Read it.

A Vietnam veteran who defended Sen. John Kerry against “Swift Boat” attacks in the 2004 presidential race has been stripped of his Silver Star by the Navy — more than a year after he was sentenced to prison on a child pornography charge.

But the Silver Star wasn’t stripped from Wade Sanders because of the child porn conviction, per se.

Military officials told Fox News the medal was revoked in 2010 after Navy investigators looked into his record and found administrative errors surrounding how the award was created. Sources said Sanders was responsible for those administrative errors and may have lied.

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

Read it.

I imagine he would.

The former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing over Scotland that killed 270 people made a rare public appearance on Tuesday at a rally in support of Muammar al-Qaddafi, a “further reminder that a great mistake was made when he was released,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

But of course Britain has no death penalty any more, so he was alive and kicking when he was released ‘on humanitarian grounds’.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who returned to a hero’s welcome in Libya in 2009 after being released from a Scottish jail after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, appeared on Libyan state television wearing traditional local garb while sitting in a wheelchair at a tribal meeting in Tripoli.

I wonder whether Crazy Anders can expect the same treatment? After all, he killed less than a third of the number of people that al-Megrahi did. He’ll probably have to convert to Islam while in prison, wink wink.

Read it.

No good deed goes unpunished.

The shooting occurred at 12:30 a.m., after the victim had just delivered fish, French fries and soda to a man named William, the paper said. The victim is known in the area as “Brother John,” because he and his wife reportedly cook hot meals and deliver them to dozens of area homeless.

The shooter reportedly drove up alongside of the victim’s van and opened fire. The victim, 29, whose name was not released, was with his wife and two young children at the time, according to the report.

Read it.

Or maybe it’s just the French, I don’t know.

Read it.

One thing you have to say about jihadists — they innovate.

Read it.

Good luck with that. Muslims are perfectly happy to let other Muslims starve to death unless there’s a political point to be made. Millions for jihad but not one riyal for soup.

Read it.

Sometimes it is good to be the World-Famous Cartoonist.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Windows Phone show up in Dilbert in the near future.

Read it.

Remember: Just because it’s irrational doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

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A Mexican judge on Tuesday sentenced a 14-year-old American boy to three years in prison for homicide, kidnapping and drug and weapons possession.

Authorities say the teen confessed to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found hanging from a bridge.

I wonder where all the ‘prisoners’ rights’ people are.

Jimenez was born in San Diego, California. He and a sister were arrested in December as they tried to board a plane to Tijuana, where they planned to cross the border and reunite with their mother in San Diego.

Yeah, we really need to re-unite these kids with their parents.

Read it.

Whenever a tragedy such as last week’s attack in Norway occurs, the first instinct of many is to ask how the perpetrator was able to get hold of a gun, and shortly after to conclude that Something Must Be Done About Guns. Among those to speak out after Friday’s horror was Dennis Hennigan, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Mr. Hennigan suggested that “such a tragedy in Norway likely will lead to determined efforts to further examine their nation’s gun policies.”

Whether it will or not remains to be seen, but history shows us that this would be the wrong response. Those who are willing to break the laws against murder do not care about the regulation of firearms, and will get hold of weapons whether doing so is legal or not. As the old trope goes, to expect a mass-murderer to be concerned that his firearm is obtained outside the law is akin to expecting a truck bomber to fret that his vehicle is occupying two parking spaces. Put simply, gun laws do not hit their target.

If even one person on that island had had a gun, the death toll might have been far left. And yet, amidst all of the finger-pointing about who is to blame, nobody thinks of the pandering politicians who set the whole thing up.

Read it.

Shoulda moved to New York.

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A Whole Foods employee has sent a blistering 2,343-word email to staff after quitting his job, describing the company as a “faux hippy Wal-Mart.”

Hey, that’s a feature, not a bug.

Read it.

A 63-year-old California man has tried to operate on his own hernia by cutting open his stomach with a six-inch butter knife.

Hey, if it was easy, anybody could do it.

Read it.

Last year, Sarah Palin-hating comedian George Lopez said that if the former governor of Alaska ever became president, all Latinos would move back to Mexico.

That’s the most persuasive argument in favor of voting for Sarah Palin that I’ve ever heard.

