Perhaps the last, decadent phase of social democracy is autarky

Or Sarkoautarky.  There is an enormous need to blame anyone but the real culprits in the looting of rich nations.  And I suspect that many of them will go through an Argentina phase of demagoguery, confiscation and violence before they become poor enough to wake up.

Some people call it muddling through and that is true:  through a man made catastrophe.  Hattip Marginal Revolution.

Sarkozy struck a strident new tone in a Sunday rally.

He threatened to pull France out of the Schengen open borders agreement and demanded the European Union adopt measures to fight cheap imports, warning that France might otherwise pass a unilateral “Buy French” law.

“I want a Europe that protects its citizens. I no longer want this savage competition,” he declared to a cheering crowd. “I have lost none of my will to act, my will to make things change, my belief in the genius of France.”

A lot of social science research findings are crap

And here's a good example why.  Hat tip Marginal Revolution.

Rasmussen Survey: Get government off of our back

Fear the Feds.  According to this Rasmussen survey almost no one believes that our great and glorious Federal Megastate can do good.  It's all about minimizing harm.  Which is why we need to break it up, break it all up.

Fifty-two percent (52%) fear the federal government will try to do too much to help the economy.  Thirty-six percent (36%) fear it will do too little. However, earlier polling found that even those who want the government to do more are primarily thinking of cutting deficits, cutting spending and cutting taxes. 

Why do politicians screw with the clocks? Because they can.

Exercise of power becomes it's own excuse.  Politicians who are not seen as 'doing something' run the risk of losing voter (and more crucially, 'muckraking, crusading' journalist support).  Therefore they do things.  Many, many things.  Daylight savings time is just one of the more obvious pointless manipulations.  It's time to break it up, break it all up.

John Miller explains.

But the very worst thing about DST is that it’s bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. (Check out one of his studies here.) The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there’s no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and “fall back” in the autumn.

Mandate it all.

Because our Supreme Leaders know what is good for us.  What would we do without them?  The WSJ has a helpful list of other mandates that are 'good for us'.

Coffee. Studies show that coffee can ward off depression, Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes and sleepiness—which makes it one of the most powerful preventive treatments. Workers who drink java are also more productive and pleasant. While many offices have coffee makers, some employers—most notably those affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—continue to deny workers this essential benefit. All employers should have to provide workers with freshly brewed coffee. Oh, and workers must also be able to choose the kind of coffee regardless of the price.

Republicans might argue that requiring Mormon charities to serve coffee is a violation of "religious liberty" since the Mormon church's doctrine proscribes coffee, but this argument is a red herring. Leading medical experts recommend drinking coffee. Moreover, 99% of adults have drunk coffee at one point in their lives (including most Mormons).

Notice anything different?

Hope!  Change!

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others...."

Orwell's famous line from Animal Farm applies to our so called 'Green' wind industry.  W was as big a hypocrite on this as BHO is, BTW.

As Robert Bryce writes in today's WSJ:
  
"For years, the wind energy industry has had a license to kill golden eagles and lots of other migratory birds. It's not an official license, mind you. But as the bird carcasses pile up—two more dead golden eagles were recently found at the Pine Tree wind project in Southern California's Kern County, bringing the number of eagle carcasses at that site to eight—the wind industry's unofficial license to kill wildlife is finally getting some serious scrutiny. 

Some 77 organizations—led by the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Endangered Species Coalition and numerous chapters of the Audubon Society—are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen the rules for the siting, permitting and operation of large-scale wind projects. 

It's about time. Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America's oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act. But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines."

Read more here. 

Frightening picture of an elegant dystopia

Very well done. And fairly plausible.

Modern Feminism promotes the interests of affluent women. Period.

JAMES TARANTO: What used to be a normal family life is now available only to the affluent.

Eventually, however, her career “succumbed,” as Reuters oddly puts it. In truth, this is no tragedy but a hypergamous happy ending. Mancini left the labor force because her husband was doing so well that he could afford to support the whole family: “She quit in 2005 when her six-digit income was overtaken by his seven-digit one.”
For Mancini, it was a liberation. She tells the wire service: “At that point, it was clear that my wage had become family pocket money. There was a real opportunity to do other things that did not require being chained to a desk.” 

An increasing number of affluent women with affluent husbands are casting off the chains of professional work, according to a forthcoming Federal Reserve study that Reuters apparently obtained in advance . . . 

For women with lower levels of education, the picture is markedly different, as Charles Murray shows in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” One-income households have become common at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well–but because women are less likely to be married at all, while men are less likely to be in the labor force. 

Marriage and male responsibility for families were once the norm at all levels of American society. Feminism was supposed to liberate women from dependency on men. Instead it has helped to create a two-tiered culture in which the norm is for women to be “chained to a desk,” but those who hit the jackpot in the mating game can realistically aspire to escape that status. Nice going, ladies. Happy International Women’s Day.

