George Will points to an inconvenient truth.

The distribution of a trillion dollars by a political institution — the federal government — will be nonpolitical? How could it be? Either markets allocate resources, or government — meaning politics — allocates them. Now that distrust of markets is high, Americans are supposed to believe that the institution they trust least — Congress — will pony up $1 trillion and then passively recede, never putting its 10 thumbs, like a manic Jack Horner, into the pie? Surely Congress will direct the executive branch to show compassion for this, that and the other industry. And it will mandate “socially responsible” spending — an infinitely elastic term — by the favored companies.

Thomas Sowell takes a look at our modern Brahmin caste and their claims to authority.

Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are “interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity,” people who “read the classics.”

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

During the 1930s, some of America’s leading intellectuals condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model – all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large food exporter.

In the 1930s, it was the intellectuals who pooh-poohed the dangers from the rise of Adolf Hitler and urged Western disarmament.

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Among the full roster of about 150 staff members being assigned to government agencies between now and Inauguration Day are dozens of former lobbyists and some who were registered as recently as this year. Many more are executives and partners at firms that pay lobbyists, and former government officials who work as consultants or advisers to those seeking influence.

Change you can believe in.

Not.

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That’s right. According to WaPo, the American people are just too darn stupid or absent-minded to stop themselves from rushing down to their local dealership and buying the largest, most gas-sucking SUV on the lot. Never mind that you’re trying to figure out how to pay the heating bill for the winter ahead, the editors of the Washington Post just know that deep down inside, you have an irresistible compulsion to go into more even debt for the next 72 months to finance a new energy-inefficient vehicle.

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Some professors responded too much to financial incentives for the university’s liking.

Nope, can’t have that.

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Somebody call AlGore and give him the bad news.

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The increasing reversion of international society into an economic caste system proceeds apace.

The foyers of hotels across the city – from the Four Seasons to the Park Hyatt – resemble the United Nations in full session, with ordinary guests pushed out of the way to make way for delegations from around the world.

An email from First Lady Laura Bush’s office detailed the lavish menu. Leaders feasted first on fruitwood-smoked quail with quince gastrique, followed by thyme-roasted rack of lamb with an aubergine fondue.

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… it’s an unintended consequence of the decision by the federal government to mandate a nationwide 55mph speed limit back in 1974. Setting such an artificially low speed limited basically made people realize that speed limits had little, if any, relationship to actual safety regulations, and felt more comfortable trusting their own judgment in terms of what speed was safe for driving.

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I am not making this up.

Another fine illustration of the general truth that government is far more often the problem than the solution.

Darwin award nominee.

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Spain is embroiled in a deepening row over an expensive artwork at the UN headquarters in Geneva that is being paid for by Spanish taxpayers from the overseas aid budget.

Hey, wasting money is what the U.N. do best. Spending taxpayer money on useless shit is what Socialist governments do best. Why complain about this brilliant intersection of core competencies?

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Boy, there’s a British name for you.

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Funny how you never see that with a Republican administration.

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Who cares? The Democrats in Congress won’t allow us to do anything about it.

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Oh, ya think?

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The basic point that financial markets are actually highly regulated and that manipulating the housing market is one of government’s favorite hobbies needs to be on t-shirts, lapel pins, and 3×5 cards for giving out to friends when they explain the Bush years as the last gasp of laissez-faire. A folk song would be nice, too.

Megan McArdle has some perceptive things to say about our auto industry.

…there was no good way to recruit new talent who might have changed things to a sinking ship.  Very few people set out to work for Detroit these days unless they’re serious gearheads, or happen to already live there.  Working for the Big Three magically combines vast corporate bureaucracy and job insecurity in one completely unattractive package.  Even the car freaks would often rather do something else–write about cars, or work for the NHTSA.

The entire thing is a toxic mess, left over from the days when interlocking oligopolies contentedly conspired to suck every last dollar out of captive consumers to whom Detroit would happily have given Flintstones cars if they could have figured out how to do them in two-tone vinyl.  But things that look like lunatic mistakes on the part of management were often quite rational responses to intolerable pressures.  I’m still not clear on why the cars had to be ugly, and all of the indicators cunningly hidden behind the wheel where they wouldn’t distract the driver, of course.  Management did many stupid and inexplicable things.