On Tuesday’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” he took this further saying that if Palin gets to the White House, he’ll move to Canada.

What, not Mexico? Hm.

What I Know About Mexico: Even Mexicans don’t want to live there.

Read it. And watch the video.

Prices for rare earth elements have gone through the roof in recent years, with China basically monopolizing the market for these rare substances (the country currently produces a whopping 97 percent of all rare earths used globally). But in the field of electric vehicles, the dependence on rare earths could be a thing of the past soon: Professor Nobukazu Hoshi’s Lab from the Tokyo University of Science has developed an electric car that doesn’t require any kind of rare earths.

Read it.

Simple 3D tools could bring astronomy alive for scientists and the public alike. But the techniques are woefully underused, argue two astronomers.

Read it.

Apparently I’m not the only person irritated by certain common practices on the part of newspaper sites.

For a live example of most of these, visit the Dallas Morning News site. You won’t do it more than once.

Read it.

In sum, temporally and spatially backward statements cause  readers and listeners to do the work that is properly done by writers and speakers — if they care about the clarity and accuracy of what they write and say. It is all too evident that many writers and speakers do not care about being understood; they prefer to deliver verbiage and let the audience sort it.

A word of sense in these degenerate modern times.

Read it.

Is nothing sacred? Some fiends apparently fake Scotch brands. Fortunately, researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland have devised some new methods involving optic fibers for distinguishing between authentic and counterfeit Scotch whisky brands

The Other McCain has video.

One hesitates to say President Kabuki has hit rock bottom, because there’s probably no limit on how far down the low road he’s willing to go.

Read it.

Well, Detroit could certainly use the business.

Judicial Watch took the lead in exposing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) abuse of military aircraft. The massive amount of press coverage resulting from our investigation not only led to a great deal of embarrassment for Pelosi, but it also prompted current House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to announce he would fly commercial between his home district and Washington, DC. Unfortunately, however, according to a new batch of documents we recently uncovered from the United States Air Force, the abuse of military resources continued in 2010, not only by Pelosi, but by other members of Congress as well.

Kevin Williamson points out the solution.

On the front page of USA Today is a headline reading: “Need a Job? Move to Texas.” Somewhere, Rick Perry is smiling.

I keep tellin’ ya….

Read it.

Well, to start with, he’s a non-Hispanic white male.

While 1,500 CEOs say that creativity is the single most important quality for success today – and studies bear out the greater success of creative, innovative leaders – the study found that when it came to hiring and promoting practices businesses consistently marked down the creative managers and bypassed them, selecting less creative types!

Quelle surprise.

Don’t forget, the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs some 20 years ago to give his role to a less creative, but more “professional,” John Scully.  Mr. Scully was subsequently fired by the Board for creatively investing too heavily in the innovative Newton – the first PDA – to be replaced by a leadership team willing to jettison this new product market and refocus all attention on the Macintosh.  Both CEO decisions turned out to be horrible for Apple, and it was only after Mr. Jobs returned to the company that its fortunes re-blossomed when the company replaced outdated industrial management philosophies with innovation.  But, oh-so-close the company came to complete failure before re-igniting the innovation jets.

Scott Johnson of Powerline draws back the curtain on the Obamanation.

Obama’s speech last night was permeated with the deep dishonesty and poll-tested euphemisms that constitute his contribution to the debt ceiling debate. Here are a few of the euphemisms Obama has contributed: revenue (taxes), shared sacrifice (taxes), asking for something (taxes), millionaires and billionaires (taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year or couples earning more than $250,000 a year), the balanced approach (taxes).

You can tell when Obama is lying — his lips are moving.

Read it.

Eddie Leroy Anderson of Craigmont, Idaho, is a retired logger, a former science teacher and now a federal criminal thanks to his arrowhead-collecting hobby.

Government is not the answer; government is the problem.

Last September, retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.

Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.

A Justice Department spokesman cited the age of the case in declining to comment. The U.S. Attorney at the time said he didn’t remember the case.

Your tax dollars at work. Aren’t you proud?

Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy has a fundamental insight.

