Read it.

After all, what sane person would want a job that destroys your privacy, makes it impossible for you to go out on the street, subjects your family to intrusive media scrutiny, forces you to watch everything you say, and drives some people to want to take a shot at you? Apparently someone who feels that the power that comes with the office is worth the attendant indignities.

“Great men are almost always bad men,” Lord Acton famously said. “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” Indeed, good men rarely run for president. And when they do, they rarely win. An honest man stands no chance against a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon. Yes, one slips through the cracks now and then. We could use Grover Cleveland’s restraint in handling the economic crisis today. I have a particular fondness for Calvin Coolidge, who conspicuously lacked the pathological need for attention that characterizes most officeholders.

And, of course, I’ve been saying for years that our political system is set up to encourage corruption and make sure that the people who get elected are the wrong sort of people to be in public office.

Bryan Caplan calls out the bleeding hearts.

“What if a poor person gets sick, doesn’t have insurance, and can’t get friends, family, or charity to pay for treatment?”

“What if an elderly person gets defrauded out of his entire retirement and the perpetrator vanishes into thin air?”

“What if a child is starving on the street, and no one voluntarily feeds him?”

“What if someone just can’t find a job?”

If you’re a libertarian, you face what-ifs like this all the time.  The point, normally, is to make you say, “Tough luck” and look like a monster.  What puzzles me, though, is why libertarians rarely ask analogous questions.  Like:

“What if Congress passes an unjust law, the President signs it, and the Supreme Court upholds it?”

“What if the government conscripts you to fight in an unjust war, and you die a horrible death?”

“What if a poor person drinks and gambles away his welfare check?”

“What if the government denies you permission to legally work?”

“What if the President decides your ethnicity is a national security risk and puts you in a concentration camp, and the Supreme Court declares his action constitutional?”

“What if a person lives an extremely unhealthy lifestyle, so by the time they’re retired, they’re in constant pain no matter how generous their Medicare coverage is?”

“What happens if a President lies to start a war, and voters don’t particularly care?”

Once you start the what-if game, it’s hard to stop.

Read it.

In New England, there remains one granite pillar against the tyranny of high tax burdens, found within the spirit of New Hampshire. This November, leadership from the State Legislature will attempt to end the creeping encroachment of the personal income tax applied to gaming winnings and interest from dividends. The New Hampshire Income Tax Amendment, known as CACR (13), would ban all forms of personal income taxes applied to a natural person.

The tax on ‘unearned income’ has long been a blot on the tax record of New Hampshire. Getting rid of it would certainly be a step in the right direction.

A good example of how state tax factors matter across state boundaries can be observed within the tale of Essex County, MA, which borders Rockingham County, NH. Over the last fifteen years, more than 23,000 taxpayers have left Rockingham County for Essex County, taking with them just over $1 billion in net AGI. However, during that same time more than 49,500 taxpayers have moved from Essex County to Rockingham County – thereby bringing more than $2.46 billion in net AGI to New Hampshire. This long-term trend from relatively high-tax states toward lower-tax regimes is typical for most states, even when close borders are not shared.

But New Hampshire is increasingly filling up with flotsam from neighboring socialists states like Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine, who bring their high-tax, grow-government attitudes with them. How long can it hold out, as the rest of New England becomes a Soviet-style collective? We’ll find out.

Read it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Of course, those of us who have visited Detroit find it no surprise.

Read it.

Pinterest’s user-generated content, which overwhelmingly emphasizes recipes, home decor, and fitness and fashion tips, feels like a reminder that women still seek out the retrograde, materialistic content that women’s magazines have been hawking for decades — and that the internet was supposed to help overcome.

Shame on all those pig-ignorant women who insist on following their own individual interests and refuse to get with the program that their betters have laid out for them!

And some of the most re-pinned recipes are diet ones. Pizza crust made with crumbled cauliflower as a low-carb alternative to dough is almost shockingly popular.

I mean, the nerve!

This isn’t where the internet was supposed to take us. The women I know who work in online women’s media hoped that the online content they created would provide an intellectual but fun alternative to print publications’ predictable fare.

And then that pesky market got in the way! People shouldn’t be allowed to just do what they want! They need to follow directions!

Read it.

Well. I guess American can’t suck all that badly.

