Read it.

Note the assumption in the headline that a sit-in is somehow not a crime — which it most definitely is.

For some reason we have become desensitized to levels of street violence that in the Good Old Days would have brought ‘a whiff of grapeshot’ response. The U.S. Constitution gives the right of assembly but specifies ‘peaceably’; once it stops being peaceable, it stops being a right.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Tom Smith at The Right Coast spanks MoDo big-time.

Poor Maureen.  She could spend a whole day getting gussied up and she still wouldn’t look half as good as Sarah does in camos.  I watched the episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska Ms. Dowd discusses here and she shockingly misrepresents it.  Palin switched rifles after a miss but as a subsequent test suggested, the sights on the first weapon were off.  She killed the caribou with a good, clean shot. I actually agree with Dowd that the suggestion in the show that hunting on the tundra is a practical way to harvest meat is somewhat misleading, but it’s not misleading at all to suggest it’s great recreation, a way to reconnect with family and you get some meat into the bargain.  I would love to go on such a trip.  Unless Dowd is suggesting we all give up eating meat, there’s nothing wrong with shooting caribou and eating them.  Dowd indulges in poor wittle Bambi fallacy as if her steak tartar comes from the meat fairy.  By contrast, we saw a lot of butchering of the Palins’ kill, a lot more than you usually see on hunting shows.  There are positively swarms of caribou on the arctic tundra and everything else up there, bears, wolves, skeeters, you name it, eats them, so why shouldn’t the Palins.  This is not shooting rhinos for their horns or something.

Maureen Dowd is one of a stable of New York Times writers who seem to have only two columns, one that says ‘I hate Sarah Palin!’ and one that says ‘I hate George W Bush!’, and they keep phoning in versions of those two as long as the Times is willing to pay for it. (Well, actually, to be fair, they have a handful of black writers who have a third column that says ‘You’re all racists out there!’)

Read it.

Shocking I know. But it does illustrate that Friedman thinks the Communist Chinese as clueless about America as he has so often demonstrated himself to be.

Consider the following gem:

Americans just had what they call an “election.” Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could do it to him. This leaves us relieved. It means America will do nothing serious to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.

Of course, it wouldn’t surprise a Normal Intelligent Adult that a Chinese Communist functionary wouldn’t recognize an election — after all, they dispensed with such nonsense long ago — but it apparently surprises Friedman?

And why not? Friedman wouldn’t recognize an election if it bit him on the butt, as this literary conceit demonstrates plainly.

His affection for the Communist Chinese viewpoint apparently keeps him from realizing that if the Congressmen in question didn’t have their regulatory hands on the throats of American business, then American business would not be paying them money, nor would the Congressmen in question be in a position to persuade them to do so.

No apparent recognition of the fact that, of all the liars in Congress, the highest percentage of them belong to the party that he supports, votes for, and keeps trying to push farther toward the Communist Chinese point of view. (The Communist Chinese, of course, are world-famous for their truth-telling at all costs.)

And, of course, a Normal Intelligent Adult would point out that the structural problems Ballooning Deficit and Declining Educational Performance are the direct consequence of people like Friedman being in control of the levers of power, that Crumbling Infrastructure is a direct consequence of the fact that people who build roads (and people who pay for them) are required to pay confiscatory Union rates by the very same sort of politician that Friedman would vote for (Democrat), and that Declining Immigration of New Talent doesn’t hold a candle to the problem of Increasing Immigation of Illegal Refugees From the Mexican Drug Wars.

But, then, a Normal Intelligent Adult really has no incentive to interact with Friedman at all; talking to a post would be so much more productive.

Check it out.

Yeah, that’s really effective advertising, all right. Makes me want to rush right out and buy one.

Not.

Read it.

Indeed, ‘Freakonomics’ is exactly the right title for the column.

Stephen J. Dubner is an author and journalist who lives in New York City.

And a Voice of the Crust. They left out the most important part.