I call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would seriously entertain default.  You call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would agree to these kinds of deficits.  We think — in the current twitter-talk of a pox on both their DC houses — Washington is a mess because we can’t find a compromise.  The truth is, however, we don’t actually think there is much room to compromise and, given that our principles on this represent a fairly sizable difference in world view, that’s probably right.  The structural problem of Washington is that everyone has a hold-up; “let’s vote and majority policy wins” doesn’t work because we’ve allowed a consensus system informally to take hold, rather than a majoritarian one (albeit one revisable at least in part by a future majority).

And that’s the fundamental problem — searching for a consensus that doesn’t exist, and an unwillingness to let the side with more votes win. Granted that the latter isn’t a panacea — Democrats had two years where they complete control of the government, and they still didn’t do anything — nevertheless it’s better than what we have now. Politicians just aren’t willing to put their names on a policy and push it through, because if it fails they own it; they’d rather dither and moan and let things fall apart, because then they can keep pointing the finger at the other side in hopes of improving their chances of re-election.

Matthew Yglesias is a fairly reliable Voice of the Crust but even a blind pig can find an acorn every now and again.

One doesn’t want to lean too heavily on human tragedies to make political points, but since a lot of our politics rightly concerns itself with how to minimize the occurrence of tragic events, it is necessary to try to see what can be learned. And to that end, it seems worth taking note of the fact that the weekend’s bombing and massacre in Norway should remind us once again that “safe havens” in Pakistan and Afghanistan are neither necessary nor sufficient to undertake mass casualty attacks in the west. Indeed, the one thing you can say for sure about a wood-be killer located in Afghanistan is that he’s not in a western country and thus has no ability to mount a major attack in the west. Any “safe haven” abroad is, by definition, too far away to open fire on a summer camp.

An excellent point that I wish the buttinskys in Washington would be reminded of periodically, preferably by tatooing it on their foreheads so that they would see it in the mirror every morning.

The Chattering Classes are fond of castigating Republicans for this sort of intrusivity, conveniently forgetting Democrat-instigated adventures like Vietnam and Korea — from which subsequent Republican administrations had to extract us, albeit incompetently — but Democrats are congenitally incapable of leaving people alone, whether at home or abroad, so it is no surprise that the Obamanation (vacuous campaign rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding) has turned out to be the third term of G.W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy.

Disappointingly, Yglesias goes off the rails soon enough:

This also shows us — as did the plotting of the 9/11 attacks themselves by a cell in Hamburg — that generalized establishment of good governance is not sufficient to foil terrorist attacks. Germany and Norway are among the best-governed countries on earth. We would be lucky if the United States were to achieve the level of orderliness efficient administration that they have. It’s simply not going to happen for Pakistan or Afghanistan in this lifetime. But at the same time, conventional law enforcement does have a pretty good track record of busting up plots. There’s no perfect security, but these things are hard to get away with. But precisely the problem we don’t have is the need to establish rough military control over large swathes of far-away foreign countries. This is both extremely difficult to pull off and largely unrelated to domestic security goals.

This is arrant nonsense, founded on Yglesias’s corrupt misapprehension of what constitutes ‘good governance’. Opening the borders to a flood of foreigners — chiefly from countries dominated by an expansionist ideology masquerading as a religion — because you aren’t producing enough kids to keep the geezers in the clover that the welfare state promised them, and then being unwilling to take the necessary steps to squelch the behavioral sink that inevitably results, is not any rational (i.e. non-’progressive’) person’s idea of ‘good governance.

In Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway, there are steadily expanding areas where Muslims are establishing their own mini-states, in which Jews and other kufr go only at their peril. The atrocity in Norway wasn’t aimed at Muslims but at the intellectual heirs of Vidkun Quisling (a Norwegian, note) who are by their pusillanimity allowing that corrosion, when they aren’t supporting it through ‘social benefits’ paid for by the existing population. Europe is in a process of slow-motion suicide, and people like Nutcase Anders are taking the only steps that appear available to them. (Funny how there isn’t, this time, that orgy of ‘Why do they hate us?’ soul-searching that always dominates the commentariat after every Mulsim atrocity.)

Read it.

Guess he’s not all that disabled, after all.

Read it.

We’ve all been there; You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Yammer or what ever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever “gone to the bathroom” in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter?

Remember when the critical mass of smokers used to leave the table or meeting in groups to go indulge their habit? I straight up open my laptop at bars and parties, and then feel more guilty about that than drinking.