Perhaps we could make it a general policy to ignore criticism from countries whose people would rather live here than there. That would simplify things immensely.

Read it.

I don’t think they mean Julie the receptionist.

Read it.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.

Read it.

Be prepared.

Read it.

Time-rich psychologists in the USA say they have discovered that female Democratic politicians are significantly less feminine in appearance than Republican ones – so much so that it’s often possible to tell which party a woman politico belongs to just by looking at her.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

I’ve always thought that Congresswoman DeLauro looks like somebody that Indian Jones ought to be battling in a third-world country. But I thought it was just me.

And a survey among undergraduate volunteers showed that you can actually tell what party a US lady politico is by gauging how feminine she appears:

In fact, the relationship is so strong that politically uninformed undergraduates were able to determine the political affiliation of the representatives with an overall accuracy rate that exceeded chance, and the accuracy of those predications increased in direct relation to the lawmaker’s proximity to feminine norms.

Well. There it is.

“Female politicians with stereotypically feminine facial features are more likely to be Republican than Democrat, and the correlation increases the more conservative the lawmaker’s voting record,” adds Colleen M Carpinella, a UCLA graduate student in psychology.

Hey, right-wing chicks are hot. Anne Coulter. Michelle Malkin. Laura Ingraham. Sara Palin. Pamela Geller. Bo Derek.

Perhaps interestingly, Democrat congressmen also appeared more masculine than Republican ones.

Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me a bit.

Read it.

Enquiring minds want to know.

Read it.

Firefly was wickedly creative, well-written and had fantastic humor. Spaceships and wardrobe that ranged from Western to Steampunk to Chinese aside, Firefly presented excellent Contract formation issues.

Contract formation consists of 1) Offer; 2) Acceptance; 3) Consideration; and 4) Performance.

In the world of Firefly, it was often 1) Offer 2) Acceptance 3) Gunfight (also known as breach). Let’s review three episodes to examine these contract issues.

Malcolm Reynolds, Esq.?

Steve Sailer.

 Perhaps my assumption that we owe certain debts to our fellow citizens, whether or not we like them or approve of their politics, is simply outmoded. The contemporary mindset seems to be that nobody is more annoying than your fellow citizens who don’t agree with you, in contrast to those blank slates from Randomistan.

Read it.

Confusion for whom?

Pop star Madonna urged Americans to support President Barack Obama during a concert in Washington DC but incorrectly referred to him as a Muslim.

Perhaps  she knows something you don’t.

With thanks to Freeberg.

Paul Mirengoff reminds us of an inconvenient truth.

Nearly twelve years after the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency it has become easy to forget this central fact about the former president: he is a pathological liar. For better or for worse, Clinton’s active participation in this year’s presidential campaign reminds us of this sad reality.

Forgetting that Bill Clinton is a world-class liar is like forgetting that Hulk Hogan is a wrestler or Barbra Streisand a singer.

Bryan Caplan scratches his head.

 Before I studied public opinion, I often wondered, “Why are democracies’ policies so bad?”  After I studied public opinion, I started asking myself the opposite question: “Why aren’t democracies’ policies even worse?”  The median American is no Nazi, but he is a moderate national socialist – statist to the core on both economic and social policy.  Given public opinion, the policies of First World democracies are surprisingly libertarian.

David Friedman points out that certain people have upside-down values.

 From the standpoint of an economist, the logic of global warming is  straightforward. There are costs to letting it happen, there are costs to preventing it, and by comparing the two we decide what, if anything, ought to be done. I am fairly sure, however, that  many of those who are sure we should be doing something about it do not see the question that way. What I see as costs, they see as benefits.

Reduced energy use is a cost if you approve of other people being able to do what they want, which includes choosing to live in the suburbs, drive cars instead of taking mass transit, heat or air condition their homes to what they find a comfortable temperature. But it is a benefit if you believe that you know better than other people how they should best live their lives—know that a European style inner city with a dense population, local stores, local jobs, mass transit instead of private cars, is a better, more human, lifestyle than living in the anonymous suburbs, commuting to work, knowing few of your neighbors. It is an attitude that I associate with an old song about little houses made of ticky-tacky—meaning houses the singer didn’t like and was therefore confident that other people shouldn’t be living in, occupied by people whose life style she thought she knew and was confident she disapproved of. A very arrogant, and very human, attitude.

