Rob Long wrote lines for Cheers. Now he writes Captain Kick-ass' lines. Brilliantly.

Here.

Societies unwilling to defend themselves aren't work saving - Toronto Edition

The G20 summit in Toronto was an orgy of left wing looting and violence.  The Police stood by while their own cars were burned.  Their own cars.  Honestly, can't anyone play this game?  I mean if the organs of the state responsible for maintaining order won't even do so, what hope is their for the society.

In St. Louis, we would have shot the looters with our legal guns.  That's why we don't have riots here.  Never have.

Oh Canada!

On Diversity

We are told that 'diversity is a core value' by our elite 'leaders'.  Yet the same leaders tell us that they expect 'diversity' to result in mathematical equality.  In College sports diversity between men and women must result in the same proportions seeking to play competitively.  Odd.  I would have thought that diversity would suggest that women and men, being 'diverse' would necessarily have different values and prefer different things.  In other words, diversity would yield 'diverse' outcomes.  Now we are told by the feminists that 'diversity' demands mathematical equality in the hard sciences, math and engineering.  49 percent women in the school?  Then 49 percent in these professions.  Strange.  We are told we need women and men and blacks and whites and Muslims and Christians to make up a 'gorgeous mosaic' because they are all different, with differing cultures, values, beliefs and preferences.  But woe betide the institution that in pursuing diverse 'inputs' actually achieves diverse outcomes.  Outcomes must be the same.

The same is true with government policy.  The avatars of 'diversity' seem always to be in favor of single continent wide solutions:  healthcare, welfare, education, drinking age, speed limits, guns, and so on all must have exactly the same outcome regardless of the 'diversity' of values, beliefs and opinions held in different parts of our land.  A tropical island state filled with Asians and Pacific Islanders must do things precisely the same way as a bunch of white and eskimo moose hunters living in the Arctic.  Diversity is 'celebrated' but not allowed.

Of course this isn't just a left wing problem:  righties are all for "federalism" until they want to ban drinking under 21 or criminalize marijuana smoking, then one size fits all.  That being said, the vast majority of the outrages come from the Left.  This isn't because leftists are more irrational or hypocritical than righties, it instead is because first of all, lefties seek more state intervention.  And implementing something once continent-wide is so much faster and more efficient.  Second, the left dominates the culture,  the intelligentsia and the academy thus they have the cultural prestige and power to demand their particular brand of hypocritical conformance.  I have no doubt were the right in the driver's seat, they would behave with equal (if not as expansive) disdain for true diversity.

I have an idea:  the next time one of our 'leaders' tells us that he or she 'values', 'celebrates', or 'promotes' diversity, laugh at them.  I mean what they're saying is a joke, isn't it?

A window into her soul

The thing that stuns me most about the Kagan-ACOG story is not that Kagan would attempt to manipulate an independent group's testimony on a matter of public import.  The ACOG people are big boys and they get to decide what they put in their press releases, they didn't have to take her dishonest wording.

No, what horrifies me is the end to which her manipulation was directed.  Lying to save Sudanese refugees, yes, even to ensure generous welfare benefits or to protect state secrets I can understand.  But to preserve a barbaric practice like Partial Birth Abortion?  To change testimony from "never ever needed" to "definitely needed" for PBA?  For a procedure that D. P. Moynihan described as "tantamount to infantacide".

I'm not worried so much about Ms. Kagan's penchant for dissembling, I'm worried about whether she has a moral center that responds to any standard but expediency.  Do we really want a lifetime Justice with her values?

Well we're going to get one.  Way to look out for the 'common' good, Barry.

You are now part of a nation-wide social experiment

Boy, this is going to be fun:
Are you starting to get the feeling Andrew Breitbart clanks when he walks? With a small pile of cash and a pair of brass, he suddenly makes every member of Journo-List who ever wrote anything on it they didn't want public very, very nervous: "I've had $100,000 burning in my pocket for the last three months and I'd really like to spend it on a worthy cause. So how about this: in the interests of journalistic transparency, and to offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex, I'm offering $100,000 for the full 'JournoList' archive, source fully protected. Now there's an offer somebody can't refuse. . . . Ezra Klein's 'JournoList 400' is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because -- to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails -- he wasn't liberal enough."

H/T Jim Geraghty The Campaign Spot

Is it just me or has John Stewart gotten funnier

On BHO reaffirming or intensifying every Bush anti-terror policy after campaigning against all of them. Fun stuff. Here.

Al Sharpton and Glenn Reynolds on the SC's gun decision

AL SHARPTON: 90% OF MY LISTENERS SUPPORT THE SUPREME COURT’S GUN DECISION. “I would say 90% of the calls I received yesterday were in support of the Supreme Court and people say they want to bear guns. They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.” Given that disarming black people was one of the main purposes of gun-control laws, it shouldn’t be that surprising.

Some years ago we had a program at my law school where ex-Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver (with whom I went to law school) came to speak. It was heavily attended by Knoxville civil-rights veterans, and I think some of my colleagues were surprised when an elderly black preacher launched into a defense of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. I wasn’t.

The Dems are losing the Gulf Coast for a generation

Heckuva Job Bammy.

How to identify faked statistics

Daily Kos has gotten himself in an odd spot of bother due to the apparent fake poll results that his pollster gave him.  One of the big problems with any data driven analytical process is the integrity of the data.  This post discusses how the pollsters were found out by an intrepid band of statisticians (you don't see intrepid and statistician in the same sentence very often do you?).  It's a cautionary tale and gives us a couple easy ways to test the authenticity of data claims.

Holy predatory pricing, Batman: Wal Mart improves Chicago neighborhood

Well I didn't see this coming, I can tell you that.

Well this is sure to raise a brouhaha

James Glassman:  Porn and Video violence implicated in falling teen pregnancy and violence rates?  It turns out that increases in Porn and Video game viewing by teens are correlated with lower levels of teen social pathology.   Correlation is not causation but it does illustrate how complicated our social arrangements are and how the 'obvious' answers (in this case, Monkey see, Monkey do) often fall wide of the mark.  It does not follow that the trend towards more porn and violence viewing is "OK" much less desirable, but it should give all of us who think we have the 'answers' to life's problems pause before demanding the power to force our views on others.