Contraception mandate infringes liberty period. Not just religious liberty.

This guy makes sense, from NRO.  The key is to demand liberty full stop.  Religious liberty, sexual liberty, economic liberty, social liberty.  Individuals are best equipped to make individual choices.

Republicans, as is typical, are making a huge tactical blunder with their focus on religious liberty. This is about liberty, period, not just religious liberty. All the religion talk simply plays into liberal attempts to smear conservatives as religious zealots. If Republicans were smart, which they clearly are not, they would emphasize 2 simple points:
1) There is no lack of access to contraception or attempt to restrict it. Any American can walk into any drug store in any State and buy whatever contraception they want. If they are poor, they can use Medicaid, various State programs, or Planned Parenthood. This Obama decree does not do anything to increase accessibility.
2) Contraception is a personal matter and should not be in the government domain. Liberals, more than anyone else, should be careful what they wish for on this. If they insist that contraception is a government issue, they forfeit the right to invoke privacy rights about it. Americans should do whatever they want with regard to contraception, whether their religion plays a role in the decision or not, and the government should not force any company to offer it or any person to pay for it.
This is a simple, winning message, and we don’t need to rely on relgion to make it stand.

Chicken vs. Pig breakfast logic

Why are airplane pilots so much more focused on avoiding error than doctors? Because doctors don’t go down with their patients.

Jim Manzi on analysis as rhetoric

Obama Fundraisers: Raise half a mil, get a job

It's the Chicago way.  Hope and change indeed.

WASHINGTON POST: The Influence Industry: Obama gives administration jobs to some big fundraisers.“More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.”

BHO is terrified of his base

MICKEY KAUS: Is Obama Scared Of Occupy? “Is Obama worried that front-page Occupy-style protests might be starting to hurt his reelection campaign? That’s one obvious explanation for the sudden shift of the G-8 summit to Camp David from Chicago.”

At least if you have car debt, you have a car....

...quite a bit of the 'college' debt is held without a degree.  Not that most degrees are worth the paper they're printed on.  And note that most is owed by the young.  Liberal, academic baby boomers have raped their kids and called it righteousness.   Hattip Phi Beta Cons

The total outstanding student-loan balance in the U.S. being greater than total outstanding credit-card debt — old news. But total outstanding student loans are now also greater than total outstanding auto loans ($870 billion vs. $730 billion). To make this matter even more rosy, $580 billion of student-loan debt is owed by people younger than 40 years old.

Incentives matter

Run, baby run.

The wrong people are puzzled in this cartoon

GM isn't puzzled, they got subsidized and bailed out to do this.  This was rational PR for them.  It's the usual suspects that are confused.  Once again Federal subsidies disappear down a rat hole, padding executive salaries and shielding union bosses from market forces.  It's a classic Chicago Liberal scam.

And the Shale Gale is contributing to the generation of huge numbers of "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs"

Again, how can this be?  I thought jobs came from Obama?  This all must be due to the stimulus.  Right?

From the Harvard Business Review blog, "New Math Will Drive a U.S. Manufacturing Comeback" by Harold Sirkin and Michael Zinser of the Boston Consulting Group:

"Making the United States an even more attractive location for factories and investments is critical for the health of our nation. More domestic factories would help create more balanced trade flows and a more stable global economy. But company decisions on what and where to place production facilities, while influenced by many factors, ultimately depend on the math.

Thankfully, the math these days is starting to work in America's favor again. 

Assuming the trend continues, as we expect it to, the economic impact could be substantial, resulting in as many as 2 million, and possibly up to 3 million, U.S. jobs between now and the end of the decade. An estimated 600,000 to 1 million of these jobs would be directly in manufacturing, with the remainder in construction, orders for new equipment, supporting services, transportation and retail sales. This could increase U.S. gross domestic product by $100 billion, lower the non-oil U.S. trade deficit by 20% to 35%, and reduce unemployment by 1 to 1.5 percentage points."

Energy independence in 8 years?

And nary a government program in sight.  How can this be?  Everyone knows that good things only come from resolute state action and subsidy.  Don't they?  Well, don't they?

From NPR (!).  Hattip Carpe Diem.

From a segment on NPR today, "Is U.S. Energy Independence Finally Within Reach?"

"Energy self-sufficiency is now in sight," says energy economist Phil Verleger. He believes that within a decade, the U.S. will no longer need to import crude oil and will be a natural gas exporter. Verleger says all of the previous presidents fighting for energy independence would be quite surprised by how this came about: It's not the result of government policy or drilling by big oil. "This is really the classic success of American entrepreneurs," he says. "These were people who saw this coming, managed to assemble the capital and go ahead."

Small energy companies using such controversial techniques as hydraulic fracturing, along with horizontal drilling, are unlocking vast oil and natural gas deposits trapped in shale in places like Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Texas. North Dakota, for instance, now produces a half-million barrels a day of crude oil, and production is rising.

