Friday, July 8. 2011
 From Ace: When Government Liberals Are Set Free - Nightmare In Connecticut. (Thanks, reader.)
It's a vicious cycle. The more you drive enterprise away, the more you need to soak the remaining people and the remaining businesses who have any money, and thus the more you drive business away or out of business.
Plunder only works to a point, and then you end up with Detroit or Greece.
CT even just placed a stiff tax on non-profit hospitals, if you can believe that. It is bad, and getting worse. One might easily imagine that they are trying to drive all of us to Florida. Personally, I do not care for Florida very much, and snow doesn't bother me at all. Weather is what you make of it and I make the best of it.
It's getting to the point that my state is only a good deal for the very rich (who can afford to avoid taxes or who don't care what they are) and the very poor. Oh yes, I almost forgot - and for government unions. The urban, unemployed poor, the government unions, and the limo Liberals in West Hartford, Litchfield County, and Fairfield County, own my state, at the moment.
It hardly seems like rugged Yankeeland here, politically, anymore. It's Gimme-land. The people with the olde codes have died or are no longer breeding. And to think that our Conservative governor candidate lost by only 6000 votes found, several days after the election, in bags in a Bridgeport warehouse or post office or something. Maybe it was legit. I don't know, but anything in Bridgeport is dubious these days.
Well, since others are weighing in with their election predictions, I thought I'd do the same. No sense in dawdling, right?
Obama in a landslide.
Pending change in circumstance, I hastily add.
As it stands now, I just can't see a Republican win. All of the declared candidates contain major flaws which the MSM will mercilessly exploit, both overtly and covertly, blatantly and subliminally, and I find none of the candidates inspirational in the slightest.
And the poor selection is only one of our worries.
The one, basic, inherent problem here is that conservatives are conservative. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. And, as such, by definition alone they're not very activistic, tending to sit around on their duffs while the liberals make all the moves. It's no mystery why so many institutions and the major media realms, including the tech world, are dominated by liberals. It's because they try.
My job here is to get some of you to try.
My initial leap into the upcoming election was to create SpeakUp! 2012, a how-to guide for putting together a snappy blog site and then spreading the word around. If you want to show a little gumption and have a say in the election, that's the way to do it. The free WordPress software (the stuff that Power Line just switched to) is terrific and very easy to use. The guide will walk you through the entire process from this moment on. Plus, you've got me trapped here to pester with questions if you run into a snag.
Below the fold I'll run through the candidates in my usual calm, careful, deliberate manner as I soundly castigate, shred, thrash, defile, lambaste, maul, abuse and abase view them with the same objectivity I always show.
Which is to say, none.
Continue reading "Election 2012: A tough row to hoe"
 Giant hogweed can scar and blind you, N.Y. warns
I have seen that plant. Didn't know it was poisonous.
5 Pro-Marijuana Arguments That Aren't Helping
Pot should not be illegal. It's just like Prohibition - everybody who wants pot gets it anyway. It's wrong to outlaw every dumb thing there is to do in life. Part of freedom is freedom to do dumb things - and to deal with the consequences.
Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel for Students
Mankiw: Housing Tax Subsidies
One more example of how government distorts markets
EPA Funds Green Groups That Sue The Agency To Expand
There is something truly wrong about that. You might term it an implicit conspiracy against the people, similar to the conspiracies between governments and government unions.
Hinderaker: Liberals: Wrong Again. Do They Care?
It is a phenomenon we see over and over again: a liberal will make a wild accusation or engage in defamatory speculation about a political opponent. The accusation will then be taken up by left-wingers across the internet and, if it looks promising, it will be repeated in far-left newspapers like the New York Times. Liberals everywhere will eat it up and elaborate on it. Then, in due course, it will be proved entirely baseless.
What happens next? Do liberal web sites, columnists and reporters retract their fictitious claims and apologize? Hardly ever. By the time the truth comes out, they have moved on to some new libel or conspiracy theory.
That's the "drive-by" media
Obama Refers To The Internet As "The Internets"
That would be a big deal if Bachmann said it
White House shows early signs of re-election panic
Klavan: Why Do Blacks Vote for the Party of Racism?
