Monday, October 31. 2011
Rush is amazing: We Should Not be Surprised by the Left's Racist Hit Job on Herman Cain. Hardly ever wrong, despite having half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair.
Recently, I posted about Steve Jobs. I believe, despite faults which he undoubtedly possessed, Steve was a visionary who radically altered our lives for the better over the last thirty years. Were it not for his untimely passing, he may have altered them further in the next twenty to thirty years.
It was part of his lifestyle, his mission, to look at things in a manner which was different from everyone else. He took computing from the realm of technology and moved it into culture and fashion. He did this without moving out of forward thinking technology. This kind of transformative behavior is unusual. Very few entrepreneurs are able to retain a firm hold on massive corporate structures. Even fewer can hold on and maintain a sharp entrepreneurial vision.
Now that Jobs is gone, Apple will be left to see if Jobs' vision was his alone or if someone else can pick up the slack at the company. However, in terms of personalities which society perceives as 'transformative', we are left with a gaping hole. There doesn't appear to be anyone quite like Steve Jobs.
I read this article recently, suggesting Jeff Bezos could be the "next Steve Jobs". I think he's definitely in the running. Jeff has changed the way people think about buying things. Like Jobs, I'm sure he's got flaws and faults, but I'm curious to see if he can be transformative. Even today, mom and pop shops in towns across the US are cursing firms like Amazon and Wal-Mart. But this isn't a fault of Bezos, it's simply the nature of the economy, which is one of change.
Are there other personalities out there who could be the "next Steve Jobs"? Certainly there are, and we may not have even heard of some of them yet.
Just got power back at ye olde Maggie's HQ. Looks like our servers held up with my pre-posts and the other postings. These links are from Bruce, mostly, because I had a productive internet-free, heat-free and electric-illumination-free weekend -
 21st Century baby names
Shakespeare, Resentment, Self-Education and Thieves
When women dress as Halloween candy - A faux-ho dressed (or mostly undressed) for Halloween might want to be careful where she turns tricks or treats.
CSU rolling out online undergraduate program
State treasurer of MA absolutely shreds RomneyCare, which “has nearly bankrupted the state” and is surviving solely because of federal aid
Is George Will right about Mitt Romney?
Moral Lessons from Tunisia
Samuelson: The dangerous debate over cutting military spending
The real oil for blood
Somin: Communism and the Jews
Occupy Wall Street Shrugged
Balancing act: Cybersecurity vs. cuts
The Social Security Lies Are Falling Apart
Debt: we are Slouching toward the 1930s
Dems turning against Obamacare
Carpe on fracking:
What is worrying is that almost a decade of energy investing hasn’t produced any home runs -- no green-energy equivalents of eBay, Amazon, Google or Facebook. The modest, incremental advances we have seen don’t perceptibly move the needle on the energy problem.
In the meantime, however, a real revolution has happened in traditional energy -- one that poses a serious challenge to companies and investors betting on alternative energy. This breakthrough is arguably one of the greatest advances in energy production since the 1960s. And it came not from a Silicon Valley company, or from MIT or Stanford, but from George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherd who immigrated to the U.S.
Saturday, October 29. 2011
I am not a Cain supporter. I don't know him well enough yet. However, this makes me sympathetic: MSNBC Analyst: GOP Sees Herman Cain as a 'Black Man Who Knows His Place'
The notion that a black man cannot be successful or free thinking is incredibly insulting. Racist, in fact. Is every black person supposed to stay on the plantation of victimization, helplessness, and dependency just because of skin tone? Is that American? And heck, what about Obama? Oh, well he's a Leftist who deeply disapproves of America so it's OK for him to be successful.
As for Cain, it seems he believes that "his place" was CEO of a major business, and that his next "place" is on PA Ave. Good for him.
Meanwhile white limousine Liberals who "care about People of Color" and want them to remain needy and victimized at all cost begin to hate him for running off the plantation. The Lefties and Dems prefer cop-killer Mumia to men like Cain. It is disgusting.
Related: Is Cain a Jeremiah for black Americans? A quote:
For all Mr. Obama's yammering about "hope and change," nothing much has changed for millions of African-Americans -- you know, all those underclass blacks in Detroit, East St. Louis, Newark, Camden, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. Check that. What has changed is that Mr. Obama has sought to make his fellow African-Americans more, not less, dependent on government -- therefore less, not more, free. The president has sought to take the black model of government dependence and make it the standard for the rest of the country.