 "This shale gale, I describe it as the energy equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down. This is a big deal," says Robin West, chairman and CEO of PFC Energy, who has been in the energy consulting business for decades. "We estimate that by 2020, the U.S. overall will be the largest hydrocarbon producer in the world; bigger than Russia or Saudi Arabia," he says."

Because producing budgets is actually something governments are supposed to do

And that ain't BHO's thing, baby.  Much easier to promise to do things that can't be measured easily.  Saul Alinsky, call your service.

MATT WELCH: The Symbolic Presidency: Obama says he can get you a job. So why can’t he produce a federal budget?

Damn Canucks

BLAME CANADA: For lower prices at the pump.

I'm proud to be a Sooner

Once again we are trend setters.

Obama loses Dem primary in 15 Oklahoma counties

(AP) – 9 hours ago  

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — President Barack Obama collected the most votes in the Oklahoma Democratic primary, but lost in 15 counties.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday, Obama won 57 percent of the vote. Four other candidates combined for 43 percent of the vote, including anti-abortion activist and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry who received 18 percent of the vote.

According to Democratic Party rules, Terry is eligible for a delegate since he won more than 15 percent of the statewide vote. Terry beat Obama in 12 counties, mostly in western Oklahoma. Terry acknowledges he can't win the presidency but says he hopes to cause Obama's defeat in the fall.

Oklahoma earned the nickname "reddest of the red" states after Obama's failed to win a single county in the 2008 presidential race.

The Propaganda of the...CO2 gas and noble cause corruption

Anarchists used to talk about the Propaganda of the Deed.  Recently the Hewlett foundation gave $581 million to promote global warming hysteria.  WWF and the Sierra club spend $1Billion annually on green propaganda.  The entire warming skeptics budget is probably smaller than Sierra's travel budget.  Matt Ridley has more:

By contrast, a storm of protest broke recently over the news that one small conservative think-tank called Heartland was proposing to spend just $200,000 in a year on influencing education against climate alarmism. A day later, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with assets of $7.2 billion, gave a grant of $100 million to something called the ClimateWorks Foundation, a pro-wind power organisation, on top of $481 million it gave to the same recipient in 2008. The deep green Sierra Club recently admitted that it took $26 million from the gas industry to lobby against coal. But money is not the only reason that the entire political establishment came to believe in wind fairies. Psychologists have a term for the wishful thinking by which we accept any means if the end seems virtuous: ‘noble-cause corruption’. The phrase was first used by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir John Woodcock in 1992 to explain miscarriages of justice. ‘It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned,’ said the late Lord Denning, referring to the Birmingham Six.

So how do you know what you know - Global Warming edition

According to a Harvard study, in 2009 US Power Plant Greenhouse gas emissions fell 9% from 2008, despite this being a recovery year from a sharp recession. In one year.  Why did this happen? Was it Wind? Solar? Electric cars? Nope. It was shale gas. The one energy technology that was not massively subsidized by Uncle Sugar was the one that delivered a massive green dividend. Imagine that, the energy technology opposed, indeed despised by most Greens delivered the green result.

I'll bet you didn't hear that on CNN, ABC, PBS, NBC, CBS, NYT, Wapo, did you? Of course you didn't. Not convenient, wouldn't be right, doesn't fit the narrative. Can't have the damned oil companies delivering a greener planet, can we?

So once again, all together now: how do you know what you know?

Greenwashing

Get Federal Money, Give Bosses Bonuses, Fail, Repeat.....

#GREENFAIL: ABC News: Green Firms Get Fed Cash, Give Execs Bonuses, Fail.

So GM's BS on the Volt caused Obama's BS and the the two BS's got cross mojinated, causing everyone's heads to explode.

Perhaps reality would have been a better option.

EDWARD NIEDERMEYER: Blind Spot: The Twilight Of The Volt. “Now that GM is undeniably signaling that the Volt is a Corvette-style halo car, with similar production and sales levels, my long-standing skepticism about the Volt’s chances seems to be validated. . . . The basic problem with the Volt isn’t that it’s a bad car that nobody could ever want; it is, in fact, quite an engineering achievement and a rather impressive drive. And if GM had said all along that it would serve as an “anti-Corvette,” selling in low volumes at a high price, nobody could now accuse it of failure. Instead, GM fueled totally unrealistic expectations for Volt, equating it with a symbol of its rebirth even before collapsing into bailout. The Obama administration simply took GM’s hype at face value, and saw it as a way to protect against the (flawed) environmentalist argument that GM deserved to die because of “SUV addiction” alone. And in the transition from corporate sales/image hype to corporatist political hype, the Volt’s expectations were driven to ever more unrealistic heights, from which they are now tumbling.”

But that would mean a lot more Christian Conservatives. And they're not diverse.

