Steve Sailer looks a the mortgage meltdown discussion.

In public, there are only two sides: the liberal (Corporate Greed!) and the libertarian (Government Interference!).

In contrast, the real divide is between the overwhelmingly dominant Diversity Dogmatists, liberal and libertarian, versus the tiny number of Diversity Heretics. Personally, I don’t oppose government regulation of the mortgage business to prevent over-optimistic borrowers and lenders from causing defaults down the road, so I’m not a libertarian on this. But, in this case, the federal government was (and still is) regulating in the wrong direction: toward more risk.

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Can the U.S. be far behind? We’ve got the same sort of delusional idiots in charge.

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Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

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

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Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “roll the dice” in the name of affordable housing. That didn’t turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity — with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

Somebody doesn’t like the cap & trade bill.

They passed this shameful fraud because they wanted to get out of town for the July 4th holiday. The rest of us get July 4th off. They get a week or more. In fact, who knows when they’ll return from this recess. Will it be to push through another huge, unread bill, this time on health care? We’re two for two now: the Stimulus Attack and the Energy Fraud.

By the way, one of the features of Cap and Trade is that your local agency for building codes will be by-passed. They’re going to set up a building code bureaucracy in Washington and fill it full of time-servers. Which means you can wait till hell freezes over to get an approval or inspection.

Does this mean your local agency will shut down? Heavens, no! They’ll just be the go-between. You’ll have more hoops to jump through, is all. The Imperial Congress strikes again! Practice your hoop-jumping; it’s a non-productive skill you’ll need to survive in this brave new world.

Recession? No problem! We’ll just destroy what’s left of the economy, so everyone is equally miserable! Your tax dollars at work!

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If people want to kill themselves, fine, but it’s narcissistic to do it in a way that inconveniences other people. Idiots.

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Young British actresses who have struggled to find work at home are flocking to Bollywood to capitalise on the Indian film industry’s insatiable appetite for white-skinned talent.

Any cries of outrage from the Racism Industry? No?

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France is to be taken to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect the Alsace hamster, a cuddly rodent threatened with extension in its native eastern France.

Truly, you can’t make this stuff up.

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A decade ago all three states were among America’s most prosperous. California was the unrivaled technology center of the globe. New York was its financial capital. New Jersey is the third wealthiest state in the nation after Connecticut and Massachusetts. All three are now suffering from devastating budget deficits as the bills for years of tax-and-spend governance come due.

Well, that’s what happens when you follow political fashion rather than common sense.

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Indeed, it is so-called “smart land use” (“smart growth”) that intensified the housing bubble in California. “Smart land use” involves planners telling the market where development will and will not occur. In the process it ignores the price signals of the market. Owners of land on which development is permitted naturally and rationally raise their asking prices, while owners of land not so favored can expect little more than agricultural value when they sell. The result is that the land element of housing prices exploded, fueling the unprecedented bubble. Restrictions on supply naturally lead to higher prices, whether in gasoline, housing or anything else.

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One of the worst aspects of both the Human Rights Act and European law generally is that they encourage disreputable behaviour. Much European law consists of vague statements of principle that are concerned with ideals rather than practicalities and in doing so leaves scope for spurious claims by those keen to bask in the bright sunshine of victimhood or who see the chance to enrich themselves with an unearned buck. It might just be that I am too deeply immersed in the English common law to understand the European way of doing things, but I am not so immersed as to be unable to see a style of law that is more concerned with political gestures than with freely agreed individual relationships.

This applies equally well to Latin America, which takes its legal and cultural traditions from Europe, and is therefore constantly awash in high-sounding idealistic slogans papered over perennial violence, oppression, and corruption.

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You’ll be surprised.

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As with most discussions of AIDS and HIV, this proceeds on the assumption that HIV is just something that happens to people, like the common cold. Nowhere is mentioned the irrefutable fact that people who keep their pants zipped just don’t get HIV, period — aside from the miniscule number who contract it from extraordinary circumstances like rape or transfusions, of course. (And it oughtn’t to be necessary to make that reservation but there’s always some nimrod who brings it up in the hopes that there’s somebody else in the room whose two-digit IQ is lower than his. Sheesh.)