Mr. Obama is, of course, ideally positioned to make an historic challenge to so-called civil rights leaders and black, mostly urban, politicians who keep African-Americans down. Yet Mr. Obama hasn't been even a scold. Instead, Mr. Obama has acted like any white Chicago Democrat ward-heeler, currying favors by spreading government largesse -- by helping corrupt black leaders and white enablers further entrench their positions through the doling out of taxpayer dollars and more government.
A Cain presidency would be a cosmic irony -- a towering affront, an epic challenge -- to African-American leaders and white progressives who profit from the bondage of African-Americans -- bondage in the form of welfare dependency, and bondage in a subculture that advances resentment, victimhood, and retribution.
It's not just black people. The Left wants everybody on the plantation, but having some color makes them feel more holy.
Snow and wind headed to Yankeeland. A Nor'easter. Don't be surprised if our servers go down sometime tonight or tomorrow. As it is, they are just held together with baling wire, duct tape, and hope. New England Yankees are cheap - we always just patch it up. Anyway, how soon before an early snow is blamed on global warming?
 Where are the ducks?
Nekked lady hunters want to know where to find a good duck
What is a Swamp Yankee?
Swamp Yankee is a colloquialism that has a variety of meanings. Generally, it refers to Yankees or WASPs (northeasterners with English colonial ancestry) from rural Rhode Island and nearby eastern Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts. The term "Yankee" connotes urbane industriousness, while the term "Swamp Yankee" signifies a more countrified, stubborn, independent and less refined subtype.
That would be us, more or less, I think. I have plenty of ancestors buried in Kingstown, RI.
Lee Siegel considers the weird comedy of letters between T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx
In the Holy Land, a changed Christian world
Howard Stern talks to OWS
Prof: People who come to the nuisance should not be heard to complain
A college-loan scam - Schools gain, families get debt
Many retirees feel they have ‘paid’ for benefits through their payroll taxes. This is much closer to being true for Social Security than it is for Medicare
The Assad Regime’s Continuing Mass Murder of Syrians
Greed: Obama Skirts Own Fundraising Rules as Small Donors Flee
The Global Moral Hazard Dawns: Merkel Says "It Must Be Prevented That Others Come Seeking A Haircut" As Ireland Cuts GDP Forecast
Ohio ballot measure raises Democrats’ hopes for 2012
New York: Public Employees Busted in Retirement Scheme
Democrats increasingly down on ObamaCare
Can You Be Guilty of Insider Trading Without Personal Gain?
Occupy EPA, Not Wall Street
James O'Keefe Scores Another Hit On the New York Times, Jay Rosen, and Clay Shirky.
What I find most dispiriting is not the decline, which as Gardiner notes is not yet irreversible, but that over 40% of the population still approves of the job Obama is doing.
The Facts of Life Are Conservative, Even in Zuccotti Park
The Same Washington Post That Got Marco Rubio’s Story Wrong, Attacks Him Again
Scared he'll be the VP candidate
Paul Ryans' speech at the Heritage Foundation:
Insty:
TRADERS TALK BACK to OccupyChicago.“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.”
Ha! Joke’s on you, dudes — the Occupy folks don’t have jobs.
Foulk Manifesto:
There’s lots of talk about self-reliance, and depending on one’s self to get along. Nice thoughts, when you are getting along. Not such a good proposition when you have to spend your last bucks for gasoline to drive to the church’s food pantry to feed your family.
Friday, October 28. 2011
We've seen the complainers for weeks now. They infest selected streets in the US and other major countries around the world. I use the word infest because they are parasites. They add nothing, offer no solutions, and continue to claim they represent 99% of society when, in fact, more than 60% oppose them or are at least ambivalent. They do not "speak" for those they claim to represent, they are a drain on society and public spending, and are frauds.
Rants against OWS are tiring. If I'm going to provide a negative story, I also like to provide a positive. The OWS movement is fraudulent because it focuses on negative things while claiming to be a force for good. Negatives produce strong knee-jerk reactions, which the OWS hopes to provoke. Humans prefer positive stories and these stories have better long term benefits. I have two stories which differentiate most people from the OWS movement, and I know there are many others.
What makes these stories different? The manner in which the people involved sought to get something they wanted. By pursuing a path related to values they considered better than cash, they wound up getting more. Perhaps not as much as the market may have paid them, but more than enough to make it worthwhile.
Continue reading "We Are The 100%"
With more women than men attending college and grad school these days, straight men are becoming an oppressed and intimidated, if not castrated, minority.
