Read it.

The Navy’s robotic fighter just got one step closer to earning its wings. The X-47B, an unmanned stealth attack jet, has completed the first major phase of flight testing on its way to become the first aircraft to be able to land and take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier –completely autonomously.

The Navy has had the SPN-42 ACLS (automatic carrier landing system) that can land a plane on a carrier flight deck without the intervention of a pilot since the early 70s — I was part of the crew on the USS John F Kennedy who maintained that gear. So this won’t be a big stretch. The autonomous refueling is the impressive part.

Read it.

Guess that will show him.

When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Steve Sailer points out that black parents do their kids no favors with these bizarre names.

Out of the corner of my eye while reading Williams’s essay, I saw a link entitled “Charles M. Blow: Trayvon Martin.” My immediate thought was, “Oh, good, Trayvon sounds like a black name. This must be about another intelligent African-American writing or doing something interesting.”

But my brain answered back: “Nope, it’s about a Trayvon, not a Thomas Chatterton. It’s not on the sports page, so it’s going to be messed-up and miserable. And because it’s in the Times, not the Post, Trayvon’s going to be the victim, not the victimizer.”

Was that stereotyping? No doubt.

Stereotypes arise because of observed patterns of behavior. No patterns of behavior, no stereotyping. Example: Both blacks and Jews have historically been widely hated and subject to derogatory stereotypes — but blacks aren’t stereotyped as bloodsucking monylenders, and Jews aren’t stereotyped as lazy, shiftless and stupid. Chinese aren’t stereotyped as religious terrorists, Arabs aren’t stereotyped as melancholy drunkards, and Russians aren’t stereotyped as parent-dominated workaholics. Think about why that is.

Trayvon had tried to fit the stereotype of young black males aspiring to the thug life, picking a Twitter handle based on a rap song featuring convicted killer C-Murder. Just as Zimmerman had worried, Trayvon likely had dabbled in burglary: Martin was nabbed at his high school last fall with a backpack containing women’s jewelry and a screwdriver.

The win-win solution against stereotyping is for blacks to stop living down to their profiles.

The way to dissolve stereotypes is for people to quit embracing the patterns of behavior that reinforce the stereotype. Unfortunately, the political fashion of Identity Politics is for stereotyped groups to embrace, rather than reject, their stereotypes. In an environment where academically ambitious black kids can be shunned for ‘acting white’, there really is no hope.

Freeberg lays it out.

… they react to a situation precisely the way a rational person would — but, not in that situation, in a different one. Let us call this one “Survival Staples” or “Starvation Imminent.” Without any supporting evidence at all, and without even any persuasive suggestion, liberals tend to behave as if the commodity-of-the-moment is in such short supply, and is so crucial to the continuing survival of the humans, be they in collectives or be they merely individuals — that an inexhaustible supply of the whatever-it-is becomes a “right.” Once they’re on this pathway, they get lost, instantly, for they adhere to the notion that mere difficulty involved in acquiring it, nevermind outright failure, constitutes an intolerable encroachment upon that right.

Crime…without an actual “bad guy.” So, of course, one has to be invented, that’s the next step.

Read it.

In my article, “The Food-Safety Fallacy: More Regulation Doesn’t Necessarily Make Food Safer,” I use ancient and more recent historical examples of flawed rules to rebut the common misconception that more food-safety regulation means safer food. Rather, history shows us that food-safety regulations have often made food (and, consequently, people) less safe.

Read it.

Actresses should be cast in male roles on stage, says the union Equity as it complains about the lack of roles for women in theatre.

How long before playwrights are required by law to have an equal number of parts for men and women? Then the next step is to make sure the racial composition is Politically Correct.

Read it.

The Big Mac isn’t just a greasy hallmark of modern technological wizardry. It’s also a tool for economists to measure the wealth of nations.

Theodore Dalrymple blows the whistle.

High rates of taxation are to accountants what anabolic steroids are to athletes: they stimulate performance. Or, as one accountant said: “It’s a game of cat and mouse. The Revenue closes one scheme, we find another way round it. It’s like a sat-nav. I’m driving, get a message there’s been a smash, press the button to re-route. That’s all we do with tax avoidance. The Revenue puts a block in, we just go round the block.”

