Read it.

Well, stay out of that row.

Read it.

Bet on Phalanx.

Megan McArdle looks at inflation.

George Will points out the silliness of listing as “endangered” a species that is increasing its numbers.

Because of restrictions on hunting, polar bears might be more numerous today than ever and might be twice as numerous as they were three decades ago — when the media were fanning frenzy about global cooling. (Science magazine, March 1975, reported “the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age.”)

But it’s not about the polar bears — it’s about cancelling the Industrial Revolution.

Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cellphone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities. Kempthorne says such uses of the act, unintended by those who wrote it in 1973, would be “wholly inappropriate.” But in 1973, climate Cassandras were saying that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). And no authors of the Constitution or the 14th Amendment intended to create a “fundamental” right to abortion, but there it is.

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Old Seinfeld reruns will do the same thing and cost less. But we’ll give them credit for a good effort.

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Earlier today I linked to the Wikipedia page about the band The Decemberists, to point out that in addition to warming up for Barack Obama in Oregon, the band is known for using the National Anthem of the Soviet Union as an introduction to their concerts.

That section of the Wikipedia page has now gone down the memory hole.

Gee, in the old Soviet Union, they used to shoot revisionists. Perhaps the fears about Obama being assassinated are well-placed.

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Or ought they to be barred from the Olympics entirely? After all, they’re as bad as the apartheid South Africans, and that precedent ought to be good enough for the Politically Correct.

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Why a lot of the people in college ought not to be there.

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The problem isn’t just with Muslims.

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Mugabe, like so many post-colonial sub-Saharan African leaders, was a successful rebel leader. He was also a professed Marxist. In 1979 Mugabe’s Shona tribe-based rebel organization and allied rebel groups (the coalition referred to itself as the Patriotic Front) overthrew the white-run Republic of Rhodesia (formerly Southern Rhodesia). However, in 1980, with the aid of North Korean military advisers, Mugabe (a member of the Shona tribe) turned on his former allies in the Matabele tribe. From seven to ten thousand Matabele died in that brief war. No one has stepped forward to finance another armed resistance. Guns cost money, and no one sees Zimbabwe worth getting involved in. So Mugabe and his well armed Shona allies have kept control, without armed opposition.

With what result?

Once a major regional food producer, today a substantial number of Zimbabweans go hungry or leave. Since 2000 an estimated three million Zimbabweans (nearly a quarter of the population) have fled the neighboring nations, with South Africa a preferred destination. Zimbabwe’s economy is wretched beyond description. In late 2007 the Zimbabwean government’s own inflation data put the inflation rate at 7,600 percent a year. Economic analysts outside of Zimbabwe rated it as high as 15,000 percent. An IMF “forecast” said the real rate could reach 100,000 percent or more. The statistical differences were meaningless. Staples like meat, bread and cooking oil are not available in retail grocery stores.

Gee, overthrowing the colonialist white regime really worked out well, didn’t it?

\Any apologies from those who promoted this scheme? Of course not.

Megan McArdle dishes the dirt.

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Government by Picard: “Make it so.” (Gee, it always works on television….)

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And what would Ellsworth Toohey’s favorite magazine be able to do about it?

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Perhaps they’re sick and tired of living in Yobistan.

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Well, you know, they don’t make doomsday cults the way they used to….

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And draw your own conclusions.

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And where are the environmentalists complaining that we’re tampering with Mother Gaia?

Just sayin’.

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We have the technology.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

What makes Zimbabwe so unsexy compared to Darfur is that in 1965 the British Colonial Office tried to give the colony of Rhodesia to its black majority. But its white population declared independence and for 15 years resisted an international trade embargo, building a substantial manufacturing base. Finally, in 1979, Margaret Thatcher organized the handover of the country to Robert Mugabe.

The new President devoted the next decade to slaughtering his tribal enemies, largely leaving the white farmers alone to feed the country. In 2000, however, Mugabe began to reward his supporters by telling them to drive out the white minority and steal their land. Not surprisingly, his bully boys proved to be worthless farmers and the country has teetered on the brink of starvation ever since. Mugabe’s government has responded to the shortages it created by printing money, driving the annual inflation rate up to 165,000% in April 2008.

