce of our graying population, then we can easily increase the number of legal immigrants.
If we give the current illegals amnesty, you can be sure that 20 or so years from now, there will be a clamor for another amnesty bill as the illegals will continue to pour in.
 I was watching TV clips of the Greek riots. The bottom line rationale of the Greek rescue effort is the transfer of known and predictable near-total losses on Greek debt from the investors, banks and governments holding that debt to the taxpayers of the EU and the taxpayers funding the IMF in order to try to protect the euro until the next crisis.
Kondratiev's predictions are:
1. There is no way Greece will ever repay the $146 billion; either (a) the austerity measures if accepted and complied with will plunge the country into deep recession, or (b) the general strikes that the austerity measures inspire will cause depression.
2. In either case, the Greek government will fall for agreeing to the austerity conditions, and the government that gets elected will repudiate both the austerity measures and the euro. Because the European Central Bank is not the issuer of euro notes and because that function has been left to individual countries, all Greece needs to do to "unpick" from the euro is to declare that each Greek-issued euro note (one with a serial number starting with "Y") is now a drachma note and will be exchanged 1-for-1 by the Bank of Greece.
3. Then Greece will go back to devaluing and inflating and devaluing and inflating just as it used to do.
The euro has been fabulous for European trade, but with a majority of Germans polled saying they opposed the Greek bailout, something will have to give. I hazard a couple of guesses, first that the euro might split into a soft euro for the PIIGS and a hard euro for the other countries, or that the rest of the PIIGS would follow Greece and return to local currencies.
Bottom line: if you are holding any "Y" euro notes, deposit them in your bank as soon as you can for their full face value.
 High water in Nashville
More Tea Bagger Presbyterian violence
"Say it with roses, say it with mink, but never never say it in ink." Be careful about what you put in emails.
Office jerks: How Dad's Yelling Can Spawn an Office Tyrant
"A standup comedian who was sued for making mother-in-law jokes has had the last laugh after a federal judge threw the case out of court."
Gov Christie fires a NJ Judge. Good quote from him:
"Many of these decisions have been results in search of a rationale."
In other New Jersey news: A brave new documentary reveals the corruption, waste, and stupidity of education spending in New Jersey.
Pisciotta: Top 10 Reasons to Rely on Private Sector Markets
Legal Ins: NY Will Actively Subvert Immigration Laws
Mankiw: Much to Love, and Hate, in a VAT
Lowry: The Greek Unions -- And Ours
Leaving Arizona
Kudlow: Keynesian Spending has Zilch Effect on Recovery
Protein: “The Left loses its way by abandoning ‘third way’”
Criminality and illegal immigration: NYM has the other side of the story
Where are the pretty pink unicorns? Peters: We can't appease Islamists
Mead:
Ten years ago, the European Union with great fanfare unveiled the “Lisbon Agenda”, a ten-year action plan to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.
It flopped. Europe is less of a factor today than it was ten years ago in the high-tech world. Even before the crash the EU lagged behind China, India and the United States when it came to economic growth. It is emerging from the recession more slowly than the others and there are no signs that Europe has overcome the problems that have slowed its growth. As for ‘greater social cohesion’, look at the trade union riots in Greece. Look at the tensions with immigrants; look at the rise of extreme right-wing parties.
Tuesday, May 4. 2010
The June issue of Chief Executive magazine confirms that while my residence in California has wonderful climate and well-educated people, otherwise I live in a state ranked by 651 chief executives across the country as the worst state to do business.
How is it that the nation’s most populous state at 37 million, one that is the world’s eighth-largest economy and the country’s richest and most diverse agricultural producer, a state that had the fastest growth rate in the 1950s and 1960s during the tenures of Democratic Governor Pat Brown and Republican Governors Earl Warren and Ronald Reagan, should become the Venezuela of North America?