Funny how that works.

Whether this is the finest use to which formidable intelligence can be put may be doubted; but in high-tax regimes, it is all but inevitable. The British chancellor of the exchequer, popularly though unjustly criticized for having been born with a large trust fund, said that he found the tax-avoidance scheme “morally repugnant,” thus establishing his credentials as a man of the people. Could he be a member of the same government, I wonder, whose head, David Cameron, is reported on page 12 of the same newspaper—after several pages of almost undiluted indignation at the conduct of the rich—to have offered financial asylum to the French who want to flee President François Hollande’s proposed 75 percent tax on incomes greater than $1.25 million? WE WILL ROLL OUT THE RED CARPET FOR FRENCH TAX REFUGEES, SAYS CAMERON, the headline read. Not since the Revolutionary Terror or the expulsion of the Huguenots have there been so many French refugees in London, and that was before Hollande’s proposed tax increase.

And when they’re setting tax rates, they never consider that people will, like, flee the jurisdiction in order to avoid paying. The Congressional Budget Office has become champions at it; they haven’t correctly forecast the amount of a tax increase correctly since they were created in 1974.

There is surely something inconsistent about a government that welcomes foreigners fleeing their own country to avoid tax, but excoriates its own citizens who do everything legally possible to do the same. The inconsistency can, perhaps, be explained by the fact that 50 percent of the population is now dependent, directly or indirectly, on the government for its income. That is why the government will never draw any general conclusion from this paradox.

Yup. Money in, no matter what its source, good; money not in, whether for good or ill, bad.

As a more fitting subject for the moral indignation of members of Cameron’s government, I suggest the following question: How and why is it that, after 11 years of compulsory attendance at schools, at a cost to the taxpayer of $80,000 per head, more than one-fifth of British children leave state schools barely able to read or write?

America probably isn’t there yet, but it’s certainly well on the way. I suspect that the D.C. schools could beat that.

Read it.

Just in case you were keeping score. This latest ruling didn’t make the list, by the way.

Actually, I’d have put Brown v. Board of Education in there as well as the Gold Clause cases, but that’s me.

Read it.

This is an example of why I maintain that Scott Adams is a clueless statist.

Hardly a day goes by without a debate about the proper role of government. Some people view government as a huge sink hole for money whose primary function is to limit freedom. Some citizens want the government to be as helpful and active as possible, preferably using tax revenue from other people. I’m somewhere in the middle, trying to decide each case on its merits.

This is the equivalent of saying ‘Some people measure using a foot ruler, and some measure using a meter stick; I’m somewhere in the middle, trying to decide each case on its merits’. In other words, he has no principles; he just lets his opinions waft to and fro as feeling and ‘intuition’ moves him. The technical term for this is ‘clueless’. (Prediction: Scott Adams is a metrosexual, supports ‘gay marriage’ because it ‘feels right to him’, and supports increasing taxes on rich people because it ‘sounds kinda fair’.)

For example, I think it’s a good idea that the United States requires banks to calculate consumer loan interest costs using a specific formula to produce something called the APR. Now consumers can compare loans from different banks. That law probably doesn’t cost the government much to enforce, and it’s good for citizens. Prior to the APR requirement, banks tried as hard as they could to confuse and screw consumers.

Guarding against fraud is a core function of government.  Let’s see how Scott misapplies that to an inapposite case:

I’m starting to feel the same way about college majors. I think the government should require colleges to display the average starting pay and the estimated lifetime earnings for each of the majors they offer. Perhaps colleges should also display the unemployment rates for each college major. Let’s also assume that colleges have to use their own graduates for the calculations because, for example, Harvard graduates would see higher starting salaries than grads from lesser schools.

(Note the characteristic term ‘feel’.) Why inapposite? Because the function of a college isn’t to train you for a job, the function of a college is to educate you in certain subject areas, which might get you a job and might not. (If you don’t believe me, just ask them — every assistant professor gets ‘THIS IS NOT A TRADE SCHOOL’ tattooed on his heart before he is allowed to teach undergraduates.)