From Farrell's The Chilly World of the Campus Male:
Professors in engineering and the hard sciences don’t speak out much about the politics of male-female issues. What we hear emanates strongly from departments of women’s and “gender” studies and is adapted by psychology; social work; sociology; anthropology; literature; schools of education; and the seminaries. At the prestigious universities, most of these departments are now 80% to 95% female.
My advice to guys in college these days is to pretend that you're gay or tranny or some sort of mixed vegetable, get in with the chicks, and then happily surprise them with the Halloween treat they've been longing for.
 The theology of the keg of beer
...for Phil and me the beer was the facilitator of the point but never the point. It was a vehicle the purpose of which was to get us to the problem of irony as a default mode of consciousness—and with luck direct us toward a solution. It brought us together on Friday nights or Saturday afternoons and it bore us upon its wings toward an answer, but it was never itself the answer. And this, I take it, is strict theology. Perhaps we violated St. Augustine’s injunction to use but not enjoy the vehicle, but at any rate we could justifiably say of the keg what a charitable and mysterious auto mechanic says to Hazel Motes in the novel by Flannnery O’Connor I just mentioned: The mechanic is unimpressed by the car Hazel has put all his trust in, but he says “Some cars’ll get some folks somewheres.” Hazel has no idea where his will get him. (He’s being undermined by a thing called grace.) He has no idea that the car he drives, lives in, preaches his creed of unbelief from, and eventually renounces will get him where he’s going, or where that place is, but then in O’Connor’s fiction no one ever knows what hits him. In this respect her characters are just like us.
Clifford Winston’s Case for Abolishing the Requirement that Lawyers Must get Law School Degrees and Pass the Bar Exam
How to get a job after college: Major in math
Why is there restrictive zoning?
White Aborigines as a protected class
How about Yankee Rednecks as a protected class?
Merkel thinks there would be war without the EU
That is crazy talk
Cain can't even run his own campaign
I like what he says, but...
Watch out for China’s ‘freak’ economy - Commentary: This is the real danger to the global economy (h/t Dino)
President Alinsky?
Juan Williams: One Year Since NPR Fired Me -- What Are the Lessons Learned?
Bolton: Let Europeans handle their own crisis
Will China own the EU, same as it owns the USA?
When you own something's debt, you own them. Bank owns my house: I pretend that I own it.
Boudreaux: My challenge to Paul Krugman
Occupy Wall Street kitchen staff protesting fixing their donated food for freeloaders
Total Number of Occupier Arrests Stands At 2,693…
I hope this sign was photoshopped
The Limits of Limited War
Life In The Fast Lane For Iran's Well-Connected Super-Rich
A Fighting Chance: Why Obama's Support For Syria's Non-Violent Protests Isn't Enough
Michelle to hold fund-raiser at Enron trader’s mansion
Those rich finance guys are usually Lefty Dems. Go figger...
Thursday, October 27. 2011
Buddy let me know about this essay by Nyquist, Totalitarian Methods. One quote:
Someone who is young and knows very little may occupy Wall Street and call for the abolition of capitalism, yet this same young person has enjoyed a high standard of living because of capitalism. Whether he knows it or not, the protestor who calls for the abolition of the market economy is siding with a totalitarian principle. He is siding with the followers of Lenin and Hitler. Those who decry “economic inequality” may not realize that equality is a totalitarian objective, while economic inequality is the condition which continually raises the level of civilization and the general standard of living.
Read the whole thing. As Milton Friedman often said, there can be no freedom without economic freedom. Free markets are simply what free people chose to do in the course of a day to pursue their own goals, dreams, and wishes.
 I forgot where I found today's image
Hitler and smoking
A movie: Margin Call
Another major diarist: Everywhere Man - Count Harry Kessler dined with Diaghilev, fought for Germany, and penned one of the greatest diaries ever published.
PRESS RELEASE: Humane Society of the United States Still Stiffing Nation’s Pet Shelters (h/t SDA)
Will Dropouts Save America?
Lawler: Is Higher Education Worth It?
Why the Government is Not Going to Force Banks to Write Down Your Mortgage Principal
US States Are Facing Total Debt of Over $4 Trillion
What happened to Obama in Vegas
Student Loans for Dummies
Related: President Cloward-Piven’s Latest Move Will Stiff Taxpayers and Add Billions to US Debt
Related: Obama Taps Taxpayers For Student Stimulus
Chicago-style vote-buying of the worst sort. Not clear to me how this can be done without going through the House.
Related, Incentives Work for Pigeons. Can They Motivate American College Students?