DIVERSITY: Princeton Prof Wants More Veterans on Campus.

The terrifying and obscene successor to lobotomies

Parents used to approve those for their children too.  Horrifying.  Evil.  You can't smoke marijuana but you can mutilate and inject hormones in your own child?  Here.

When children look to adults to give them guidance, adults often fall short of their charge; but few fall as short as Dr. Norman Spack of Children’s Hospital in Boston. According to a scattering of reports that have consistently struggled to gain attention when pitted against more important topics — the Oscars, for example — there has been a dramatic rise in the number of incidents in which children are given treatment that is designed to halt their development as males or females and, ultimately, completely change the sex of their birth. Spack is the procedure’s champion. He rejects the traditional notion that children who are confused about their gender are suffering from what psychiatrists term “gender-identity disorder” — which varies in severity from normal growing pains to fully-fledged disorders — and believes instead that they have innate differences in their brains that render them, literally, of the wrong sex.

Such “transgendered” children, argues Spack, need “correcting” before it is too late. And this is done, he explained in the Boston Globe in 2009, with “puberty-blocking drugs” that “work best at the beginning of the pubital process, typically age 10 to 12 for a girl and 12 to 14 for a boy.” The results are remarkable. One patient was a “girl from the UK,” who “was destined to be a 6-foot-4 male. With treatment, she’s going to end up 5-foot-10.” Spack’s ideas are growing in popularity. “If you open the doors, these are the kids who come,” he claims.

Osama not buried at sea?

So Obama lied and....Osama still died.  Here.

Actual evidence on the Sudafed/Meth nexus

It turns out that all of the hysterical abuse of consumers over Sudafed has.....little or no impact.  Which isn't surprising since most Meth is now made in Mexican Mega Labs and smuggled across our unguarded border.  But the temptation  to oppress their neighbors is too great for our 'leaders' to pass up.  Indeed, the drive to dominate and oppress is written deeply into the sin nature of man.  Which means the only answer is to severely limit their power.  Hattip Reihan Salam.

Courtney Knapp kindly referred me to a new paper by the Cascade Policy Institute by Chris Stomberg and Arun Sharma that will be of great interest to those of you who use cold medicine from time to time. To curb the manufacture and, presumably, the consumption of methamphetamine, Oregon decided require that pharmacies put cold medicines that use pseudoephedrine behind the counter. The authors conclude that while this measure has inconvenienced cold sufferers, it has done little if anything to achieve its intended purpose.

Rampant, excess Patenting - Another consequence of the centralizing Federal State

It turns out that the Patent system is rigged in favor of the DC based patent lawyers.  Who woulda thunk it?  The more things are centered in the Imperial Capital, the more they are run for the courtiers who inhabit it.  The rest of us?  Well, we're just proles.

Hattip Rehan Salam:

Mike Masnick summarizes a new article by Jonathan Masur in the Yale Law Journal:

When the numbers came out showing that 2011 represented yet another record year for patents granted, it was such a non-surprise that I didn’t even bother mentioning it. The number of patents granted just keeps going up. And yes, there were two small dips during the past decade, but they corresponded with the rare situations in which the Supreme Court finally took an interest in some element of patent law and pushed back on the Federal Circuit (the appeals court that handles all patent issues) and the USPTO. We’ve discussed at length in the past, the problems of having a single appeals court that solely focuses on patent issues, because you lose the diversity of opinions (made worse at times when some of the judges on the panel have been former patent attorneys — or, most famously, when a judge at the court was the same former patent attorney who wrote the last major update to patent law…).
However, Steve sends over a fascinating Yale Law Journal review article by Jonathan Masur that notes this problem of the Federal Circuit can be explained structurally, in that the relationship between the PTO and the Federal Circuit combined with the fact that there’s no “adversarial” party contesting a patent grant, means that the patent system is effectively rigged to only expand, even if that goes against the best interests of society.

Fortunately, Tim Lee has offered a solution to the problems posed by the Federal Circuit:

In 1982, Congress became concerned that patent law was too complex for generalist judges. So it created a new court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and gave it exclusive jurisdiction to hear appeals in patent cases.
This had the unintended consequence of dramatically increasing the influence of the patent bar over patent law. Not only do Federal Circuit judges spend all their time hearing arguments from patent attorneys, but some of them are former patent attorneys themselves. In its first two decades, the Federal Circuit gradually shifted patent law in the pro-patent direction favored by most patent attorneys. Patents became easier to get and harder to invalidate. The courts allowed tougher punishments against infringers. And the Federal Circuit unilaterally eliminated traditional limits on patenting software and “business methods.”
The creation of the Federal Circuit had another unintended consequence, too. The Supreme Court relies on disagreements among appeals courts — known as “circuit splits” — to help it figure out which issues require its attention. And when the Supreme Court takes a case, the existence of multiple, conflicting precedents gives the justices more raw material from which to fashion their own decisions.
But when the Federal Circuit became the only court ruling on patent cases, there were no more circuit splits and no more competing legal precedents. That might be why the Supreme Court seems to have barely noticed that the Federal Circuit was dramatically reshaping patent law in the 1990s. The high court reviewed only about a dozen Federal Circuit decisions between 1982 and 2004, and the ones it did review tended to be on narrow, technical issues. The Supreme Court finally began to give the Federal Circuit’s handiwork some serious scrutiny when Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench. And the justices did not like what they saw. In the Chief Justice’s first three terms, the high court heard five different patent cases, and all of them resulted in unanimous or near-unanimous reversals of pro-patent decisions by the Federal Circuit.
But a lot of the damage had already been done. Hundreds of thousands of low-quality patents had been approved under the permissive rules the Federal Circuit had developed during the 1990s. Those patents may be technically invalid under recent Supreme Court decisions, but that’s of little help to a small company that can’t afford to litigate the question. So contra The Economist, a key element of any serious patent reform agenda should be to decentralize authority over patent appeals.

This seems like a sensible move — and potentially appealing to those who enjoy abolishing things. 

Obama's 1%

James Pethokoukis tells the tale:  the bottom 99% of us have had no recovery.  Nada, zip, nunca, zilch.  I am so glad that the President is on the job, fighting for us.  Imagine how rich we'd be if he had done nothing.....

Let the punishment vastly exceed the crime....

Our insane drug laws turn Gilbert and Sullivan on their heads.  St. Charles county here in Missouri has banned the sale of Sudafed over the counter.  The human drive to dominate and oppress others is alive and growing by leaps and bounds.  The latest lunatic madness from Kentucky:

KENTUCKY ESCALATES IN THE war against Sudafed.

Perhaps only when everyone is a felon will we relent....

Public Debts and Deficits: US is one of the worst

Look for the US, top right corner, just south of (bankrupt) Ireland and somewhat west of (bankrupt) Greece.  The only saving grace is that we owe money exclusively in our own currency.  That way we can screw all of the debt holders with a swingeing inflation.  The rub is that inflation doesn't do anything about the real problem:  unfunded future liabilities - which rise in lock step with inflation.  But in the interim, our alternative is going to the policy choice of Banana Republics and Presidents for Life everywhere.  All hail our Maximum Lider Senor Baracka Obamio!  Down with the Yanqui's!  Wait, that can't be right....

Private GDP soaring, public GDP shrinking

The result is stagnant growth.  The Obami handed out almost a trillion dollars in 'stimulus' mostly to states and localities so that they could put off the inevitable retrenchment.  The result, along with their provoking of a massive capital strike has ensured that they would enter this election season with a stagnant economy and half a dozen deep blue states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.  Ironic, no?



Attaboy, Barry.

Get your Ovaries off my Rosaries?

The contraception debate is descending into farce.

Angela Morabito, a student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service,writes:

Let’s talk priorities here. It costs over $23,000 for a year at Georgetown Law. Sandra, are you telling us that you can afford that but cannot afford your own contraception? Really? Math was never my strong suit, but something about Sandra’s accounting just doesn’t seem right.

No one forced Sandra to come to Georgetown. And now that she has, Sandra does not have to depend on the university health plan. She could walk down the street to CVS and get some contraception herself. Or, go to an off-campus, non-university doctor and pay for it out of pocket. (Or, you know . . . maybe not have so much sex that it puts her in financial peril?)

Funny how the same side that cries “Get your rosaries off my ovaries” is the same side saying, “on second thought . . . please pay for me to have all the sex I want!” The people who espouse “pro-choice” “values” are the same people who say religious institutions have no right to choose.

Imagine if someone else had asked the government to cover a different activity. Let’s say I want to go rock climbing. It’s my body and my choice and I want to climb all the cliffs I can! Imagine if I went to the government and asked it to pay for helmets and ropes and band-aids I’ll need to safely climb rocks every day of my life. What would everyone say?

“It’s your choice to do that — no one’s forcing you to scale cliffs. So, either quit it or pay for it yourself!”

This is the reaction we should have had to Sandra Fluke.

Sandra, I hope you take to heart our school’s motto of “Cura Personalis” — care of the whole person. You are so much more than your reproductive organs. Please, have some self-respect and take responsibility for your choices instead of having to beg the government for help. The government should not be able to force a religious institution — like the one we attend — to pay for the things they don’t believe in. That is pretty clear in the first amendment. But since you missed the ten commandments I can’t expect you to read the Bill of Rights either.

I believe in Georgetown. I love this school. And I know that we are so, so much better than what Sandra Fluke would make us out to be.

Chicago Liberalism, Obamacare and contraception

The key is to pay off the people who paid you off.  And the Obami learned their Chicago lessons well.

