Read it.

And guess who will win? Hint: Not the Sioux tribe. Political correctness always trumps reality.

“The Fighting Sioux” is the nickname and logo of the University of North Dakota. It is also the source of a decade-long controversy.

The NCAA opposed the nickname on the grounds that it was offensive to Native Americans.

God forbid that they should ask, you know, real Native Americans.

Through it all, the Sioux tribe has maintained that it does not find the name offensive—and has granted permission for UND to keep it.

Not that it matters to the NCAA. They know what they know, and don’t confuse them with facts.

Read it.

Of course, what ‘misogyny’ has to do with poverty, Southern or otherwise (or law, for that matter), is a question best left to those who steep themselves in left-wing fantasy.

It is truly sublime that a group the DHS cited in its controversial report on right-wing terrorism now turns to a website called “Man Boobz” for its hate-group reporting.

And once more the SPLC keeps its position on the cutting edge of the Preserve-Funding-Through-Finding-New-And-Better-Victims effort.

The frightening part? “…the SPLC’s Intelligence Report gets sent to every law enforcement agency in the country.”

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Gourmands in Austria have called for “discriminatory” names for food, such as “n—–bread” and “whore’s pasta” to be banned on the grounds that they are offensive.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Markets work, even when you don’t want them to.

Warning Philippines: You’re next on the Nanny-Staters’ hit list.

Even Jacob Sullum at tReason magazine can’t buy what she’s selling.

Whatever his intentions, Limbaugh’s sexist tirade reinforced a narrative that depicts resistance to the contraceptive mandate as part of “a systematic war against women,” as Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) put it last week. But that narrative remains false, no matter how many stupid jokes Rush Limbaugh makes.

The Other McCain blows the whistle.

But the fact that the Left never stopped defending the contemptible Ted Kennedy — a man who was permitted to shamelessly abuse his inherited privilege simply because of his political posture as a defender of the downtrodden — and that Kennedy was especially a hero to feminists, would seem to demonstrate the validity of my analysis.

And don’t get us started on Bill Clinton — or Chris Dodd.

Feminism’s embrace of the vile Kennedy very much resembles the way the Left celebrates such monsters as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, et al., who have ruthlessly slaughtered innumerable innocents in pursuit of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That the Left’s heroes butcher (actual) peasants and workers as an alleged means of advancing the (theoretical) rights of peasants and workers is one of those contradictions that the Left can never explain to the satisfaction of any honest observer.

Read it.

Placing his belongings, including a scarf, into a tray to pass through the X-ray scanner he spotted a Muslim woman in hijab pass through the area without showing her face.

In a light-hearted aside to a security official who had been assisting him, he said: “If I was wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen.”

The quip proved to be a mistake. After passing through the gates, he was confronted by staff and accused of racism.

Read it.

New York City has eight specialized high schools whose admission is based entirely on the results of an entrance exam, a meritocratic system that does not consider race or ethnicity. The top score on the exam is 800. In recent years, the cutoff for Stuyvesant has been around 560; Rudi scored 594.

Earning a spot at Stuyvesant is unquestionably a badge of honor, sort of a secret knock to an exclusive club. As high school admissions decisions are revealed across the city in the coming week, many people are concerned that it is a club that black students — and, to a similar extent, Latinos — have an increasingly hard time cracking.

Entrance based on merit? How did that happen in New York City? This is the New York Times, after all; the real miracle is that it is being written about at all.

No one claims that the disparity is caused by overt discrimination. But in a school that is devised to attract the best of the best, parents and educators alike find the demographics troubling. It has become a question of perception as to who belongs.

They don’t quite say ‘women and minorities hardest hit’, but you know they’re thinking it.

Read it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Read it. And watch the video.

Most American readers will remember a brutal incident in Texas back in 1998, when a man named James Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to death.

Because the victim was black and his murderers were white, there was a national outcry about the crime that continued for years afterwards. During the 2000 election campaign the incident was even used for shamelessly partisan purposes — by the Democrats, needless to say.

When the races are reversed, however, silence reigns. When a white farmer was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to death by murderous blacks, there was no great outcry. Outside of his immediate neighborhood in South Africa, hardly anyone was even aware of the crime.

He’s just another statistic. He’s one of thousands of white victims of ethnic cleansing in South Africa.

The process has become so blatant that the leader of the youth wing of the African National Congress implicitly acknowledged that the current regime exercises a measure of political control over it.

