Nicholas Kristof has a Blind Pig moment.

“PISS CHRIST,” a famous photograph partly financed by taxpayers, depicted a crucifix immersed in what the artist said was his own urine. But conservative Christians did not riot on the Washington Mall.

“The Book of Mormon,” a huge hit on Broadway, mocks the church’s beliefs as hocus-pocus. But Mormons haven’t burned down any theaters.

So why do parts of the Islamic world erupt in violence over insults to the Prophet Muhammad?

Perhaps because Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology under the guise of a religion, with which no co-existence is possible.

Perhaps because Islam is a deliberate construct by Satan in an attempt to destroy the Jews, God’s chosen people.

The possibilities are endless, although writing for theNew York Times bars Kristof from considering the obvious ones:

Let me try to address that indelicate question, and a related one: Should we curb the freedom to insult religions that are twitchy?

So, in the face of massive evidence that Islam is a murderous, dysfunctional belief system, Kristof turns his head to the side to consider ‘religions that are twitchy’. The term ‘clueless’ seems totally inadequate, like going up to an ax-murderer caught in the act and pondering whether we ought to criticize the fact that he has tattoos.

I guess the pig is still blind. False alarm.

The Atlantic completes it’s transition to a full-on Lefty rag.

Look at the “Voices” sidebar titles if you doubt it.

Ross Douthat is disgusted. Unfortunately, he’s hung up on this whole ‘moral equivalence’ hobby-horse that he needs to ride if he’s going to keep his lucrative gig at the New York Times, so he’s pretty much a walking illustration of what’s wrong with America.

For rich Republicans, the stereotype is all about the money: They have it, other Americans don’t, and those resentful, entitled others might just have enough votes to wage class warfare and redistribute the donors’ hard-earned millions to the indolent and irresponsible.

Which is the stone cold truth that very few are willing even to admit to themselves, much less utter in public.

For rich Democrats, the stereotype is all about the culture wars: They think they’ve built an enlightened society, liberated from archaic beliefs and antique hang-ups, and yet these Jesus freaks in flyover country are mobilizing to restore the patriarchy.

Which is a fantasy ‘progressives’ have clung to since Teddy Roosevelt. It’s the equation of truth with fantasy that makes Douthat such a caricature of a columnists, a would-be David Brooks pandering to his paymasters by licking their hands while peeing on their legs in hopes that this somehow will be interpreted as ‘balance’.

Hence the category Axis of Drivel, which (besides being a clever pun) is pretty much an exact description of our modern information media.

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I guess the goober doesn’t fall far from the bush.

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Frankly when I saw the release about Fquare’s launch I thought it would be about crowdfunding for… I don’t know… food? Buying cows? Anyways, it turns out it’s about something pretty cool for struggling farmers out there. This is about investing in farmland and potentially keeping hard-pressed farmers on the land in a totally new way.

And if that works, they’ll do the same with blacksmiths, buggy-whip makers, and God knows what next.

Face it, clowns, the 40-acres-and-a-mule model of the ‘family farm’ is as obsolete as kerosene lamps and cracker barrels. Try to keep up.

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An American Ambassador and three American security guards were butchered, anti-American riots broke out across the Middle East, a U.S. Embassy both before and after being stormed issued apologies for the exercise of our constitutional rights, our Secretary of State practically prostrated herself, the President had a good night’s sleep through it all and then went to Vegas for a fundraiser, and Mitt Romney commented intelligently on the absurdity of it all.

So on whom did the media collectively and in unison lash out?  Mitt Romney.

Media bias? What media bias?

Read it.

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

Maybe we ought to start a web site called “90 Days, 90 Reasons Why Obama Sucks”. We could start with his golf game.

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Apparently the preferred retirement occupation for those who have gotten rich from shuffling numbers around is to stride the highways and byways warning against those evil rich people. (Funny, I don’t see any of them giving the money back.)

Quite frankly, I’d be more impressed if one of these Lame-Stream Media outlets could find a ‘journalist’ who actually knew what the term ‘oligarch’ meant…. Obama is an oligarch. Harry Reid is an oligarch. John Kerry is an oligarch. Vladimir Putin is an oligarch. George Soros is merely a corrupt rich guy.