And you know who you are. (But, more to the point, we know who you are, too….)

Read it.

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that despite all the talk of a farm labor shortage last summer, American farms had an amazingly profitable year.

Net cash income rose from the record high in 2010 of $99.4 billion to a new record high of $134.7 billion. That’s an eye-popping 35.5 percent profit growth! (Read more: More Data on The Phony Farm Labor Crisis)

I pointed out that in some of the states that had been repeatedly said to be facing a labor shortage—California and Washington, for example—profit growth was even higher. Washington farms saw profits grow by 58 percent, for goodness’ sakes.

Yet somehow the myth of a farm labor shortage persists.

Read it.

 A candidate for a Michigan judgeship scored a major coup: Nearly the entire cast of the TV’s “The West Wing” reunited in a Web ad to endorse her candidacy.

It apparently helped that state Supreme Court hopeful Bridget McCormack’s actress sister, Mary McCormack, played national-security adviser Kate Harper on the hit show for three seasons.

Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet, has a major role in the ad.

This one ought not to be difficult at all.

Freeburg is on a roll today.

Every time I buy something at the pharmacy I feel my ears reddening with a whole new anger toward those who think “big business” has made health care resources harder to get hold of, and a new and heavier dose of government involvement will somehow fix this. How long does your memory need to work, in order for you to realize that government meddling isn’t making the meds any cheaper? Two years or so, right? Seems that’s how often the politicians promise to fix the problem once-and-for-all.

It’s amazing how many stupid people there are in this country, who believe that getting the government involved in an area will make things either cheaper or more efficient, as if government employees have ever demonstrated any shred of ability to do that.

So the Obamapologists are trying to get out the vote by pledging allegiance in pictures, writing things on their hands first? I thought they didn’t like it when people wrote things on their hands. Wasn’t it just yesterday they were saying Sarah Palin is stupid and unsophisticated for writing things on her hand?

She wasn’t making the New Party Salute to the Obamassiah, though, and that makes all the difference.

Rush Limbaugh said that if the average liberal had to choose between making deadly radical Islamist extremism go away, or American conservatism go away, he’d hit the button that would obliterate American conservatism and leave the Islamic radicals running around wild & free. I think he’s right.

I agree, because they see conservatives as a threat and Muslims as not, which is what demonstrates that they are Too Stupid To Be Allowed To Run Things. If only the Left disliked terrorists as much as they dislike people who favor property rights, we’d all be safer in our beds tonight.

The Other McCain is on the case.

Rare is the day when I have cause to express gratitude to Matt Yglesias, but his expression of the statist view could not be clearer:

The concept of “redistribution” falsely implies that the existence of property is prior to the existence of the state. #mythofownership

The absolute disconnect between the statist idolatry of Yglesias and any real sense of history is not, I think, accidental.

And there it is, in a nutshell.

Read it.

One trend you can’t help but notice if you travel is the increasing homogenization of the urban culture and standard of urban development. Global markets demand standardized commodities that can be graded and traded. This includes cities. This forces cities increasingly into a standard model of what one expects.

If you’re a corrupt Democrat politician, Chicago is the place to be. Look what it did for Obama.

Read it.

 At stake are the Arctic’s abundant supplies of oil, gas and minerals that are, thanks to climate change, becoming newly accessible along with increasingly navigable polar shipping shortcuts.

Remind me again why Global Warming is a bad thing.

Read it.

Boy, there’s a hole with no bottom….

Read it.

Even the New York Times has something worth reading now and again.

I really don’t buy the premise that the only two options for ‘morality’ are religion or relativism. It ought to be possible to construct a system of behavioral norms rationally based on what we know about how societies work — and have to work, if they are to survive and prosper — without respect to any religious beliefs and without throwing up our hands and saying it’s all relative. (Indeed, I constructed such a chain of reasoning regarding murder as a seminar paper in law school; got an A on it, too.)

In fact, murder is a fine example. Every society has a behavioral norm barring murder — the definition of ‘murder’ varies a lot but it almost always falls within the scope of ‘unjustified killing of another person’ — and the penalty (except in our degenerate modern age) is almost invariably execution. The evolutionary case for such a bar is intuitively obvious: any social group in which one can’t depend on being safe from random whimsical killing is going to disintegrate whenever the opportunities outside the group exceed the danger of living inside the group.