The entire premise of the article is that this money somehow belongs rightfully to the government, and these slimy bastards, just by dying during the year when there is no estate tax, thereby screwed the government out of all this money that was rightfully its.

Read it.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

But the Voices of the Crust are standing by to carry on its anti-American struggle.

El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down.

Ah, yes, the Usual Suspects. What would we do without them? Perhaps win the war against terrorism, or something disgusting like that.

Read it.

An outfit called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength has drawn the attention of the Wall Street Journal with a letter calling for a tax increase on those earning more than $1 million a year.

The Journal reporter asked a couple of the “patriotic millionaires” why they don’t just send in voluntary checks to the Treasury rather than trying to raise everyone’s taxes. One of them, Dennis Mehiel, responded, “Let’s carry this voluntary taxation argument to its conclusion. We already have a country like that, it’s called Greece. No one pays taxes in Greece. We’ve had a progressive income tax in the U.S. for decades and during that time we had a growing middle class and increased affluence and increase consumption. To say we should just write our own checks is a spurious argument. It’s catchy. But it has no validity in a substantial dialogue about public policy.”

But the American millionaires are not like Greeks who don’t pay taxes. In fact in 2007 the top 1% of taxpayers paid more than 40% of the federal income taxes, more than are paid by the bottom 95%. In 2008, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 38.0 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 20.0 percent of adjusted gross income.

So either there’s something else going on here, or millionaires can be as stupid as anybody else. Which it is, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Mr. Mehiel ran for lieutenant governor of New York in 2002 and lost after a campaign full of mud-slinging.

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

There’s a certain asymmetry in this debate. The “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength” get attention from the press, probably get invited to testify on Capitol Hill, see their names in the company of other famous and widely lauded people, and seem selfless. If some millionaires against tax increases were to start an organization called Patriotic Millionaires Against Coercion and Socialism, they’d get attacked as selfish, even though they’re not the ones trying to force their own values on others. The Patriotic Millionaires Against Coercion and Socialism, if they ever got started, would argue that they’d rather exchange the money voluntarily with their employees, their shareholders, their customers, or their charities than have it taken by force by the government.

‘Asymmetry’. What an anodyne name for it. I think the technical term in German is ‘einbahnstrasse’.

Read it.

You just know it’s bound to happen, especially after an election season as heated as this one was. That Republican relative we all have is going to show up at Thanksgiving and start parroting lies about Democrats that he heard on Fox News or from one of those shadow group attack ads he saw on TV during the campaign.

That’s why we’re proud to bring back the DCCC’s Thanksgiving Cheat Sheet. The Cheat Sheet will arm you with the real facts so you can answer back with the truth as soon as your Republican relatives start sounding like Sarah Palin.

Read it.

My question is: If she were white or Asian, would they care quite as much?

Read it.

An odd thing to see on NPR. Usually they’re a reality-free environment.

Read it.

ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger has been awarded a column in the New York Times, which explains that ProPublica “produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” The formulation makes one wonder in whose interest the rest of journalism is published in.

Read it.

The Wall Street Journal succumbs to the Identity Politics Error.

Despite more diversity initiatives, as well as maternity-leave and part-time policies that are generally viewed as female-friendly, women remain dramatically underrepresented in law firms leadership ranks, according to a new study from the National Association of Women Lawyers.

The key shell-game-word here is ‘underrepresented’. Using the term ‘underrepresented’ assumes (without attempting to prove) that women are somehow entitled to some sort of ‘representation’ within the legal field — presumably a proportion matching the number of women in the population as a whole, or in the college-educated population, or some other arbitrary percentage — and that if reality doesn’t match that ideal number, there is Something Nefarious Afoot.

The truth is that the mix of people in a particular profession IS NOT A REPRESENTATIVE FUNCTION; there is no ‘one person one vote’ rule in how people go about making their livings. It’s as irrelevant as whether or not you have as many dollar bills in your wallet as other people in your ‘group’, however that ‘group’ may be defined. The two are not connected, and are determined by nothing more than your preference for carrying around dollar bills, or pure chance.