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Yeah, it’s impressive, but … some people just have too much time on their hands.

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Well, there, see, it’s not my fault. Blame that qwertyitis on my parents.

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And what are the odds of that?

These new small reactors meet important criteria for nuclear power plants. With no control rods to jam, they are far safer than the old models — you might well call them nuclear batteries. By not using weapons-grade enriched fuels, they are nonproliferating. They minimize nuclear waste. And they’re economical.

In other words, not a chance.

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On the bakesale issue, Bromfield stated: “disparate racial pricing for doughnut sales — was prohibited because we cannot and do not permit racially discriminatory practices.”

Other than affirmative action in everything from admissions to housing, of course. But it would be gauche to mention those.

The invincible humorlessness of the Politically Correct is infamous, of course, but nothing drives them so insane as underscoring it with a real situation.

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No rose without a thorn.

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Better late than never, I suppose.

Sure would like to read the pre-nup on that, though.

They have one son, Redmond, 24, who is currently in jail on drug charges.

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Uh-huh. Told you so.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that was a problem.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Sir Michael, who plays Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, had the child with the 43-year-old set designer Philippa Hart, with whom he already has a two year-old son, Michael.

The Irish actor’s wife of 45 years, Lady Gambon, knows about his second family and his divides his time between their two homes and a flat in London, according to The Sun newspaper.

I think there’s something in the water.

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And were promptly shot for trespassing? No such luck.

Ch Supt Matthew Nix added: “There are no reports of any injuries at this time. Public safety is of paramount importance to the operation and Kent police is using all available resources to bring a safe conclusion to the incident.”

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Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people inside and outside that room know exactly what you are talking about. A skewed reimbursement scheme set up by Medicare, a system that pays generously when you do something to a patient, but is stingy when you do something for a patient, is largely to blame. Cut, poke, sew, burn, insert, inject, dilate, stent, remove and you get very well paid; if you learn how to do this efficiently, maybe set up your own outpatient center so you can do it to more people in a shorter time (which is what happened when this payment system was put in place in 1989) and you are paid even more. If, however, you are a primary care physician, and if, just like the young doctor who saw my parents yesterday, you spend time getting to know your patients, and are willing to play quarterback when your patient enters the hospital, so that you can herd the consultants and guide the family through a bewildering experience that gets surreal if you are in the intensive care unit, then you may have great personal satisfaction but you will make five to tenfold less than your colleagues in the doing-to disciplines.

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Organisers of the demonstration accused embassy officials of attempting to spread fear among supporters of the thwarted challengers in the presidential election. One Iranian woman, Maryam, 26, said she felt threatened, as she was about to return to Tehran: “I’m worried they’ll take my passport or won’t let me get a flight back.”

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

Actually, what is most astonishing is the number of dimwits who are surprised when a dictatorship acts like, well, a dictatorship.

Charlie Stross is a best-selling, award-winning author. If you haven’t read Accelerando, which won the Hugo Award, I don’t particularly blame you; I couldn’t get into it. If, on the other hand, you haven’t read any of the Merchant Princes books, your life is the poorer for it, I tell you truly.

However: Charlie started out as a geek, and writes about it on his blog — and it’s obvious why he was intended by God to be an award-winning writer.

During this process I discovered several things about myself. I do not respond well to micro-managing. I especially do not respond well to being micro-managed on a highly technical task by a journalism graduate.

Do I need to explain why putting an accountant in charge of a technology-driven company is not necessarily a wise, visionary, and forward-looking move?

As a Californian software corporation, SCO was prone to various types of American management disease; no alcohol on corporate premises, for example: and then the annual recurring Maoist self-criticism and re-education ritual known as the performance appraisal.

Here is an example of a Terminally Bad Sign for any organization in the computer business:

… When you discover that your line manager’s recreational reading is the 1980 edition of the IBM Staff Handbook.

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Since Britain is about five years further along on the road to cultural degeneration than we, I suppose this is a look at our future.

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They’re from the government, and they’re there to help.

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

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Never was a woman more appropriately named.