CONTRACEPTION MANDATE: Actually a payoff to Big Pharma? “Completely ignored is the more fundamental problem: this mandate is not only about the bedroom, it’s about the boardroom. You’ve heard of crony capitalism? Well this is America’s first example of crony contraceptives. Forget for a minute the religious question and look at who wins big here: Big Pharma. This mandate is not really about condoms or generic versions of ‘the pill,’ which are available free or cheap in lots of places. This is about brand-name birth control drugs and other devices that some consumers swear off because they are too expensive. The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requires health-insurance companies provide contraceptive coverage for all ‘FDA approved contraceptive methods.’ It does not insist on generics. And it does not offer any cost containment. . . . It’s important to point out that among President Obama’s biggest financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies who benefit from the mandate.”

Federal Statism: a bipartisan addiction

Congress is about to whoop through a massive expansion of EX-IM Bank lending authority.  So why do exporters need Federal loans to fund exports?  After all, there are many banks just dying to lend money to credit worthy borrowers.  Ah, that's the rub, isn't it?  Businesses want to sell products to customers who real banks won't touch with a ten foot pole.  And to do that they need a lender who is stupid.  Very stupid.  Enter Uncle Sugar, stage left.  This Federal bipartisan commitment to putting powerful interests ahead of the common interest is one more reason we need to break it up, break it all up.

WSJ: The Export Subsidy Boomerang. “If you thought Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Solyndra would teach Congress a lesson about politicized credit, think again. The federal Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization, and the only question seems to be how much more taxpayer money Washington wants to put at risk. If the GOP wants to have a principled battle about fiscal waste and market distortions, this is a good one. . . . Business lobbies claim the country can’t afford to let the bank expire or—gasp—private banks like Citigroup and J.P. Morgan would have to do more trade financing. California Republican Gary Miller, supported by fellow Republican Spencer Bachus, Democrat Barney Frank and others, has a bill pending in the House to prolong the bank’s life through 2015 and raise its lending cap to $160 billion from $100 billion. The House Financial Services Committee waved the bill through in a voice vote last year and it’s likely to get a floor vote this month.”

Deeper and deeper and deeper

The problem with regulation is you just can never stop.  Regulations beget a response which requires more detailed regulation ad infinitum.  And in the end, the only ones who benefit are lawyers and other state minions.  And consumers?  We always lose.

Government Meddling In Family Farms
Hunter Lewis writes at Against Crony Capitalism:

The Labor Department decided that children growing up on a family farm could only work there if wholly owned or operated by their parents ( no LLC's and family partnerships and the like). The Department has decided to reconsider this (see recent article in Washington Times weekly, 2/6/12, P 18), but clearly intends to narrow the "parental exemption." So even children doing farm chores is to be regulated by Washington. Based on how most of this is going, it wouldn't be surprising if you will be able to get an exemption by hiring a federally approved "consultant" to help you define the chores.

Mona Charen provides an example how the media echo chamber distorts the news

They won't even let dissenting opinions on the air.

In the spirit of Andrew Breitbart (may he rest in peace), I feel the need to expand on my experience with NBC Nightly News last night.

I had a good experience with NBC a couple of months ago, so when they asked me back, I agreed to come talk about what Rush Limbaugh had said yesterday about the Georgetown law student who testified before the Democrats on the contraceptive issue.

The producers culled a few unrepresentative words from my interview. So here’s what I said.

When the producer asked: “What do you make of Rush Limbaugh’s comments?” I said that his choice of words was crude but that I certainly understood and sympathized with the point he was making. A law student is now a hardship case? She needs the rest of us to provide her with free contraceptives?

Well, said the producer, “What about this contraceptive thing? Aren’t we past all of that?” I said that liberals and Democrats were distorting the issue. The issue is not “access” to contraceptives. With the exception of one stray, unwise remark from Rick Santorum (and he said nothing about denying women access, merely that he questioned whether they were altogether good for women) no one on our side is arguing about access to contraceptives. What the Obama Administration is requiring is that all women — no matter what their income — be provided with free contraceptives. And of course, all entities, even religious institutions with moral objections, are required to provide contraceptives and abortifacients for free as well.

So the Democrats come along and force insurance companies to provide for free something that 95 percent of people have been purchasing, and when we object, they scream that we want to “send women back” to someplace or other, and deny women access to contraceptives. It’s ludicrous and dishonest and manipulative.

But NBC had their template: women protest Rush’s awful words. And while I had thought that they were going to include at least one woman who didn’t see it their way, I was wrong.

But IQ can't buy you love....

But the real question is how many men would swap to get a woman with bigger boobs if it meant her having a lower IQ?

THE GOOD NEWS IS, YOU CAN BUY BOOBS BUT YOU CAN’T BUY IQ: Research: Third of young women would swap IQ for larger breasts. “The study, which has alarmed women’s groups, also found a quarter of those surveyed felt bigger breasts would make them feel ‘happier’. And almost 60 per cent of the respondents believed that men would be ‘more interested’ in them romantically if they had bigger breasts.”

