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Mr. Quinn ran as Mr. Blagojevich’s Lieutenant Governor on a platform of no new taxes. But now he defends his huge tax increase by saying this will only hit those who have the “ability to pay.” Of course, employers and the wealthy also have the ability to leave — which they have been doing. In the last decade 736,000 more Americans have left Illinois than have entered, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

It’s amazing how many politicians and bureaucrats believe that taxpayers, like sheep, will stand still and be fleeced. When they don’t, of course, the immediate reaction is to attempt to shave them on the way out — as witness the many proposals in Congress for confiscatory taxation on American citizens who are tired of being bled white and decide to leave for greener pastures.

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In an Islamic state governed by sharia, the relationship between the rulers — the Muslims — and the ruled — the dhimmis and the slaves — is very straightforward.

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And this is from al-Reuters, so you know it has to be true, right?

Yusuf said the killings took place in Balad town, 30 km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu. He also accused al Shabaab militants of decapitating three elderly women last weekend. Al Shabaab officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Hey, cutting people’s heads off takes a lot of effort. Sometimes you just can’t return calls until later.

Read it. Easier than you would think.

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Michelina Roy, 70, was handed the on-the-spot penalty after tossing bread and left-over crumpets down for the pigeons.

Most of the food had already been devoured by more than 20 birds which had landed on the grass when she was approached by two council wardens last week.

They informed her she was guilty of littering in Green Park, near her home in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, and instantly issued her with the ticket.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in New York.

Read it.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

Read it.

The frantic passage of the Populist Rage Tax was a new low in the US government’s response to this crisis.  It shows just how likely we are to doom ourselves to a decade or more of misery–by choking our markets, closing our borders, turning our banks into tools of social policy, and wrecking what’s left of our economy.

If the “TARP bonus” bill the House passed today becomes law, any of the hundreds of thousands of people who work for Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, and nine other major US corporations will have to fork over 90 cents of every bonus dollar that puts their household income over $250,000.

Believe it or not, hidden inside these companies are thousands of decent, competent people whose households bring in more than $250,000 a year.  Many of these folks had NOTHING to do with the gambling addiction that bankrupted their firms.  Many of them still have a choice where to work.  And now that they’ve learned that their family’s pay will be capped at $250,000 indefinitely, many of them will quickly decide that now is a good time to pursue their careers elsewhere.  (That is, unless their firm takes the easy and obvious step of just paying them a fatter salary, which just renders the whole thing a farce.)

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“We have a Facebook page,” said one official of the Department of Homeland Security. “But we don’t allow people to look at Facebook in the office. So we have to go home to use it. I find this bizarre.”

Arnold Kling likes to delve into strange stuff — for an economist.

In other words, because economists do not want to punish rich people, altruists believe we must be punished.

But it’s worse than that. You can signal that you are an altruist not by engaging in altruistic acts, but simply by expressing a desire to punish others. For example, by taking away AIG bonuses, you do a great deal to signal altruism, even though the actual social gains from taking the bonuses away are miniscule (the gains may even be negative).

And I have no problem believing that.

Read it.

And here I was hoping it was Hockaday.

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There really isn’t a lot of development in this area.

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I know that would certainly pinch me.

Marie Douglas-David, a former investment banker, says she has no income and needs her 67-year-old husband, George David, to pay her more than $53,000 a week – more than most U.S. households make in a year – to cover her expenses.

I guess getting a job, for an investment banker these days, would be rather difficult.

David and Douglas-David married in 2002, but the marriage was in trouble by 2004, court papers show. Amid a series of reconciliations, the couple signed a postnuptial agreement in October 2005 that would give her $43 million when they divorce.

Douglas-David wants the agreement invalidated. She accused her husband of coercing her to sign it by preying upon her fears of being divorced and childless.

She could always get pregnant. A lot of people are doing that. And I don’t suppose she’ll have a problem finding someone to marry, with $43 million.

Douglas-David has filed court papers showing she has more than $53,800 in weekly expenses, including for maintaining a Park Avenue apartment and three residences in Sweden. Her weekly expenses also include $700 for limousine service, $4,500 for clothes, $1,000 for hair and skin treatments, $1,500 for restaurants and entertainment, and $8,000 for travel.

How does one spend $1,000 a week for hair and skin treatments?

Read it.

Number one is that he’s black. I’ve got Sicilian in-laws with darker skin than he has.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

(Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.)

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I smell a book deal.

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Moral: Don’t shop at Office Depot.

Cringely, after a long and rambling but still entertaining essay, finally imparts some wisdom.

I learned an important lesson that day; success in a large organization, whether it’s a university or IBM, is generally based on appearance, not reality. It is understanding the system and then working within it that really counts, not bowling scores or body bags.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll see today.

Read it.

Many civil libertarians were hopeful that the Obama administration would be a lot more reasonable on certain issues, like warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of Americans.

Guess not. So far the major difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama speaks well in public. Oh, and wants to spend more of your money, which no one would have predicted was possible.

Read it.

Let the finger-pointing begin….

Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

And the lies…

On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with adding the language, which has been used by officials at bailed-out insurance giant AIG to justify paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives after receiving federal money.

It’s getting to the point where nobody even blinks when politicians lie because that’s what we expect them to do. As Otter so joyously said to Flounder after they trashed his brother’s car, “Hey, you fucked up! You trusted us!”