It's complicated out there folks.  And the default position should be leave well enough alone.  Unless  you have spectacular evidence to the contrary.

And we'll wan't to see those numbers and that math, please.

Want to guarantee a draconian immigration law? Persuade the American people that you're not willing to enforce the existing ones....

Philadelphia won't even share criminal arrest records of aliens with the INS.  The left want to keep illegal immigrant felons in the country.  These guys want to be crushed to a pulp.  They are begging for the biggest electoral wipeout in American history.  And a dishonest but rapidly fading MSM can no longer rig it for them.

When will the responsible left stand up?  Adults.  Where are the adults?

And this dishonest, unethical Lawyer with no judicial experience will be given a life appointment to the Supreme Court.

Power trumps honor in what is becoming typical for this administration.  Key grafs:

If you haven’t read Shannen Coffin’s piece on Elena Kagan and the partial-birth-abortion debate today, you really should. What he describes, based on newly released Clinton White House memos, is absolutely astonishing.

It seems that the most important statement in the famous position paper of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—a 1996 document that was central to the case of partial-birth-abortion defenders for the subsequent decade and played a major role in a number of court cases and political battles—was drafted not by an impartial committee of physicians, as both ACOG and the pro-abortion lobby claimed for years, but by Elena Kagan, who was then the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.

Kagan saw ACOG’s original paper, which did not include the claim that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman,” but, on the contrary, said that ACOG “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” She wrote a memo to two White House colleagues noting that this language would be “a disaster” for the cause of partial-birth abortion, and she then set out to do something about it. In notes released by the White House it now looks as though Kagan herself—a senior Clinton White House staffer with no medical background—proposed the “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman” language, and sent it to ACOG, which then included that language in its final statement.

What’s described in these memos is easily the most serious and flagrant violation of the boundary between scientific expertise and politics I have ever encountered. A White House official formulating a substantive policy position for a supposedly impartial physicians’ group, and a position at odds with what that group’s own policy committee had actually concluded?  You have to wonder where all the defenders of science—those intrepid guardians of the freedom of inquiry who throughout the Bush years wailed about the supposed politicization of scientific research and expertise—are now. If the Bush White House (in which I served as a domestic policy staffer) had ever done anything even close to this it would have been declared a monumental scandal, and rightly so.  

Apparently scientific integrity only matters as long as it doesn’t somehow infringe on abortion. That, of course, was always the lesson of the stem-cell debate in the Bush years anyhow. But clearly it started earlier. It’s good to know where Kagan’s priorities are. Let’s hope senators are paying attention.

Dishonorable, fraudulent behavior are apparently no longer a bar to the highest honors this nation has to give.  Disgusting.

Cat Lassie: The truth unleashed

Hillsdale College: The last true meritocracy

Why is this so shocking (in a good way)?

"Hillsdale College is one of the last true meritocracies. There's no place on its application for racial identity, and it doesn't know the racial make-up of its student body until it shows up on campus in the fall.  

'The purpose of education is not diversity,' Hillsdale President Larry Arnn says. 'It's truth.'"

Holy theocratic boob Batman, Palin says cops should leave private weed smokers alone

On Fox news.  Not redacted, not beeped.  Sarah Palin effectively supports the decriminalization of marijuana (though not its complete legalization).

These theocratic, Bible beating, self righteous, nanny-bosses keep sticking their nose where it doesn't belongers, why don't they leave us alone?

Umm.  Never mind.

Seeking safety where none exists

Watching the Euro begin its inevitable crumble and the flight to the dollar, I am struck by the sad similarity to 9/11.  When planes struck the first tower, the inhabitants above the strike moved  upward to the roof,  hoping for a totally unrealistic  rescue by helicopter.  Likewise, the refugees from the collapse of confidence in the Euro are fleeing to the dollar, hoping for an equally unrealistic rescue.

The GAO estimates that by 2020 93% of all Federal revenues will go to entitlements and to service the debt.  93%.  I subscribe to the theory that when something can't happen, it won't.  Will we raise taxes or cut spending enough to move this number appreciably?  You know the answer to that.  We'll do what almost every 'developed' nation has done before us:  we'll inflate our debts away.

And all of those financial refugees crowding on the roof, searching in vain for rescue?

They'll be pulverized.

Is the Tea Party a social movement?

Fascinating, thoughtful opinion that tracks my perspective.  Now there I've gone and done it, no one will read it now.

The Steyn column has so much meat - on Obama's one sort of 'successful' policy

Imported from GWB:

Likewise, on Afghanistan, his attitude seems to be "I don't want to hear about it." Unmanned drones take care of a lot of that, for a while. So do his courtiers in the media: Did all those hopeychangers realize that Obama's war would be run by Bush's defense secretary and Bush's general?

Hey, never mind: the Moveon.org folks have quietly removed their celebrated "General Betray-us" ad from their website. Cindy Sheehan, the supposed conscience of the nation when she was railing against Bush from the front pages, is an irrelevant kook unworthy of coverage when she protests Obama. Why, a cynic might almost think the "anti-war" movement was really an anti-Bush movement, and that they really don't care about dead foreigners after all. Plus ça change you can believe in, plus c'est la même chose.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on our President

"Into the great wide open,
into the skies so blue.

Out in the great wide open,
a leader without a clue."

Adding insult to injury - 2,000 skimmers in America, 20 in the Gulf

Mark Steyn:

Only the other day, Florida Sen. George Lemieux attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America's overpaid, overmanned and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their "super-skimmers": Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. "He doesn't seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers," reported the senator.

Channeling Casey Stengel:  "Does anybody in power know how to play this game?"

Occam's Razor Department: The Official Purpose of the US Government

It all makes perfect sense now.

ALEX LIGHTMAN ON FACEBOOK: “After researching the issue carefully and interviewing people in a position to know, I can now reveal that the current primary purpose of the United State government is to bankrupt the United States. It comes as a relief to know this. So many things now make sense.” Least hypothesis, and all that.

H/T Instapundit.

It took Canadians to break the news of Obama's criminal negligence

No one in our so called "quality" press has enough ideological 'distance' from "The One" to ask the obvious questions.  Once again our 'elite' leaders let us down.

The Ivy league?  It's just these weeds, you know.

Pathetic.