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So are homosexuals, but you don’t see them being banned from church cemetaries, or even the sacristy.

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No, they’re discriminating against high-risk groups for blood-transmitted sexual diseases. All homosexuals have to do is drop out of that group by keeping their pants zipped.

For students, of course, it’s more important that discrimination be fought than that people who get transfusions not get HIV at the same time.

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

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Imagine that.

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As if the enviro-Nazis would ever permit that….

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

The problem with the social sciences is that there’s little demand for social scientists. What there’s a huge demand for is social shamans who can lift the curse of the evil eye.

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What is the point to changing the time twice a year? I mean, really, just what is the fucking point? It’s a tremendous pain in the ass for everybody, and I’ve never seen a plausible, much less convincing, argument in its favor.

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

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They’re right, too.

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It’s been over six years since we began banging the drum around here to get Congress to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, the law that was hastily written post-Enron to try to prevent such collapses again, but instead simply added a huge compliance tax, without doing much of anything to actually prevent corporate fraud. Corporate fraud is still rampant, and the law did absolutely nothing to prevent the financial collapse we see ourselves in today. There were, instead, massive unintended consequences, leading companies to go public elsewhere, go private or avoid the public markets altogether. The lack of IPOs, especially in the tech space over the past few years, even as the economy was looking strong, is incredibly telling.

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So much for wireless security.

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Yeah, this democracy thing is just so Republican….

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Handy — since that’s about all the RAF can deal with these days … or afford.

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And there’s a frightening thought.

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Pardon me while I snicker. Socialists don’t understand markets, so it’s no surprise that this sort of thing happens. Their response, of course, will be to pass a law against it; that’s all they every do. This will drive the market underground, thereby increasing criminality in Michigan. Just what we need more of.

All of these bright people, dumber than rocks.

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There you go, Barack, a reminder that we have enemies, and they aren’t interested in “just getting along”.

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Not that they would want to. Apparently the Workers’ Paradise isn’t such a paradise after all, since people are coming there to get benefits but avoid the work. Whoda thunkit?

Arnold Kling looks ahead to The Obama Years.

My point is that sooner or later the U.S. government is going to have to get serious about stripping the assets of those of us who have tried to live within our means. Sooner or later, the profligate are going to take from the prudent, the grasshopper is going to confiscate the property of the ants.

A word to the wise….

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And I’ll bet you really wanted to know that.

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I suppose one must applaud, however limply, the thought of council bureaucrats worrying about the needs of employees who are immigrants from Poland or Lithuania or Nigeria who might be perplexed by odd bits of Latin-derived jargon in memos. But this really smacks of the sort of P.C. nonsense that brings down ridicule on the heads of honest folk working to reduce prejudice.

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A great idea if there’s a way to implement it that wouldn’t be worse than what we’ve got now.

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Kinda gives new meaning to the phrase “more money than sense”, doesn’t it?

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Well, that’s Communism for you.

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Hey, let’s regress to the Democrat political machines of a hundred years ago. Yeah, that’s change you can believe in.

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It’s not your grandfather’s Britain.

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The Ministry of Truth is alive in well in Britain — just as George Orwell predicted.

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That means that Bush was always Dick Nixon in a Clever Plastic Disguise. With results as you seen them.

This is what happens when the only choice you have is the lesser of two evils — you get evil guaranteed, just not so much as with the other guy.

And that makes this election especially depressing, because there’s no hope for the future; even if McCain wins, the next four to eight years are going to be shitty, unless John McCain has more “surprise” in him than I’ve seen any evidence for — and most of the “surprise” in McCain has been of the unpleasant variety.

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A new EU naval task force will be unable to take tough action against Somali pirates because it must respect their human rights, its commander has admitted.

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Romsey has the only productive fields for miles around in the once-fertile Makonde South district, 90 miles north of Harare. Now it is under threat from a local strongman, Chief Nemakonde, a strong supporter of Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, whose land grab is being supported by local government officials. He has already taken over five formerly white-owned farms in the district, all of which are derelict after his efforts at planting failed.

Boy, those Zimbabweans are sure lucky they’re no longer under the boot of that oppressive white regime.

Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what sort of hell they’d be living in now.

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Presumably so people can go by and thank them for speaking truth to power.

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Gotta love Australians.

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You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.

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When seconds count, police respond in minutes. Buy a gun. Or die. Your choice.