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Most people want cheap. Some people can only afford cheap. Walmart helps people maximize the return from their financial resources and all it gets is crap from the Crust.

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This presumes that postal employees can read a map. We know that they can’t read a clock.

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Dr Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen is barred from running for Austria’s presidency by his country’s republican constitution, drawn up when the last Habsburg Emperor Charles I was forced to abdicate power in 1918.

Dr Habsburg, who has three children and six grandchildren, is angry that he and his descendants are discriminated against while candidates with a Nazi past, such as Kurt Waldheim, Austria’s president between 1986 and 1992, are not.

Not an unreasonable position.

A member of the environmentalist Green party since 1987, in a province governed for years by the far-right, Dr Habsburg has little in common with his imperial ancestors who once ruled much of Europe.

Oh, boy, just what we need – another blue-blood kook. To hell with him.

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I don’t think Sean Penn is kooky; I just think he likes Communists.

The stupidity of supposedly smart men can be simply stunning. And that stupidity is not random; it tends to almost always go in the same direction, that of failing to understand the workings of the totalitarian and tyrannical mindset.

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A perfect demonstration of the economic reality of our non-competitive labor rates can be seen in the decision of BP to shut down a solar-panel manufacturing plant in Frederick, Maryland. The plant was expanded with great fanfare three and a half years ago, and green jobs were the order of the day. BP was to pour $70 million into the expansion, but instead, they’ll be moving their production to—surprise!—China and India. BP will be laying off about 300 people here, and, as they can’t find any buyers for their building, they’ll be tearing it down. The Washington Post (a frequent “green energy” booster) now points out that BP, which once (fatuously) declared its new mission as moving “Beyond Petroleum,” is still “committed” to solar power, just not here. “‘We remain absolutely committed to solar,’ BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in an interview Friday. But he said BP was ‘moving to where we can manufacture cheaply.’”

And for those who doubted the United States would be balked in leading the green-power revolution because of obscure rare earth elements that nobody can pronounce (Dysprosium, anyone? Neodymium? Yttrium?), the evidence is becoming overwhelming that we will indeed be stymied by our lack of supply. As Daniel McGroarty, a principal of the Carmot Strategic Group observes, China is involved in an intentional strategy to ensure that the Chinese, not the United States, will be the ones building the green devices of tomorrow. And it’s not only the obvious devices, like windmills and solar panels. China will be making your compact fluorescent bulbs, your power-saving computer monitor, cell-phone display, fiber-optic cables, automotive components, and much more.

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A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, “We still have the power to shape history.” But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

In terms of the classic dichotomy, Barack is President in order to ‘be’ rather than in order to ‘do’. And YOU are paying for all this narcissism; rather handsomely, too. Aren’t you proud?

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The agency’s “tiger team” of security specialists was dispatched as part of an ongoing investigation conducted jointly with the Justice Department into a program backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program, called the John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort to identify them further.

The team also expressed concerns about the inmates’ access to laptop computers in the past. Some of the inmates who are representing themselves in legal proceedings were granted laptop computers without Internet access. However, the officials fear that future unfavorable court rulings could provide the inmates with the capability of communicating outside the island prison.

Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

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Jim Railton, 57, fell foul of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act by offering the Edwardian cabinet for sale because of what was inside.

The RSPB saw the item – complete with 54 eggs from species including herring gull and guillemot inside – and informed Northumbria Police.

An inquiry was launched and the auctioneer was arrested, questioned and had to give a DNA sample.

His legal saga ended at Alnwick magistrates, where he was fined £1,000, ordered to pay £70 costs and a £15 victim’s surcharge.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Check it out. Why is this person still alive?

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Check it out.

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The system works.

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Very curious. Apparently modern feminism has some odd quirks.

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Police said the customer crawled out of his car and into the drive thru window to get his fish sandwich, after slapping the McDonald’s employee in the face.

‘Course, this was in New York. (Ohhhhhohhhhhhohhhh….)

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Just so you know.

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

In 2008 it was “Vote for Barack Obama or we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.” In 2010 it’s “Barack Obama is still in trouble so we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.”

These guys aren’t showing racism, progressivism, intelligence or stupidity. They’re just demonstrating a working long-term memory.

Took their own sweet time about it.

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Another reason to get rid of this stupid practice. You can tell it’s a government program because it WILL NOT DIE.

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The future of Obamacare. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

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Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, believes new research justifies offering places to candidates whose A-level results are up to three grades lower than those from independent or grammar schools.

I can hear guidance counselors all over Britain: ‘Do badly in your exams, Johnny, so you can get into a good university.’

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At the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, more than 30 storeys above the noise and bustle of Manhattan, there is so much high-mindedness hanging in the air you can almost taste it. This is the epicentre of a certain type of socially smart, progressive activism — the kind that persuades Hollywood grandees, power lawyers and liberal financiers to dig deeply into their pockets.

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Is nothing sacred?

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Hey, it worked in Zimbabwe … no, wait….

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The tax that dare not speak its name.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke took to the White House blog to write that while ObamaCare is great for business, “In the last few days, though, we have seen a couple of companies imply that reform will raise costs for them.” In a Thursday interview on CNBC, Mr. Locke said “for them to come out, I think is premature and irresponsible.”

Meanwhile, Henry Waxman and House Democrats announced yesterday that they will haul these companies in for an April 21 hearing because their judgment “appears to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”

In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.

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There must be some way to cut off internet access to Nigeria.

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Can you think of a more singularly useless talent to have? This is on a par with the guys who could make pictures of Snoopy on a “letter-quality printer”. Impressive, yeah, but what’s the point?