The Gulf: An "Avertible Catastrophe"

Read this:

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

Hell, read the whole thing.  If this is even half true President Obama is beneath contempt.  I cannot imagine the arrogance that this man has locked up in his little cranium.  To sacrifice an entire region of the country, an entire ecosystem to his union driven, power mad ego is so stunning that I really don't have words that measure up to the level of contempt that I feel.

Is willful politicking against the public weal an impeachable offense?  If not it should be.

As was said of the British Army in WWI:  America:  Heroes led by donkeys.

And the rest of the civilized world looks at us and says:  "What Cretins"  Changing our image abroad, indeed.

The "The Race" and "Mecha-A" guys are increasingly cutting hispanic immigrants throats

Now that Americans are attuned to it, it will not take much Mexican chauvinism to shut the borders tight to our neighbors from the south.  Which would be a catastrophe.

From Reno, an example of what is likely to become very common here in the next couple years.  Not good for North America but inevitable if the "Aztlan" chauvinists and their leftist 'multi-culti' enablers keep it up.

Poke Americans in the eye enough and we'll knock you down.

The Press: from a Christian view of leaders to Commodification

Robbie Griggs pointed me to this column by David Brooks.  I am struck by one paragraph:
Those of us in the press corps have to figure out how to treat this torrent of private kvetching. During World War II and the years just after, a culture of reticence prevailed. The basic view was that human beings are sinful, flawed and fallen. What mattered most was whether people could overcome their flaws and do their duty as soldiers, politicians and public servants. Reporters suppressed private information and reported mostly — and maybe too gently — on public duties.
Indeed, if Mr. Brooks is to be believed, the press' attitude towards our leaders was remarkably reticent and adult.  Which is as it should be.  Focus in politics should remain on policy.  Focusing on personal behavior unless clearly illegal diverts us from what matters to the rest of the world.  Sin is a commodity that sells newspapers (well that's not true, nothing sells newspapers these days) but it doesn't move our understanding forward of the underlying issues.

Don't get me wrong:  people can write about whatever they want but in a Christian world I would expect political conversations to focus on policy and public sins and count on personal relationships and pastors to deal with personal failings.

Our leaders are indeed not Saints and to place the demand for perfection ahead of the legitimate business of government is wrong.

We should have the government do more because governments are so much more honest and trustworthy than private business

From NRO:

The New York Times has an interesting piece this morning about proposed pension-disclosure rules for states and cities:

Government officials have granted pensions to teachers, police, judges, and other public workers for years without reflecting the true cost, analysts say. Now the bills are coming due, and in many cases there is not enough money set aside, adding to the fiscal distress across the country.

Corporations are required to measure their pension obligations at fair value when they report their numbers to the Securities and Exchange Commission. But not state and local governments. That’s because they have no desire to be transparent about how in the red their pension systems are.

Well this is sustainable.

Funny how a 'recovery' can have massive net job losses, no?  I know, lets just have the government hire everyone and we'll be fully 'recovered'.  Worked for the Sovs.....

Damn Soccer: It's going to make me care even though I hate it.

Emmanuelle Ottolenghi is manipulating my patriotism to make me care about a dirty evil sport, darn her.

As for the U.S., my point is even less ambitious. To see it join the big league as a serious contender to me is refreshing not because a victory for the United States (unlikely this time, by the way) would bring pride and prestige to democracy, or because of what it may or may not demonstrate about American nationalism or America’s sudden abandonment of its exceptionalism. In fact, I think it proves American exceptionalism. Given how late America comes to football and how quickly it rises from obscurity to success, it would be yet another sign of certain characteristics that make America so unique. It would prove how fast and successful America is in mastering all things foreign and seamlessly integrating them in its own unique national fabric; it would offer yet another proof of immigrants becoming the standard bearers of American patriotism — just look at who plays for the national team and you’ll see my point; and of sport being a ticket for them into the pantheon of all American heroes.

Knowing this, how does this affect your choice of physicians? Should it?

This is an example of bad data presentation.  This shows that medical schools let in certain minorities with modest credentials at a higher rate than others.

 But what it does not show is more important:

1. What proportion of all medical students fall into this category?  1%? 10?

2. What proportion of students with these entering credentials graduate?  Are the graduating statistics from this category equal by race?

3.  Did those with these entering credentials achieve better, worse or the same grade levels as other medical students?

I am much more interested in whether or not the GRADUATES received preferential treatment than I am the enrollees.  One could argue that we are willing to take greater risks on underrepresented groups but apply the same high standards to all.  Then the question is only whether the gamble paid off.

This says nothing about the qualifications of Black, Hispanic, and Native American doctors.

Reason 11347 why I hate Soccer: NPR Loves it

'nuff said

As leftist ideologue and soccer fanatic Dave Zirin writes in the Nation, the NPR crowd was ecstatic when the U.S. squad’s Landon Donovan scored to seal the American victory that put them into the tournament’s second round. As Zirin tells it, he was literally at the NPR studios in Washington waiting to go on to discuss the game when the goal was scored and “almost every cubicle and office let out an extemporaneous yelp. Yes, NPR went wild.” Needless to say, there was no such demonstration at the offices of COMMENTARY.

Holy capitalist roader, Batman, Business Roundtable says Obama and Dems "hostile" to business

What a shocker.  I mean who would have guessed?  I didn't see this one coming, I can tell you that....

The chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama’s closest ally in the business community, accused the president and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday of creating an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.” Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and “harm our ability… to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.”

Holy Confederacy Batman: Charleston SC is going to elect a black man it's next Congressman. And he's a Republican....

....who beat Strom Thurmond's boy.  From John Steele Gordon:

Charleston, South Carolina, was the cradle of the Confederacy. And come next January, barring unforeseen developments, it and the rest of the 1st District will have a black Congressman for the first time since Reconstruction. Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond for the Republican nomination last night, and the district has been a safe Republican seat since 1981. It wasn’t even close, with Scott trouncing Strom Thurmond’s son by 61 to 39 percent.

That a black man could beat the son of the legendary segregationist so badly in a district where the Civil War began — the district where Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 — is a measure of just how much the South has changed in the last 50 years, and the country’s politics and race relations along with it.

But assuming Scott is elected, he needn’t apply for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, of course. It’s a measure of how little the left in American politics has changed in the last 50 years that the Black Caucus — devoted to race-based politics and victimology — admits only liberal Democratic members.