And so on — were I a trust-fund baby I could spend a productive year or two exploring this process and possibly writing it up for publication. Try it yourself; it’s easier than it looks.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna takes a look at Andy McCarthy’s new book.

These most recent eruptions are easier to understand if you keep in mind Islam’s major premise: it is always the fault of the infidel — whatever particular inflammatory outbreak is occurring in the Ummah is never about Islam behaving badly. So, that being the case, once we’ve all been eliminated or sufficiently dhimmified (can’t get rid of us all otherwise who would do the work requiring skill or intelligence or degradation?), will peace reign in the Ummah? Heavens, no. Then the blame will shift to whatever Muslim group the blamer does not owe allegiance. In other words, keep the moral calculus simple. Islam’s justice mills grind very finely but they don’t do higher equations.]

…

Mr. McCarthy has been fighting this insanely and deeply alien evil since the days of the Blind Sheikh trial, when Omar Abdel Rahman was finally cornered and brought to justice in 1995. It is my opinion that this was McCarthy’s own trial by fire as he was forced to descend into the specifics of that unbounded malevolence which lies at the core of those who destroy in the name of their grotesque deity. The B.S. went to prison thanks to McCarthy and his team, but it is probably the case that what the prosecutor himself was forced to endure in the course of that trial left him permanently changed.

Roger Simon takes a look at the man behind the curtain.

Hillary Clinton, I insist that you have me arrested. I am thinking of making a movie about Mohammed.

I don’t want to brag, but as a film professional with an Academy Award nomination in screenwriting, I may do a better job than Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, alleged creator of the Innocence of Muslims.

But I have to admit one thing. Hopeless and inept as Nakoula may be as a filmmaker, I agree with the intentions of his movie. I too detest Islam because I happen to abhor misogyny and homophobia, both mainstays of that faith. And, like most Americans, I prefer freedom of religion to jihad, Sharia law, and a global caliphate.

Don’t let me criticize any of that.

I also happen to agree with Nakoula that making a movie about a faith whose prophet married a six year old and deflowered her at nine is of thematic and dramatic relevance. As a father, I am seriously concerned about child abuse, as is most of our film-going public, I would imagine.

Indeed, the beginnings of Islam are the very stuff of great theatre and cinema, reprehensible as the actions of the protagonist may be. In fact, it may be great because of those actions. After all, Richard III is not a classic for nothing.

So I am very tempted by the subject of Mohammed.

Arrest me, Hillary Clinton, before I start. Call Eric Holder!

Read it.

Set aside the opening follies of this administration, such as the cringe-inducing “reset” button given to Russia’s foreign minister that yielded no cooperation but managed to produce anti-American venom from Vladimir Putin and the harassment of our ambassador to Moscow by thugs in Putin’s youth movement.

Set aside the hypocrisy of the Obama team’s scorn at former governor Mitt Romney’s lack of foreign policy experience, given that its own candidate, during his two years in the Senate prior to his presidential campaign, managed to produce one large goof: contemptuous certainty that the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007 would fail.

Set aside even the unseemliness of the president blaming America’s failures abroad on the George W. Bush administration while claiming credit for operations whose foundations were laid during the Bush presidency.

Disregard all this, and the answer remains no.

Guess Obama’s World Apology Tour was a real success, wasn’t it? Certainly the massively improved image of America overseas, especially in the Muslim world, would seem to attest to it. God knows what would have happened if that warmongering bumbler Bush were still in charge.

Read it.

The reason for the apparent disconnect is because schools don’t prepare students for the real world, so broad educational attainment will have a weak correlation with economic power. Research has consistently shown that on nearly every measure of education (instructional hours, class-size, enrollment, college preparation), what students learn in school does not translate into later life success. The United States has an abundance of the factors that likely do matter: access to the best immigrants, economic opportunity, and the best research facilities.

Read it.