Read it. But don’t bother watching the video; it’s just more of the same old shit.

Barack Obama last night told residents of America’s Gulf Coast that they should evacuate their homes if necessary and that they should not to “tempt fate” as Tropical Storm Isaac was upgraded to a category one hurricane.

Because, you know, if he didn’t, then they would just ignore it, having no experience of hurricanes on the Gulf coast.

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These are the 1%, if anyone is. I’ll leave you to guess how many of them support Obama.

But everybody knows that The Filthy Rich Are Republicans, right? Right.

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

Although the dimwitted refuse to acknowledge it, merely calling yourself a Republican doesn’t make you a Republican, any more than calling watch a Rolex makes it a Rolex.

Certain people run for election as ‘Republicans’ because the competition for pro-government pro-welfare pro-degeneracy candidates is less in the Republican party than it is in the Democrat party, and there are a lot of apparatchiks in the Republican party who regard it as some sort of sports contest in which winning is everything so they’re willing to play along. Nanny Bloomberg in New York is one such (Hey, it worked for John Lindsay, didn’t it?), and Charlie ‘The Tuna’ Crist in Florida is another.

Read it.

One of Barack Obama’s recent ads for his re-election campaign purports to feature Republican women who have turned away from the GOP to support Obama/Biden. But, as it turns out, one of the women in the ad is not so “Republican.”

Maria Ciano has been a registered Democrat for the last six years — several years longer than Obama has been president — according to her voting records.

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… which doesn’t hold a candle to how much Republicans are turned off by the sniveling toady-to-the-left positions espoused by the current so-called ‘Conservative’ Party in Britain.

Brooks Newmark, a government Whip and MP for Braintree in Essex who was born in the US and campaigned for George Bush Snr as a student, said that Barack Obama remained much more popular with Tory MPs than Mitt Romney and his fiscally conservative running-mate Paul Ryan.

Really, I’m surprised that they dare use the name.

“More importantly the whole Tea Party movement doesn’t sit comfortably with most conservatives in the UK. And the whole Bible-Belt thing; looking to God the whole time; the extreme anti-abortion approach; it just doesn’t sit well with the Conservative Party at all.”

Dude, we left for a reason. Think about it.

Read it.

On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates and insulates these knuckle-draggers.

Oh, really? Google the following: Sheilia Jackson-Lee. Cynthia McKinney. Major Owen. All Democrat Congresscritters. All dumber than sand. And I don’t even need to bring up Joe Biden, do I?

And when it comes to ‘matters of basic science’ and ‘elementary fiscal math’, I haven’t met a Democrat in my 62 years that knows what a market is or how it works. Getting your ears boxed in a medieval classroom? Most Democrats, put in a medieval classroom and allowed to vent, would get beaten until they couldn’t move for incorrigible stupidity.

Looks like Mr Egan knows as little about Republicans — and Democrats — as he does about medieval classrooms.

And they pay money for this drivel….

Read it.

And lose with dignity, as he did.

Dyspepsia Generation urges Mitt Romney to stay away from RINO squish losers like Bob Dole.

Note to Republicans: Advice from losers can safely be ignored.

Read it.

Yet another hit-piece by our ‘unbiased’ media. The completely factual ‘Romney Uses Data Mining’ is neutral and objective and doesn’t advance the pro-Obama agenda, so they needed to stick in some scare words to make sure everyone gets the message.

Anyone who doesn’t think that the Obama campaign isn’t using data mining to identify potential donors is too stupid to be allowed to vote.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has long been known as data-savvy, but Romney’s project appears to take a page from the Fortune 500 business world and dig deeper into available consumer data.

And there you have it: Obama is ‘data-savvy’, Romney is installing TV cameras in your toilet.

An AP analysis this week determined that Romney’s campaign has made impressive inroads into even traditionally Democratic neighborhoods, collecting more than $350,000 this summer around San Francisco in contributions that averaged $400 each.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that ‘traditionally Democratic neighborhoods’ might realize that Obama is a slow-motion train wreck, and it couldn’t possibly be that ‘traditionally Democratic neighborhoods’ might harbor people who, you know, actually prefer Romney. Nope, it’s got to be sleazy CORPORATE MANIPULATION. The swine.