Golf and politics.....

From Jay Nordlinger:

 . . though this post is not about Dick Gephardt. I’d like to tell a golf story — at least one. Yesterday, I had a little item on “the presidential swing” — Obama’s action (or inaction) — and this, predictably, prompted a good deal of mail. One reader wrote in with the following story:

“I frequent a driving range in Seattle and on one occasion found myself hitting balls next to former governor Gary Locke. (He’s now U.S. commerce secretary.) Locke is left-handed, and was hitting a pronounced hook with his driver. Unable to resist, I said to him, ‘I would not have expected you to do anything to the right.’”

Years ago, a politically minded friend and I played some golf together, and we’d refer to a shot short and left as a “Michael Dukakis,” and a shot short and right as a “Yitzhak Shamir.” (That pegs the era, doesn’t it?)

Okay, here’s the story I want to tell — one of my favorites in golf (and there are thousands). Bruce Lietzke was a fantastic player on the PGA Tour. Oddly, he only wanted to play part-time. Anyway, he always, always hit a cut — a left-to-right shot. It was his trademark. One of the best cutters of the ball ever (with Hogan, Trevino, and a handful of others). One day, his young son was on the range, at one of the PGA tournaments — players commonly bring their sons to tournaments, and have them hit on the range. This son was hitting a succession of draws (shots right to left). One of Lietzke’s fellow pros walked by and said, “Must’ve been the milkman.”

The difference between Crooks and White Collar Crooks

Andy McCarthy makes some important points in honor of Conrad Black's win.  We have a legal system that grossly over-favors the state, particularly on white collar matters.  Why is the state always made so powerful?   it's not good for our society to give that much power to politicos.  The founding fathers explicitly wrote our constitution to hobble them.

We have screwed this up big-time, boys.  Big Time.

Mark, I don't disagree. I've made similar points about corporate fraud, most recently in the SEC's action against Goldman Sachs, on which I guess I turn out to be more of a prosecutorial dove than Larry Kudlow (see here and here). 

There are good reasons for this. For most of my years in the Justice Department, I got to prosecute real bad guys — drug kingpins, gang-bangers, mafia dons, terrorists, etc. Also in my tenure, I was a deputy-chief of the appeals unit, a boss, and — in the last couple of years — handled a few corporate fraud cases based on accounting shenanigans. What I found, especially in mob cases under RICO (the 1971 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), is that most of the really bad precedents prosecutors have to work around result from judges trying to crack down on extravagant stretches of the statute in the civil context. That is, RICO was intended to be a powerful tool against the mafia and similar organized crime groups; but Congress included private, civil enforcement and treble damages, so every lawyer in a run-of-the-mill negligence case starts accusing the people he wants to sue of being an "association in fact" engaged in a "pattern of racketeering" (key elements of a RICO offense), with the result that the law gets applied to situations that have nothing to do with organized crime (or even crime).

When I was a supervisor, I had a young prosecutor once pitch me on a push-in robbery he wanted to indict. That's a state crime, not a federal one, but he had creatively suggested charging it as a federal extortion offense. Under U.S. penal law, extortion requires proof of an impact on interstate commerce, so I asked him what was the impact. He explained that the robbers had stolen money, and since U.S. currency is not printed in New York, it had to have moved interstate before being stolen. This theory would turn virtually every crime into a federal case. And that's a lot of what many young prosecutors (and some not so young) will do: use their supple minds to stretch criminal statutes to cover unsavory conduct that may or may not be criminal.

In the corporate fraud cases, I was very surprised to find that the applicable laws were unlike ordinary criminal statutes. Criminal statutes are required to be sufficiently clear and definite that people of ordinary intelligence are able to understand what is prohibited. But accounting fraud imports accounting standards, like the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. These provisions are rife with wiggle room for judgment, discretion, and reasonableness. They can turn even Enron-dimension schemes into horse-races when they end up in criminal trials.

It's just a fact that there's a lot more room for a businessman to push the envelope than for a racketeer. That's as it should be: Most people have not yet accepted the notion that the pursuit of profit is something shameful. While I concede that I could have been over the hill by the time I started dealing with many white-collar cases, it just seems ridiculous to me, as someone who spent years dealing with really bad people, to suggest that most accused businessmen are bad guys in the same way that, say, John Gotti, was a bad guy — to say nothing of a mass-murdering terrorist. I thought it was pretty offensive that in the same courthouse around the same time, the WorldCom fraudster Bernie Ebbers got 25 years for fraud while Lynne Stewart got 23 months for providing material support to terrorism.

I think I'm pretty hardnosed when it comes to serious crime — to malum in se. But I'm instinctively a skeptic on malum prohibitum, especially on financial regulation and especially when, for all its hot air, government is a serial violator of every transparency provision it imposes on business. And laws that are intentionally (or even unintentionally) elastic to allow prosecutors and other lawyers to press their application far beyond whatever evil prompted their enactment are never a good idea.

Goldberg and the Prophetic Voice in......him

His book Liberal Fascism has turned out to be eerily prophetic.  Of course Johah is descended from.......Jonah so whaddya expect.  Here's the key riff:

Now, I don't mean to say that my book has turned out to be a work of stunning prophecy as an objective matter ("No, you just mean to imply it very, very, very strongly" -- The Couch). Opinions differ among reasonable people. But I've been shocked at how determined the events seem to be to prove my book right. Not on every point, to be sure. But on the basic nature of liberalism, it's kind of hard for me not to see Obama, his administration, and the intellectual climate defending them as a confirmation of my basic argument(s). I argued that liberalism is shot through with a deeply ideological faith in the power of government that masquerades as "pragmatism"; that liberalism is addicted to crisis and the moral equivalent of war; that liberalism is intellectually deracinated from its own tradition; that liberalism is in many respects a new religion (in the Voegelinian sense); that the default economic "doctrine" (tendency might be a better word) is corporatism; and so on. On all of these points I was proved right.

As for my historical arguments, I've been stunned that the efforts by the historical profession -- late, mean-spirited, and hysterical as they've been - to debunk them have been so weak (see here, for more on that).

Why am I bringing all of this up? I dunno. I still get so much grief for the book from the left, largely from people who haven't read it or refused to read it in good faith. Or maybe I'm just starved for topics for today's G-File. We'll never know.