Commentary: The Obama Doctrine Defined
Mead: Beyond The Big City Blues
Health care: Ezra Klein’s public-private fetish
Yale's anti-Semitism whitewash
75% See Vital U.S. Interests As Only Reason For Committing Military Forces to Overseas Action
 It's an upscale village of 19,000 now, but 25 years ago it was just turning from semi-rural to suburban. The farms are all gone. Even with a train connection to NYC, it's a hike. Wiki again:
The town is one of the most affluent communities in the United States. In 2008, CNN Money ranked New Canaan first in the nation with the highest median family income.
(Prosperous, indeed, but what those stats really mean, in part, is that there are no poor neighborhoods there to drag down the average.)
The comfortable colonial (built 1936) pictured is for sale for $4 million and change, but 3 years ago it would have been 6 or 7.
Thursday, July 7. 2011
 American Front Lawn Update: Turf Wars
Related: The Case Against the American Front Lawn
Related: Setbacks, Suburbs and the American Front Lawn
Flying car gets regulatory clearance
Cosby to Christians: Man Up!
View from the Left - New Republic: Man Without a Plan: Obama’s Short-Sighted View of U.S. Politics
Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level.
Just like what we wrote about on Tuesday: Long-term California Cooling Trend Blamed on Global Warming
Climate change causes everything.
Malanga: The Compensation Monster Devouring Cities - The real battle over public workers’ pay is happening in city halls, not state capitols.
The vote-buying pols sold out the taxpayer everywhere
Goldberg: ‘That’s Racist’ - The accusation becomes a punch line.
Hey, Jonah. That's racist.
Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr (R., CA): Ronald Reagan Would Never Be Elected Today
Why we like Marco Rubio: “The kind of language you would expect from a leader of a third-world country, not the President of the United States”
A forceful speaker. Is it racist to say he is "articulate"?
Blame the rating companies: Portugal reels after Moody's junk rating.
In the last go-round, they accused the raters of being too lenient. I think the raters are trying to find a delicate way of opining that Greece and Portugal are technically bankrupt.
Driscoll: Why does the MSM Downplay the Violence at Left-Wing Protests?
The Lt. Dan Band: Trailer, For the Common Good
Why Greece is thwarting Gaza flotilla
Small Wars Journal: Killing your way to control
WSJ: Inside the Disappointing Comeback
“Fast and Furious” Blows Sky-High
Wednesday, July 6. 2011
Details at Boring Old Man.
It's depressing. Perhaps I need some Risperdal?
How Greece's Political Elite Ruined the Country
Pork for all! Greece is bankrupt, and everybody knows it. There is no way they will ever pay back what they have borrowed to sustain their vote-buying politics. Maybe they could just sell the whole country to Club Med, and change those Euros or Drachmas into drink beads.
Obama Losing Canada's Oil to China
Saddam Hussein Torture Doctor at Work in British Hospital
Brits can't get top students to go to medical school anymore (nobody really wants to work for the NHS) - so they have to import docs from Whereisitstan.
McArdle: Why Can't the GOP Get to Yes?
She sort-of agrees with David Brooks. I don't know what I think except that the Dems cannot stop spending money they don't have to give people stuff they don't want. Plunder politics.
Stossel on The College Scam. A quote:
"There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor's degrees," Vedder said. He says that 17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers.
Nothing wrong with that (a bartender who can discuss Paradise Lost with you is a good thing) - unless those folks were scammed into getting those diplomas as a financial investment. I see many parallels with sub-prime mortgage sales. Most colleges these days are all about sales - warm bodies with loans in hand. It's become the Big Education industry, built on debt.
Obama’s Final Argument: Republicans Are Poopheads: A quote:
No Republican has won the presidency without significant name recognition entering primary season since Warren G. Harding in 1920. That is because Republicans have to face down Democrats’ constant attacks on their personhood, attacks are made more effective because the Republican platform is supposed to be personal responsibility and aspirational performance standards, while the Democratic platform is handouts, pure and simple. The only way for Republicans to win is to make it widely known to the American public prior to their demonization that they are good and decent human beings.