The Identity Politics Nanny Brigade have succeeded in getting this ‘underrepresented’ meme in circulation so well that even so presumably-well-educated a person as Vanessa O’Connell (and who the hell is Vanessa O’Connell?) is snookered by it. The depth of this corruption is her reference later on in the article to this ‘underrepresentation’ as ‘inequity’, as if it’s somehow unfair on the part of Somebody (who, exactly?) that this ‘underrepresentation’ exists.

Read it.

Identity politics doesn’t always lead to clear-cut solutions.

If this election proves anything, it is that immigrant bashing is not a white-only sport. Non-whites can play it just as well. Advocates of liberal immigration policies, therefore, can’t count on the coming end of white domination to automatically propel this country in their direction. They have to keep making their case to the American public regardless of its hue—brown, black, or Avatar blue.

Of course, this being an article in tReason magazine, the assumption here is that More Immigrants Is Good, Restrictionism Is Bad. (When you don’t like a viewpoint, cast it into an ‘-ism’ and all will feel good about trashing it.) But it has some interesting information carried along with the political posturing, sort of by accident.

Read it.

Statement that food prices are rising?  Smart! Sarah Palin agreeing with your statement that food prices are rising?  Dumb!

And they wonder why even their own reporters don’t read the papers anymore.

Read it.

Employees at a CBS affiliate in Anchorage left an accidental voicemail for an aide to GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller in which they discussed and laughed about the possibility of reporting on the appearance of sex offenders at a Miller rally. And they chatted about responding with a Twitter alert to “any sort of chaos whatsoever” including the candidate being “punched.”

The Crust takes care of its own.

McDonald’s Workers Are Told Whom to Vote For

Except, of course, that they weren’t. But, of course, one seldom expects truth from the New York Times, and one is rarely disappointed.

Read it.

Apparently we aren’t the only ones who have noticed the decline in quality.

Read it.

Well, of course, he didn’t ‘attack’ the Congressman for being a Muslim; he urged that the Congressman not be re-elected because he is a Muslim, which is a perfectly reasonable position for anybody who has, you know, actually read the Koran … which I suspect that nobody at the Washington Post has actually done.

But, of course, that’s an invincible blind-spot on the part of those who are psychologically committed to the position that Islam is ‘just a religion’ and hence ought to be excluded from any debate on public policy–despite the fact that Islam is not just a religion but a totalitarian ideology based on religion, and despite the fact that those who write for (and read?) the Washington Post wouldn’t give any religion other than Islam the respect that they would give, say, a convicted murderer.

Especially amusing is the accompanying photograph, showing Muslims engaged in their customary ‘hate speech’ with the caption ‘Muslims begin education campaign to counter U.S. backlash’ (a ‘backlash’ for which there is absolutely no evidence, unlike the daily evidence that all the hate is on the part of Muslims–as this photograph makes plain).

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

Well, perhaps; so what? Pedestrians are ‘at risk’ whenever a new road is built; we don’t avoid building new roads because of that.

A new ferry route across the Strait of Gibraltar is threatening the largest concentration of whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean, environmentalists have warned.

The correct term for these people is not ‘environmentalist’ but rather ‘anti-humanist’–they give every other species priority over their own. You won’t see any animals, for example, doing stupid stuff like that. Animals are smarter than environmentalists.

“There is an exclusion zone that is ignored already and now they are going to create a new route that slices it in two,” Pilar Marcos, head of Greenpeace Spain’s coastal campaign, told Spanish newspaper El Pais.

What ‘exclusion zone’? The one that Greenpeace would like to pretend exists where they want it to?

Instead it will urge freighters sto reduce their speed during the crossing to 13 knots and post lookouts on deck to “avoid collisions with cetaceans”.