High-dollar donors have been essential to Romney’s election effort, unlike Obama, who relies on more contributors giving smaller amounts.

Hollywood will be delighted to hear it — so I guess Morgan Freeman will get his $1,000,000 back? And all those $50,000-a-plate fundraisers that Obama’s been doing are just camouflage? Hey, good that the record is being set straight.

Romney and the GOP have out-fundraised Obama’s re-election effort for the past three months.

And that’s what really burns: People putting their money on the line to Support the Wrong Guy. That’s why this article had to be written, and plastered all over the nation’s front page; the first in a never-ending drumbeat until November.

Read it.

New ice core data from the Antarctic Peninsula has revealed that temperatures in the region during the past 10,000 years have often been higher than they are today, and that warming of the sort seen there recently has also occurred in the pre-industrial past.

Shucks – all that Global Warming hysteria, wasted. Well, better luck next time.

Thomas Friedman is a comedian but just doesn’t know it.

This is like Stalin writing an article on Jeffersonian democracy.

True conservatives know that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used both tax revenue and spending cuts to fix budget shortfalls.

Actually, true conservatives know that Reagan accepted increased taxes as the price he had to pay to get Democrats to agree to spending cuts that then never happened — in effect, he was rolled by Tip O’Neill & co. And George H.W. Bush isn’t a model that any true conservative would want to emulate. But Friedman, a classic Beltway liberal, has a definition of ‘true conservative’ that only another Beltway liberal would recognize. I’m sure he things of Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks as ‘true conservatives’.

John Hinderaker has some fun bashing biased reporting.

Mayer, no believer in Occam’s Razor, hypothesizes that the problem is that rich Republican donors are greedy, while rich Democratic donors are altruistic:

    Creating a sense of intimacy with the President is especially important with Democratic donors, a frustrated Obama fund-raiser argues: “Unlike Republicans, they have no business interest being furthered by the donation—they just like to be involved. So it makes them more needy. It’s like, ‘If you’re not going to deregulate my industry, or lower my taxes, can’t I at least get a picture?’”

This is profoundly stupid. Given the endless overreach of the federal government, every substantial business is affected by federal laws and regulations. Democratic businessmen have “business interests” just like Republican businessmen–leave my industry alone, or regulate my competitors, or don’t single out my industry for a destructive tax, or don’t adopt a stupid regulation. Or pay my business money: when the federal government spends $3 1/2 trillion a year, it is supporting not just a lot of senior citizens, but a lot of businesses, too.

Read it.

We want women and Negroes in these previously white-male bastions of privilege, but it has to be the correct (or should I say Correct?) kind of women and Negroes.

So glass ceilings only truly get broken by ladies who have the right kind of politics. Duly noted, white man!

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Apparently Obama is not sufficiently socialist for some.

For positive change in the issues that affect our daily lives — not only food but also jobs, income, housing — we need active political leadership. But until President Obama is pushed more strongly by the left, the coming presidential election represents a choice between a full-fledged attack on government services and a continuing slide into the gloomy and depressing world of austerity economics. That’s a real choice, but it’s not a happy one.

The New York Times is possibly the only place where you can see what Obama does characterized as ‘a continuing slide into … austerity economics’. If adding trillions to the national debt in less than three years counts as ‘austerity economics’, what is the language coming to?

Mark Bittman, the author, allegedly writes ‘on food and all things related’, so I guess there is nothing that the Left doesn’t think relates to politics. These people need to get a life … preferably not at taxpayer expense, although I realize that is asking a lot.

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The question almost answers itself.

Admit it:  when Joe opens his mouth, you feel a lot smarter than you did right before he opened his mouth.

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Imagine that. Quelle dommage.

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Although what reason the U.S. would have to invade their piss-ant country is left as an exercise for the reader, I guess.

What a great idea! Perhaps we ought to train a million-strong guerrilla army to defend the US against a Mexican invasion.

Oops! Too late….

Read it.

There is less here than meets the eye. tReason magazine has some fun with that:

CNN’s reporting of the new study focuses on one Mercedes Lipscomb, who was rejected from the National Guard for being 80 pounds overweight. She lost the weight on her own. First of all, good for her. Second of all, way to point out that this problem does not require government intervention.