Soon we will have implants — call them the ‘electronic cigarettes’ of the tech world.

Read it. And watch the video, if you want a laugh.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

Read it.

(Don’t you just love the way they picked a photograph that makes it appear as if he’s wearing a red armband, just like — wait for it — the Nazi party members used to do? And this is the Telegraph, not your Usual Suspect. Pure class, the media.)

Glenn Beck has a problem, and I don’t see that it’s a problem he’ll be able to fix. However much he may have noticed this resemblance — and there is a resemblance, although (considering the ideologies involved) I’d have characterized it as ‘Young Pioneers’ rather than ‘Hitler Youth’ — and however reasonable it may be to mention this in private conversation, he ought to have known that to say it in public would be … unhelpful, let us say.

Now, if he had been a commentator on CNN or MSNBC positing a resemblance of a gathering of Young Republicans to Hitler Youth, nobody would have blinked an eye. But that’s the world we live in, and Beck has been in that world long enough to realize it, and to learn to deal with it. Sadly, he hasn’t.

Read it.

Sometimes it’s possible to figure out what Mencius Moldbug is saying, and sometimes it’s not. But it’s almost always worth the effort.

All power is rooted in violence – even electoral power (to the extent that any such thing still exists). There is most definitely a continuum between democratic activism and civil war. The struggle for power is one. The whole point of the classic picket sign is that the writing on the cardboard sends one message; the two-by-four it’s stapled to sends another.

And we can tell that left rules right, because we can see that Noam Chomsky has the right to trumpet his ideas to Osama bin Laden, whereas Robert Spencer does not have the right to trumpet his ideas to Anders Behring Breivik. Did he think he had that right? He had not the might, so he had not the right. He’s finding that out right now, as he stares down the barrel of a very angry New York Times.

The trumpeter game, version left, is played ad nauseam in every school system in the world today. All our noble workers and peasants are constantly inculcated with two messages. First, you are the victim of injustice. Second, even though you are the victim of injustice, violence is evil and you must under no circumstances punish the guilty. Human beings are human beings, of course, so the second message doesn’t always take. Aww. Another “random attack.”

Read it.

And why should they? The government will pay for it all.

While we all know there is a job shortage, employers are increasingly talking about a “talent shortage” — they can’t find qualified workers even for the jobs that are available. “We found that 30% of companies surveyed had openings for six months or longer, and can’t find the right person,” says Susan Lund, research director for the McKinsey Global Institute.

With the schools producing ever-increasing pools of functionally illiterate and innumerate (but with high self-esteem!) people, that’s hardly a surprise.

But there is an even more fundamental question behind the rise in long-term employed rates: Are our public policies contributing to the rise of millions of Americans who lose the habit of work?

Well, duh.

Read it.

Are there any lawyers in the House who write laws that benefit lawyers?  Even if the House members aren’t practicing law now, might they be interested in doing so in the future?

I think there may be a couple.  So I guess that’s ok, then.  St. Helena should get rid of its grape-grower Congressman and elect a lawyer.  He will understand the problems of all the lawyers in the district.  I’m sure the folks there will be happier with that.

Read it.

Probably conservatives. You know how underhanded they are.

While the leftist and Islamic supremacist ghouls rush to portray Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a Christian and even as an anti-jihadist, the unanswered questions multiply. Why did a jihad group take credit for the atrocities, and then retract? And who altered the murderer’s Facebook page?

Read it.

The Food and Drug Administration has banned the only over-the-counter asthma inhaler, Primatene Mist, on the grounds that it releases chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and is thus bad for the ozone layer.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … everybody but you.

Read it.

I’ll just bet he was actually a Norwegian in disguise. You know how those anti-Islamic Christian fundamentalists can’t be trusted.

Read it.

Fifty years ago, Congress passed legislation that allowed the public to give voluntary gifts to lower the federal debt. The government has set up a P.O. box and even an online site where citizens concerned about the debt can make contributions to pay it down.  Every month, about 30 to 50 gifts come in, averaging less than $500, often accompanied by letters from citizens expressing their gratitude for our country and their desire to lift the burden of debt from the shoulders of future generations.

So what does Washington do with the money that citizens send in to reduce the debt?  Turns out the federal government … spends it.