IPCC exposed
New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government
Americans usually feel that way. It's an American attitude, and a good one. Trow da bums out!
Income mobility: How to Make it in America
The campaign has begun: The O will be working for his campaign full-time for the next 12 months - between golf and vacations
China's real estate bubble
Losing the Economic Battle - The global debt apocalypse approaches.
UK update: Now you can defend your home and family
How about firearms? Knives are so messy...
Obama's War on Greed
Government is greedier than your average CEO, plus the CEO works hard for his paycheck, while government just takes it from him with no effort at all
Major Democrat Donor Sajat Gupta Indicted on Insider Trading Charges
Hugely respected guy in the biz world. It's said he did not profit from any information.
Wizbang: The Mitt I know
Confused, Inarticulate Woman Pretty Darn Sure The Government Is Preventing Her From Fully Utilizing Her Skill-Set In Economy
The video there is cruel
President Obama's Blame-Americans-First Tour
Claims it's our fault the economy stinks
The Real Lessons of Moneyball - The efficient market hypothesis in Michael Lewis’s book essentially holds fast, but there are still inefficiencies to be exploited
Was Fiscal Irresponsibility Part of ObamaCare's Plan?
It was designed to fail
Report: Obama’s Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians’ Access to the White House
European Leaders Agree to Bail Out Greece in Massive Write-off
Wednesday, October 26. 2011
Via Riehl:
At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.
Estimates of the costs to the US of 9/11 range up to $5 trillion, from a left-leaning source. The September 2011 New York Times survey of estimates balances at $3.3 trillion, noting that “this total equals one-fifth of the current national debt.” Much of those costs could have been avoided if the US had a more alert, focused and muscular foreign policy in the 1990s. Much of future such costs of the US being dragged by events into future conflicts may be avoided if there were more attention by US politicians and public. In 1996, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Americans were unintersted in hearing about foreign policy challenges, and is repeating that now. We paid for it then and will pay for it again. Luntz' polling is dangerously misleading to politicians with finger-in-the-wind that invites fists in America's eyes.
Given the varying opportunistic rationales over the years by Osama bin Laden for attacking the West, and similar from other Islamist foes, it is reasonable to assume that one way or another attacks on the US – absent 9/11 – would have occurred anyway. They did, but not of the scale and shock of 9/11. But, in Islamist foes’ own words, their perception of US weakness of reaction and resolve throughout the 1980s and 1990s encouraged them to step up their attacks. However, these attacks didn’t rouse the US before 9/11, so the $3.3 trillion, or some cost lower or higher can justifiably be connected to 9/11, which by the way cost al Quaeda about $500,000.
Some of that $3.3 trillion represents improving our domestic defenses, much of which can be seen as plugging holes that weren’t paid attention to before 9/11, much else of which can be seen as misspent or over-reaction: $360 billion for Homeland Security, $110 billion for domestic expenses of National Intelligence, $100 billion for lost time at airports, extra driving to avoid flight-boarding delays resulting in $19 billion in car accidents. A bigger amount, $1.6 trillion, went to military related costs ($1.2 billion directly in Iraq and Afghanistan). Up to $1 billion will go to future costs of veterans and wounded.
One can argue retrospectively that both or either Iraq and Afghanistan were avoidable choices, including not having sufficient military forces for the required occupations. That would require avoiding realities of threats and the best intelligence available at the time, and avoiding that the 1990s drawdown of our military left us ill-prepared. One can argue prospectively that the dysfunctional Iraqi and Afghan governance should be avoided by our non-involvement. That would require a neo-isolationist avoidance of facing up to the likely worse results there, in their regions, and for the US.
There’s no mistaking that most Americans want out of such frustrating, protracted entanglements. There’s also no mistaking that the erratic and incoherent foreign policies pursued by the Obama administration have failed to provide Americans with leadership, explanation or guidance as to why the US should be engaged abroad. There’s, as well, no mistaking that the potential Republican 2012 candidates have not presented nor emphasized the details of a more forthright, focused and muscular foreign policy for Americans. Democrats and Republicans read similar polls about most Americans properly putting our domestic concerns and angst above all. But, they also fail to provide credible leadership.
It is uniquely the job of the President to inform and lead American public opinion about issues that are not part of their daily lives and preoccupations, and to exert himself to protect American interests and security. Regardless of the lack of knowledge or interest or agreement by US media, the leadership of the President is essential to raise the salience, importance, of such issues via the media to provide Americans with better information from which to assess priorities and feedback choices to our political class. Otherwise we Americans are cast adrift in too late reactiveness that soon fades or is pained by costs for which we are unprepared.