President Obama’s only hope, by contrast, is to personalize, polarize, and destroy. It’s pure Alinsky, and it will work unless Republicans nominate someone so honest and eminently kind that Obama’s criticism seems as foolish as it clearly is.
Remembering Entebbe
I am an unworthy - and grateful - American
What he said
Climate scientists predict mini Ice Age
Then catastrophic warming after that, I suppose? How long must I wait?
Coyote: More Wind Craziness
Tuesday, July 5. 2011
Feminists Against Beautiful Women
How To Plan a Fireworks Show
The best Literary Tales Of Real-Life Crimes
Via Insty: The Five Best Inventions of the Founding Fathers
The War on Lemonade Stands! Nanny of the Month (June 2011)
Carpe: How State Income Tax Rates Affect NBA Outcomes
Cory Maye is finally getting out of jail
Sowell: Politics Versus Reality:
It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.
Am Thinker: The Education of a Compassionate Conservative
Barone: Replacing Property as a Source of Wealth Creation
Connecticut’s ‘Anti-Christie’ Malloy Plans Worker Cuts
Joe Biden Warns Teamsters: Vote Dem or ‘You’re on Your Own, Jack’
NYT freaks because CEOs make big bucks. But what about Pinch?
Re our wars: Belmont Club: The return of reality
Obama’s Economists: Each Job ‘Saved or Created’ by the Stimulus Cost $278,000 (So Far)
Obama's labor union problem
Twenty-two states (plus the District of Columbia) currently impose an estate tax or an inheritance tax (Maryland and New Jersey have both). (h/t Insty)
Re the housing bubble and Fannie Mae:
Under Johnson, an important Democratic operative, Fannie Mae became, Morgenson and Rosner say, “the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.” Its power derived from the unstated certainty that the government would be ultimately liable for Fannie’s obligations. This assumption and other perquisites were subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worth an estimated $7 billion a year. They retained about a third of this.
Morgenson and Rosner report that in 1998, when Fannie Mae’s lending hit $1 trillion, its top officials began manipulating the company’s results to generate bonuses for themselves. That year Johnson’s $1.9 million bonus brought his compensation to $21 million. In nine years, Johnson received $100 million.
At Driscoll:
At Big Government yesterday, Phillip Dennis asked, “What Has Happened to Liberals In the Past 50 Years?” Here’s one answer: They went from viewing America as a beacon of freedom (or a Shining City upon a Hill, to borrow a phrase popular with both liberal icon JFK and former Roosevelt liberal Ronald Wilson Reagan) worth sharing with a beleaguered world to a Show About Nothing during that time. If only they had Upped Their Game during this period, instead.
Related: “Were the Founders Democrats?” That depends on whether you spell it with a large or small-d.
Monday, July 4. 2011
This post may seem to some as “inside baseball” but it illustrates a wider issue of being diligently informed for civil discourse and for effectiveness in supporting a cause, while not shirking from calling out those -- even allies -- who dangerously undermine that cause.
Europe has a deeper and historic anti-Semitism than in the US, and its Jews are proportionately and politically weaker than in the US. In this sense, European Jews may be more dependent on the efforts of non-Jews to defend themselves and Israel. This defense – here or there -- is based on the increasing realization, among Jews and gentiles, that it is part of a wider defense of the West, its culture and security against Islamist jihadists. Europe has also been more accomodationist toward Islamist offenses and offenders, partly out of post-WWII pacifism and retreat from global responsibilities and partly from it placing its energy and trade interests paramount. Both the US and Europe have activist Leftist and pro-Palestinian communities, but in the US they are far more marginalized in both public opinion and government policy, and there is lower tolerance for them. In Europe, allies are harder to come by, which can lead to infiltration by some who are anti-Islamist jihad but anti-Semitic, and slower reaction.