D of Education and Border Service cancel meetings in Arizona - Fox

This really isn't one country to the Dems and their government minions is it?  Well I think we can guarantee a complete extermination of the Democrat party in Arizona can't we?  And after that a massive die back of the bureaucracy is in order.

I can't wait.

Addendum:  with Republicans in complete control after the election, I predict the Arizona economy will undergo a massive secular boom.  Out with the blue, in with the green.

The first positive from the bust

Looks like Cannabis will be legalized in small amounts in CA so it can be taxed.  About damn time.  Watch the the self righteous nannies howl.

I predict a state by state restructuring of our laws towards weed.  Much like happened with gambling.  The Baptist and Bootlegger (or Pentecostals and Pot Grower's) coalition is going to collapse.  Lets generate revenue rather than spend money chasing the 'demon weed' around.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad Congress

Just checked in with what antics are going on over at "Health Care Reform" central.  Here's the latest:

The new law includes several tax increases.  Starting in 2013, the Medicare payroll tax will go up from 1.45% to 2.35% of income for single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year (and couples earning more than $250,000).  At the same time, people in these income levels will be hit by a new 3.8% Medicare tax on all dividends, capital gains and income from rental property.  These new taxes will be applied in a way that most of us are not familiar with; if you earn one dollar over the threshold, the higher Medicare tax counts against your ENTIRE income, not just the income you earned over the threshold amount.  And the extra Medicare tax on dividends, capital gains and rent is only applied to people with income above these threshold amounts; if your adjusted gross income is one dollar lower than the threshold, the tax doesn't apply to you--at all.  

All I can say is W.O.W.  is there any better way to make sure that a person with control over their incomes and dividend streams (small and closely held businesses, this is you) limits their income to 1 dollar below the amount than to apply the rates retroactively to their entire income stream?  Stunning.

Prepare for a major 'dip' in reported wages, interest and dividends starting in 2014.  I'm actually preparing a Comunicato script for investment advisors to share with their clients telling them precisely how to legally short the tax man.

These boys really don't understand how things work, do they?

Philosophy and the Tea Party

Fascinating if obscure discussion of why the Tea Partiers are ticked.

I hate the World Cup because I hate Soccer

I find it ironic that the most exciting part of this ‘sport’:  the ‘penalty shootout’ after 90 minutes of pointless to-ing and fro-ing  is the part invented in the good ‘ol US of A.  (And only used in the final round!).  I used to go to NASL games when Tulsa had a team but could only do so drunk (which is a requirement shared by most Anglo-Saxon attendees, indicating their possession of at least a modicum of residual humanity).

Soccer is a sport played by foreigners to fill their pointless days with random wandering and kicking - sort of like Zebra or Wildebeest.  No wonder the rest of the world is a wasteland.  I spent my whole childhood overseas, having to chase a bleeding ball around the yard in utter pointless desperation (why?  why?).

PG Wodehouse wrote in his Jeeves books about an imaginary English Fascist group:  The Black Shorts.  Its leader, Roderick Spode, designed ladies undergarments in his spare time under the name “Eulalie Sowers”.  The rank and file wore black ‘Footers’, aka: soccer shorts.  Just about sums it up for me.  Bunch of fascist, pantywaist cross dressers in toddler’s short pants.

Oh Lord forgive me but I hate soccer.  

In honor of the World Cup

ZZZZZZZZZZZ





ZZZZZZZZZZ.

Something to remember next time one is tempted to dump on Israel

Saudi "Justice".  Only 80 lashes of the whip for the minor girl.

Of course in the Islamic "Republic" they ritually rape girls before they execute them due to prohibitions against executing virgins in the Koran.  Hear it's a major honor and perc of the job to be tapped to do the deed.

The 'protectors' of the Sunni and Shia faiths respectively.  Barbarians to their toes.

I don't understand why the rest of Islam doesn't repudiate them.

Colombia shows the way for Mexico

Colombia is an enormous success story.  Mexico could learn much from their neighbors to the south.  It's a pity our President and his Congress continue to treat good friends, allies and successes like scum.  Mr. Obama:  keep America's promise, demand ratification of the free trade agreement with Colombia.

I mean, show some backbone, not every decision has to be vetted by the unions and decided according to Chicago rules.

More perspective on BP

From Wizbang:

Instead, we have an administration that seems hell-bent on destroying BP. Hell, last week they extorted a $20-billion-dollar shakedown out of BP. And, cynically, the primary motive wasn’t to get that money, but to secure the federal government’s first dibs on BP’s assets should they file bankruptcy in the US. This was the same move the Obama administration pulled with GM and Chrysler — bypassing the normal rules of bankruptcy and screwing out the other creditors.

Imagine that:  the same extralegal moves to bypass our laws and grab the schwag for themselves and their friends.  I wonder if the assistance checks will now read:  "From your friends at the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party".

Don't they have enough power already?  Can't they just play the game inside the lines?  Why does everything need to be turned into an extralegal scam?

Making fun of the Washington Rubes

No, not a sports team, although they have about as much success identifying reality as the famous opponents of the Harlem Globetrotters.  Ed Driscoll makes shameless fun of therm:

An up and coming pundit named Richard Cohen writes:

It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges — of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama’s approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.

For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?

Who indeed. If only Cohen worked for an organization that had people paid to gather facts and…what’s the word I’m looking for — reported them to the public — yes, that’s it! — before going all in on a candidate. Perhaps someone should invent such a business. It could combine a mass audience with a veneer of… hmmm, what’s a word that rhymes with mass? Class! Yes, that’s it.

You could print it on paper for a retro vibe  and call it news on paper, a paper of news, something like that. I’m sure there’s got to be a catchier name for it, and it’ll come to me eventually. But in these days of media experimentation, such a venture could really catch on with elitist readers, particularly inside the Washington Beltway.

The How is as important as the What

The BP slush fund is just the latest affront.  Thomas Sowell explains.  Our nation needs rule of law more than it needs swift clean up of a spill or perfect resolution of bankrupt banks or salvation of automakers.  We need rules that apply to everyone.  We need civilized rule of law.

Obama and his Democrat enablers are taking that apart piece by piece by piece.

I fear for what will be left.