The Hog with some practical information.

I want my laser fairly far back on the gun. I could put a laser and a light on the barrel, but I don’t want a ton of crap hanging off of it. A light seems like more than enough weight. And I want the light as far forward as possible, so it won’t shine on the gun. Add it all up, and you get laser in the back, light in the front. So it seems to me that there is a need for a side rail mount that holds a laser to the left of the receiver. Line it up so it’s in the center of the buckshot pattern at 50 feet, and you should be all set. If it’s a little off at 100 feet, it won’t matter. Under 50 feet, you can’t be off more than the offset between the muzzle and laser. Who cares? It’s a shotgun.

Say what you want about the Chinese. They are doing a marvelous job of supplying Americans with weapon accessories.

This contains a video of Neil’s appearance on the Colbert Report. It is well worth watching, and contains irrefutable proof that Neil is the world’s nicest and wittiest human being, and that Colbert is a pretentious putz.

Neil’s daughter is pretty cute, too, and looks much cuter without the braces.

Read it.

Saw that coming.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of the political technology site Personal Democracy Forum, said too many messages consist of warbling monologues that miss the point.

Have you ever heard a better description of Congess in your life?

Other postings, including one by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, were said to be too eccentric or random to resonate.

In a minute-long video, Mrs Pelosi showed footage of her life behind the scenes in the Capitol Building through the eyes of two pet cats.

Making matters more bizarre, the minute-long film was captured to the strains of Rick Astley’s disco hit, Never Going To Give You Up.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

I had suspected as much.

Perhaps, if Aniston had died her hair brown, Pitt would have taken her more seriously.

Hey, it’s worth a thought.

Read it.

Actually, I think they ought to be deported. But that’s me.

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I guess that’s why everyone regards Winona Ryder as a Serious Person. Uh, yeah.

So the ones that remain blonde don’t want to be taken seriously? This is a useful indicator.

Actually, if they wanted to be taken seriously, they wouldn’t wear so much lipstick.

Read it.

Or at least thinks he does. But you knew that.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

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It’s easy to laugh at Britain but America isn’t any better.

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And why not? They’re his natural constituency.

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And how would they? Most mothers these days don’t cook, and many don’t know how themselves.

Read it.

However, the depression conditions in the great valley reflect more than a mere water shortage. They are the direct result of conscious actions by environmental activists to usher in a new era of scarcity.

Read it.

A teachable moment.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Steve Sailer is never afraid to ask the questions nobody else dares ask.

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Which does not in the least reduce my compelling need to have one. “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

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Much rather have this than a Segway. It appeals to my inner Henchman.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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And yet we’re all forced to buy it. Why is that?

Corn ethanol producers — led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy — want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn’t cooperate.

Oh, yeah, I forgot — Congress is involved.

Read it.

Land tenure in Indian country is complicated thanks to laws, dating back to the 19th century, which put millions of acres of tribal and individual Indian land under the trusteeship of the Interior department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. These lands cannot be sold, used as collateral, easily inherited, or managed productively. Instead of giving Indians more federal welfare, Mr. Obama has the opportunity to increase their autonomy. It is, after all, their land. Let them manage it, borrow against it, and make it productive.

If you want to see what America would be like if the socialists get their way, just look at how the Skraelings live. There’s a reason why vodka was such a problem in the old Soviet Union.

Read it.

We are all too familiar with the persecution of Christians in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet sitting in front of me is a British woman whose life has been threatened in this country solely because she is a Christian. Indeed, so real is the threat that the book she has written about her experiences has had to appear under an assumed name.

Put this next to what’s happening in Malmo, Sweden, and it becomes plain to anyone who is paying attention that letting significant numbers of Muslims into your country is a recipe for disaster.

Read it.

The 23-year-old, brought to worldwide attention after an Independent campaign, was praying that Afghanistan’s top judges would quash his conviction for lack of evidence, or because he was tried in secret and convicted without a defence lawyer. Instead, almost 18 months after he was arrested for allegedly circulating an article about women’s rights, any hope of justice and due process evaporated amid gross irregularities, allegations of corruption and coercion at the Supreme Court. Justices issued their decision in secret, without letting Mr Kambaksh’s lawyer submit so much as a word in his defence.

A useful reminder that Afghanistan, although better than it was, is still locked in the hell of Islamic law. The ironic part is that the Chattering Classes in the West, who would be the first to take to the streets if a Christian nation did something like this, are loudly silent. The sad part is that our people are dying, and our wallets bleeding, in order to buy these idiots the freedom to oppress each other.

Isolationism in foreign affairs never looked so attractive.

Read it.

Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to get to the heart of the matter. I won’t go so far as to say that this Economist article does that, but it does point out that Democrats are loud in proclaiming their determination to remove science from the grip of politics even while miscasting political positions as scientific, chiefly in an attempt to quell argument.

Read it.

Traditionally they used angry peasants with pitchforks and torches. It’s a shame to see the old ways die….

Read it.

Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Ageing, found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60.

So younger people are quick-witted but ignorant. I can buy that.

Read it.

We have the technology.

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C’mon, Barry, you promised we could invade Pakistan.

Read it.

A Christian minister who has had heated arguments with Muslims on his TV Gospel show has been brutally attacked by three men who ripped off his cross and warned: ‘If you go back to the studio, we’ll break your legs.’

Yup, that’s a religion o’ peace, alright.