There is a blog dispute between blog friends, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs blog and "Baron Bodissey and Dymphna" at Gates Of Vienna (GOV) blog, about the infiltration by some anti-Semites tarnishing of anti-jihadist English Defense League. Geller, an early supporter of the EDL, says she "did not want to write" her post exposing anti-Semitism infiltration within EDL but is required to go there as "I cannot and will not sanction anti-Semitic infiltration." Accordingly, subject to EDL leadership's promised purge of such elements, she has distanced herself from the EDL. The GOV bloggers have reacted with an Open Letter in which they criticize Geller as over-reacting. Geller's reply, in her typical fashion, minces few words:
Continue reading "Informed Civil Discussion"
We'll have big link catch-up tomorrow - toon below via American Power -
Goodwin: Forgetting Founders' tough love:
...in the frenzy of our entitlement mania, where happiness is viewed as an "unalienable Right," we are losing the freedom to fail. That loss is a major factor in America's decline. Much of the unprecedented growth of government aims to protect people from the consequences of failure and the vagaries of life.
Steyn: Obama’s Declaration of Dependence
Patriotic use of Fourth of July apparel violates the U.S. Flag Code
American Amnesia - Young people in this country are failing civics, which is a crisis for the nation.
The Coming of the Fourth Reich? - You — or your kids — will be assimilated: the "liberal" university prepares the totalitarian future.
There’s no arguing with the result of a Rasmussen poll of who was the “greatest founding father”, George Washington. But the choices to select from -- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington or James Madison? – excluded Patrick Henry and his key role in rallying the new Americans to rebel against Britain and then to enact the new Constitution’s Bill of Rights to further protect individual liberties and states’ rights.
A biographer of Patrick Henry calls him “the first American to sound his displeasure with big government.”
Continue reading "Patrick Henry: Founding Father of Today’s Tea Party"
Sunday, July 3. 2011
(originally posted last Friday)
When Perro del Pájaro said it was going to be a 'long' weekend this morning, he wasn't kidding. With the 1st falling on a Friday, you can bet this'll be a 3½, if not 4-day holiday for many. Here's to ya. <clink!>
If you're looking for something to do, I have a few ideas to toss into the mix.
Speak Up!
Do I really have to tell you how important this next election is? Are you honestly just going to sit there on your duff the whole time, or are you going to be a part of it? If Obama is reelected, who ya gonna blame? Everybody else for not being more proactive?
I'll be debuting this site next week sometime, but it's rarin' to go now:
If you're one of those 'blogger' type o' guys, please grab the link and spread it far and wide.
Unless you'd rather go through four more years of this, of course.
Home Repair
Finally! At last you don't have some cheap, paltry excuse to hand the wife on why you can't get to all those fix-it jobs that have been piling up!
Lucky you!
Rather than this being a "how-to" site, it's more like a "Can I do it?" site, and should give you a pretty good idea as to whether you can handle it yourself or not.
A water heater is a pretty good example. Because they're large, they look kind of 'serious', and most people's first thought would be to call the plumber if it started to leak. But when you actually look at what exactly needs to be unhooked, it's really quite simple, and bendable supply lines mean you don't have to get an exact replacement so the inlet and outlet pipes match up. And, just between you and me, a pipe wrench is probably cheaper than a 4-hour visit from the union plumber.
Now in Deutsch, Français y Español!
Guaranteed Original*
*discounting coincidence, of course
I rarely write unless I have something new to add to the narrative, or a fresh slant on something. The OJ jury got it right. Magellan was a lie. Maggie's Farm is politically centrist. You know, the usual kind of wild hyperbole you expect in the blogosphere. A nice little intro to my unique style is here. The main site is here:
And for your visual delight:
Fly The Friendly Skies
Have you heard of Google Earth? It basically lets you fly around the globe in your own personal space ship, then zoom way in to look at your topless neighbor sunbathing historical monuments. It's a series of constantly-updated images from every spot on the globe, and there are big sites out there dedicated to posting the latest crazy/odd/beautiful spots people find. You click on the link and your own program takes you there. Very cool.
There are gigantic compass roses out there that you'd never have a clue what they were from the ground, as well as a whole shitload of wild mazes, cities and terrain in 3-D (you can fly between buildings and down the Grand Canyon), real-time airline tracking, real-time weather, strange geoglyphic inscriptions spanning the length of a football field — and that's not to mention some very convincing alien crop circles.