Democrats decide we don't need a budget

In a move unprecedented in normal times, the Congressional Leadership decides that they just won't publish a budget this year.  I mean why put so much pressure on ourselves?  Let's relax, we're having fun, no need to  do anything prudent.  Let's just chill.  Obama's set the pace:  let's golf !

I love these boys, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Jim Nabors X 4

Illinois has now passed California as the most likely to go belly up.  Illinois hasn't balanced a state budget in a decade.  The state of Obama has the economics of Obama.

Fun fact for the uninitiated:  St. Louis is on both the Missouri and Illinois side of the river: on the Missouri side:  vigorous growth that is the fastest of any state in the Midwest.   On the Illinois side:  not so much.  Well that's an exaggeration:  not is more accurate.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.

Blinded by Science

COLD, DARK, and teeming with life. No, not my office refrigerator. “In 1984, scientists found that the heat was not necessary. In exploring the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, they discovered sunless habitats powered by a new form of nourishment. The microbes that founded the food chain lived not on hot minerals but on cold petrochemicals seeping up from the icy seabed.”


H/T Instapundit

Another example of Obama's inability to manage - Afghanistan and McChrystal

This basic managerial incompetence is starting to lose us lives.....and wars.  From Lowry at NRO:


Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration’s internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama.


For months Obama has tolerated deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last December. The divide has made it practically impossible to fashion a coherent politico-military plan, led to frequent disputes over tactics and contributed to a sharp deterioration in the administration’s relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. 


Nor is McChrystal the only participant in the feuding who has gone public with his argument. A scathing memo by Eikenberry describing Karzai as an unreliable partner was leaked to the press last fall. At a White House press briefing during Karzai’s visit to Washington last month, the ambassador pointedly refused to endorse the Afghan leader he must work with.

Biden, for his part, gave an interview to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in which he said that in July of next year “you are going to see a whole lot of [U.S. troops] moving out.” Yet as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates tartly pointed out over the weekend, “that absolutely has not been decided.” Instead, Biden was pushing his personal version of the strategy Obama approved, which calls for the beginning of withdrawals next year, with the size and pace to be determined by conditions at that time.


The real trouble is that Obama never resolved the dispute within his administration over Afghanistan strategy.

"It looks like a limp I Pad"

"....it's a newspaper, go ahead, pick it up"

H/T Doonesbury

Another reason to despise colleges and the bigoted crooks who run them: Title IX

Title IX:  dedicated to 'gender equality' in intercollegiate athletics has led to massive discrimination against men.  Take soccer as an example:

In 1996 the Education Department issued a set of safe-harbor standards that colleges could follow in order to be deemed in compliance with Title IX and thus avoid expensive lawsuits over disparities in athletic spending. The easiest standard, chosen by the overwhelming majority of institutions, was "proportionality": spending on athletics proportional to the ratio of males to females attending the college in question. Proportionality might have seemed fair in 1996---even though women tend to be less interested in the costly team sports that attract men---because only 52 percent of college students were female back then. Now the female-favoring gender disparity is much bigger: 57 percent to 43 percent.

The effect of the proportionality rule on opportunities for young men to play college soccer has been devastating, the CSC figures and graphs show. In 1996 there were 197 men's soccer teams in Division I and about 190 women's teams. In 2009 there were still 197 men's teams---even though the NCAA had added 27 new member schools---but the number of women's teams had soared to 310. Some 93 percent of Division I athletic programs offer women's soccer, compared with only 59 percent of Division I programs offering men's soccer.

Compounding the problem are the NCAA's scholarship policies. NCAA rules limit Division I men's teams to 9.9 scholarships, while women's teams are allowed 14 scholarships. "when considered across all of Division I, that means that the maximum number of possible scholarships offered to women in the sport in Division I outnumber those available to men by a ratio of greater than 2-1 (4,340 to 1,950.e)."

The growing disparity between men's and women's opportunities to play college soccer doesn't reflect men's declining interest in the sport---far from it. According to data cited by the CSC from the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 384,000 boys and 345,000 girls played soccer at the nation's high schools during the 2008-2009 academic year. But those male soccer enthusiasts have more limited college choices than their female counterparts. In Texas, the CSC notes, more than 27,000 boys play high school soccer, but there is only one Division I college with a men's soccer team: Southern Methodist. Neither the University of Texas at Austin nor Texas A&M, both Division I schools, sponsor varsity soccer programs for men, although they do offer women's varsity soccer.

And people wonder why I mock our institutions of "higher learning" as being run by corrupt, cowardly bigots.

Why I care about the Israelis more than the Congolese - Derbyshire

John Derbyshire on why every rational westerner should support Israel.  He talks sense.

Howzabout winning one of our current wars before declaring war on Arizona?

The One goes after the Grand Canyon state.  Byron York has the tale.  And he doesn't have the decency to inform them before the Ecuadoreans are told.

Of course not, they're 'citizen's too!

BP and the US Government: A case study in corporatism

Rich Lowry describes how BP rebranded itself as the 'green'  energy company even as industry insiders knew it as the 'corner cutter'.  Of course, corporatism is the economic arm of fascism.  The bigger and more intrusive the state gets, the greater the returns to companies for manipulating said state.  For the giant corporation it is the only rational response.  Thus the two great predators of liberty join to become one.

Getting rich in Obama's America: Ironing Boards

How our perverted trade laws created an officially sanctioned ironing board monopoly.

From Carpe Diem.

Sigh.

Does BHO want the job?

Roger Simon asks the basic question:  does BHO really want to be President anymore?  He didn't expect to be here when he started his tune up campaign and he doesn't seem to relish the role of visible leader.  A similar question was asked of W.  But W looked upon it as a duty and manfully ground through.  Will BHO, with no history of overcoming adversity, no record of actual leadership do the same?  Or will he fold?  Roger Simon asks the question more fully.

If true, this is President Buchanan redux - a man paralyzed at the wheel as the country spins out of control.  In a word:  disaster.

We are cretins yes we are, we are cretins har har har! - Zero Tolerance watch

Public schools and zero tolerance of guns are demonstrating just how mentally deficient the lords of Educatocracy are.  It's a wonder they can maintain sentience long enough to find their offices.