Sure, whales that can’t be bothered to get out of the way are an adequate reason to creep across the ocean. Hey, guys, the point of going from point A to point B is to get there in as little time as possible; this isn’t a senior-citizen Golden Years cruise. Thirteen knots might have been hot stuff when sails were in vogue but I’ve ridden bicycles that go faster.

“In 2002 we saw one close up. A freighter passed by our side and ran into a sperm whale, which was left expelling jets of blood,” said Renaud de Stephanis, president of CIRCE.

It’s not as if these were stealth watercraft. Whales that are too stupid to get out of the way will die and not reproduce; eventually you have a whale population that knows enough to avoid ships. That’s called ‘evolution’, and all the cool species are doing it. (For all their supposed fondness for nature, these ‘environmentalists’ seem remarkably clueless as to how it works.)

Read it.

Being the Washington Post, of course, you’ll never see a headline ‘Pro-Muslim Feelings Propel Left Wing in Europe’.

Note, too, that this is a ‘religion’ column. Except for the fact that it mentions Muslims and the reactions to Muslims, it’s really all about politics.

Read it.

The irony here is fairly obvious.

So it was a serendipitous time for Columbia University to convene the first Elites Research Network conference last week. The conference drew in scholars focused on inequality across academic disciplines, like economics, political science, sociology and history.

In the academic world, this was remarkable. As several of the scholars acknowledged, there has traditionally been some unease in talking about the elite, let alone researching them.

Perhaps because it’s rather obviously an exercise in navel-gazing? By what sophistry are academics convened at Columbia University considered to be somehow outside of ‘the elite’, however defined?

“The poor don’t have the power to say no. Elites don’t grant us interviews. They don’t let us hang out at their country clubs.”

Uh, hate to be the one to break the bad news, Professor, but if your not allowed to hang out at country clubs, it’s far more a function of being named Sudhir Venkatesh than of being a professor of sociology.

But Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia, said the increasing concentration of wealth, moving from the top 10 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent, has made this the right time to look more closely at the group. “We have to understand what’s going on at the top,” Mr. Warren said.

Ah, now it becomes clear. When they say ‘elite’, they actually mean ‘rich’. That avoids the elephant in the room: The fact that any definition of ‘elite’ in America that doesn’t include the upper tiers of academia, government, and mass media (such as The New York Times) would be laughed out of the room in any gathering other than one of Crustian academics.

This is how the professoriat can pretend to objectivity and outsider status–the ‘elite’ are rich and we’re not rich so obviously they’re not in the ‘elite’. Never mine that every professor at Harvard or Princeton or Stanford makes far in excess of the Obamassiah’s $250,000 p.a. definition of ‘rich’.

“If you look at the poor as a problem, you’ll be angry at elites or you’ll expect them to come up with a solution,” said Mr. Venkatesh, who took the most pragmatic line. “You have to come in accepting that there will always be poor people in society and there will always be wealthy people in society, and neither of the two reached that status by their own efforts.”

And there’s the Voice of the Crust. I guess Bill Gates was just walking down the street one day and was randomly picked to win the World’s Richest Guy contest.

Radley Balko explains how it works.

It goes something like this: When a black person expresses views that liberal elites have deemed unacceptable for black people to hold, it is permissible for good liberals to respond by implying that said black person is either too stupid or too corrupt to think for himself, and to then call that black person racist names. In fact, not only are both responses permissible and not racist, they are a recommended way of displaying your open-mindedness.

Read it.

The Maori language is in danger of dying out because of neglect by successive New Zealand governments, a new report has claimed.

Read it.

Apparently it doesn’t help.

“The screen won’t go blank,” said Faton Begolli, a sophomore from Boston. “There can’t be a virus. It wouldn’t be the same without books. They’ve defined ‘academia’ for a thousand years.”

Actually, we’ve only had textbooks for less than half that. The original purpose of a college lecture was so that students could make (from dictation) their own copies of the materials that the teacher was using. (Easily done with Peter Lombard’s Sententiae; differential calculus, not so much.)