Hasty and excessive withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with huge slashes of our military, plus acquiescing to Russian and Chinese expansionism, are an easy path now, but will very likely require far more expenditures of US influence, US lives, and US treasure than the leadership path. Republican candidates must present the details of a surer and less expensive future, not just one-liners, or be complicit in those present and future catastrophic costs. Another $3.3 trillion or far less now for preparedness is only the financial equation. Our very future is the higher and more pressing cost that must be paid for or suffer the consequences. Better to spend some budget and political capital than be doomed to repeat the past decade or worse.
(6:43 pm last night)
(Doc skims over a news site)
Hurricane Rina Lumbers Toward Mexican Resort Towns
"Oh, big deal! Probably nothin' more than a bunch of fat-cat 1-percenters living in the lap of luxury off the sweat and toil of us hard-working 99-percenters! Go get 'em, Rina! Kick some Wall Street ass!"
(goes back to reading, glad he got it out of his system)
Ding!
"Hmm, an email. From the landlord? Wonder what that's all about."
Subject: HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS PLAN
"Huh?"
(goes to NOAA web site)
"Uh, yeah? And? Who gives a shit what happens to Mexico? What the hell's my landlord talking about?"
(fearing he's being suckered into playing into the hands of a demented madman, Doc goes to the Stormpulse site, since it has such pretty graphics)
"Oh."
(preparing for a long evening of picturing the worst that could happen when hit by a Category 18 hurricane, Doc grabs the blender and whips up one of his famous Valium-Vicodin-Jack Daniels-methamphetamine milkshakes and heads over to Terrapin, his usual mainstay for hurricane tracking because it uses the combined plot of the six best agencies in the business)
"Well, at least we can be grateful that we live in a day and age when hurricanes can be accurately predicted," he says fatefully.
"Okay, so maybe there are still a few kinks to work out of the system."
And that's the sitch at the moment. If it continues on the Stormpulse track (also in this video), you'll have some real, live hurricaneblogging here at Maggie's.
With emphasis on the "live" part, hopefully.
Best wishes to Mr. Vanderleun for a speedy recovery from his heart attack
 Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death
Seriously hot curry
"Homesickness: An American History"
Actual sign spotted at WalMart
Boomtown Strippers Make $2k/Night in ND, "We Make More Than Doctors"
Women prefer not to work with women
Ben Stein: Raising Taxes Is the Adult Thing to Do
Re OWS:
Once again conservatives are fumbling a sure opportunity to deal the opposition a crippling blow.
Paul Ryan declares war on Obama’s class-warfare campaign
Obama’s Mythical Political Skills Won’t Save Him: Ramesh Ponnuru
Occupying St. Paul’s - A centuries-old building is rendered useless by demonstrators.
White House Unveils Details of Student-Loan Relief Plan
Greenspan: Why European Union Is Doomed to Fail
Prager: Why Is Class Hatred Morally Superior to Race Hatred?
Mitt Romney Boldly Defends Right Not to be Bold About Anything
You are the 99%? We are the 66% who call you deadbeats. Pay up! - Fixed
The plan to begin another housing crisis
Elizabeth Warren:
... the consumer advocate tells Samuel P. Jacobs how she created 'much of the intellectual foundation' for the Occupy Wall Street movement
Wall Street Occupiers Continue To Desecrate The American Flag, San Diego Protesters Sic Dog On Old Glory…
Terrorist BILL AYERS Teaches Revolutionary Theory to Young Leftists at Occupy Chicago
Eugene Robinson clearly did not read Maggie's Farm yesterday
Related, Harsanyi: The Real Luddites
From homeland security to healthcare, the federal government now has the power to reach further than ever into American society. But so far, the feds have sensibly stayed out of the business of appointing religious leaders.
Mead:
Let’s hope the next generation of environmentalists is a generation of tinkerers, innovators and builders rather than a generation of leaflet distributors, envelope stuffers and foundation-fund scroungers.
Tuesday, October 25. 2011
From Matt Patterson on Obama:
The malicious intent behind such demagoguery is exceeded only by its utter disconnect from reality -- the "rich" already pay the vast majority of taxes. The top 10 percent of income earners pay some 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the National Taxpayers Union.
Meanwhile, the president's erstwhile Democratic allies in the Senate have actually hindered passage of his jobs bill even as House Republicans could only talk about doing so.