I've put together a number of video tours to show off this remarkable program. The 'Google Goofs' tour is hysterical.
Have a fun weekend, y'all.
And happy birthday, America.
 Robin Hanson: Words Show Lies
Deneen: Social Justice, Rightly Understood
Excitement accompanies news Thaddeus McCotter will run for president
McCotter's White House bid launching at Michigan festival
Maggie's Farm likes McCotter's personality
Anchoress: When True Evil Rises Before Us
Teachers' pensions in Illinois.
Good grief.
Kling: The New Commanding Heights (my bolds):
We are accustomed to thinking that our country is in the midst of a long transition from an industrial economy to a "service" economy, and these figures would seem to confirm that perception. But the service economy is not what we often think it is. The images that most readily come to mind when we think of these sectors might involve retail sales, information-technology consulting, and financial services. But Spence and Hlatshwayo's work shows that, within the non-tradable sector, health care was easily the growth leader — increasing from 10 million to 16.3 million jobs, and accounting for almost 25% of total job growth in the past two decades. Government was second, growing from 18.4 million to 22.5 million jobs, and accounting for about 15% of total job growth. Of this expansion in government employment, nearly 70% was attributable to jobs in education. Today, the drivers of the American labor market are therefore clearly health, education, and government work; these sectors form the backbone of our post-industrial economy.
 Obama Admin Lists Israel as a Terror Sponsor
Rubio: “America does not have a tradition of class warfare”
Shameless… In Weekly Address Obama Says “Government Has to Start Living Within Its Means”
Human Events: Top 10 Obama Attacks on Capitalism
Fox News: Best places to be an illegal alien
Via AVI, who gives how much to political causes?
Am Thinker: In Government, First, Do No Harm!
VDH's The Philosophies of Illegal Immigration:
...illegal immigration has transmogrified into one of the most illiberal, reactionary phenomena on the current American scene, an ossified concept of racial solidarity and tribalism that attempts to privilege one group, solely on the basis of race or ethnic fides, in its exemption from federal law, and in a manner that would never be extended to other immigrant lobbies, with less numbers, influence, and potential electoral power. We have come full circle back to the 1920s when immigration was likewise largely seen through racial lenses — when one’s race determined how one navigated immigration law.
Should there now be 6 million Korean nationals — and more on their way — inside California without legality, would the proverbial Hispanic community in large part be calling for stricter border enforcement? Would it be amnesty or deportation? English-only or Korean-language interpreters?
'The first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created people in the history of the world.':
Adams thought the day of independence should be commemorated by “Acts of Devotion to God Almighty,” and further “solemnized” (as he confided in a letter to his wife, Abigail) “with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one end of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
Mickey Mouse runs afoul of the Islamists in Egypt
Chavez health scare leaves dependent Cuba on edge
Is Obama taking a Reagan approach to the budget?
Am Thinker: The New York Times' agenda is showing
Is reverse racism Constitutional?
Top pic from Driscoll's Quote of the Day
Delicious Deviled Egg pic from neoneo's The Atkins diet and me
Toon below from Theo:
Saturday, July 2. 2011
New England Real Estate: Katherine Hepburn's house in CT for sale
A cruise with Steyn et al
Is the Sun Taking a Holiday?
Warren Meyer (Coyote): Missing the Point on July 4: The Right to Vote Was Not The Main Achievement in 1776
Campaigner-in-Chief Scolds Congress for Work Ethic
Al Gore's Ugly Rhetoric - The latest pseudoscience from the former vice president
The Trinity Sisters - Many of America’s most powerful women went to a college you’ve never heard of.
The U.N.’s Climate Of Desperation
Greenspan: Stimulus did nothing
Union curbs rescue a Wisconsin school district
Another college skeptic
Is Barack Obama a Socialist?
Via Lucianne:
Subprime Scandal: Democrats thought they'd dammed up the truth about government's role in the financial crisis. But the levees are breaking, thanks to a spate of rogue new books on the subject. The latest, "Reckless Endangerment," shreds the narrative carefully constructed by Democrats and the liberal media that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only bit players in the crisis and followed Wall Street into subprime lending.