“All whites are criminals,” he said. “We will take the land back. Without compensation.”

But that’s not evidence of racism, since it was uttered by a black man. By definition, non-whites cannot possibly be racist.

My guess is that what he was saying can be excused as “redistributive justice against the historical oppressor”. Or some similar Marxist cant.

Check it out.

In case of emergency, break glass. Order will be restored, communism suppressed, and the country will avoid being dragged into any major wars. Citizens will live in prosperity until the politicians are allowed to take charge again, at which point the leftist idiots will take over and the economy will tank.

Tim Cavanaugh has the inside story.

Tax cheat Tim Geithner, the only member of the Obama economic brain trust who has not yet been fired, testified to the Senate Finance Committee today in favor of the president’s proposed trillion-dollar-deficit budget.

Geithner, a Dartmouth man esteemed more for his tennis skills than for his understanding of markets or business, peddled much Keynesian voodoo before a nation whose economy he helped destroy while employed by the Federal Reserve Bank and then the Department of the Treasury.

Don Boudreaux reacts to Michelle Obama’s First Nanny tour.

Who the hell is she to tell – or even to advise – people outside of her own family what to eat?  Free and responsible men and women do not take seriously those who use their fame as a platform to issue advice about matters on which they know nothing – and politicians’ spouses (no less than politicians themselves, Hollywood entertainers, sports stars, and the like) have zero knowledge about each individual American’s tastes and preferences over a wide range of lifestyle options.  I’m downright repulsed by the media’s habit of mistaking a person’s celebrity for expertise, popularity for acumen, and visibility for enlightenment.

Read it.

While the U.S. has been busy trying to bring order to failed states in Afghanistan and elsewhere, The Daily’s Mara Gay reports that its own failed city, Detroit, is continuing its steady descent into the state of nature. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are taking matters into their own hands. Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average.

“Judge, he needed killin’.”

Read it.

Hard on the story noted here the other day of new doubts about catastrophic global warming from the scientific mainstream comes the news from Britain’s MET office, which is one of the primary nodes of the global warming establishment, that global temperatures have now been essentially flat for the last 15 years.

Time for AlGore to write another book, I guess, or for Michael More to make another ‘documentary’.

Read it.

The fallout over Barack Obama’s decision to kill 20,000 (mostly) union jobs on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project continues as the Laborers International Union of North America left the BlueGreen Alliance Friday afternoon.

Founded in 2006, the BlueGreen Alliance is a political pairing of left-wing unions and environmental groups whose mission (so to speak) is to ensure that America’s conversion to a green economy results in union jobs as jobs in industries like coal are destroyed.

Heh. Pass the popcorn.

Eric Raymond does some politics.

From a certain deeply cynical perspective the moguls’ outrage is sort of understandable. How dare Obama curry favor with Silicon Valley and the Wikipedians when he should have stayed bought? It’s not as though Obama actually cares about the “civil liberties” those damned anti-copyright anarchists are screaming about – anyone suffering from that delusion has forgotten that he signed the NDAA. So forget “principle”; from the moguls’ point of view this is a pure betrayal of the basest kind.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, as a certain pseudo-Marine would say.

Read it.

Renaissance fairs. White people dressing up as… white people from the 10th – 15th centuries, in celebration of the culture and traditions that were found in England during this time period.

For Black people, a renaissance fair is just another reminder that even white people 500 – 700 years ago were far more advanced and lived in safer communities then Black people in Africa do now. The so-called “Dark Ages” that preceded this boom weren’t even that dark, not compared to the darkness that has followed white flight from Detroit, Baltimore, Birmingham and other major American cities (not to mention former European colonies in Africa) and what Black people who inherit these cities/nations have been able to sustain.

Read it.

Agriculture to produce wheat, rice and pulses requires clear-felling native vegetation. That act alone results in the deaths of thousands of Australian animals and plants per hectare. Since Europeans arrived on this continent we have lost more than half of Australia’s unique native vegetation, mostly to increase production of monocultures of introduced species for human consumption.

Most of Australia’s arable land is already in use. If more Australians want their nutritional needs to be met by plants, our arable land will need to be even more intensely farmed. This will require a net increase in the use of fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and other threats to biodiversity and environmental health. Or, if existing laws are changed, more native vegetation could be cleared for agriculture (an area the size of Victoria plus Tasmania would be needed to produce the additional amount of plant-based food required).