So much for the collegiate learning experience.

Read it.

More news from the world of starving ‘Palestinians’.

* Time magazine, which previously claimed that Palestinians were “starving,” now writes of the Palestinian “multistory villas fronted by ornamental porticos and columns,” the “car dealerships selling everything from BMWs to Hyundais,” and the “state of the art gyms with the latest equipment, classes in spinning, kickboxing and Pilates, a sauna and even a smoothie bar.”

* Upcoming on the next Gaza “aid” convoy: an Algerian militant wanted by Swiss authorities for torture

Read it.

Without substantial scandals or wedge issues to work with, the candidates mostly argue about actual policy….

Yeah, what’s up with that?

Read it.

Membership in the E.U.? This would be the same E.U. that handed over Kosovo, Serbia’s historic heartland, to Albanian immigrants? That E.U.? Gee, whyever would ‘nationalist groups’ resist membership in the E.U.?

Paul Krugman, of course.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

Is Krugman really an economist, or does he just play one in Washington? THE RICH PAY PEOPLE TO MAKE SURE THEIR MONEY DOESN’T JUST SIT IDLE. One would think that a Princeton Professor would know enough about rich people to know at least that much.

Of course, he could always just be lying to us in pursuit of a political agenda. (No! He wouldn’t do that, surely?)

Read it.

Let’s see: A manifesto on how to fix our schools by the people who are already in charge of our schools and presumably responsible for their needing fixing in the first place.

Right.

I have a question: Why are they writing pompous articles for the Washington Post instead of, you know, FIXING OUR SCHOOLS?

I wonder about these things.

Robin Hanson is one of the more eminent thumb-suckers of the modern world.

Of course, the classic statement is that there are two types of people, those who divide people into two types and those who don’t, but that’s not what he means.

This is quite obviously a warming-over of the whole Noble Savage idea most frequently associated with Rousseau (and which ought to have died with him), an idea that modern ‘progressives’ embrace because it tarts up their unrealistic assumptions in a Clever Plastic Disguise.

Memorandum that civilization did not arise among the hunter-gatherers, but among the farmers; if you want to know what ‘progressive’ policies produce, go look at the Khoisan in southern Africa.

Read it.

One thing totally missing from this discussion is the fact that Islam is radically different from every other religion in the U.S. It is not a tenet of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or Vedantism (or Sikh or Bah’ai or Jain or whatever) to subject everyone in the community to their religious law, by force if necessary. That is a tenet of Islam, and so to extend to Islam the same tolerance as has been traditionally (and harmlessly) extended to other religions is both ignorant and stupid.

To refuse to defend a community against a clear and present danger to that community is treason; to actively prevent others from defending themselves is, if possible, even worse.

Check it out.

In this artwork provided by Liquid Comics, the “Sliver Scorpion” is shown. The new superhero is a young Muslim, who loses his legs in a tragic landmine accident and must learn to come to terms with the reality of his disability while learning to use his newfound power to fight for social inclusion, equity and justice

No mention of the fact that a young Muslim with superpowers would almost inevitably turn into a super-terrorist — but, of course, that doesn’t fit the narrative. (Note that freedom, tolerance, and the rights of women aren’t on the program.)

Read it.

A journalist feels grumpy on Monday morning, and decides to phone it in.

Read it.

The New York Times, premier Voice of the Crust, voices the angst of the Ruling Class over those silly proles not doing what they’re told by Big Nanny.

Read it.

Apparently, yes. Despite the fact that close to one-third of the country’s workforce is comprised of independent workers, this sizeable chunk of our economy has none of the protections and benefits that “traditional” employees have. Health insurance? No. Unemployment insurance? Nope. Protection from unpaid wages, or race, gender, or age discrimination? Not a chance. We’ve left these 42 million workers out to dry and entirely out of our social support system.

In other words, they aren’t chained to government like the rest of us. Lucky stiffs.