More to the point, CNN’s reporting goes on about the cost to the military ($60 million) to have to replace overweight recruits that are unable to complete their service, which means the military is apparently letting in some of these 25 percent. Another full 50 percent of young Americans are disqualified due to poor education and criminal records, but you won’t find any suggestions of charter schools or legal reform (the early education programs are supposed to solve these problems).

Tina Rosenberg, Voice of the Crust, wants to nanny-state you even more than you are already. ‘It’s for the children!’

I’m not going to bother quoting any of her article, because it’s the same old we’re-doing-it-because-you’re-too-stupid-to-know-what’s-good-for-you logic that she would be the first to denounce if opponents of things like abortion or pornography or drugs or whatever the left-wing Neat Thing To Do of the week might be. I’d bet money she’s a huge supporter of Nanny Bloomberg’s attempts to make you Eat Right And Live Straight, by law if necessary.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s let people run their own lives, alright? If smoking poses no danger to others — and it doesn’t, bogus claims of ‘second-hand smoke’ to the contrary notwithstanding, however annoying it may be to those of us who don’t smoke — then Keep Your Nose Out.

This attitude is a major reason why government-funded (i.e. taxpayer-funded) health care is such a bad idea: Once everybody starts paying for your health care, then everybody thinks they have a right to stick their noses into your health care decisions, even when it’s obviously None Of Their Damned Business. This way lies fascism, and the fact that it’s dressed in a pretty blue-state Democrat Clever Plastic Disguise ought not to fool anybody (except the fools who are pushing it — and those, like the poor, we have always with us).

Read it.

The media-formerly-known-as-mainstream are doing their best –as a commentator who is more outspoken than I am put it–to “drag Barack Obama’s sorry ass across the finish line.” We see this every day; a particularly egregious example was the press coverage of Mitt Romney’s excellent trip overseas. The Media Research Center analyzed the news coverage of Romney’s trip and concluded that an astonishing 86% of network news stories focused on Romney’s supposed “gaffes.” If you watched the video of “reporters” from the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN heckling Romney in Poland, you don’t need a scorecard to know which presidential campaign they are trying to boost.

Media bias? Say it ain’t so!

Read it.

Hattori was convicted of attacking and raping a 19-year-old student who was cycling home from college in January 2002. He set her on fire while she was still conscious, killing her. Hattori was on parole after being sentenced for a violent robbery.

Matsumura killed his 57-year-old aunt and his 72-year-old grand uncle in separate attacks in January 2007 and stole their money.

Sound like good calls to me. At least they don’t charge the families for the cost of the pistol bullet, as I’m told the Red Chinese do.

Amnesty International says there are around 130 death-row inmate in Japan at imminent risk of execution. It says the secretive nature of the system means they may spend every day on death row fearing they could be killed at any time.

I have no problem with that.

France urged Japan to restore a moratorium on its use of the death penalty following the executions.

Doesn’t seem to me like any of France’s business. They don’t have a Frog in this fight, to coin a phrase.

“France calls on Japan to follow the path of the 140 countries who have, in law or in practice, ended capital punishment by re-establishing its de facto moratorium while it continues a national debate on the future of the death penalty,” a French foreign ministry spokesman said.

Well, let’s just compare France’s murder rate with Japan’s. (Don’t forget to include the multicultural immigrants, which Japan has had the wisdom to keep out.) Looks like France has 1.35 per 100k while Japan has 0.45 — perhaps the Japanese know something that the French don’t?

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General Francisco Franco is to be stripped of his title of honorary mayor of Valencia, 36 years after his death, following a Spanish court ruling that it is “incompatible” with modern democracy.

Although they were quick enough to kiss his ass when he was alive. And he was a short shit, too, so that would have involved some serious bending down.

Read it.

 CNN represents the passive-aggressive Left. MSNBC is unrestrained id, but CNN can never fully surrender to its liberal impulses. It tries to maintain a fig leaf of neutrality. But CNN can’t get through the day without betraying what it really thinks, often in underhanded ways. Thus, when CNN did a story on Chick-fil-A today, what did it focus on? The merits of the controversy? The fact that more than one Democratic government official has threatened to violate the company’s constitutional rights, because its CEO is opposed to gay marriage? No. In a dog whistle to its liberal audience, CNN focused on the fact that Todd and Sarah Palin, along with thousands of other Americans, tweeted photos of themselves eating at Chick-fil-A….