Read it.

And thus balance is restored to the universe.

Don’t know how the British tax system works, but in America he’d still owe income tax on the value of that car. Perhaps that till teach him to be more careful.

Read it.

Critics of a controversial trend in advertising are proposing legislation that would force companies to inform customers when the models in their ads have been photoshopped in order to improve their appearance.

Coming soon: Legislation banning unrealistic plots and scenes in books, movies, and video games. And don’t get me started on Weight Watchers.

Seth Matlin is the founder of offourchests.com, the driving force behind the “Self Esteem Act,” which seeks to make consumers more aware of the digital enhancement that occurs in advertising.

‘Progressives’ are all about ensuring that your life as dreary as theirs.

Matlin believes that digitally enhanced advertising creates unrealistic expectations for young women and that advertisers are giving young girls the impression that they will never be good enough. He argues that by focusing on physical beauty, and by photoshopping already beautiful models, entire segments of the population are being excluded.

‘We’re going to enhance your self-esteem by making sure that you have no prayer of being anything other than fat, ugly, and stupid.’ The anti-Burger-King: Have it our way — or else.

The Other McCain is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

“Look deep into her eyes: Is she the stupidest person on Earth, or does she actually know what she’s advocating?” (The death toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution is estimated from 1.5 million to 20 million.)

Her name is Colleen. She’s a 20-year-old student from Vermont – 95% white, where the unemployment rate is a relatively low 5.6%.

She attends Johnson State College, where in-state tuition is a modest $8,568 a year. We may therefore dismiss as implausible any idea that Colleen is part of an oppressed group whose plight justifies “revolution,” cultural or otherwise. So why was she in Zuccotti Park last week? Dunno.

It’s the romanticization of victimhood. Liberalism teaches kids to identify so profoundly with “victims” that, no matter how comfortable or privileged their own circumstances may be, they have to protest on behalf of the downtrodden, the exploited, the oppressed. Otherwise, they feel inauthentic, full of guilt about being un-victimized.

We live in a country where the people who complain the loudest about oppression are not oppressed in any rational sense of the term. Coupled with the fashionable concern for ‘poor’ people (who aren’t really poor as the rest of the world understands the word) and ‘rich’ people (who mostly earned what they have and are still pilloried as blood-sucking parasites), there comes a time when one is forced to conclude that the inmates are in charge of the asylum, and the safest thing to do is find a convenient hiding place in which to wait for things to get better — if, indeed, they will get better.

Read it.

Sorry if this comes as a surprise, as I’m sure it will to Some. (One of the most amazing things about ‘progressives’ is their ability to ignore basic economics when it suits them. Then they act so surprised when those Unintended Consequences bites them square on the butt. Unfortunately, the rest of us get our butts bitten as well.)

I am reminded of Michelle Obama’s plea to graduating college students to not go work in for-profit businesses, but to work for government or NGO’s.  The problem is that workers, particularly young workers, don’t get to define what is productive labor and what is not.  You can’t go out in the world expecting to work really really hard at puppeteering or for the cause of Mayan feminism and necessarily expect to get paid a lot.  In any job, how much you make is determined by how valuable others see that work.

Well, you can understand her point. When her husband became a Senator, the University of Chicago Hospitals created a position especially for her that paid about twice what her husband was making — and when she left with him for Washington, they abolished the position. She’s living proof that companies exist just to provide well-paying positions for excellent and deserving people such as herself. Live the dream.

Read it.

It may seem strange, but when leftist social scientists actually talk to and observe the poor, they confirm the stereotypes of the harshest Victorian.  Poverty isn’t about money; it’s a state of mind.  That state of mind is low conscientiousness.

Turns out that the reason poor people are poor is because they aren’t worth much. There appears to be a certain degree of symmetry there.

Read it … oh, wait, there’s nothing to read. Wonder why that is.

Perhaps it’s just because these ‘OccupyWhatever’ gatherings are just an internal squabble among the Crust, using tools and dupes from the Underclass (and their own silly kids) as proxies.

Their master’s voice.

After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street protests, phones at the party committee started ringing.

Banking executives personally called the offices of DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC Finance Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) last week demanding answers, three financial services lobbyists told POLITICO.

Here’s a teachable moment for you.

The people with money learn a valuable lesson that the people with power will turn on them at the faintest scent of blood.