Californians pay among the highest income and sales taxes in the nation, the former exceeding 10 percent in the top brackets. Unemployment statewide is over 12.2 percent, higher than the national average. State politics seems consumed with how to divide a shrinking pie rather than how to expand it. Against national trend, union density is climbing from 16.1 percent of workers in 1998 to 17.8 percent in 2002. Organized labor has more political influence in California than in most other states. In addition, unfunded pension and health care liabilities for state workers top $500 billion and the annual pension contribution has climbed from $320 million to $7.3 billion in less than a decade. When state employees reach critical mass, they tend to become a permanent lobby for continual growth in government.
No surprise, the other states at the bottom of the barrel for governments deemed unfriendly to business: New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts. The states whose business friendliness has declined most in the past five years: Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Jersey. The states most friendly toward business: Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Nevada.
With 2010 census reassignment of Congressional seats coming up, there are consequences:
Little wonder then that while Texas gained over 848,000 net new residents in the last 10 years, according to the Census Bureau, California lost 1.5 million. New York State’s net loss exceeded 1.6 million - the highest of any state. High-tax, big- government New Jersey ranked fourth, with a net loss of almost 460,000, enough to drop it from 10th to 11th place in population.
Good.
But not so good for taxpayers in the states unfriendly to business.
The political elites in the states that dismiss out-migration trends overlook the radical demographic adjustment underway. As higher-income earners leave, they are more often replaced by those with lower incomes and lower skills, many needing public assistance. Gone too are the entrepreneurs and risk-takers, off seeking regions where their job creating abilities are rewarded.
Another more daunting reality is in store. The so-called de-leveraging of America hasn’t reached government. U.S. cities and states have issued over $2 trillion in new debt since 2008, with another $1 trillion scheduled this year. The problem is that state revenues in real terms may not reach 2008 levels until late in 2012, according to John Thomasian of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. As he emphasizes in his paper, “The Big Reset: State Government after the Great Recession,” states will have to rethink and redesign government in terms of what is essential and what can be made more efficient if their citizens are to have much of a future.
Investors Business Daily adds:
The Chief Executive magazine report follows last year's alarming "Manufacturing 2.0" study by California's Milken Institute. It showed California suffering a collapse of its manufacturing sector on a magnitude of the one that killed Michigan's economy.
California's long-term job losses are downright ugly. Since 2001, while politicians dither and spend, 634,000 factory jobs have disappeared along with 34% of the industrial base. From 2003 to 2007 alone, according to the Milken report, 79,000 jobs were lost due to excessive regulation and too-high taxes.
But if California's private companies are suffering, its public sector sure isn't. From 2001 to 2009, California lost 235,000 net private-sector jobs, but gained 163,700 government jobs. Those cushy union jobs also pay more than comparable private jobs and provide gold-plated benefits. Now Californians find they actually have to pay for this foolishness.
Those dangerous Tea Party "Patriots" just can't catch a break. A Presbyterian, as usual. They always turn out to be Presbyterians.
 The unofficial bio of Leroy Jethro Gibbs
The ambiguous utopias of Iain M. Banks
Latest Rasmussen: Obamacare: Majority of Americans Are Skeptical
Shrinkwrapped: Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out
Franklin Graham sounds a bit pissed at Obama
Why can't men be more like women?:
It is telling that scientists are so thoroughly steeped in knee-jerk male bashing that they do not even ask whether there might be something positive about having less oxytocin.
Why the Obama-FDR comparison doesn't work
Williamson at NRO:
Americans love Big Government. But it's not a blind love — it all depends on the direction the arrow is pointing on the cashflow chart. Ask George W. Bush , who got himself cruficied for trying to reform Social Security. Ask anybody who has touched Medicare, or even idly thought aloud about doing so. Ask a farmer or anybody marching in the Small Business Administration pork parade.
The problem with big bills, at Commentary:
If the best place to hide a book is in a library, then the best way to hide a favor for a contributor or a quiet little power grab is in a bill 2,000 pages long.
Stelzer: For now, economy is looking up
Greece: tax-dodging as a way of life
Powerline:
If Obama is an enigma today, it's because of the contrast between his remarkably open disdain for his domestic rivals and opponents on the one hand and his obsequious approach to the nation's foreign adversaries on the other. As enigmas go, however, this one is more troubling than puzzling.