If you need to pound a nail and go to a hardware store to buy a screwdriver, your lack of success in subsequently pounding a nail isn’t a reflection on how well the hardware store did its job — you asked for a screwdriver, and that’s what you got. It’s not the job of the hardware store to post statistics on how successful purchasers of screwdrivers were when hammering nails.

Now, of course, a good hardware store will gently inquire as to why you need a screwdriver, and if you say ‘I need to pound a nail’, might attempt to steer you toward the racks of hammers. In the college context, this is like Mom & Dad saying, ‘Honey, why don’t you study something like Accounting or Engineering that will help you get a job? I don’t think there’s much demand for Women’s Studies minoring in Queer Theory.’ To which the average child who is attracted to Women’s Studies with a minor in Queer Theory will start hollering bloody murder about her creativity being repressed. Subsequent underemployment is therefore ODF.

Then I would take it one step further, the same way cigarette warning labels do. For majors with the lowest starting salaries I might include the warning: “Graduates with this degree are unlikely to be able to pay their bills. Their best career options include crime, marrying for money, or living with parents.”

Sure. Just ‘one step further’. And then ‘one step further’ when the last step didn’t get the desired result. Then another ‘one step further’ until there’s a nationwide assignment of graduates to jobs like the NFL draft. These are the people who voted for Mussolini because the concept of trains running on time seemed to them a really spiff idea. The technical term for this sort of dork is ‘statist’ — it’s the government’s job to save you from yourself, even if it means individual freedom goes out the window. (Prediction: Scott Adams supports motorcycle helmet laws.)

In fact, a good university will do this already. When I applied for graduate study in Philosophy at Indiana University, the application materials came with a sheet of paper that said ‘WARNING. THERE ARE NO JOBS IN THIS FIELD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK UNLESS YOU HAVE A TRUST FUND.’ But it’s still not a college’s job to get you a job. You want to study sociology, we’ll teach you sociology. You want to get a job as a sociologist, best of luck to you, not our problem.

Proponents of small government might point out that information on starting salaries is readily available on the Internet. That’s true, but I think there is value in presenting the information with brutal frankness, and including appropriate warnings with every description of course offerings. That level of convenience will make the parents’ jobs easier as they try to steer their kids in the best direction.

No, proponents of small government will point that IT’S NONE OF THE GOVERNMENT’S FUCKING BUSINESS.  There is indeed value in presenting the information with brutal frankness, but it’s not the government’s job to do that (at taxpayer expense). Nor is it the government’s job (at taxpayer expense) to increase the level of convenience for parents whose kids will ignore them anyway. (Scott obviously has never had teen-aged kids.)

Is that too much government?

Yes. (Prediction: Scott Adams voted for Obama, and will vote for him again.)

Read it.

It is easier to trust people if you feel that you know them. This is why businessmen take the effort to travel to meet their clients personally. If you know that the other party shares the same basic values, you already know a lot about that person – because you know yourself. Sharing values means knowing each other, and knowing each other increases trust. This is why criminal gangs – which are built on a high level of trust – are mostly monocultural.

So what happens when people with very different cultural backgrounds and religious values live together? The level of trust naturally goes down. In order to preserve trust and the many benefits coming from this important feeling and experience, the different groups tend to live together in enclaves separated from the other groups. It is important for people to feel “at home” – but what makes that feeling of being at home? It’s the feeling of being surrounded by a recognisable environment and culture where one does not have to communicate excessively to reach mutual understanding and thereby trust.

A decrease in trust leads to a decrease in the feeling of safety and happiness as well. As psychologist Abraham Maslow showed us in his hierarchy of needs, and as all who have been able to learn from life’s ups and downs know, not having our basic needs fulfilled leads human beings to focus more on their own basic needs before focusing their efforts on benefiting those around them. Thus a decrease in trust means an increase in egotism.