A sad story: Posterity Denied: The Hijacking of the Barnes Foundation
Rumsfeld: The Peril of Deep Defense Cuts
Thailand: Red Shirts and Rowdy Royals
Here's an idea: Official Calls For Riverside, 12 Other Counties To Secede From California - New state would have no term limits, part-time legislature
Via Vanderleun on plunder:
"Democracies endure until the citizens care more for what the state can give them than for its ability to defend rich and poor alike; until they care more for their privileges than their responsibilities; until they learn they can vote largess from the public treasury and use the state as an instrument for plundering, first those who have wealth, then those who create it” -- Jerry Pournelle.
Friday, July 1. 2011
 I believe in work.
I believe that no honest work should be beneath any American. I also believe that all kids should work, and earn their own money. Kids learn more about how to, and how not to, negotiate the world from work than they do from school. Make your mistakes when young, and learn from them, as everybody needs to. Any paid work will do, but the more "menial" the better.
Except for the most spoiled brats who want to hang out during the summer or to be indulged in "enriching experiences," most kids want to work. It's a step towards adulthood and independence, and moping around the house or driving to the beach in the Beemer is a spiritual death for teens - or a sign of spiritual death.
Summer "vacation" is for the teachers. What do kids need a vacation for? They've been in school, for heaven's sake. School isn't "work work," as Whoopi Goldberg did not say. School is a piece of cake, compared to work. It's a delight, a joy, and a privilege - and it sure beats working an industrial loom in New Bedford at age 11. And, heck, teaching is real difficult too, compared to running a business. Right?
This is sad: The Jobless Summer - Why only one in four teens is employed.
That one-in-four is the one with initiative and drive. Watch that one, because if you can make something happen in your teens with all of the forces creating headwinds today, Bravo. Or Brava, as they say in NYC.
Thursday, June 30. 2011
Here. When you train and enable adults to be children, they will act like it. Just like in Wisconsin. Many will revert to childhood if they can get away with it. Those made of sterner stuff will not.
They are marching and berserking for "socialism." They don't realize they already have it, along with the typical Socialist terminal case of the Gimmes.
Euroland people need to grow up and accept the reality that life is difficult and challenging, and that no adult is entitled to anything. You are supposed to man up, in life. Or woman up, as the case may be. Reagan would have fired them all for shirking their duties to the public who hired them and who pays their wages from their own toil, and rightly so.
If you want to be a serf, expect to be treated like one.
 This isn't a particularly exciting post, just a follow-up.
A few years ago I wrote The Sound of Many Faucets Running, a look at the new dollar coins. Coins last much longer than bills, y'see, therefore using much less energy to replace, thereby saving the planet from catastrophic meltdown.
While my post was fairly routine, I have to admit that if we had to switch from dollar bills to coins, I thought my idea bordered on the brilliant.
And here we are today:
Inside the Fed’s Vault: $1 Billion Worth of Unused Coins
In the basement of a Baltimore vault the size of a soccer field, 1 billion dollar coins are just sitting there. Thanks, Congress.
And the planet thanks you!
Actually, there appears to be a bit of gray area as to why they tried to foist these on us in the first place. From the original article:
The U.S. Mint is spending about $12 million on a pilot project to promote the presidential dollar coin by appealing to Americans' duty to protect the environment while saving the government money.
But now it's:
NPR’s Planet Money reporters recently investigated the $1 presidential coin program, which was a Congressional effort to get more $1 coins into circulation while also trying to be educational.
That's right, folks. They're educational. We're doing it for the children!
And, of course, it would be downright criminal not to include the Shoshone woman who help guide Lewis & Clark on their expedition:
At the same time, the legislation mandated that a certain number of Sacagawea coins be made in conjunction with the presidential coins, which has now amounted to one Sacagawea for every four presidents.
Spokespersons for the Mohave, Navaho, Pima, Yuma, Washo, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cree, Crow, Dakota, Osage, Seminole, Comanche, Wichita and Apache tribes could not be reached for comment.