Am Thinker on Palin-hatred:
...the fury directed against Palin by leftists is so overwrought, and at times maniacal, precisely because her innate common sense is so powerful and effective when she dares to declare that the emperor of government economic planning has no clothes. Like Mises and Reagan, Palin understands with utter (and to leftists, frightening) clarity that leftist utopias have no practicality or viability, but are, in Mises' words, "illusory fantasies."
Like most people, self-important intellectuals don't like their cherished dreams and aspirations dismissed as fantasies.
Sporting Art via Theo
Monday, May 3. 2010
CA Dem candidate Mickey Kaus: "It's time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism."
Bailout making things worse, at Reason:
...you have politicians defying the will of the voters to pour more water into a leaky bucket; transnational economic planners destroying a currency in order to save it; markets responding to those actions with predictable horror; and the few recipients of all the largesse too dumb to say "Thank you." This is apparently what EU stability looks like.
 Ridley's Turtles, caught on the big hook of Cape Cod. If their numbers were healthier, a few lost turtles would not matter.
Recommended Revolutionary War Reading List
An example of why Rubio should be a senator.
Prager: Why Left Talks About 'White' Tea Parties
Good, demanding schools: Learning from the successful charter schools
Re Goldman: Berkshire Execs Blame Turmoil On Faulty Regulation. Exactly right.
McArdle:
In answer to Andrew's question--"That auto restructuring last year was a disaster, wasn't it?"--well, yes, it was. The Congressional Budget Office believes that it will ultimately cost the taxpayers $50 billion--as much or more than the rest of TARP put together. For that, we saved less than 400,000 jobs at GM and Chrysler. We could have given each of the autoworkers $100,000 to go start over somewhere else, and still saved money on the deal.
Government spending per household, 1965-present
They took this kid's sandwich
Does "audacity" mean doing things people don't want?
Moonbattery: Item #2: Why You Can't Have an Intelligent Discussion with a Progressive Leftist
Fishing photo via Theo
From the Huffington Post:
State-sponsored anti-Semitism... in 2010? ... in VENEZUELA? On the surface, it didn't make sense.
But as we continued our investigation, the evidence continued to build. There was the anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on the synagogues and businesses owned by Jews; there was the police raid on the Jewish school Hebraica that was based on a "tip" that the school was involved in an assassination plot [no evidence was ever found]; there were the frequent publications in the state-run media calling for the expulsion of the Jews; and there was even the anti-Semitic rhetoric of President Hugo Chavez himself.
Perhaps it is this last example that Jewish Venezuelans fear the most. When your own president is comparing Zionists to Nazis on national television, and insinuating that it is people of your religion that have all the wealth in the world ("the descendants of those who crucified Christ"), and then publically expels the ambassador of Israel during a war that your country has nothing to do with, I can understand why you might start to feel nervous.
But why? What could possibly be the motivation?
Maybe that is most shocking of all....
Below is the preview. What will be the conclusion?
Sunday, May 2. 2010
We are hearing the voices of Greek infants. Do they think money grows on trees? Why we connect Plato and Socrates to modern Greeks is a mystery of geography.
Mead explains how modern Greeks think.
Saturday, May 1. 2010
 Noonan: The Big Alienation. A quote:
This is not the old, conservative and long-lampooned "I don't trust gummint" attitude of the 1950s, '60s and '70s. It's something new, or rather something so much more broadly and fully evolved that it constitutes something new. The right never trusted the government, but now the middle doesn't.
Goldberg: States' Rights and Wrongs
Do not hack into peoples' emails
Karl Rove still driving people crazy
The notion of offering Medicare to businesses
Oil spill as Obama's Katrina?
They ran crying to the Dean. Pathetic.
Via Dino:
As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care and pensions, and the gap grows even bigger. The average federal employee’s benefits add $40,785 to his annual total compensation, whereas the average working taxpayer’s benefits increase his total compensation by only $9,881. In other words, federal workers are paid on average salaries that are twice as generous as those in the private sector, and they receive benefits that are four times greater.