For years, we’ve been fascinated with the general phenomenon of technology moral panics, and how we see them all the time around new forms of technology. Video games destroying children’s brains. The internet leading kids into a life of porn. These things go back many, many years. In the 15th century there was a technopanic about the printing press (“He who ceases from zeal for writing because of printing is no true lover of the Scriptures.”) In the 19th century, people were told that traveling on trains above 20mph would asphyxiate passengers. A hundred years ago, movies and telephones were declared evil (movies: “This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood” and telephones: “Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?”).

Assuming, of course, that they haven’t been aborted first.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!  Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.  The effects are apparent in many countries.  Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.  A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.  The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.  Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities.  Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die.  But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.  No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.  Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proseltyzing faith.  It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

— Winston S. Churchill, The River War

Read it.

Ambassador Chris Stevens did not have a Marine detail in Benghazi, Libya. But White House Senior Advisor and Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett has a full Secret Service detail on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, according to Democratic pollster Pat Caddell.

Priorities, dude, priorities. My homies are more important than whatever might be happening in wog-world.

Read it.

Matt Welch gives tReason magazine a Blind Pig moment.

The fact is that the First Amendment, no matter how embattled, protects a range of expression unthinkable even in Western Europe. Because of that unique position, and because the U.S. seems doomed to play an outsized diplomatic and military role in the tumultuous Muslim world, it behooves the State Department to constantly explain the vast differences between state-sanctioned and legally protected speech in the so-called Land of the Free. If the U.S. government really was in the business of “firmly reject[ing]” private free-speech acts that “hurt the religious beliefs of others” there would be no time left over for doing anything else.

It’s really not that hard. The values in that film (or “film”) are not our values; our government respects religion, religious expression, and religious pluralism (including and especially that of Muslims, even in the wake of murderous Muslim-led attacks on American soil); and we are not in the business of approving or (for the most part) regulating the private speech of our citizens. To the extent that that message is not sufficient for rioters, the problem is theirs.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, waxes nostalgic.

All this illustrates something I spend a lot of time pondering: the strange disconnect between what democratic populations want and what they get—or fail to get—from their politicians.

…

Democratic government’s plodding regularities are certainly superior to despotism or prolonged anarchy. But one can’t help feeling it would be character-building for our political classes if a mob were to come around and break their windows now and then.

Steve Sailer dabbles in the Topic That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Roth’s key insight about race was that deep down, race is less about skin color than about whom your relatives are. That’s why old-fashioned passing, while beneficial objectively, was relatively rare. Under the American one-drop rule, having any black relatives meant that you were black. Hence, successful passing meant cutting yourself off from familial relationships with your kin.

And, of course, it all winds up back with Obama.

Members of the mixed-race castes began changing their self-image from Not Really Black to the Natural Leaders of Blacks just as white America was switching from despising to subsidizing blacks. Thus, several of the “black” mayors of New Orleans, such as the Morial family, have been creoles of color who could be said to be “passing” as black.

Similarly, as the Hawaiian-born preppie Obama documents in Dreams from My Father, he had to strive for years to make himself black enough to reap the rewards.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, speaks some inconvenient truth.

The fundamental problem here is that we don’t know what to do with adolescents. Well, we know what to do with the ones who are bookish and willing to be educated: Sit them in rows of desks and have trained teachers instruct them. We simply have no idea what to do with the others. All we have come up with is to subject them to the same environment as the bookish kids. This (see above) leads to massive waste and destroys some subset of studious, educable youngsters’ chances.

This sort of thinking is why we need to SUPPORT JOHN DERBYSHIRE (see right).

Read it.

A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface.

Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland’s dirty little secret is revealed.

Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about.

In SWPL terms, it is enough to celebrate diversity without, you know, doing anything about it. That way you can feel good about yourselves and yet not risk having to consort with people whose children you would avoid at all costs sending your children to the same school as.

Jeff Jarvis puts his finger on it.

Yes, we must remember. That is why I had insisted on returning in years past: so I could remember and give thanks for surviving that day. But the memorial does more than just remember. It closes up the open wound on the city but leaves the scar there. It refuses to let life return to the place where death occurred. Worse, it creates a new fortress of fear with security and scanners around it. Worse yet, one exits that fortress and returns to life through the gift shop.

That’s what happens when such things are put in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. They build a monument to themselves rather than to what is being remembered, and that is why it takes so long, because of all the pissing contests between massive narcissistic egos. You want a good example of a monument? The Vietnam Memorial in DC — done by a Yalie, I’ll point out — is perfect.