This is why areas with mixed cultures show higher rates of crime and other socially deviant behavior. Doubt it? Track the crime rate for Portland (leftist but damned near all white) and Los Angeles (be careful not to get caught in the black/Latino gang wars).

Proponents of multiculturalism may think that they are working for more confluent societies with more tolerant citizens by waging lawfare against our national borders and thereby forcing us to live with people from cultures that we basically do not know and understand. But their efforts are clearly counterproductive, as the result is cultural segregation and individuals focusing more on themselves. The multiculti segment clearly lacks knowledge of human nature, and their ivory tower theories completely overlook normal real life experience, established psychological theories and well known facts.

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Tyler O’Neil points out some of the stealthier fascist provisions of Obamacare.

The law gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the authority to issue “quality standards” that “control all providers of healthcare: doctors, hospitals, nurses, and so forth.” If a doctor does not comply with these standards, he “will be unable to get reimbursement from any of the insurance plans that all Americans will be required to have” under the individual mandate, which was ruled constitutional under the Congress’ power to tax.

Congress set up the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). This group of regulators “is directed, starting in 2015 and every two years thereafter, to make recommendations … to limit the ability of Americans to put resources into healthcare so that they stay below certain goals set forth in the legislation.” IPAB sets a price cap, a dollar amount beyond which Americans cannot pay for care. All of those limits are required to be below the rate of medical inflation.

To illustrate this principle, Balch used an analogy with food prices. “Imagine a situation where Congress said, ‘Whenever you go out to buy food, if the price of food has risen by ten percent next year, you’re not allowed to pay that extra ten percent to get the same food that you got this year. You’re only allowed to pay five percent more.’” Such a policy would force citizens to buy less food, or lower quality food, each year.

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

Read it.

We’ve rounded up five medical apps and websites that connect users directly to doctors. With tele-health apps, patients can call, text or privately message licensed physicians online for immediate help. Patients have an instant connection to knowledgable specialists. This industry won’t replace primary care physicians, but it will come in handy when sudden sickness strikes. Illnesses can be diagnosed and medicine can be prescribed right over the web or phone.

Read it.

Carlos Miller of Photography is Not a Crime is helping publicize (and test) a new iPhone app that automatically streams video as a user is recording it and stores it remotely in a cloud, thus preventing grabby law enforcement officers from deleting footage.

Which is, of course the crime of conversion, when it isn’t actual obstruction of justice. But we all know that police never get called on that sort of thing. This will redress the balance somewhat.

Big Brother doesn’t like it when you’re watching him back.

Read it.

It’s been an interesting day for a developing market which seems so utterly niche as to be untrue. There really are startups out there linking recipes to supermarket so you can just buy the food you need to make the dishes. Niche, but potentially quite powerful. Two start-ups announced funding today in the UK. Whisk, a startup produced by a minor UK TV celebrity, has raised £170,000 for a product that has yet to launch, while Foodity has secured over £300,000 seed funding for a platform that’s already being traded on and has customers after bootstrapping for two years.

Foodity produces an e-commerce toolkit for recipe publishers on all platforms that lets consumers buy recipe ingredients at major online grocers in the UK, Europe and the US; plus a data platform and an advertising/analytics module. The startup already has Premier Foods, (the UK’s biggest food manufacturer) as a customer and a number of big grocery retailers, as yet unannounced.

Read it.

U.S. military leaders are promising a small-scale, but effective plan for dealing with terrorist threats throughout Africa.  The head of the military’s Africa Command says that U.S. forces are carrying out reconnaissance missions across the continent but Washington has no plans to expand its permanent presence in Africa.

Oh, they never do. But somehow it just seems to happen. Funny how that works.

My question is, Why are we still spending money in Europe, Soviet Communism now being extinct?

Paul Rahe looks at the Obamacare decision.

In his opinion, the Chief Justice affirmed the principle asserted by Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas. He made it clear that the commerce clause does not give Congress authority over economic activity that we do not engage in. He also made it clear that the necessary and proper clause cannot be applied to achieve this end. In short, he joined these four Justices in setting a clear limit to the commerce clause, and he paved the way for future challenges to extensions of the regulatory state.