But no matter. As independent voters -- who handed him the presidency because they believed his promise to be a healer -- turn from him in droves, the president is forced to play to the basest prejudices of his left-wing acolytes.
More taxes is not good enough. They want the prosperous to be dead. At Maggie's, we want everybody to be prosperous who wants to be.
 Toon is another one from Theo. He has a good toon collector on his staff.
Why Mrs. BD and I like Norcia
The Global Costs of American Ethanol
A YouGov survey for The Sunday Times this weekend found 66 percent of Britons back a referendum on European Union membership.
I don't understand why anybody would want a vast unelected government sitting on top of their own government
Fareed Zakaria: Less Than 50% Death Tax Is “Un-American”
Difficult for me to comprehend some peoples' blind faith in the wisdom and benevolence of governments
VDH: Rage On—and on and on…
Stunner. Video Reveals NY Times Reporter Is Also an #OWS Activist
Barone: Cult of Global Warming Is Losing Influence
Hewitt: The California Disease
Don’t worry, your centralized medical records are safe
Funniest global warming headline
More states limiting Medicaid hospital stays
What the 'Taxing the Rich' Rhetoric Really Means
The institution out to conquer evil in this case is the deadly serious École de Guerre Économique,
Bernie: How Obama Will Try to Win
Obama’s Foreign Policy: Manchurian Candidate or Keystone Kop?
Blood Money… Abbas to Pay Released Terrorists’ Pensions With US Aid Money
Amazingly how quickly the bunch of free wheeling individuals have set up a ruling party, an intelligence service "documenting" the disruptive elements and a people's militia. They claim to be the 99%, as popular as Stalin in an election, so crushing dissent is justified.
If only I had a Lambeg Drum I would be down there beating the fuck out of it 24/7 shouting "No Surrender" and seeing how they like it.
There should be laws limiting working hours! Not fair for some people to work too hard! Sheesh. Dairy farmers in MA have already been working for 4 hours when these socialist people are just waking up for their free breakfasts.
Monday, October 24. 2011
We all look for great deals when we buy things. Groupon has taken this concept and turned it into a phenomenon. Alas, it is an easy concept to mimic. Living Social, Facebook, and Google have all launched similar products.
Meanwhile, the Groupon idea is not always a winner for the small businessperson seeking to corral new or increased business. I recently utilized one of their offers at a local business. While it was a savings for me, it represented a loss to the business owner. This is the risk many people are willing to take to drive business, leading many to try Groupon once and abandon it. The Groupon story from a sales and income perspective is fraught with issues.
So is their IPO.
There was a time any dot com business could drive an IPO skyward. The new ideas coming out today are too easy to mimic and barriers to entry are low. Maybe someone can explain why Linked In is priced at $92, when it only earns $.07 per share and has competitors targeting it like mad?
These new businesses are not groundbreaking ideas and are being overvalued.
Groundbreaking ideas are what will drive the economy forward. Not IPOs for coupon books.
At Surber. It's about deleveraging. A quote:
We can’t solve the problem easily because we still have too much debt. But we can move forward in being able to make the best of it. We can spread it out, we can keep orderly. We have a situation now in which we have a very severe situation, not only because we have a de-leveraging going on, but we have a situation in which monetary policy cannot work the way it worked in the past, that fiscal policy will not be stimulative.
He thinks we have a decade of economic doom in the US anyway. His biz is global.
10 most unique insects
Cosmetically imperfect teeth?
Leftist Censors Defeated at UC Santa Barbara
24 years ago today, Borking was born
Yet One More Doomed Education Reform:
Escaping the dysfunctional NCLB is certainly good news for many professional educators and parents, but like every other recent alleged panacea, Obama's fix will fail it since it ignores the one feature of American education that dares not speak its name in public: the intellectual quality of students. If reformers insisted on transforming all ordinary kids into world-class athletes, this would be a joke, since everybody would know the truth. But when it comes to upping academic performance, nothing is said about individual ability or motivation; the culprit is always something else, and this avoidance of reality applies across the entire ideological spectrum. Better to waste billions and fail than speak frankly
CBC running scared: State broadcaster's false attack ads demonstrate how financial probe is desperately needed
Why Dems are winning the money war
Globalization Is Great—Except When It Isn't
The Wild Ride of the 1% - The once-stable incomes of America's biggest earners now fluctuate dramatically from year to year. And as go the rich, so goes much of the economy.
California: Regs Run Amok: A bumper crop of bureaucracy
Is Philosophy the Most Practical Major?