It’s people like this who cause unrest. Large urban areas attract such people. Stay away from them.

Timothy Burke has the perfect comment:

On one hand, she seems perfectly aware that most of the other parents at the schools her kids have been at don’t like her much, nor do the school administrators. On the other hand, she seems so serenely unperturbed by the existence of other people with other views than her own, or by a little thing we academics like to call “culture”, who knows?

But if you want to be an aggravating irritant to the lives of every other adult trying to raise or teach a kid in your community, you’d better be damn sure the cause justifies it. If you’re Atticus Finch, green light, go for it. If you’re the scourge of the snacks, and brook no dissent? You might want to worry more about the epidemic spread of “lack of proportionality and self-awareness” before you worry about the epidemic of obesity.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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I am sorry to inform you that after some consideration, I’ve decided not to perform the appraisal service that you’ve requested. Your writing on the subject of global warming is offensive to me personally, and I feel that I would have difficulty being an impartial appraiser of value given my view on the subject.

Megan McArdle looks at health care reform.

As far as I’m aware, the actual track record of heightened contradictions is pretty poor.  The crisis tends to straggle on far longer than you thought possible, a large number of people suffer, and it turns out that you don’t get the exciting new system you were hoping for, but whatever terrible idea looked most expedient during the crisis.  See Argentina, Nation of.

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Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

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

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Fascism is on the march.

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According to a paper written by two philosophy professors, Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California at Riverside and Joshua Rust of Stetson University, a college professorship in ethics does not necessary translate into moral behavior. At least, that’s what the people who work with ethicists say.

I’ve always that that being an “ethicist” would be a really cool job. I mean, you get to tell other people what they ought to do. And you get paid for it. And it pays better than being a government bureaucrat, which is the other position with the same job description.

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I should like to point out that this rarely happens when traveling in one’s own private automobile.

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Well, I suppose that would do it. On the other hand, I’m sure there are those who would consider that a feature rather than a bug.

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Watching it blow up like the Hindenburg in an accident, taking you and the emergency responders with it. Very innovative.

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Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

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The Germans went from shooting Jews to gassing them for precisely the same reason.

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Mr. Obama’s cri de coeur might have had more credibility had he not specifically ruled out the one policy to deter frivolous suits. “Don’t get too excited yet,” he warned the cheering AMA members. “Just hold onto your horses here, guys. . . . I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating caps on malpractice awards.” In other words, the tort lottery will continue. California, of all places, has had great success in holding down liability costs for doctors and hospitals after a 1975 reform that limited pain and suffering damages — balanced against the public interest of fairly treating victims of genuine malpractice.

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As recently as 2000, Michigan ranked 16th in terms of per capita income. Today Michigan ranks 33rd, with its per capita income 11% below the national average — the lowest it’s been since the federal government started keeping figures. Over those same years, Michigan has steadily hemorrhaged jobs.

Michigan’s economy is in the toilet because it’s run by tax-and-spend Democrats — and Michigan voters keep hitting themselves in the head with a hammer hoping that that will somehow make the pain stop.

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Gotta love that Global Warming.

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I’ve seen it happen so many times that I’m prepared to call it a general rule. If you’ve got all your receipts neatly organized in a shoebox, then it may well make sense to buy a handsome wooden receipt box. But if your receipts are scattered among drawers, tucked into envelopes, folders, and purses, and stacked up with unfiled bank statements, then buying a handsome box will do you no good at all. In fact, it’s worse than no good at all: next time you need to gather your receipts you’ll have to look in all those old places and your box as well.

There is wisdom here.

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Remember the golden rule.

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Geez, you’d think it was Chicago.

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Which demonstrates about how much it’s worth.

Read it. Apparently Apple is discovering what customers of AT&T (formerly Cingular, not to be confused with the Old AT&T, which was a great company before Cingular bought it and screwed it up) have known all along — AT&T service sucks, and that spills over onto the iPhone.

I’d dearly love to have an iPhone but I will not deal with AT&T, and Apple needs to think hard about its partnership with one of the worst companies in an industry notorious for poor customer satisfaction.

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