We’re dealing with an outdated employment system – it was built for a workforce from the 1930s, and it no longer works for us today. So as a result, a growing number of working Americans are left with no protections.

Fortunately, we have a government built for the 1930s, as well, so it’s not as bad as it could be — we don’t get all the ‘protections’ we pay for. Although the Obamanation is trying to change that.

And freelancers need to come together and recognize their power in numbers. This group of 42 million holds tremendous potential to influence politics (by demanding better legislation to protect them) and markets (by demanding affordable health insurance). However, without solidarity and a collective desire to create change, without raising their voices and demonstrating their immense economic contributions, independent workers will never be recognized as a “class” that is worth paying attention to. Employers also have a role in the solution. Some, like Time Inc., require that freelancers take a 4% hit on what they are owed if they want to be paid in 25 days, and others “misclassify” staff members as contractors in order to avoid paying their benefits.

Forward, comrades! We have nothing to lose but our chains!

Ponder the fact that somebody actually got paid for this piece of thumbsuckery.

Read it.

The New York Times on Sunday devoted more than 1,000 words to an article by two of its staff reporters about what it described as “the brutal, premeditated killings of three Afghan civilians — allegedly at the hands of American soldiers.” Today the Times ran another 1,000-word, staff-written article, on the front-page, about gays in the military. Meanwhile, the president posthumously awards the Medal of Honor to Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger, and the Times handles it with a 230-word squib from the Associated Press wire service.

Eventually, people in the military are going to get tired of being slimed by their own countrymen, and sooner or later one or more of them are going to resort to what the Special Operations people call ‘direct action’. I would not want to be an employee of the New York Times when that day comes.

Read it.

Nonsense. We grouchy pessimists don’t have hearts, so it’s not a problem.

Fargin’ sentimental know-it-alls….

Read it.

It gets better:

The Quran doesn’t just preach religious tolerance; the Prophet Muhammad demonstrated it in his life, [Emad El-Din Shahin, a religion professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana] says.

The prophet would meet Christian delegations in his mosque.

“He would allow them to perform Christian prayers in the mosque,” Shahin says.

First Things’ Joe Carter has a relevant question: “Why would Christians need to pray in a mosque? Why don’t they just go to First Baptist of Mecca or St. Paul’s in Medina. Oh yeah, that’s right. Because there are no official churches in Saudi Arabia of any Christian denomination.” I mean, how — in a story such as this — do you not mention these basic facts about how Christianity is actually treated in Saudi Arabia? It’s just journalistic malpractice. One almost gets the feeling that mainstream reporters are just expressing their hopes and wishes in stories about religious tolerance in Islam. We’re certainly not concerned about accuracy, if stories such as this are any guide.

So if you think about the current global situation when it comes to religious freedom, who matches this better? Is it — as CNN writes — the pastor of a 50-person congregation in Florida? Or do you think we should consider other small and inconsequential groups, such as the entire nation of Saudi Arabia?

Read it.

Home Owners’ Associations are living proof that Americans can be as fascist as anybody when they’re inclined to be.

Like much in contemporary American politics, this leaves me confused. I don’t understand why an exclusive residential association, freely entered into, with explicit rules that are presented at the outset, offering services-for-cash, is un-American. After all, this is in contrast to a municipality that levies taxes for services from which one cannot opt out (if one has no children in the schools, for instance) and which may not be available to all (such as public transport), and which could easily be seen as a redistributive institution, an example of that socialism we keep hearing so much about.

That’s because you’re dimwitted. The HOA agreement is usually mandatory for a particular neighborhood, and if you want to live there you have to join and pay — not unlike a municipality. And the actions of HOAs aren’t subject to the normal political processes or safeguards — quite unlike legitimate political entities. Many times their oppressive nature isn’t apparent until one is already stuck; and with the housing market the way it is, there is no easy way to escape.

NPR.

And they ought to know — just ask Bush.