At the moment, the program is still moving forward, and NPR projects that by the time it’s finished, 2 billion coins could be sitting in the Fed’s vaults. Next up for minting is our 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes.
Rutherford B. Hayes? Be still, my beating heart!
 Photo from In Maine, ObamaCare's New High Risk Pool Attracts Just 14 Enrollees
Nice that Hussey's sells everything you need for a shotgun wedding
Turtles on JFK runway cause flight delays
Those are female Diamondback Terrapins living in Jamaica Bay in New York City, looking for nesting sites. Good to know that they are still thriving there. Somebody built a cement runway on their historic nesting site.
An oldie from David Horowitz: Columbia a disaster. Kenyon an unexpected surprise
Surber asks The Republican presidential candidates are serious. Why isn’t the press?
Powerline has a new look
Maggie's Farm will stick with our antique look - for now. You can scroll down quite a long ways here, and we only put things on a continuation page when they exceed our ordinary format.
The Religion of Rape… ALL Norwegian Rapists in 2010 Were Muslim
Why is Greece too big to fail?
Greece is already bankrupt, financially, morally, and spiritually. But, as Donald Trump once said, if you owe a bank a half million bucks, they own you - but if you owe them 300 million bucks, you own them. Something like that.
New Obama deficit talking point: The GOP loves corporate jets or something. However, Obama Blasts Private Jet Tax Breaks Created by His Own Stimulus
That is called The Washington Monument Strategy
Children will starve, Granny will die, etc. As Lizards says:
Now it's B.O.'s turn to schrai gevalt, just as sister J. did in the ancient times. But J. had a perfectly legitimate reason to act like that: She was five years old.
McArdle: Breaking: Voters Prefer Free Stuff to Higher Taxes, Lower Spending
From Obama, Listen to Andrew Cuomo:
The American people continue to have little patience for politicians who shamelessly try to siphon off more and more of the public’s hard-earned money to fund grandiose, top-down schemes that inevitably reward powerful interest groups instead of bolstering the economy as a whole.
Ace on the commerce clause:
..this new claim is that really there is only one clause that matters in the Constitution, and that is the Commerce Clause, and this one brief clause renders all 4400 other words in the Constitution null and void, because the Commerce Clause says, it is contended, that the federal government may do anything so long as, in the aggregate, it "affects interstate commerce," which, as is often pointed out, applies to everything.
Wednesday, June 29. 2011
Everybody makes fun of poor Paul Krugman, who is widely known as having become a real flake, a partisan hack, and a mind-numbed robot for the Left. Has he written a single thing in the past ten years that has not been predictably straight Left-wing Dem party line apologetics?
Foster in FP attempts a sympathetic understanding.
Classic silent films, streamable and downloadable
Case Studies vs Quantitative Analyses
Excellent review of the topic
Spatial navigation in the congenitally blind
Just keep reading the translation
Uh oh: White House caught lying about Petraeus’s withdrawal recommendations?
Tunisia's Morning After
The Authentic Palestine Freedom Flotilla
Bookworm: Principles are so inconvenient
Morals and principles create stress!
The hateful Left
If Public Pensions Are a Sinking Ship, Charter Schools Are Smart Rats
The Unions’ Real Enemy: Themselves (h/t Larwin)
Factoid du jour, via Coyote:
Wal-Mart’s profit to shareholders is about 3.6% of sales. This means that for the majority of the country, on the items you buy at Wal-Mart, they are earning less than half of what the government takes in sales tax on the same item.
Is that serfdom?
A comment at Lucianne:
His mother hated the USA, his dad hated the USA, his step-dad hated the USA. His schools in Indonesia hated the USA. His college buddies hated the USA. His pastor of 20 years hates the USA and his associates in Chicago hate the USA.
It's Radical Chic. Loving freedom is not cool. Lenin and Che were cool.
Tuesday, June 28. 2011
Among the likely winners of the Republican race (yes, that excludes Sarah Palin and Rand Paul), none have yet come even close to sewing up the nomination for president. That’s a good thing.
