Read it.

Ross Langmead, 18, was described by friends as “very bright” – and planned to go to medical school later this year to study to become a doctor.

Ever notice how kids who do away with themselves are always talented and well-liked, if not actual over-achievers, with a bright future ahead of them, etc., etc.?

Ever wonder why we never read stories about suicide by antisocial losers from the left side of the bell curve without whom society is really much better off?

Don’t mean to come across as cold-hearted or anything, but I suspect that, from an evolutionary point of view, oversensitivity to teen angst tends to be a self-correcting problem.

Read it.

Briefly, a VAT resembles a sales tax passed in the end onto the consumer at the register. But the government collects most of the money during the stages of a product’s manufacture. Since manufacturers are writing the checks, it’s an extremely efficient, virtually fraud-free way to collect money.

But it’s never gotten much support in the U.S. for two reasons. First, it’s a regressive tax: Low-earning families pay a bigger portion of their incomes than the wealthy. And second, the VAT — first introduced by a French civil servant in 1954 — has fueled the rapid growth of government in France, Germany, and even Japan. In fact, no other country spends the kind of money we’re planning to spend without a VAT. The numbers tell the story.

Read it.

Guess the standards are what they are at the Niagara County Community College.

Read it.

Children with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams syndrome (WS) are overly friendly because they do not fear strangers. Now, a study shows that these children also do not develop negative attitudes about other ethnic groups, even though they show patterns of gender stereotyping found in other children. “This is the first evidence that different forms of stereotypes are biologically dissociable,” says Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, who led the study published today in Current Biology¹.

So racists are normal, and non-racists have a brain disorder. I wonder whether this new fact will get as much publicity as it would where things the other way? Somehow I doubt it.

UPDATE: And, as you might expect, Steve Sailer has a lot of fun with this.

Read it.

A UK-based milkman and former football manager has questioned whether Google Street View played a role in a series of attempted burglaries on his home – one successful – after Google’s virtual window onto the world’s very real streets exposed a photo of his wide open garage.

Read it.

What a great way to prolong the recession and make it worse. Thanks, Barry.

Emach is my kinda guy.

This is a classic example of two douchebags who want to use some hairbrained notion of charity as a premise to get other people to fund a 3 month vacation to scratch their own selfish itches.  Who wants to bet me that at least one of these idiots will write a book about his life-changing experience while on the road wasting your money?

Steve Sailer yawns.

A recurrent theme in David Remnick’s biography of Obama, The Bridge, is The Boredom of Barack: He was bored as president of the Harvard Law Review, bored as a civil rights lawyer, bored as a law school lecturer, bored as a state senator, and bored as a U.S. Senator. The one thing that really interests him is writing about himself. (Well, that and power and praise.)

Read it.

Recent health care reform legislation doesn’t take any meaningful steps towards reducing or controlling costs. In fact, it explicitly forbids states from trying to curtail the costs of malpractice litigation in any way that would reduce lawyers’ fees.

Anytime we tell anyone anything, any kind of advice, doctors must consider the risk of a lawsuit. Everything we say and do is supposed to be documented, too– to defend ourselves. Every wonder why the doc spends so much time scribbling in the chart, instead of talking to you? It’s not because we like writing. It’s because every single day we’re reminded that the chart is our only defense.

Read  it.

If you have government-controlled medicine, as the Democrats want to institute here, then every health care decision becomes political. Is that really what you want?

Darwin Award candidate.

Good idea – get rid of the stupid ones before they reproduce. Natural Selection at its finest.

Read it.

A theoretical examination of what Jerry Pournelle calls the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

Read it.

Mr Amor’s torment began when he noticed immigration officers outside Withington Community Hospital, Manchester, and joked that his colleague had “better hide”.

Although his remark caused no offence to his “victim”, it was overheard by someone else who lodged an official complaint with his superiors. As a result he was suspended pending an investigation.

This sort of thing is why I have a category entitled ‘Dystopia Watch’.

However, a friend said: “Roy made a joke along the lines that his friend had better hide in case the officers found him. It was nothing more than a good-humoured joke but apparently someone overheard it and made an official complaint because they thought it was racist.

“Roy was devastated when he was suspended and was worried he might lose his job.

“His colleague has known both Roy and Ann for years and is a family friend. He went to Roy’s funeral and is as shattered by what happened as is everyone else. He has told Ann that he didn’t make the complaint.”

This is what happens when people with no sense of humor or proportion have their hands on the levers of power. I hope they find out who this asshole is and beat him to death.

Tim Cavanaugh connects the dots.

…is that all your supporters will just start imagining what’s in it. And then you (or actually, innocent bystanders in the private sector) will have to talk them down from the ledge.