At the same time, he dodged the political firestorm, and nearly all of the liberals who have commented on the matter – a slow-thinking lot, in my opinion – have applauded what they take to be cowardice on his part as “judiciousness.” Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit was among the first to recognize that Roberts might be playing an elaborate game. He compared the decision to Marbury v. Madison, where Chief Justice John Marshall surrendered in the case before the court while firmly and eloquently reasserting the Court’s right and responsibility to engage in judicial review; and Reynolds pointed to one crucial fact: Senate rules do not allow a filibuster when the bill under consideration has to do with imposing or repealing a tax. If the Republicans take the Senate and the Presidency, they can now repeal the individual mandate. They will not need sixty votes.

Read it.

A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin won a $1,000 bet with the Department of Homeland Security by hacking into an airborne drone and wresting control from the pilot.

The researchers, headed by Dr. Todd E. Humphreys, got control of the drone by overloading it with false signals that were precisely matched up with authentic satellite signals. Once that happened, the drone ignored the original pilot, instead obeying the hackers’ every command.

Don’t mess with Texas.

Read it.

Jury nullification, in which jurors refuse to convict defendants under laws they find objectionable or inappropriately applied, is a favored tactic of many libertarians who, rightly or wrongly perceive individual liberty as, at best, a minority taste among their neighbors. They like the idea of a tool that can be wielded on the spot to shield people from powerful control freaks without first having to win a popularity contest. But nullification is useful only if people know about. And last week, New Hampshire’s governor signed a law requiring the state’s judges to permit defense attorneys to inform jurors of their right to nullify the law.

Now, this is very curious. Lynch is a Democrat, which in New Hampshire means he’s a transplant from Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the nation. Democrats, especially Massachusetts Democrats (think Kennedys) aren’t famous for being very libertarian. So what’s his agenda here?

Data point 1: New Hampshire, long a bastion of individual rights (which these days is characterized as ‘conservative’, although ‘conservatives’ don’t have a great record when it comes to individual rights), is becoming increasingly liberal because of immigration by left-winger Summer People from the surrounding blue states of Vermont, Maine, and especially Massachusetts.

Data point 2: New Hampshire has a lot of laws that socialists dislike, especially with respect to things like gun rights and property rights.

Suspicion: Lynch sees this as a wedge whereby increasingly liberal immigrants can overturn, in their local communities, laws intended to preserve individual rights without the effort needed to do a state-wide change through a still-Republican-controlled legislature. Muslims are doing the same thing with respect to shari’a law in Britain and Europe, and probably in the United States in places like Michigan (which the Crustian media refuse to report, since it goes against the Party Line).

But only time will tell.

Read it.

By 2020, experts think tech-enhanced homes, appliances, and utilities will spread, but many of the analysts believe we still won’t likely be living in the long-envisioned ‘Homes of the Future.’

Hundreds of tech analysts foresee a future with “smart” devices and environments that make people’s lives more efficient.

But they also note that current evidence about the uptake of smart systems is that the costs and necessary infrastructure changes to make it all work are daunting. And they add that people find comfort in the familiar, simple, “dumb” systems to which they are accustomed.

No pony flying car, either. Sorry.

Read it.

A business named Drive-a-Tank offers drivers the chance to pilot surplus military tanks and other armored vehicles around an old limestone quarry and smash junk cars like an action movie hero.

Or you could join the National Guard and get to do it for free. In fact, they’ll pay you.

Read it.

“I was very amazed and amused yesterday to notice that that panel records the date of the end of the 13th baktun (20 cycles of the Mayan long count calendar), which for us is coming up in just a few months time in December of 2012,” Dr. David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin told Reuters.

Guess we won’t have to worry about Obamacare coming in 2014, then.

Read it.

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

Read it.

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

Read it.

More adventures of the Flying Uighurs.

Read it.

When you’re a nerd and a metrosexual.

Read it.

I guess some Communists are more equal than others.

Read it.

When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will cheerfully murder each other.