Colombia emerges
The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax and Other Myths Revived
Sunday, October 23. 2011
The Red State in Your Future:
If you do not currently live in a red state, there’s a good chance you will be in the near future. Either you will flee to a red state or a red state will come to you—because voters fed up with blue-state fiscal irresponsibility will elect candidates who promise to pass red-state policies.
Seems to me that most of it is about pols being in bed with government unions, and splitting the pie at the taxpayers' expense. In blue states, who represents the citizens against the union machines? My state government (CT) is owned, top to bottom, by the government unions and functions like a Mafia conspiracy preying on the taxpayers.
Dems have nationalized the method: Has Harry Reid lost his mind?
In the two years Reid and President Obama have controlled Washington, government jobs have increased 13.5 percent to 2.1 million.
During that same time, 2.5 million private-sector jobs were lost.
Perhaps the goal is to have everybody working for our government overlords. Feudalism.
Government jobs are a necessary evil and are functionally parasitic, not a basis for the real economy which is required to work and make a profit to pay those government bills. McConnell is right: These are local and state concerns, not federal concerns. The federal government has enough to deal with as it is with its constitutional duties, and is not doing a very good job with that. States and localities have to run themselves, or surrender their sovereignty to the feds. Like Greece. That is not a good idea.
 Major ALS Breakthrough – Common Cause of All Forms of ALS Discovered
America's Emptiest Cities, 2011 (h/t neoneo)
Together, I Shall Ride You To Victory - A Very Special Announcement by T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Wind Energy Can Be Deadly for Bats
and birds
I just don't have the time - 5 minutes/day
Modern Giordano Brunos
Think Again: Nuclear Power - Japan melted down, but that doesn't mean the end of the atomic age.
Occupy Wall Street and the Jews
Mogadishu on the Mediterranean? - Muammar al-Qaddafi is dead. Now comes the hard part -- preventing Libya from turning into another Somalia.
Despite Difficult Talks, U.S. and Iraq Had Expected Some American Troops to Stay
Prelutsky: Shooting Holes Into Obama’s Campaign Strategy
I have to admit that I don’t understand the “I am the 99%” shtick coming out of OWS. If these people are saying that 99% of the country is poor, with only 1% holding the wealth, perhaps I don’t understand poverty as well as I should.
Rush Limbaugh favors Clinton-era spending levels!?!?
Steyn: Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics - How to justify unaffordable and inefficient stimulus
Kids do understand Santa Claus
The Wall Street occupiers, like their brethren in other cities, are a combination of crackpots, misfits and crazies. But some are crazier than others.
Krauthammer sours on Herman Cain: ‘He is winging it’
I agree. He is likeable, though.
Colleges adopt the feminist theory that in all sexual controversies or accusations, the man is guilty unless he proves himself innocent.
Of course. Men want sex, and women don't...right?
London has suddenly awoken to the costs of indiscriminate greenness and is proposing to reduce the solar subsidies and — this is big — now threatens the multibillion dollar subsidies for its massive (and massively ugly) wind power scam.
Is Pat Buchanan right about NATO?
NATO = USA, EU = German Empire, UN = ?
Econ. Professor Explains to #OccupyWallSt Crowd How Marxist America Will Work - Of course, it's only a coincidence Democrats support the #OWS movement...
Saturday, October 22. 2011
 After nearly 3,000 years, does the “Iliad” really need translating again?
Lattimore is good enuf for us
Renovated Church Home in Kyloe, Northumberland
Stop Funding College Sports - Why should taxpayers have to pay for college athletic programs?
The Role of Friendship in Marriage
One potential way to reform academia is to combine academic "book-learning" with an old-fashioned, hands-on apprenticeship.
The EPA's Electric Vehicle Mileage Fraud
A Snippet on Alleged Middle-Class Stagnation
Shock: War-Hating Left Pretty Psyched About Killing People, So Long As They Can Claim This Somehow Means They've Scored a Goal Against Conservatives
Thornton: The End of the Euro?
The possibililty of Marco Rubio entering the fray has Obama 2012 scrambling for dirt.
Today’s Questions for the President
Obama, delighted with Senate defeat of his jobs bill, criticizes GOP anyway
Unions and left-wing groups organize Occupy Wall Street
How ObamaCare Guts Medicare - The president's pledge that 'If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep it' clearly does not apply to America's seniors.
In praise of OWS
Occupy Museums to protest at art exhibits in New York
A President's Class War - Where on the income scale does Mr. Obama divide the country between us and them?