I’d like to join in the funmaking, but how can this be a surprise? The first rule of freeloading is that you have nothing to gain by being shy. Of course people are making the phone call. Who can say for sure that if you called an insurance company right now and said “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says you have to sell me insurance now,” you wouldn’t get somewhere?

There’s a new benefit on the table. Anybody who isn’t grabbing for it already is unworthy to be a citizen of Schnorrerstan.

Read it. Thanks to Peggy for the link.

The Rev. Julie Blake Fisher, an Episcopal priest in Kent, Ohio, created “Episcopal Priest Barbie High Church Edition” for a friend, the Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew, when she got her first pulpit assignment in Manlius, N.Y.

One of the most tedious aspects of the unravelling of the Episcopal Church in the United States is its descent into a SWPL dress-up game for people who want to look like Catholics but don’t want to have to follow all those silly rules.

Read it.

They’re right, the rich don’t pay their fair share — they pay much, much more.

First of all, half of Americans don’t even pay income taxes, but it gets worse. If we look at total federal taxes, 20% of Americans pay 70% of taxes, as shown below. 40% of Americans pay 85% of federal taxes.

Read it.

Want a preview of ObamaCare in action? Check out the Massachusetts insurance market—which earlier this week entered a state of “market chaos” after Governor Deval Patrick denied a host of health insurance rate increases.

The technical scientific name for those who refuse to profit from the experience of others is ‘stupid’.

Read it.

Another good reason not to fly.

Read it.

And the reason why is a complete giveaway:

“Everybody, you’re going to be surprised: I finally found a tax I don’t like, and it’s this VAT tax!” Skinner exclaimed. “Here’s why – it doesn’t produce any behavioral changes – it’s hidden as Gerri Willis said. What you want in a tax is a tax that changes behavior.”

And that’s why ‘progressive’ notions of taxation are entirely illegitimate. The only legitimate justification for a tax is to raise revenue to pay for the necessary operations of government. Anything else is theft, pure and simple. The ideal tax is like making people swim in water: Yes, it’s a burden, but it affects everyone equally, and doesn’t distort economic activity.

But distortion of economic activity is precisely what ‘progressives’ want: They manipulate economic conditions in order to impose a political agenda in an attempt to make their imposition self-enforcing. ‘We can’t make you do it, but we can sure make you wish you had.’

Read it.

She is said to have been furious when she learnt of Woods’ other affairs, according to the National Enquirer magazine.

“I felt used and violated, like I meant nothing to him but a night of casual sex,” she said. “I wanted to dig a hole, crawl in and die.”

One searches in vain for any hint that she has apologized to Tiger’s wife. Evidently, it’s All About Her. Sounds like a night of casual sex is about all she’s worth.

Read it.

A police force has been criticised for making a public appeal to find a lost search dog 19 hours before issuing a similar request for the missing man the animal had been hunting.

Hey, it’s all about priorities.

Read it.

Two lessons to be learned here:

1. It is possible to overthrow a repressive regime.
2. Those who suffer an oppressive regime to continue are by doing so responsible to a degree for their own repression.

Read it.

A Muslim obey kafir law? It is to laugh.

Read it.

Seems surprised by the nature of a Communist government.

“It’s disappointing, not to mention outrageous,” Mr Auletta said, adding he didn’t know where to begin to appeal to the Chinese government.

“It sounds like a faceless decision. It doesn’t sound like one person you appeal to …

It just sounds like ‘1984.”‘

Ya think?

Read it.

Apparently teachers are just SO overworked.

Read it.

Obviously this guy has never run a business.

Read it.

Read it.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

The decision, made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, has irritated other locals as well. They bristle at federal interference in this city of nearly 23,000 people, two-thirds of whom are black.

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

Read it.

And oh, the ring that would leave around the Mediterranean….

Read it.

We’re way too tolerant of this. Once it crosses into out-and-out lying, it’s no longer virtuous to be tolerant of it. And I’m sorry, once you’re protesting for your right to wear a tuxedo to the prom when you’re a girl, that’s not about being left alone to live your own life in a manner of your choosing. That’s about being a walking fucking billboard.

Read it.

You knew it had to happen.

John Stossel turns over a rock.

Much government interference with our peaceful pursuits is based on junk science and junk economics. Politicians know a lot of stuff that isn’t so. So do reporters.

Let me count some of the ways.

Read it.

Don’t axe your Counts before they’ve chickened.

Heh.

The house at 10512 Baldy Mountain Rd. in Sandpoint, Idaho, looks like just another vacant foreclosed home. Some appliances, a bathroom mirror and even the hot tub are missing. The dining room of the three-bedroom house has water damage.

But this isn’t your run-of-the-mill problem house. Call it an Extreme Foreclosure. The 3,678-square-foot McMansion is a product of the popular “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” reality television show. It isn’t the only “Extreme” home to fall on hard times.

Read it.