And the people with power learn a valuable lesson that there is a limit to how stupid the people with money will be over time.

Read it.

For every OccupyWallStreet participant, there are 20,000 kids in India cramming for a calculus final.

In other words,

• the Indian kids are serious and the squatters on Wall Street are dilettantes looking for a concert ‘rush’.
• Indian kids struggle to get ahead, the Wall Street Squatters struggle to get laid.
• the Indian kids may have bathed today, but it wasn’t in their very own tiled bathroom. The Squatters defecated on police cars. The epitome of kewl.
• The Indians want a chance. The Squatters want a megaphone so they can take turns interrupting.
• The Indians add, or will add, to global productivity. The Squatters will consume.
• Indian kids hope. Squatters hate. Just ask them for the photo-copied list the nice union man gave them.
• Indian kids have been educated. Squatters don’t need no education, at least not one they’re willing to pay for.
• Indian kids study maths and sciences. Squatters major in Queer Dance Theory After the Death of Patriarchy.
• Indian kids dream. Squatters scream.
• Indian kids have learned to persist because life isn’t fair. Squatters are determined to repeal that basic law. “Down With Gravity”.

Read it.

If Hollywood has to start complying with false advertising laws, they’re in BIG trouble.

Read it.

The makers of the most expensive Burgundy wines have changed the rule book to make grape-picking by hand compulsory in bid to defend the region’s age-old traditions.

For the past fortnight, thousands of seasonal workers have been toiling under the autumn sun to pluck precious pinot noir grapes destined for Burgundy’s top quality red wines, its grands crus, using methods little changed since Cistercian monks cultivated the land 1,000 years ago.

Read it.

Some people just have no sense of humor.

Read it.

Did you know that it is a crime to tell a lie to the federal government? Even if your lie is oral and not under oath? Even if you have received no warnings of any kind? Even if you are not trying to cheat the government out of money? Even if the government is not actually misled by your falsehood? Well it is.

The best option is to do a Sgt. Schultz: Say nothing.

For example, if you lie to your employer on your time and attendance records and, unbeknownst to you, he submits your records, along with those of other employees, to the federal government pursuant to some regulatory duty, you could be criminally liable.

‘Oh, but I have nothing to hide. I want to cooperate.’ Two words: Martha Stewart. Not enough? Two more: Scooter Libby.

It may be true that most federal agents and prosecutors are decent people who would not intentionally abuse Section 1001. Moreover, it is very important from a law enforcement perspective for federal agents to be able to informally question witnesses during the initial stages of an investigation. And certainly citizens are under no obligation to speak to a law enforcement agent in the first place, although, as shown below, it is essential to learn how to decline to speak to government officers. But power corrupts, and the potential for abuse of this statute is great, especially during periods of public outcry over corporate and other white-collar crimes. When we reflect upon how many petty rules and regulations get broken and how many white lies are told during the course of an average American business day, it is apparent that Section 1001 can easily be applied and misapplied to normally upstanding folk.

Do you really want your future to depend on the honor or honesty of a government employee? Three letters: TSA.

Keep it zipped. No exceptions.

Read it.

After reportedly feeding a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was recently served with formal legal notice from industry trade associations, demanding that he cease and desist from what they charge is an illegal food-sharing operation under the terms of the Miracle Millennium Anti-Replication Act (MMAA).

Read it.

In case you haven’t heard, the 2012 presidential election is already over and the Republicans stole it. Both Rolling Stone and Mother Jones report this week that those wascally Wepublicans have already walked away with the ballot boxes.

Well, that certainly takes some of the suspense away.

Apparently it’s fascist to require the same ID for voting that you need for driving, watching adult movies, buying cigarettes, and drinking alcohol. (Those are all more important than voting, you see; nobody cares about what happens during elections so long as Democrats win.)

Read it.

Mr. le Dous, 56, a power plant engineer, rides a bike himself, as do his children, though he also has a car. He just wishes bikers would behave.

“We call cyclists the plague of the pavement,” he said.

The downside of being a Yuppie Heaven. Funny how the people in New York and Los Angeles who are such big proponents of biking do not, so far as I can tell, themselves ride bicycles.

The Other McCain is having entirely too much fun.

Yglesias is too young to remember exactly how and why Jimmy Carter’s presidency failed. After eight years of GOP control of the White House, liberals in 1976 very much wanted to see a Democratic presidency succeed. And when Carter’s policies quickly proved unpopular, liberals blamed Carter personally.