In defence of Glenn Beck
On immigration at NRO:
Linda (Chavez) criticizes the “slow, steady harassment” of illegal aliens. “Slow, steady harassment” is a pretty good working definition of about 80 percent of American law enforcement. It mostly works. You want to change the law, then change the law. But people who believe the way Linda believes about immigration have had ample opportunity to change the law through the democratic process. They have lost. They will continue to lose.
We have generous legal immigration laws now. They can always be changed. A nation without borders, though, is not a nation. A nation is a community of law. As we often say, the whole world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity, and would if they would only have to ignore our laws and wade through the Rio Grande. One thing that ticks me off is that the illegals have taken the jobs high school kids like I used to get: laborers on construction, landscaping work, electrician helpers, etc. They pay the illegals cash and the high school kids get fat and lazy playing video games. I began working summers and part-time during the school year when I was 13. Can kids do that now? I enjoyed working, learned a lot about life, got in good physical shape, and made money too.
Friday, April 30. 2010
“In this election… we have got to realize there is no longer any such thing as a conservative Democrat. It doesn’t exist. I used to be one of them. When I worked for Bill Clinton, that’s what I was. Now I’m extinct. There are no more of me. I’m a dodo bird. Now you are either a Reid-Pelosi Democrat or you are a Republican.”
Dick Morris
Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. h/t, Washington Reb
Shawcross: Britain's humiliation
Legally, what's an "offended observer"? I am one, all day long.
Pew: More trouble for Democrats
If the government runs medical care, they will own your body. Bought and sold.
Mexico acknowledges migrant abuse, pledges changes. Yeah, sure.
Immigration: New third rail in American politics announced
Market-Based Membership Approach to Healthcare At the Same Monthly Cost As a Cell Phone Plan
Obama to Wall Street: “I Do Think at Certain Point You’ve Made Enough Money”. He made 5.5 million last year. Plus he gets free room and board from the government with a free chopper to the golf course. More from Driscoll
"Where's our money?" The SEIU protest (h/t, Theo):
Thursday, April 29. 2010
 Neither an imminent 10-meter ocean level rise nor the prospect of a flooded basement deters the Fearless Al from this waterfront purchase.
So does anybody still think he really believes his nonsense? Yes, he is making ark-loads of $ from it but, even so, he is so on board that it would be too late for him to change his mind regardless of facts.
Like Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley.
But "facts" and "evidence" are just patriarchal and racist tools of oppression anyway, aren't they? In this brave new world, we all get to pick our own facts, depending on how we feel or on which side our bread is buttered, and reality is a politico-socio-emotional construct. Isn't it?
Remind me to post my bit on "Psycho-utopianism" some time soon.
Re Goldman, from Cardinalpark at Tiger:
The one thing I thought the Goldman executives should have remarked, when questioned about their tactical short overlay to reduce their long exposure to the mortgage morket, would have been to add that, had they not gone net short, they very likely would have been in line testifying with Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. And I know which questioning, however ignorant, I would prefer to face.
Today, I am a proud Goldman alum.
Is Congress ignorant about how business works, or do they feign ignorance for populist, political purposes; boob bait for the bubbas? Hard to tell. For certain, the WH is ignorant, as Dino reminds us via this reposted IBD chart:
At Politico today: The Wall Street-Washington divide. My gut tells me it's all a big diversion.
 A fun Costco prank. Goat balls?
From The Crushing Patriarchy, Episode 12:
The assumption of a ‘natural’ 1:1 gender ratio in all occupations is itself a prejudice, albeit a modish one. On what basis do we determine that there ought to be a particular ratio of male and female philosophers, or mathematicians, or engineers? At what point and on what basis do we determine that a particular gender is sufficiently “represented” in a given vocation?
Ambinder: The Democratic Message for 2010
Teach Social Justice - Or Else
Obamacare Requires You To "Show Your Papers"
Why reporters are down on the President. And no presser for 10 months! Shocking.
Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing
Stealth Statehood for Puerto Rico?
Astroturf to support the Cult of Personality
Why Obama is going negative
Adler at Volokh likes Cape Wind. I think it is insane. These costly bird-shredding eyesores will never make money without taxpayer subsidies, and will never amount to a hill of beans as far as energy sourcing goes. Tax-subsidized feel-good baloney.
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