Now these creeps can add grade fraud to their rap sheet

Monopolistic pricing, lying to their students, self dealing, 482% higher real prices since 1982, and now overt, explicit grade fraud.  Why we show any respect to higher education mystifies me.  This is what passes for 'progressive' and 'liberal' in our nation.

What a bunch of corrupt creeps.  If there was any justice our 'academic leaders' would all be in jail.

Paul Ryan: Our economic policy to the left of Europe's

Paul Ryan:  the leading Republican economic spokesman talks about how our economic policy is drifting.

Ross Douthat: Liberalism itself may be running out of time

In the NYT.  Very perceptive take on liberal angst from ground zero of liberalism.

Good News: Gobar Gas - Biogas

One place where not for profits have helped both poverty and the environment is by jump starting the Biogas industry.  Hopefully the new donors like Buffett and Gates will invest in these types of initiatives and not the traditional 'chartiable' groups that consume so much and produce nothing (Harvard, call your service).

Although even here note that the biggest development is the emergence of a for profit biogas equipment industry to supply equipment to the market.

The BP Shakedown

You don't need to agree with everything Rep Joe Barton said about the $20 Billion fund that the Administration squeezed out of BP to realize that it's a problem.  We have laws to assess liability and hold the responsible party accountable.  BP, in an effort to minimize it's liability, has every incentive to spend its own money now to prevent greater damage and costs later.  The purpose of the 'fund' was political:  to allow the Administration to have a desperately needed win and BP to be endorsed by Obama for doing something right.  Once again the fascist short-cut is taken so the politics can be optimized.

We didn't use to run our country like a banana republic.  The more we do, the more we undermine what makes us special.

Mike Barone has more.

A study in contrast - Uncommon knowledge looks back at Ronald Reagan's famous 1964 speech

A timeless speech, written in Reagan's own hand and commented on by Steyn and Long - the contrast between Reagan, the supposed airhead and BHO, the 'constitutional' 'scholar' couldn't be more stark.  When he speaks of the existential threat to liberty posed by communism he sounds incredibly modern - there is always an existential threat to our liberties and it isn't the threat that determines our survival, it's  our response.  To paraphrase agent K:

"There's always an alien battle-cruiser, or a Corillian death ray, or an intergalactic plague that's about to wipe out life on this miserable planet. The only way that these people get on with their happy lives is they DO NOT know about it."


That's the job of conservatism, then:  to see off the existential threats while letting most people believe in the smiley face soft fascism that dominates our relationship with government.  To let people pretend that they can vote themselves prosperity or safety.  To make America safe for graft and log-rolling, so that incompetent constitutional law professors can become President.

It's a tall order but inevitably our fate.

Captain K-A's Energy fantasy: Robert Samuelson

DC's resident moderate economist calls baloney on Obama's energy speech here.  Are we really going to have to wait until 2013 before we get any policy honesty on any key economic issue?  Is the fantasy tour really going to last for four years?

God help us all.

MSM Deathwatch No XX

Sunday talk shows lead with fired BP CEO Tony Hayward''s yachting and ignore Obama's golfing.

These guys really aren't trying to save themselves are they?

All trees, no forest: God's Brain

Interesting book on the neurochemistry of belief.  It's reductionism doesn't settle anything but it seems like it would be worth a read on how God enables us to believe.

Those that infest our academies and news rooms would mock him

Which is why their dreams are dying.

I just hope for LAs sake that Mexico doesn't win the world cup

The Aztlan homies will tear their 'home' apart.  Would be great for immigration restrictionists, though.

Britain's public sector workers aren't nearly as privileged as ours

Shocker:  UK's public workers are only 30 percent better paid and work only nine years less than their private counterparts.  If only the US could get our 'public servants' down to that level of larceny.

Holy Resume, Batman, leadership experience really matters!

Mortimer Zuckerman, an erstwhile Obama supporter and expert on foreign policy matters explains why our current foreign policy is failing.  PS:  Inexperience, amateurishness and naivete factor heavily into the explanation.

Sigh.

Who is this Obama 'cat any way?

Deroy Murdock points out that the "Internationalist" Obama who would "heal" our relations with the world has still not waived the union featherbedding Jones Act so that we can seek foreign specialized assistance in the cleanup arrangements.  He notes that this is unprecedented in recent history, W waived it twice for 9/11 and Katrina.

So what's going on?  Is it really true that BHO is so much of a Chicago politician that he will be seen visibly turning away desperately needed help because it would offend some of his supporters?  Or is his administration in such chaos that they haven't established an effective decision making process  after 8 weeks?  Or is it that BHO simply can't grasp the magnitude of the disaster?

I am a man of many answers, some of them even right, but I have no earthly idea why this situation has persisted for so long save the frightening possibility is that Mr. Obama is completely out of his depth as President and that stunningly, the Democrat leadership has made no provisions to buttress him.

Reagan was famously derided as being 'out of touch' and stage managed by his 'handlers'.  That wasn't true but we now know that basic Presidential competence includes recognizing  your weaknesses and making sure that you have a team that can cover them.  The problem with Mr. Obama is that never having run even a modestly sized organization he had no way of knowing what his leadership deficits were and no experience in finding people who could fill them.

18 months in the Management Trainee in Chief is repeating his rookie year.  The Democrat leadership need to persuade the President to add experienced senior managers from (and regular readers know how much it pains me to say this) the Clinton administration who can boil down the roar to a key set of decisions that the President can focus on.  John Podesta would be a good place to start, hell even David Gergen (gorge rising in my throat) could help (it is instructive that the only Clinton insider in the Administration is HRC, also completely bereft of executive experience).

When asked what was the greatest challenge to a Statesman Harold Macmillan replied:  "Evens, my dear boy, Events".   This is more true than ever, because when the big international crisis comes - in the Caucasus or heaven forbid Iran gets their nuke, the current inability to cope will turn deadly.

Run Away Run Away

Really cool graphics from Forbes showing county migration patterns.  Striking, really.

There be "other shoes" droppin' everywhere

One of the inevitable outcomes of a 'legislative' 'process' (I use both terms ironically) as was used for Obamacare is that no one has any idea what screwy stuff is in the law or when it will fall out.

On our heads.

 Here's a classic example:  it turns out that union sponsored health plans are largely exempt from Obamacare regulation (unlike everyone else's).  We find this out now because HHS has just issued the regs.