You Can Not judge our souls

Goldberg on the similarities between Breitbart and Buckley.

One thing that he [Breitbart] and Bill [Buckley] shared was this basic contempt for the premise that the mainstream liberal elite institutions in the United States are in a position to judge and adjudicate the worth of conservatives. That they are in a position to judge our souls. That if we disagree with liberals, that proves that we are somehow wanting or lacking in compassion; lacking in humanity. That is a fundamental thing that enraged Andrew, this idea that if you disagreed about public policy, if you disagreed about how to organize society, that proved you were a racist. That proved you were a fascist. That proved you were a homophobe. It was the fundamental bad faith of the leading liberal institutions that controlled the commanding heights of this culture that infuriated him. And he refused, at the most basic level, to give them that authority over him or his ideas, and that is was fueled hisRighteous Indignation, as his book title called it.

TSA: Extra special creepy thugs make us less safe

Is there any part of our Federal monster that doesn't make things worse?  Anything?  Here's a list of the ways the TSA makes us less safe.  Way to go guys.

That the TSA fails in its stated goal of keeping prohibited items off airplanes is amply demonstrated by its 70% failure rate in testing, and the continuing presence of loaded handguns and box cutters on flights.And how does TSA make us less safe? Let me count the ways:
The TSA creates vulnerabilities by breaching the integrity of our closed and locked luggage. Hundreds of screeners have been arrested for stealing from passengers. Screener theft betrays a serious security vulnerability, because a dishonest person with access to take things out of your bags is a dishonest person who could be bribed to put something into your bags. In fact, this has already happened with the TSA's drug smuggling rings: how does the screener know whether it's meth or explosives in that sealed container?
The TSA concentrates people in enormous lines right outside the checkpoint, creating a target of opportunity for a bomber who wouldn't ever be screened.
...The TSA forces people with poor balance or in wheelchairs to walk without their walkers or canes, to totter through metal detectors and body scanners, so it's just a matter of time until a passenger breaks a hip trying to comply with these bullies.
The TSA trains children to be vulnerable to sexual predators by teaching children the lesson that anyone with a badge gets to reach inside their clothing and rub them on the body parts that their bathing suits cover.
Finally, the TSA's abusive searches of innocent people cause many of us to drive to our destinations instead of flying. Flying is by far the safest long-distance travel mode, and discouraging flying causes road deaths.

More from Christopher Elliott on the TSA's new "charm offensive," and their sickening bit of PR about screening cute baby otters. Loved this bit about what they find:

Jon Allen, a TSA spokesman in Nashville, "proudly" showed off an entire table of dangerous items at the agency's, "show and tell" last week. They included giant knives, a pepper spray dispenser, a 3-liter box of white wine, even fully-loaded handguns. Allen said the items were largely confiscated within the past five weeks.What's a terrorist going to do with a box of booze on a plane, except get really drunk and show the entire plane that he has extraordinarily bad taste in wine? Likewise, we have no evidence that the knives, the pepper spray and even the loaded guns would be used for anything related to terrorism. More likely, they were packed accidentally and would have been caught with a conventional magnetometer or X-ray machine, anyway.

Stagflation II

Same kind of people run the country this time.  Only now we're bankrupt.  Sigh.  Read the whole thing.

During the 1970s, the toxic combination of a weak dollar, high tax rates, and onerous regulations introduced a new word into America's economic vocabulary: stagflation. Reaganomics banished this word to the history books. Now, President Obama and Fed Chairman Bernanke are teaming up to give stagflation another try. It is not likely that Americans will like it any more this time around than they did 40 years ago.

CBS News: Government Lying about the real inflation rate

When even CBS News is off narrative....

CBS NEWS: INFLATION: NOT AS LOW AS YOU THINK. “Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government’s widely used measure of inflation. Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.”

Chicago Liberalism is remarkably corrupting, isn't it?

Why do they hate us so? Lefties cheer Andrew Breitbart's death

I think it is because for some on the left, life is nothing but politics.  So to oppose their politics is to oppose life itself.  There is a reason there are very few devoutly religious on the left, it's because the state is their God.  And to them, chaps like Andrew Breitbart are the spawn of Satan.  Deep, pervasive, corrosive hate.  Astonishing.

As news broke this morning of the tragic death of Conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart, liberals celebrated the news on Twitter.

The most influential tweet came fromSlate's Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias), who tweeted: "Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead."

AlmightyBob ‏ @AlmightyBoob : @AndrewBreitbart haha youre dead and in hell being a gay with hitler

Jeff Glasse ‏ @jeffglasse : Andrew Breitbart now enjoying afternoon tea with Hitler #goodriddanceyouhack

@darrenfiorello: Andrew Breitbart died? Is it wrong that I'm happier about that than when they got bin Laden and Saddam?