Read it.

That about sums up my opinion, too.

Understanding modernism’s not-so-hidden agenda, the Nazis were better off than we are. They recognized modern art for the degenerate thing it is. Today’s art students are taught that 1916 was an annus mirabilis that freed art from the shackles of form, figure, lighting, drawing, perspective, composition, genius, beauty, truth, and the moral principle.

Bruce Lawson says what we all really believe.

I think of non-GUI programs in the same way as I do about going camping. Some people love sleeping in a tent and getting up in the night to walk in the rain to poo in a hole they’ve dug behind a tree. Not me. I spend a considerable portion of my income on a house with a central heating system and three flushing toilets, so there’s no bloody way I’m going camping. You may think it a badge of honour that you can do “sudo dpkg -i –force-all cupswrapperHL2270DW-2.0.4-2a.i386.deb” from memory. I think you’re burying your turds with a trowel in a thunderstorm.

Read it.

And, of course, if the Obamas are obsessed with something, you’d better by-God be obsessed with it, too, or the gubmint gonna come down on you.

For the past three years, food has been an issue with the Obamas.  During the recession, they’ve dined in style while others have clipped coupon.  Wagyu beef, anyone?

Michelle made food her crusade, urging Americans to eat expensive, “healthy,” “organic” food (which has now proven to be just as nutritious as non-organic food), even as she was seen all over the world (and the TV) enjoying unhealthy food with gusto.

Although Barack Obama is regularly seen in public eating junk food, his increasing emaciation has led to Tabloids talking about him having an eating disorder.

Sonic Charmer, I think, has the right of it:

My take, it’s a status thing; food/skinniness is one of the last remaining socially-acceptable ways to show off your status. People more secure and/or deeply-rooted in their high status wouldn’t feel the need to indulge in this sort of thing, but the Obamas are relatively new to this stratosphere and so are just feeling their oats. Same goes for all Michelle’s travelling, etc.

Jacob Sullum calls them out.

Last week I faulted the Republicans for the selective reading of the Constitution reflected in their 2012 platform. But at least the folks who put together that platform have read the Constitution (or parts of it); I’m not sure the same can be said of their Democratic counterparts. While the Republicans have a 4,000-word section devoted to “A Restoration of Constitutional Government,” the Democrats give us 1,400 words on “Protecting Rights and Freedoms”—many of which, upon closer examination, turn out to be neither rights nor freedoms. Among the alleged rights that the Democrats promise to defend: freedom from “discrimination in the workplace and other settings,” “paycheck fairness” for women, “job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons,” “evidence-based and age-appropriate sex education,” government subsidies for Planned Parenthood, and taxpayer-funded health care, including “free access” to “prenatal screenings, mammograms, cervical cancer screening, breast-feeding supports, and contraception.”

Read it.

The last U.S. troops left Iraq in December 2011, while Barack Obama was president, but the “status of forces agreement” that governed the departure of U.S. troops was actually negotiated between Iraqi and U.S. officials in late 2008, under the auspices of President George W. Bush.  In fact, none other than the Huffington Post actually pointed out that as president, Obama was actually interested in keeping troops in Iraq past the agreed-upon 2011 deadline, explaining that “the president ultimately had no choice but to stick to candidate Obama’s plan — thanks, of all things, to an agreement signed by George W. Bush.” Just six months before the Bush deadline, Obama tried to foist 10,000 U.S. troops on the Iraqis past 2011.

Freeberg nails it yet again.

    Modern liberalism: Some 20 or 30 percent of us who never matured much past middle school, claiming to represent 99 percent, trying to win an election by a tenth of a percent so that some 4 percent of us can tell everybody else how to live, and where to put 100 percent of our money.

Read it.

A Polish research institute has developed a board game to teach young people about life under Communism. In the game, which is inspired by Monopoly, players must wait in endless lines at stores for scarce goods. For added realism, they have to put up with people cutting in line and products running out — unless they have a “colleague in the government” card.

The Other McCain is having a lot of fun with this one.

It takes a special kind of stupid for a Democrat to lose a statewide race in Massachusetts.

Indeed. It’s always entertaining watching the Democrat hand being bitten by one of their client groups; sort of makes them feel for a while what it’s like being a Republican.