One would have thought that Prohibition had taught the country that such things merely lead to rampant crime and violence. Government in the modern world seems chiefly to serve as an illustration of the medieval concept of Invincible Ignorance.

The Other McCain gives Conor Friedersdorf a well-deserved spanking.

The facts may be in dispute, but apparently no argument is permissible. Freidersdorf condemns Shaidle for “casual bigotry against Hispanics and blacks,” and condemns Steyn for “uncritically pass[ing] along” her views to readers of the Corner. This assumes that readers of the Corner lack the discernment to decide for themselves whether they agree or disagree with Shaidle. Must Steyn include a disclaimer with every link to Shaidle? “WARNING: This person may occasionally say things I do not endorse.”

Read it.

Sister Mary Joseph. In the library. With a ruler.

Problem solved.

Read it.

I thought that, too.

Read it.

Tiptoe through the TULIP.

Read it.

Be careful what you look for, you just might find it.

Read it.

What would you do if you only had half a body? Well, of course you would get all tatted up and dress like a dork. That’s obvious.

Read it.

A distillation of the Crustian worldview. Usually they aren’t this honest.

What’s wrong with this picture? Air America vanishes into the ether, while Glenn Beck indoctrinates 2.7 million daily viewers with his histrionic brand of right-wing lunacy. Independent news agencies must continuously solicit donations from readers to stay afloat, while hate-filled shock jock Rush Limbaugh makes $50 million a year.

Of course, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with this picture in the eyes of anybody who realizes that broadcasting is a business and in that business those who produce content that people are willing to pay for will win out of people who don’t. ‘Progressives’ are champions at refusing to accept this reality and feel moved to make up their own facts to substitute for those that the world hands them. (Anybody who can call Rush Limbaugh a ‘shock jock’ with a straight face has so tenuous a connection with reality that it’s probably a medical condition.)

The Nation and TheNation.com are part of a progressive journalistic community that is challenging the right in every medium.

To massive yawns. That’s what burns their asses the most, and leads to the meme that The People are just too stupid to know what’s good for them. Funny how that works.

Below are ten steps you can take to help keep progressive journalism alive:….

Needless to say, it’s also a great blueprint for resisting ‘progressive’ journalism. Take whatever action you think is appropriate.

Read it.

The president, who promised in both word and style to usher in a “new era” of Washington “responsibility,” routinely says things that aren’t true and supports initiatives that break campaign promises. When called on it, he mostly keeps digging. And when obliged to explain why American voters are turning so sharply away from his party and his policies, Obama pins the blame not on his own deviations from verity but on his failure to “explain” things “more clearly to the American people.”

But, really, he’s so clean….

Read it.

The anti-capitalism view is an ideological fixture of our education systems at every level, from grade to graduate school.  We could call it orthodoxy if it were not so much like boilerplate.  It’s not so much argued as assumed.

Capitalism doesn’t have heroes.  It doesn’t have people called to higher motives.  It doesn’t have noble sacrifices for the good of others.  It doesn’t, usually, have daring action on a public stage.

No, capitalism is just has some guy who owns a handful of dry cleaning outfits in a small town in New Hampshire.  He works hard, supplies a service, pays off his loans, coaches Little League, goes to church, gets his kids through college, and spends his very few disposable hours on the golf course.

Script!  Casting!  Some one call the studio!   This is appalling.  It doesn’t matter that out of these mundane activities in lots of towns big and small, played out by millions of people across the US, something remarkable will come.  This just isn’t a story anyone wants to listen to.  So no one much wants to tell it.  Not Hollywood.  Not our mythmakers.  Not our story tellers.

Highly recommended.

Ian Murray turns over the rock.

The UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has issued its report  into the so-called Climategate scandal.  As might be expected, it’s pretty much a whitewash, except as detailed below.

Read it.

Whatever the new problem, environmentalists always end up back at the same old ‘solutions.’ No matter how many times green gloom is discredited, lapsing into the old eco-fundamentalism is just too irresistible.

Read it.

As steadily as ivy creeps up the walls of its well-groomed campuses, the education industrial complex has cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege.

Joel Kellum says he’s living proof that the claim is a lie.

The Other McCain overturns a rock.

Drew M. at Ace of Spades says John Cornyn is “starting to go wobbly,” which involves the wholly unwarranted assumption that Cornyn was ever steady to begin with.

Over and over, we have seen recently that Republican “leadership” in Washington is a joke, their cowardice exceeded only by their incompetence.

Preach it, brother.

Disgusting.

Another of the reasons I never practiced law.

Read it.

One of the reasons to have hearings on legislation is that so people who comb through it can point out hidden traps, ambiguous language, unintended consequences, etc. But large parts of the Senate bill on health care that went into law were written behind closed doors. And it shows.

Quelle surprise.