Kellie Allen @thirtyseven : Breitbart helped destroy the career of someone I know. Good riddance, scumraker.

Scott On Da Rox  @ridinchillwaves : RT GOOD RIDDANCE..fascist prick @Gawker: Andrew Breitbart Dead? gawker.com/5889586/

Josh M ‏ @TheSocialest : Good riddance Breitbart. Hopefully they put James O'Keefe in your casket.

John Kapp ‏ @johnkapp : Andrew Breitbart was a racist, sexist, homophobe. Good riddance.

Gabriel ‏ @gabriel0923 : Andrew #Breitbart has died having been finally consumed by his revolting hatred! The world is better off without him!

Dufus ‏ @dufus : Did we cry when Hitler died? No.. #Breitbart see you in hell asshole

Natasha Yar-Routh ‏ @xiomberg : Andrew Breitbart is dead, good riddance to bad trash. He was a vile excuse for a human being

Dave Lartigue ‏ @daveexmachina : Andrew Breitbart has died. Honestly, good riddance. He helped poison the country where I live and we are better off without him.

Lalo Alcaraz ‏ @laloalcaraz RT @Mfusion66: RIP Breitbart? Nah, too good to be true

vtred ‏ @vtred1 : Good riddance to Andrew Breitbart - a McCarthyite nutcase.

Sean Paul Kelley ‏ @seanpaulkelley Andrew Breitbart has died: bigjournalism.com/lsolov/2012/03… If so, good riddance.

CpG ‏ @Crow1138 : I know it's wrong, but good riddance “@cnnbrk: Conservative blogger Andrew #Breitbart has died, attorney says. on.cnn.com/wkDt4g”

TahitiNut ‏ @TahitiNut : Forgive me, God, for I have sinned. I err on the side of being pleased with a death ... of Andrew Breitbart. Good riddance.

michael mayer ‏ @prisonforbush: Breitbart dead? D Good riddance. More republicans should follow his lead.

DAC ‏ @dac2527 : Satan calls Andrew Breitbart home... Good riddance!

Kate Witko ‏ @katewitko : Andrew Breitbart is dead at 43 from "natural causes". hrm yes I suppose wine is pretty natural. good riddance, asshole.

WeirdArchives ‏ @WeirdArchives : Looks like it's official. Andrew Breitbart is dead. Personally I don't like the guy, so good riddance to bad rubbish.

Scott On Da Rox ‏ @ridinchillwaves : RT GOOD RIDDANCE..fascist prick @Gawker: Andrew Breitbart Dead? gawker.com/5889586/

Mike Hightower ‏ @MikeHightower1 Good riddance andrew breitbart.

Nick Huinker ‏ @towndrinker good riddance to bad rubbish. no reason to mourn someone who made it their business to make this world a less pleasant place. #breitbart

Michael David ‏ @renmiked Good riddance Andrew #Breitbart.

@Sttbs73 It is very hard to have sympathy for an evil person like Andrew Breitbart! I am done being NICE.

@CleverTrousers: Andrew Breitbart died! Today looks like it's going to be a GREAT day. #deadgasbags

@crmlqt: Andrew Breitbart is dead....one less racist!!!!!

@jawillie: The saddest thing about Andrew Breitbart's death is that he died such a douchebag.

Inglorious Basterdz ‏ @TheLibertyLamp : Andrew Breitbart destroyed lives based on LIES, I will not be some phony liberal and pretend condolences. ROT IN HELL ANDREW U BASTARD!

The ANWR shuffle has been going on for almost 20 years

But many, many mosquitoes have been saved.

JAY LENO ON ANWR DRILLING: “Leno’s punchline: Democrats say drilling in ANWR wouldn’t produce any oil for 10 years ‘the same point they’ve been making for more than 10 years now.’ President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have opened ANWR to oil exploration.” It would be nice to have some extra oil coming on line about now.

Creating Demons for the Obami's Three Minutes Hate

These 'cats are very, very Orwellian.

THAT’S RICH CONSIDERING THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN DOESN’T EVEN RUN ADDRESS VERIFICATION ON CREDIT CARDS:Obama campaign manager to Koch brothers: Disclose your donors.

And isn’t there something kind of, I don’t know, tacky and third-world about this demonization of people who aren’t even running against them? Pathetic. And unAmerican.

Next fall the youth vote is going to be a protest vote

And, gee, I wonder who they are going to protest?  Young adults went in droves for Obama.  Call it the chump vote.  The capital strike grinds on and on and on and.....

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Only 54% Of Young Adults In America Have A Job. “When it comes to young adults (18-24) in the US, the employment rate is just barely above half, or 54%, which just happens to be the lowest in 64 years, and 7% worse than when Obama took office promising a whole lot of change 3 years ago.”