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Barack Obama’s White House has been forced to admit that it did return a bust of Sir Winston Churchill to British diplomats, after describing such claims as “100 per cent false”.

Perhaps I need a new category, ‘Obama’s Minions Caught Lying Again’.

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Dimock, Pa. is famous within the anti-fracking movement for being the city from the movie Gasland where residents had to drink exclusively from bottled water because the well water was so contaminated by nearby fracking sites that you could light it on fire. However, yesterday the EPA released data that actually indicated that samples in the private drinking well water “did not indicate levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action,” according to the EPA’s press release. The EPA did find dangerous levels of arsenic, barium, and manganese in five homes (out of the 64 sampled), but all of these substances “are also naturally occurring substances” which, in any case, can be reduced by available treatment systems.

In other words, the enviro-nazis and their ‘progressive’ co-conspirators are lying like rugs.

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

Mark Helprin has some fun with a Voice of the Crust.

Every day it seems, reason and the English language are ravished by contemporary American politics.

For example, as there is no God-given tax rate, when the rate increases it is an increase, not the expiration of a decrease. Were it the latter, one could say that the Bush tax cuts were not tax cuts but the expiration of the Clinton increases, the Clinton increases the expiration of the Reagan cuts, the Reagan cuts the expiration of previous increases, and so on. Such is the thinking of non-effervescent minds that see as a cut a lesser increase in spending than they advocate, or urge passage of a stupendous, juggernaut, congressional bill so that they can find out what’s in it.

‘Progressives’, like their siblings the Socialists and Communists, realize that controlling the meaning of language perforce controls the means of debate. Hence the use of loaded terms like ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ for copyright infringement, and ‘gay marriage’ for a relationship that has never been characterized as marriage in all of human history.

The nation appears more and more able to eat whatever words are shoved down its throat. It is told, and does not protest, that Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is indeed a religion of peace, but it is also, quite demonstratively and throughout the world in proof after proof day after day, a religion of war.

(And that’s not to mention usage of ‘racism’ for being disagreeable to Muslims, which aren’t a race even by the expansive standards of the Left.)

Perhaps the most brazen language diktat has been the mischievous switch of political colors. Stalin would hardly believe it, but blue now supposedly signifies the left and red the right. According to Wikipedia and the Washington Post, so it must be true, the change came in 2000 courtesy of MSNBC and NBC’s “Today” show. It next migrated to David Letterman at CBS, and then went bacterial. The spirit of the change is reminiscent of the cable TV directory that read, “The World’s Best Ho . . .” when space was clearly available for “tels.” One can imagine the high-pitched giggling at this naughtiness. Saddling your political rivals with a symbol to which they have been historically opposed is an even better and naughtier joke. Either it was that or numbing cluelessness.

That’s always puzzled me. Republicans are Red? Not even. Democrats are Blue, the traditional color in Europe for Reaction? Guess their admiration for Europe stops at that water’s edge.

Red is the mobile color of passion and engagement, and blue the staid color of reason and detachment. As you may recall, the left champions radical change spurred by boundless compassion, while the right wants to check the passions of human nature as they flow into politics, and to balance opposing powers in a stable equilibrium. Over time, natural affinities for the two colors have been confirmed by adoption—communist, socialist, and labor parties almost always favoring red. But if NBC says to, we had better jump into line. Most of the country has already done so without a thought. Who says “old media” is vestigial? They are highly adaptable, or, as they might say, “Better blue than dead.”

After all, if the Voices of the Crust say it, is it not our duty to believe it?

Read it.

There’s been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a virus and this has caused the Department of Defense (DOD) to use GNU/Linux which is a more secure option. This has, predictably, caused raised eyebrows and demands by some that any military organisation should be prevented from using GNU/Linux in offensive weapons systems.

Thanks, guys, I needed a laugh. Just how do you plan to stop them? Call the U.N.? Join the Folksong Army?  Occupy Leavenworth?

Read it.

The New York Times is receiving pushback from its constituents for having the audacity to explain that changes in marriage patterns are playing a huge role in the growth of income inequality.

‘Step outa line, the man come, and take you away….’