A reminder that living together in peace and harmony is not a Muslim value.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

A typical problem in modern Muslim marriages: wife and daughters refuse to be beaten. For some reason Demir, a self-appointed Sharia lawyer, has not been charged for not reporting the violence to the police.

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

And the feminists say … [chirp] … [chirp] ….

Read it.

 China’s nuclear warhead stockpile is more than twice as large as U.S. intelligence estimates and could include as many as 3,000 warheads, according to a retired Russian general and former strategic forces commander.

Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, the former head of the Strategic Rocket Forces, revealed in a May 2012 article that based on estimated stocks of up to 70 tons of uranium and plutonium, Beijing has enough material for 3,600 nuclear warheads.

Based on the fissile material, “there are probably 1,600 to 1,800 warheads in the Chinese nuclear arsenal,” Yesin stated.

“According to assessments, 800 to 900 warheads from this number may be operationally deployed, with the rest in long-term storage,” the general stated.

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

Great job you’re doing there, Barry, great job.

Gavin McInnes laments.

When libertarians, paleocons, neocons, and Republicans are confronted with a shrieking liberal they usually shoo it away. That’s easy if you don’t live in New York City, Berkeley, LA, or Madison, but those of us mired here in the jungles of hysteria have to come up with other solutions.

Such as?

Liberals hate big business and the white men who run it because the whole thing reminds them of their father. Dad was disappointed in them for spending tens of thousands of his dollars at NYU taking Japanese Animation & New Media. Therefore, massage their own daddy complexes by pretending to hate the rich white male father figure as much as they do. As Fran Lebowitz pointed out, “No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million.” Agree with Fran. Say, “These guys aren’t entrepreneurs. They’re slave drivers.” Then you can add, “That’s the saddest part about illegal immigration. It only benefits rich whites in both countries. Poor Mexicans on both sides of the border are worse off for it, and black workers in California are the first ones to lose jobs to illegal—sorry—undocumented workers.” Don’t say, “Multiculturalism is a weakness,” because the liberal hears, “Having a variety of restaurants scares me because I’m racist.” Instead say, “High schools in California have metal detectors and the tension between blacks and Hispanics is getting so bad, it’s bordering on a race war. Why? So rich whites can ‘steal’ another $100 million.”

Read it.

Hah!

Read it.

The men expended more energy than Olympic athletes as they hand-hauled their supplies on sledges across hundreds of miles of ice and snow.

Read it.

To which the obvious rejoinder is, ‘With what?’ When last I looked, the Royal Navy has one (1) reasonably new destroyer-class ship and two or three reasonably modern nuclear submarines. And the British army is being reduced to the old ‘guards and garrisons’ level last seen under the Stewarts.

Good luck with that.

Read it.

Six of the 12 instructors under investigation for misconduct face charges ranging from rape to adultery. A senior Air Force commander said nine of those instructors were in the same squadron, briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the same time that one of the accused appeared in a Lackland courtroom.

Read it.

 First there was the “death tax;” now with the Supreme Court’s rationale for Obamacare, the United States has a “birth tax.” Under the law, simply by being born, American citizens are saddled with a tax burden if they are not covered by a health insurance plan. They don’t have to possess anything; they don’t have to do anything; they simply have to be.

This is an unprecedented level of government power. Progressives may point to Social Security as a tax on existence. However, that tax is not collected unless a person engages in some sort of economic transaction such as earning wages. Paying a tax for NOT enrolling in a health insurance plan is a de facto tax on a person’s automatic biological processes. Instead of deducting Social Security from earnings, every heartbeat, regardless of one’s economic activity, will have a calculable monetary value.

The party of Bull Conner returns to its roots.

Once the government is responsible for your health care, your ‘health’ decisions are properly the business of the government. There is no aspect of your life that is now free of second-guessing by some bureaucrat.

Have a good day. Big Brother is watching.

Read it.

Gee,  in a Catholic school you could educate four kids for that price — and they’d actually get an education.

Of course, public schools in a Democrat-controlled area aren’t about educating kids, but rather hiring and paying black public employees. The kids are just the Clever Plastic Disguise.