I’m a firm believer in the worth of long campaign seasons. Democrat or Republican partisans alone are a minority of the electorate. The crucible requires potential candidates to demonstrate their ability to craft a national coalition of their political party that will reach beyond to enough leaners (otherwise often called Independents).
The long campaign crucible, also, demonstrates the potential candidates’ ability to present themself and to encourage positive feelings with articulate, persuasive, sound proposals, while avoiding seriously alienating leaners or committing major gaffes that raise crippling doubts among the open-minded (not just opponent scalphunters).
At this point, there’s enough good to say about the leading Republican contenders to believe they’d all make fine vice-presidents, but as yet none have earned the higher expectation.
All will be in good stead as a better alternative than President Obama. However, that is not enough, for me anyway.
Continue reading "Looking at the 2012 Republican Presidential Contenders and Beyond"
 From Mead's brilliant analysis of the failure of Algore, Part Deux:
Once the political power of the climate movement, aided by an indulgent and largely unquestioning press, had pushed the climate agenda into the realm of serious politics, failure was inevitable. The only question was whether the comprehensive green meltdown would occur before or after the movement achieved its core political goal of a comprehensive and binding global agreement on greenhouse gasses.
and
It is a waste of time to talk science with Al Gore. It is a waste of time to listen to him at all. That, apparently, is what the world at long last is beginning to understand. The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.
These days, he can’t even get his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone.
As Mead points out, the entire enterprise was close to insane from the beginning, despite all of the money to be made from it.
Off topic: Mead, Steyn, and VDH are so hot these days that it is difficult not to simply link all of their stuff.
Image above via Moonbattery
Norm on a sense of purpose without a grand plan
Related, at Stumbling: The meaning of life
Our friend Skook: Honesty and Integrity, Up Close and Personal:
He looked me directly in the eye, with a cold blue eyed stare and said, “Young with a bit of life and not too wide in the back. Should be a sure footed mare that can move fast and smooth with rhythm, without being scared of every little thing.”
Whoa now, that was a different request; I started to ask him if he was referring to a woman or a horse, but you can’t count on everyone appreciating my sense of humor.
Why Is It So Hard To Get a Good Bagel Outside of New York City?
Just imagine if this were a charter school
Wisconsin Battle Moves from Collective Bargaining to School Choice
On, Wisconsin!
Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy
Egyptian "Pro-Democracy Activists" At A Loss
My Degree Isn't Worth the Debt!
Herman Cain & Juan Williams Agree: “Liberals Have a Problem With Black Conservatives… You’re Jumping Out of the Pen”
I call it "the plantation,' but it's the same idea
Driscoll: It's not easy being the accidental President
The economic experts are confused.
I'm not
UK update: - Major Strike Looms After Talks With Govt Fail
Sounds like the US
Texas Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood
Atlantic Review: Understanding Germany. Also, "German Soldiers Can't Shoot"
Cutting government red tape produces new jobs
Obama's Drawdown Disaster
Commentary: Real-World Effects of Anti-War Activism
A duel between French thinkers produces a Euroland best-seller
Not from The Onion: Obama Will 'Co-Invest' Tax Dollars in Corporate-Government Partnership
It's called crony capitalism. Brilliant use of our taxes.
Ohio’s Lost Decade, and Its New Hope - Can John Kasich and Tea Party activists save Ohio?
President Quixote's Legacy: Confused, Ill-Educated and Not Too Bright:
Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote about "seductive beliefs" in a two-part article (second part here). He touched on some of the incorrect beliefs guiding President Obama. In short, Obama is an ideologue, narrowly (and poorly) educated. As a result, he is ignorant in the ways of the world.
and
Instead of having a superior intellect, we likely have the most ignorant, ideological, brainwashed dupe this country has ever elected to high office. The man's intellectual development never progressed beyond the stage of all-night freshman bull sessions where all the world's problems were solved (with help from adequate amounts of beer of course).
Beer, or pot and coke. Whatever. True or not, I guess that piece counts as a rant.
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The Big Apple Celebrates the King James Bible
Godless Britain -