Katie Roiphe pushes back in a piece for Slate. She characterizes the piece as “another puritanical and alarmist rumination on the decline of the American family disguised as a straight-news story.” Presumably, Roiphe believes that income inequality is a legitimate story topic, but its causes aren’t, unless they conform to the feminist narrative.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised. (Slate really ought to be renamed Prate.)

Read it.

In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too.

Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little – or nothing- to back them.

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

Read it.

If that’s not the perfect article for NPR, I don’t know what is.

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Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) threatened on Monday that Democrats would let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody if Republicans did not compromise with Democrats and not extend the tax cuts for those in income brackets above $250,000.

Message: It’s more important for ‘the rich’ to get hurt, even if everyone gets hurt, than take the chance that  everybody might get a benefit that ‘the rich’ might also get.

Democrats: The Kindergarten Recess Party.

Read it.

Or so The Politico would have you believe. (Agenda? What agenda?) Sorry, guys; it’s only a nightmare for Democrat demagogues who need those votes in order to access the public trough.

In the states with significant voter ID laws, more than 10 million eligible citizens live 10 or more miles from an office issuing the proper photo IDs and about half a million of those voters don’t have access to a vehicle, according to a study out Wednesday.

So how do they get to the polls on election day? Both political parties have ‘get out the vote’ efforts; getting voters registered would seem a perfect application of that. But no; opening the system up to fraud is the only ‘fair’ solution.

In the report, the Brennan Center — which is regarded as a liberal think tank and is against the new voter ID laws — states free photo IDs are not easily accessible to the 11 percent of voters who do not currently have them.

So how do they cash a check, drive a car, fly on a plane, get into an R-rated movie, see the President, or attend a Union meeting, all of which require a photo ID? I guess voting is less important than any of those other things.

The government offices where voters can obtain the proper IDs have limited business hours, the Brennan Center stated, citing an example in Sauk City, Wisconsin where the ID office is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month — but only four months in 2012 have that fifth Wednesday.

Oh, gee, the government’s operations are inconvenient. Who would ever have thought it? And Wisconsin is a blue state — surely it couldn’t be that Democrat bureaucrats are deliberately making getting a government ID difficult so as to support studies like these? Naw, that could never happen.

Read it.

Frum certainly has embraced his inner Crust and ‘progressed’ far from the days when he pretended to be a conservative.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline turns over a rock and watches what scuttles out.

Here’s how Politico writers Jake Sherman and Reid Epstein reported the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s vote to hold Eric Holder in contempt: “The Fast and Furious investigation has finally handed House Republicans a prize they’ve long sought: a legal smackdown of the Obama administration.”

Can anyone imagine this lead sentence if the House had found the Attorney General in a Republican administration, Alberto Gonzalez for example, in contempt? I can’t. Instead, Politico would no doubt be focusing on the obstruction (real or imagined) that led to the contempt vote, and very possibly touting the House’s action as a victory for truth, justice, and the American way.

CNN is pissed that Congress isn’t passing enough laws.

The current Congress has worked just as many days as its legislative predecessors. It just has a lot less to show for it.

According to a CNN analysis of congressional records that looked at bills that became law and the number of days lawmakers worked, members of the House have spent more than 150 days and Senate just over 140 days in session so far, comparable to previous Congresses at this point in the term.

Color me cynical, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug. Of course a Voice of the Crust would think more laws better than less, but somebody ought to sit them down and explain that ‘number of laws passed’ is not the proper metric for a legislature. That way lies fascism.

Read it.

Though Stewart distances himself from the “one-percenters” and bellows over their extravagance, his bank accounts bear all the marks of the “multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires” he mocks. The 49-year-old Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, makes more than 300 times the median American salary, owns three luxury homes and sometimes doesn’t pay his taxes.

In January Stewart exploded on-air over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s income level. “That’s almost — that’s almost $57,000 a day!” he gushed.

But Stewart’s own income level brings him and his wife Tracey approximately $41,000 a day. The celebrity income-handicapping website Celebrity Net Worth lists his annual salary as $15 million and estimates his net worth at $80 million.

Pot, meet kettle.

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The poor in Britain face a “perfect storm” of benefit cuts, rising living costs and a lack of jobs that result in a return to Victorian levels of inequality, a charity has said.