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As doctors move from being employers to employees, their politics often take a leftward turn. This helps explain why the American Medical Association — long opposed to health care reforms — gave at least a tepid endorsement to Mr. Obama’s overhaul effort.

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I am not making this up.

Ilya Somin reviews the legal issues involved.

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We’ve been tracking the increased openness on the center-right to new or increased federal taxes: David Brooks, Glenn Hubbard, Karl Rove, Tyler Cowen, Greg Mankiw. The latest example comes in the new Spring issue of National Affairs, which bills itself as the successor to Irving Kristol’s Public Interest. There, Donald Marron, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers (as did Professor Hubbard and Professor Mankiw), writes: “No one solution — not economic growth, not tax increases, and not spending reductions — can get us to our goal. To put ourselves on a sustainable fiscal trajectory, we will need to use all the measures at our disposal.” Or, to be more blunt: “some tax increases will almost certainly be required.”

An ugly trend.

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The best precedent for a Frum-style strategy of selling out compromise is probably Medicare Part D. That bill picked up support from genuine fiscal conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan because the understanding was that, if this version doesn’t pass, something bigger and worse will. As a political calculation, this makes sense. But the end result wasn’t one to be proud of: We still ended up with a poorly designed, unsustainable, potentially disastrous policy. If ObamaCare opponents had compromised, that’s all they would have succeeded in passing here. Fine, you might say, but that’s what we got anyway! Fair enough. But unlike the current situation, they would have been responsible for those outcomes, would have given liberals political cover, and ultimately put themselves in a far weaker position to push for reforms.

Preach it, brother. Suck on it, Frum.

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The government’s war on small businesses claims more victims.

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Smoking kills. Never doubt it.

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I’ve always thought that Schadenfreude would be a great name for a high-end German sports car.

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A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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A special panel of federal judges is being asked Thursday to consolidate before a single court dozens of proposed class-action lawsuits filed by Toyota owners who say the value of their vehicles has plummeted after millions were recalled for safety fixes.

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Lord Oxburgh, a geologist by training and the former scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defence, was appointed to lead the enquiry into the scientific aspects of the Climategate scandal on Monday. But Oxburgh is also a director of GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.

GLOBE may be too obscure to merit its own Wikipedia entry, but that belies its wealth and influence. It funds meetings for parliamentarians worldwide with an interest in climate change, and prior to the Copenhagen Summit GLOBE issued guidelines (pdf) for legislators. Little expense is spared: in one year alone, one peer – Lord Michael Jay of Ewelme – enjoyed seven club class flights and hotel accommodation, at GLOBE’s expense. There’s no greater love a Parliamentarian can give to the global warming cause. And in return, Globe lists Oxburgh as one of 23 key legislators.

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For nearly 80 years, contractors working on federally funded construction projects have been forced to pay their workers artificially inflated wages that rip off American taxpayers while lining the pockets of organized labor. The culprit is the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which requires all workers on federal projects worth more than $2,000 to be paid the “prevailing wage,” which typically means the local union wage.

James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation finds that repealing Davis-Bacon would save taxpayers $11.4 billion in 2010 alone. Simply suspending Davis-Bacon would allow government contractors to hire 160,000 new workers at no additional cost, according to Sherk.

Let’s get rid of these FDR-era payoffs to the Democrat base.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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A passer-by was reported to police for trespass on a school’s grounds after she came to the aid of a five-year-old boy who had been left on his own in a tree after playtime.

However, she said she was “surprised and angry” when she later received letters from Manor primary school, Melksham, Wilts, and the local council, reprimanding her for entering the school grounds without permission.

No good deed goes unpunished.

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Movin’ to Montana soon … Gonna be a dental floss tycoon….

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Why provide something that your employees can get from the government at a subsidized price? How many Canadian employers provide health benefits? I doubt that any do.

If preliminary summaries of Obamacare  are true, it looks like individual health insurance will soon be a better deal than employer-provided health insurance.  In the individual market, you can now wait until you’re really sick to buy insurance: “Heads I win, tails I break even.”  Firms won’t have that gimme – and it seems more valuable than premiums’ tax deductibility.  Admittedly, Obamacare imposes a small penalty on individuals who don’t buy insurance, and a moderate penalty on firms that don’t provide it.  But it still seems like it will be in the financial self-interest of many firms and their workers to get rid of insurance, and split the (cash savings minus penalties).

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Well, when governments refuse to perform their essential function, people have to take matters into their own hands. Whenever you get a proliferation of private security services, it indicates that the government is falling down on the job.

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More honest than union officials tend to be.

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Well, when have they ever had to do their own laundry?

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Why, wonders Joe Weisenthal, are we only finding out about this now? The National Restaurant Association sought the measure — which constricts the freedom of its own membership — in hopes of gaining uniformity instead of “a potential patchwork of conflicting requirements adopted by states and cities,” to quote the Times. It can be reliably predicted, though, that the ever-growing battalions of “food policy advocates” will home-made cherry pie white backgroundnot feel constrained by any supposed national deal to refrain from pushing for further piecemeal extension of state and local requirements, thus rendering any seeming uniformity but temporary.

The requirement kicks in when a restaurant chain reaches ten units, and will foreseeably make it harder for 15-unit local chains to compete with the 1,500-unit behemoths who can spread the nontrivial costs of compliance over a much larger base. Like earlier calorie-labeling laws, it will also encourage standardization by making it hazardous for owners not to prescribe and control, e.g., precisely how much topping local employees are to spread on each sandwich or pizza. Earlier here.

People just never learn.

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On the one hand, correlation does not imply causation.

On the other, it doesn’t surprise me a bit.

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Anybody who lives in an area with a Home Owner’s Association is a willing slave and ought to be traded to the Europeans.

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Ah, those hotblooded Italians….