Back to 1969:
I was alive then, and I'm not that old. I remember life without an Education Department, for example. We somehow learned the times-table and how to diagram sentences without the "help" of the federal government, and also without mandatory teacher certification. The guys who put men on the moon all went to grade school before even the first New Math, much less the Education Department.
Romney Wins in 'Blowout' Over Obama in 2012, Poll Shows
Morning Jay: What Harry Reid Can Teach the GOP About 2012
Estonia: "They are hardworking, honest and never late," he says. The group of Greek men falls silent for a moment. "Strange country," says Elias.
Normally I'd leave this link for the morning compendium, but this is too important to be mixed in with others.
After 9-years of US sacrifices, President Obama's rush for the exits in Iraq and the incompetence of his administration is seen again, with very probable bad consequences for Iraq's ability to withstand internal discord and external influence from Iran. The US is left with little but a likely buffer protecting Iranian interests and a sanctions evasion route that allows Iran greater freedom from Western pressure. Once again, each time over and over, Obama blows US interests into the crapper.
Read it and weep. How the Obama administration bungled the Iraq withdrawal negotiations. Also, read Obama abandons Iraq.
Morning Postscript: Carl Cannon makes the case that "The Obama Doctrine, Made Plain at Last in Libya, Iraq": The administration "They preferred to frame the events of the week in ways that play into a domestic, election-season narrative: Namely, Barack Obama made promises regarding foreign policy, and kept them....Distilled to its essence, this approach envisioned an American foreign policy that was less militaristic, less confrontational, and less-unilateral than that of his predecessor."
Fred and Kimberly Kagan, however, call it "Retreat With Our Heads Held High", as the Obama administration's veil for failure to meet even newly President Obama's criteria for US goals in Iraq, citing his speech of February 2009. I'll quote them at length to see how Obama or his defenders should hang their heads in shame:
The humiliation of this retreat is compounded by the dishonesty of its presentation....
Have any of these conditions been met? Such sovereignty as Iraq has is gravely marred by the continuous efforts of Iran to direct the course of its internal politics through armed means and otherwise. Iraq is not stable. The Iraqi government has still not been completely formed, and the parties contesting the parliamentary election of early 2010 have not yet come to an agreement on how the state will be run or who will run it. Iraq is not self-reliant. In fact, it will not be able to protect its territory or its airspace. Its government is not “just, representative, and accountable,” but rather heading toward a new authoritarian structure at a time when many Arab states are convulsed by resistance to authoritarianism. The U.S. has not helped Iraq build ties of trade or commerce. Above all, today’s announcement is the definitive renunciation of any attempt to “forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq.” In other words, the president has failed to achieve any of the objectives that he established as his own policy in February 2009—apart, of course, from withdrawing U.S. military forces.
This failure was not inevitable. When President Obama took office, the U.S. had more than 100,000 troops in Iraq who had just completed, together with the Iraqi Security Forces, driving off Iranian militias and clearing the last bastions of al Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni resistance forces. As he noted in that February 2009 speech, Iraq had just completed provincial elections that were, in fact, “just, representative, and accountable,” and that laid a solid foundation for the transition to a successful Iraqi parliamentary democracy. And, in fact, the parliamentary elections of early 2010 were also in many respects remarkably successful—they were peaceful, heavily-contested, with high participation, and produced the potential for a new political balance in which forces of secularism and cross-sectarianism might well have succeeded. Had the U.S. pursued a determined strategy, using all of the considerable leverage at our disposal, to support the formation of an Iraqi government harnessing that potential, then Iraq’s path could have been very different.
But the Obama administration did not focus on helping Iraq move forward to seize this opportunity, but rather focused on prodding the Iraqis to form a coalition government as rapidly as possible—in order to negotiate a new agreement that would allow American forces to remain in Iraq after the end of this year. In other words, the administration threw away the chance of political progress in Iraq in pursuit of something it has now decided it never wanted to begin with.
Observers of U.S. policy could have been excused for finding all of this rather confusing, but today’s speech resolves any lack of clarity. The president has enunciated the Obama Doctrine: American retreat.
If there's any multilateralism buried in the manure, it is that of widespread burying heads in it to avoid facing the reality of a contra-Western interests Middle East that we will see in Iraq and Libya, as we've seen in Egypt, while Iran and its proxies are encouraged as was al-Quaeda by prior US weaknesses and excuses.
BTW: Obama Ignores That U.S. Won in Iraq -- Twice
Friday, October 21. 2011
Take my wife...please.
And have a nice life, honey. Thanks for the kids. Bye bye.
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