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

The next time Obama – or Bill Gates Sr., or Warren Buffet, or any other rich mouthfarter– complains that his taxes are too low, tell him ‘Write a check!’

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Jerry Pournelle looks at education.

The single most effective thing you can do to improve a school is to fire the worst teachers and distribute their students among the remaining teachers. The increased class size won’t matter much: the school will improve quickly and visibly.

With many schools it can be quite dramatic. Most teachers know it. Most teachers know who the incompetent teachers are. Yet incompetent teachers are seldom if ever removed. Any attempt to get rid of the worst – and the worst can be really really bad, obviously bad, hilariously bad, and everyone knows it – and any attempt to get rid of them is met with implacable opposition and fanatic resistance by the teacher unions who are willing to sue school districts into bankruptcy if that’s what it takes to protect the incompetent. That’s hardly surprising, nor is it astonishing that the unions will at the same time claim that all they want is to protect the best interests of the kids; but it is a bit surprising that parents never catch on, and the best teachers, who are thoroughly aware of all this, almost never speak out. Of course they don’t dare. Teachers unions may claim to be professional associations, but many of them are more than willing to employ tactics that might shock even a mob-controlled garbage collector union. Bring a good teacher is hard enough: it’s a bit much to ask good teachers also to be crusaders against the system at the same time.

One of Gates’ problems is egalitarianism. Gates has said often that every American child deserves a world class university prep education. That goal is unattainable even in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, because not even all those who are above average can or should go to university, and a world class university prep education doesn’t necessarily equip them to do much in the real world. I understand that there can be real value in a university prep education coupled with some practical instruction, and if all the children were really above average this might be a goal worth striving for; but everywhere except in Lake Wobegon half the children are below average, and condemning all the children to a world class university prep education dooms about half of them to a school life of hell followed by being thrust out into the School of Hard Knocks unprepared to do anything anyone would pay you money to have done. OK – I exaggerate. But not by all that much.

Mark Steyn points out that most of the people opining on the Norway atrocity seem not to be very intelligent.

Nevertheless, Breivik’s manifesto seems to be determining the narrative in the anglophone media. The opening sentence from USA Today:

Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe.

So, if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that’s now an “Islamophobic” mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder.

We’re so used to the news media sounding like idiots that we don’t even notice it any more, like a cheap hotel room next to an elevated train. ‘How can you sleep with all that noise?’ ‘Noise? What noise?’

A member of the country’s second political party gunned down members of its first. But, in the merest evolution of post-9/11 syndrome, Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent.

The Narrative triumphs over facts every time.

Read it.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a radio interview that he’s thinking about trying to encourage somebody to run against President Obamain a primary election, claiming the president has drifted toward Republican positions because “no one will stand up to him.”

Typical socialist: ‘How about you and him fight.’

Read it.

Guess it almost didn’t work, huh.

‘It’s lovely out in the woods at night, but safer to stay at home….’

Steve Sailer, as usual, loves touching third rails in American politics.

Six years ago, Randall Burns noted on VDARE.com that his analysis of Indian arranged marriage market ads showed that holding an H-1b visa could be expected to add $70,000 to an Indian’s dowry.

If an H-1b visa was worth $70,000, how much is the gold standard of American citizenship worth?

Helpfully, ChineseBabyCare.com itemizes the eight major benefits of paying them to make your baby a fake American….

Read it.

An excellent article (how surprising to find it in the New York Times) about one of the central issues in the Civil War, and the ways that it really affected the people in the trenches, so to speak.

It is almost impossible for us today to appreciate how people of the mid-19th century felt about slavery, most especially those who supported it; the obvious contradictions inherent in being a pro-slavery American are so clear to us, that we literally cannot conceive how anyone could see it any other way. And yet there were enough of them to fight a war. Wrapping our heads around that is the first step on the road to understanding similar evils in the modern world, from the Judenhasse that still afflicts the European upper classes to the way Muslims look at, well, everybody.

Read it.

Siegel-Spaeth ideology scores that indicate “progressive” ideology were negatively correlated with the Stanford-Benet estimates.  The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (-0.61) provides strong evidence of a negative relationship between progressive ideology and intelligence.

Read it.

And, of course, scientists are never wrong.

Read it.

And so it can’t be approved by the FDA and without official government sanction nobody can make and sell it.

Thank you, government.