Women and minorities hardest hit, of course.

Left as an unjustified assumption is that ‘inequality’, per se, is somehow a Serious Problem … which of  course it is to the Levelers in OxFam — but for normal people? Not so much.

Benefit cuts? Well, if fifty years of socialist kleptocracy hadn’t raised two generations of slackers dependent on the government, that wouldn’t be a problem. Rising living costs? Try toting up the costs of silly government regulations layered on top of normal business costs. (Guess how much of the price of auto fuel is taxes. No wonder ‘living costs’ are rising.) Lack of jobs? Figure the costs of hiring a new worker under the Nanny State and see whether you can make a profit doing so.

So what’s the solution? According to OxFam, more government. ‘Let’s try adding more of what got us in this situation in the first place! Of course, what a wonderful idea!’

The notorious Sean Rayment overheats his cliche machine.

It’s hot, dark, airless and smells of rotting wood. The floor is uneven and my guide, a US soldier, warns me that there may be snakes.

I walk gingerly to the centre of the room where a wooden table is bolted to the floor. The hut is divided into two rooms, each the mirror image of the other.

There are no windows, just space for an air-conditioning unit; the ceilings and walls have been soundproofed.

Read it.

Published in the spring of 1962, Michael Harrington’s The Other America was a sweeping description of the country’s poor, combined with an appeal to the federal government and “better-off” to save them. It became one of the best-selling books ever authored by an American socialist, inspired the creation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society regime, and has been routinely hailed as one of the most influential books of the 20th century. This year partisans of the welfare state are commemorating the golden anniversary of The Other America with a series of celebrations and renewed calls for government programs to save the poor once more.

Read it.

Well, if you’re really concerned….

So what vast sums of money did the duplicitous executives at General Electric lavish on the Reason Foundation in 2008 and 2009 to support an implied campaign to traduce climate science? Exactly $325. How much did GE spend on matching and direct grants on the six think tanks identified by the UCS as being pro-climate consensus? That would be $497,744. At least with regard to General Electric’s contributions, it appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists has salted a follow-the-money trail with pieces of fool’s gold, which certain unwary news outlets obligingly picked up and reported as real bullion.

Read it.

Read it.

It was a fairly typical lunch at an academic conference in the East after the New Hampshire primary in 2008. There was a smattering of endowed professorships and international reputations at the table, perhaps eight academics in all.

Along with the sweet tea and penne pasta came the inevitable skewering of George W. Bush.

“Never has a president experienced such horrible poll approval numbers in the midst of a war,” one professor quipped.

“That is, if you overlook Harry Truman,” I interjected into an uncomfortable silence.

It was going to be that kind of meal.

Illustrating once again Jonah Goldberg’s theory of The Tyranny Of Clichés: Nobody in the Crust likes George W Bush, so obviously he’s The Worst President Ever; everybody in the Crust loves Barack Obama (although that love is wearing kinda thin recently), so obviously he’s The Best President Ever. Record? Who cares about the record?

“I couldn’t vote for a Mormon,” one professor said. There was some polite (or perhaps impolite) head-bobbing. “It’s a cult. Very intolerant, and their opinions about women, and, well … ” and his voice trailed off.

Ask him his opinion of Muslims, and I expect that he would fall all over himself proclaiming his willingness to vote for one for President.

I’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing. At one session involving a discussion of Utah’s history, several dismissive comments were spoken, rather blithely and without any sense of embarrassment. Belittling comments were made about Mormons’ abstemiousness, and there was a general negative undercurrent. The LDS Church was referred to as the Mormon Church, something many members object to. They don’t mind being called Mormons, but their church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church. At least some of the professors who were making these remarks knew that.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/05/29/essay-about-prejudice-academe-against-mormons#ixzz1weV83BeG
Inside Higher EdI’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing. At one session involving a discussion of Utah’s history, several dismissive comments were spoken, rather blithely and without any sense of embarrassment. Belittling comments were made about Mormons’ abstemiousness, and there was a general negative undercurrent. The LDS Church was referred to as the Mormon Church, something many members object to. They don’t mind being called Mormons, but their church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church. At least some of the professors who were making these remarks knew that.