Read it.

Not that they would have contributed anything to the proceeding had they stayed. Their position is entirely predicated on the fact that Holder, like them, is a black Democrat, without respect to the facts of the case. Were he white, or a Republican (or, horror of horrors, a white Republican), they wouldn’t have budged. But identity politics expresses its Third World roots in supporting members of The Tribe regardless of the actual situation (precisely the reason democracy takes no root in the Muslim World). In that, it is profoundly ‘conservative’ — or perhaps ‘regressive’ would be a more accurate term.

Indeed, being an explicitly racist organization devoted to promoting a particular ethnic group and screwing everybody else whenever possible, a good case could be made that Congress — and the people of the United States — would be well rid of them if they stayed away forever.

Read it.

Along with the rest of the Obamassiah’s base.

Obama to The Youth of America: ‘Yes we can! Bend over please.’

The Youth of America to Obama: ‘Thank you, sir! May we have another?’

Read it.

Midway up the Maine coast, a tidal estuary known as the Damariscotta River has long been the epicenter of oyster shucking. Shell heaps rise on both its banks—towering middens of flaky, bleached white shells discarded between 2,200 and 1,000 years ago when American oysters (Crassostrea virginica) flourished in the warm, brackish waters.

Read it.

Skyonic lands funding to build a commercial-scale facility that takes flue gases and converts them into commodity chemicals.

No, thanks, we’d rather pass government regulations that make it impossible to burn coal.

Thank you for playing. NEXT!

Read it.

Oddly enough, it was Sunnis misunderstanding Islam and murdering more Shi’ites.

When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will cheerfully murder each other.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

Privacy. Everybody talks about it. Grandstanding politicians make plenty of loud noises in the general direction of the internet, disparaging it for turning your perusal of Kim Kardashian-related articles into targeted ads for breast enhancement surgery and Kanye West tickets. Of course, while these politicians are making all this noise about your privacy, they’re quietly signing off on efforts allowing them to sneak in the backdoor and raid your browser history.

Putting the government in charge of your privacy has never been a great idea. When HIPAA was enacted, its privacy requirements greatly affected the medical community. Like many regulatory acts, HIPAA both raised costs (additional paperwork and other compliance factors) and lowered quality (negatively affecting retrospective research and curtailing proactive follow up care).

Read it.

Since launching last year, HealthTap has built a network of 12,000 U.S.-licensed physicians — no easy task — to allow its users to get answers to medical questions for free without relying on algorithms — and has raised $14 million from Mayfield Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Esther Dyson, and more. With its new mobile apps, HealthTap is essentially trying to bring the house call back to life, giving users the option to text doctors from their mobile devices for free.

Read it.

Forget Tupperware bashes and toga soirees — the latest rage is food stamp parties.

The USDA is encouraging the nation’s food stamp program to promote to the elderly using parties and games.

A series of guides currently posted on the USDA website promotes local offices of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP, but commonly referred to as food stamps — to entice eligible seniors to enroll in the welfare program. The promotional campaign has cost between $2.5 million and $3 million.

Because nothing says care-free fun like government welfare programs. ‘It’s free! Just swipe your EBT!’

Read it.

The family of a critically-ill transplant patient hoped their son might say he loved them when he emerged from an eight-day coma but instead demanded a KFC chicken burger meal.

Yeah, well, that’s the way people are these days. Better get used to it.

Read it.

For many people, the most unbelievable aspect of Natasha Smith’s story is that hundreds of people should have been standing there, unable or unwilling to help.

And the feminists say … [chirp] … [chirp] ….

Read it.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Larry Kudlow points out some inconvenient truth.

Of course the stock market dropped about 130 points. Twenty new or higher taxes across-the-board are bad for economic growth, bad for job hiring, bad for investors, and bad for families.

A tax is a tax is a tax, according to Judge Roberts. But he forgot to say that if you tax something more, you get less of it.

Read it.

So why do we keep sending them money? I’m hoping it’s stupidity rather than treason.*

* ‘Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.’