Liberals believe that liberalism is right. They believe that liberal policies should be both successful and popular.

So when the Carter administration proved to be a policy disaster, and when that disaster led to political unpopularity for Democrats — the party that defines the meaning and embodies the spirit of liberalism in America — liberals were faced with a choice: Admit the failures of liberalism, or find an explanatory excuse.

The scapegoating of Carter was the convenient excuse that permitted liberals to avoid confronting the evidence that liberalism had failed.

Read it.

But the harmony of this idyllic Suffolk community has been shattered – by a golliwog.

Yesterday, a 65-year-old grandmother was preparing to appear in court charged with a race hate crime after placing the doll in her window.

Jena Mason was arrested when her black neighbour, Rosemarie O’Donnell, complained that it was a racial taunt following a long dispute between the two households.

A rather stark reminder that there is no First Amendment in Britain, where you can be arrested for putting a child’s doll in the window of your own home.

Read it.

Voracious mining has hollowed out vast tracts of the north of China, leaving three million people living on ground that could collapse at any moment.

Boy, those blood-sucking corporations have gone too far. This is what corporate capitalism leads to, oppression!

Oh, wait….

Read it.

Get ready for the great environmental civil wars. So far the environmental community has been fighting industry, developers, utilities and other villainous purveyors of human stuff. But going forward its big battles might be with itself.

Pass the popcorn. As Kissinger said about the Iran/Iraq war, ‘A pity both sides can’t lose.’

Read it.

A couple in Shanghai strung their 12-year-old son to a metal pole by his hands and feet and beat him with whips and a wooden club after he stole their rent money to play video games.

Under the Chinese one-child policy, if they snuff him, do they get to try again?

Read it.

When the Democratic National Committee chose Charlotte, North Carolina as the site for its 2012 DNC Convention, some union bosses’ eyebrows were raised (as well were those on the extreme Left) with the DNC’s decision to go union-free.  While the underlying issue of the Charlotte choice may be a union rift playing out between AFL-CIO unions and the C2W union because Charlotte is becoming a big pain in the ass donkey for Democrats.

Even Democrats realize that dealing with unions is more trouble than it’s worth.

Read it.

Britain’s police forces could face a bill for tens of millions of pounds from insurance companies because property was damaged in the rioting while the “police effectively failed to keep law and order”.

Good luck with that.

Read it.

Young males are particularly prone to rioting. Witness the football and basketball riots at fine U.S. universities, or the recent Vancouver hockey riot. Indeed, the photographs here and elsewhere make painfully clear what is happening in Tottenham and now other parts of London—young men are flooding the streets looking to have some fun. This is no spontaneous group reaction to a perceived injustice; before leaving home these able-bodied lads are dressing up in hoodies, covering their faces in bandanas, and checking Twitter and the like to see where the action is. They want to get drunk, mix it up with the police, and grab all the liquor, pricy sneakers, snazzy clothes, and electronics they can.

Read it.

The Australian outback town of Broken Hill will no longer host the production of a Mad Max sequel after record rains made the surrounding countryside too green to pass for a post-apocalyptic landscape.

In a pinch, they could always use Barack Obama’s subconscious.

Read it.

Four elderly Kenyans were give the go-ahead at the High Court today to sue the British government over alleged colonial atrocities committed during the Mau Mau uprising.

Read it.

A Bronx man was viciously assaulted and robbed on a subway train Sunday by four men who he says taunted him for being white.

Police confirmed they are investigating the assault and robbery of Jason Fordell, 29, but have not labeled it a hate crime.

Of course not. Silly to think otherwise. Only white people can be guilty of hate crimes, after all.

Read it.

Read it.

I don’t suppose that it ought to come as any surprise that the major players in an industry built on monetizing narcissism should throw up parents who are more concerned with their own whimsy than their children’s future. At any rate, it provides us with a perfect opportunity to sneer at people who are richer and prettier than we are.

Toilet seat wars.

Read it.

Crews on Wednesday night removed the Surfing Madonna mosaic from the base of a train bridge on Encinitas Boulevard.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

The piece depicts Our Lady of Guadalupe on a surfboard with the words “Save the Ocean” down the side. Patterson and another person installed the mosaic April 22 without permission from the city.

The mosaic, however, is graffiti under Encinitas municipal code, and city officials said it must come down.

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ — Benito Mussolini