I find myself channeling Jim Nabors more and more:  "Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise!".  And I am becoming fluent in "Church Lady"::  "Well isn't that special?"  These 'cats don 't even go through the motions of pretending to seek equality under the law or the common good.  It's just a raw grab to get while the gettin' is good.

Englishmen of a certain age remember what the UK was like during the '70s:  a socialist government actively managing the economy to failure by preferencing unions and government workers.  They describe the a consistent but peculiar response from union members when confronted by people angry at the chaos and self dealing:  They would always shrug their shoulders and say: "Well I've got mine, chum!"

That just about describes out rent seekers, doesn't it?

Bastiat kicks once again

Latest unintended consequence of government rent seeking:  There are dozens of specialized vessels around the world that could dramatically improve the quality and speed of cleanup for the BP spill. See David Warren here.  But they're sitting idle.  Why?  The Jones act.  A piece of protectionist feather bedding for the maritime unions that says that only American vessels with American crews can work in American waters.

Bet the boys that wrote that one didn't think that they would be contributing their little bit to the greatest environmental mess of the millenium.  Government specializes in devastating unintended consequences.

But their are always economic rents to be had from manipulating the law and there are always government lawyers happy to help.

I mean screw the environment, screw the people, we've got a union to run.

UPDATE:  It has been pointed out that President Obama has the power to suspend Jones Act provisions at times of national emergency.  Indeed George W. Bush did so after 9/11.  Our current President has chosen not to go that route, putting a rent seeking maritime union that picks consumers pockets of billions every year ahead of the future of our Gulf coast.

I guess we should thank President Obama for giving us such a high quality lesson in  Chicago style (stick bundle) politics.  "I mean who the eff is the Gulf Coast anyway?  They 'ain't got no clout, they're way downstate and anyway, the dummies vote Republican.  So screw the Rednecks"

"Hope" and "Change" indeed.

Of course if the oil starts hitting Provincetown and Fire Island beaches, the act will be immediately suspended.  But the "Redneck Riviera?", those dudes can't actually swim can they?

This will end in tears

HOW PROGRESSIVE: Senate Votes to Let the EPA Ration Energy, Ah, Carbon.

How do conservative southern politicians end up coming from India?

Tunku V. on the case.  As the racial complexity of America soars exponentially, the racial identity politics of the Democrats are going to begin canibalizing themselves.  When there's not one 'other' but dozens, they eat each other.  All of a sudden so many things are just so not working for the left.  Change the rules, change the game.  Change the game, change the winners.

Tunku Varadarajan: “Why has no Indian-American liberal risen as high in the Democratic ranks as Jindal and Haley have done in the GOP? Could it be that because Democrats put more of an emphasis on identity politics, an Indian-American Democrat would have to contend with other ethnic constituencies that might think that it’s ‘their turn’ first? And once you go down the ‘identity’ route, your success as a politician tends to rest more on the weight of numbers—the size of your ethnic constituency, or your racial voting bloc—than on the weight of your ideas. The most striking thing about Jindal and Haley’s success is not that they are Indian-American politicians who have triumphed in conservative Southern states, but that they are conservative Southern politicians who just happen to be Indian American.”

Liberals talking sense

Of course Michael Lind used to be a conservative before he crossed over.  Talking sense about choo choos, windmills and sun drops.

Joel Kotkin on 2050

On reason.  I think Kotkin is our brightest social scientist.

An interesting result of our unmanaged immigration system

I'm in favor of immigration, but I'm not in favor of this outcome.  We've made immigration decisions based upon certain elites economic and political interests.  An unholy alliance of business and ethnic politicos have joined to make sure there has been no serious enforcement of the borders and the result is remarkable social regression.  If this is the consequence of the Federal government running immigration, then maybe we need to get them out of the business.  Of course California's award winning public school Unions also had a lot to do with this achievement.

In 1970, California had the 7th most educated work force of the 50 states in terms of the share of its workers who had completed high school. By 2008 it ranked 50th, making it the least educated state.

Way to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear, California.

Holy domestic partnership, Batman! Sir Elton and El Rushbo agree on gay marriage

Cats sleeping with dogs, etc. etc.

Here.

Some Republicans are too stupid for power

Many of them are joining with the increasingly desperate and looney left to impose popular but insane card price controls.  Fortunately these are the Republicans that are losing primaries right and left.

May they Rot in Pieces.

March of the Palinettes

Nikki Haley and Carly Fiorina, both strongly endorsed by Sara Palin are the favorites to win the S Carolina Governorship and the CA Senate.

Oh and Meg Whitman to boot.  CA has two accomplished big company Tech CEOs running for election under the Republican Brand.  What is this world coming to?

This is going to tick the 'great and the good' off something fierce.

Why banks aren't lending

Because they can't price the risk, says Todd Zywicki.  And sadly, he predicts that it is likely to get worse.

Worst job market for teens since 1969

See here.  Interestingly enough, 1969 was right after the minimum wage was raised to its highest level in history:  almost $10.00 in today's dollars.  See here.  Looking at this chart explains why it was so hard for teenagers like me to get jobs during the 1970s and why the job picture suddenly brightened starting in the 80s.  Liberals have been hurting inexperienced workers at the behest of their Union sponsors for a long time, haven't they?

Of course Republicans have been cynically voting for what they know to be bad policy for just as long.  But we're supposed to hate the weak and the poor, aren't we?

But the big question remains:  is this the Hope or the Change or the Shaft?

Barack Obama has his nickname - and he ain't gonna like it

"Captain Kick-ass"

Real public service

Thomas Sowell explains why BHO's speech to ASU was so wrong headed.

Houston, we're gonna have a problem in 2011

Art Laffer - Chicago economist, points out that based upon tax incentives, this year is much better than it should be and next year.....well let's just say that it won't be BHO lives happily ever after.  I really can't refute his logic.

And the problem is this:  with massive problems in Europe, countries tipping into the toilet quarterly, the additional negative karma of a US double dip is going to make the global debt crisis much, much worse.

And BHO will have spent two full years destroying business confidence.  This is going to get ugly, gang.

Sigh..

Heard on the way to the collapse

From Derbyshire:

From a pessimist pal on the trading floor, in re the world debt crisis: “We’re all just waiting for the rest of the watertight compartments to fill.”