Read it.

In virtually every activity at the school, administrators say, the goal is to help create “a new man,” instilled with communal values, filled with love for the republic and ready to battle “internal or external aggression” against Venezuela.

Read it.

I find this particularly amusing:

This scandal should blow over very quickly, since the minister in question is not a powerful figure whose name is easy to link to GOP politics.

Parts I find appalling: A congregation with 26,000 members (I’ve lived in towns smaller than that); a congregation with over 40 ministers (can you say “impersonal”?), and a minister specifically in charge of a narrowly sliced demographic (“married adults, ages 42 to 58”).

Read it.

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Once again, the private sector does the jobs that the public sector fumbles.

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But all of the Usual Suspects are wringing their hands about Club Gitmo, so nobody gives a shit.

Tell me how much Zimbabwe is better off than it was under Ian Smith. Try to do it with a straight face, and without your nose growing by a meter.

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Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians.

When reading a science fiction story, I never account an alien species convincing unless they are stranger than the Japanese.

Read it.

Ride ‘im, cowboy.

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Fortunately, I don’t have that problem.

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I particularly love this passage: ‘. As it remade itself in recent decades from a bedroom suburb into a more densely settled, partly urban, more diverse cluster of communities,…’. In other words, ‘as it went from middle class to incipient slum’. Don’t you just love the way Washington talks?

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Ain’t no biased media here, no sir.

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Read it.

I am not making this up.

Megan McArdle points out some Inconvenient Truth.

Farm subsidies overwhelmingly do not go to struggling farmers; they go to large, flourishing concerns.

And once the Death Tax gets done with them, they won’t be struggling any more.

Read it.

The course of true love doth ne’er run smooth.

Wonder how much the book rights will go for.

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Ask yourself why India thinks it needs submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles.

And take a look at this.

Read it.

Read it.

“Juveniles and former child soldiers should be treated first and foremost as candidates for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not subjected to further victimization,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, said in a statement.

This appeared in the same issue of the paper that described terrorists strapping explosives to an 8-year-old child in order to bomb somebody they didn’t like.

A rational person would see this situation as evidence that the bad guys are wickedly using children in their plots. The ACLU sees it as Just Another Excuse to Bash America. That tells you all you really need to know about the ACLU. (Question: Why is the ACLU involved in this at all? And what is somebody named “Jamil Dakwar” doing as a director of the ACLU’s “human rights program”?)

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The future looks dim after all.

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Well, I never like Houston anyway.

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And, more to the point, has (much like this column) demonstrated why.

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No wonder academics are gun-shy.

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Although an obsession with healthy eating is not officially in the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual for psychiatrists, at least one doctor has given it a name: orthorexia. Colorado alternative physician Steven Bratman coined the phrase in his 2001 book, “Health Food Junkies,” saying it is a disease disguised as a virtue.

Probably.

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An endangered species that isn’t really endangered; it’s merely endangered in the fantasy world of enviro-wackos and simple-minded bureaucrats.

“We now have a species threatened which is both healthy in size and population; the real risk is litigation that will follow,” Crockett said. “Lawsuits will continue to be filed opposing individual operations, lease sales and permits, and that could have a significant impact on business up here.”

They don’t give a shit about the polar bears; that’s just a convenient stick with which to beat anybody wanting to solve the oil crisis by, you know, actually pumping American oil.

Read it.

Hey, when the government provides your health care, you don’t get a lot of options.

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AlGore is only #2? I’m offended.

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If we ever lose Al Gore, we’re sunk.

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If anyone is wondering why Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II, here’s an example why.

So long as group loyalties exist, members of a suspect group are going to be suspected. Whether that is appropriate or inappropriate depends on the circumstances; those who claim that it is always and everywhere inappropriate need to read up on human nature, because they live in a world that does not exist.

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

Perhaps if Senator Obama will just talk to them, they’ll quit and decide to play nice.

A handy reminder.