Read it.

Almost everyone is pretty screwed up. That’s not my opinion, that’s official – according to a new paper in the latest British Journal of Psychiatry.

Let’s see — according to a field that makes it’s money from repairing alleged mental difficulties, which repairs cannot be objectively measured, finds that there’s a lot of fixing needed out there. Okay.

Read it.

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents. Many Iraqis remain very concerned for their country’s future despite a dramatic improvement in security, the economy and living conditions in many areas.

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

When you’ve lost Cronkite, you’ve lost America.

Perhaps Obama ought to have had a banner in the background saying ‘MISSION ABANDONED’.

Read it.

Orszag is the eighteenth individual (that we know of) to transition between the White House and the mainstream press. He will surely not be the last. That amazingly high number again underscores the ideological similarities between members of the Obama administration and members of the press.

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

Tom Smith is disappointed.

Maybe it’s just too hard for a British intellectual to understand how Walmart shoppers think.

Steve Sailer kicks over a rock, and finds Slate magazine.

I’m always getting accused of being obsessed with IQ, but it seems an awful lot of people are obsessed with showing off how smart they are. In general, that would be a good thing, except that our culture has got itself into a culdesac whereby a proof of being “thoughtful” is by how little thought you give to crucial topics such as immigration, and by how mindlessly you sneer at those who actually have thought hard on the subject.

Read it.

Humanity is in general genetically predisposed not to take surveys, according to new research. However there exists a proportion of mutant freaks whose genes make them want to respond to surveys.

That explains a lot.

The amazing news comes as part of a new study by profs in America and Singapore. This involved the cunning sending out of a survey to over 1,000 sets of twins.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it.

At the Columbia Journalism Review, Trudy Lieberman provides further evidence for my conclusion that what really offended Alan Simpson’s critics about his comparison between Social Security and “a milk cow with 310 million tits” was his candor. Lieberman says “what’s really at stake here” is not Simpson’s colorful language but his “long-standing antipathy toward Social Security and Medicare,” which “raises the question about why the president appointed him [to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] in the first place.”

I mean, really. Cut entitlements? What was he smoking?

Read it.

On a week that included the anchor Katie Couric’s trip to Afghanistan, the “CBS Evening News” recorded its lowest total viewer rating in nearly 20 years, tying a record that it set in June.

I guess Katie Couric is worth every penny of the millions they’re paying her. Of course, the New York Times spins it as merely people being uninterested in the war in Afghanistan.

It can be tricky to draw a direct correlation between subject matter and ratings. But last week’s ratings offer another talking point for the people — including some inside television newsrooms — who argue that the American public has tuned out the war.

No, they’ve just tuned out of what Rush Limbaugh calls ‘the chickification of the news’. Thanks, Katie; you’re the best.

Read it.

While Borgnine’s work ethic is admirable — he has three films due out this year — his personal politics are less than laudable.

No speck of sand is too small for the Thought Police.

Read it.

When the President of the United States, in prepared remarks, launches a broadside against any organization, it is no accident. In the case of Barack Obama and left, we have a new target for this White House — yet another company whose owners take issue with Barack Obama destroying the country.

On August 9th, speaking in Austin, TX, Barack Obama said, “Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.”

Not really news, although a useful reminder. ‘Progressives’ specialize in ginning up ‘non-profit’ organizations with specious names that usually indicate exactly the opposite of what the organization is devoted to pushing. ‘Southern Poverty Law Center’, for example, which bills itself as the foremost ‘watchdog’ against ‘hate groups’ spreads far more hate than it watches; ‘Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’ is devoted to vilifying anybody attempting to spread the facts about the leftist agenda; ‘People for the American Way’ is the foremost advocate of socialism in the U.S, the most un-American ‘way’ it is possible to conceive. So this is just another case of left-wing projection, accusing their enemies of the very tactics of which they are arguably the masters. (See Nancy Pelosi, ‘Culture of Corruption’.)