Read it.

Why do countries and groups within countries engage in large-scale violent conflict? Social scientists’ knee-jerk impulse is to look for objective conflict of interest: It’s about land, oil, or whatever. But if you watch a standard news channel like CNN, you get a very different explanation: Groups are fighting because they hate each other.

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Alternative title: Why Socialism Can’t and Won’t Ever Work.

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Then ask why the school system sucks. Gee, could it be the quality of the teachers?

One of the most popular objections to home-schooling is that “kids won’t be socialized properly unless they interact with their peers”.

The cure would appear to be worse than the disease.

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Although couched in terms of “those mean policies impose a burden on others”, the real lesson to be learned here is “if things are made difficult for illegal immigrants, they’ll take their parasitical ways elsewhere.”

I guess enforcement works, after all.

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“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Stick your hands up.”

Steve Sailer pulls the curtain back on Los Angeles.

LA scored near the top only in “Luxury boutiques,” “Shoe-shopping,” and “Jewelry-shopping.”

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“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Stick your hands up.”

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Perhaps that’s the answer.

Oh, wait … I keep forgetting that there aren’t any Republicans in prison. (Go ahead, ask them. They’re pretty much all Democrats.)

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See for yourself whether Wright is being “taken out of context”.

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Frequently, when a patient goes to see a specialist for the first time, none of the records kept by his primary care physician are accessible to the new doctor. The specialist will typically order a whole new series of diagnostic tests to ensure the file he starts contains records he can trust, even if the same tests were just performed at the request of the other physician. Not only is this duplication costly, it also undermines quality care, as the patient is in danger of getting conflicting treatment plans based on competing and incomplete patient records.

One of the major reasons health care costs are out of control is that it’s so labor-intensive. We’ve brought the efficiencies (and consequent cost savings) of automation to almost every area of human activity — with the glaring exception of health care and education. With health care, people aren’t willing to sacrifice quality, so the cost goes through the roof. With education, people aren’t willing to spend what it takes to ensure high quality, so quality goes in the toilet. The only way to fix these situations is automation. As with automation in the manufacturing sector, the chief obstacle to overcome isn’t technical, it’s social — primarily resistance on the part of the relevant unions (AMA and NEA, for example).

And, of course, the lack of a free market in both areas is crucial.

The primary payers of medical bills are not the consumers—that is, the patients—but rather insurance plans and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Consequently, the normal marketplace dynamic of suppliers competing with each other based on price and services is weak, almost nonexistent. Doctors and hospitals do not need to add convenient electronic information to their service provision because their payments will be the same either way. Indeed, most health insurers are mildly supportive of an improved HIT system—so long as they do not have to pay higher reimbursement rates for medical claims.

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I’ve always wondered how regressives could claim to have some exclusive dedication to rationality and science and yet embrace some of the New Age bullshit that they do. Consider somebody with crystals hanging from their rearview mirror who reads the daily horoscope and gets a Tarot reading at life’s crisis points. Guess whether this person’s political views are “left” or “right”. The question answers itself.

Party of Science? Well, I suppose, for sufficiently flaky definitions of “science”.

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Terry Battersby, 53, from Manchester, has been removed from his job as head of information technology at the Brussels-based Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE) and placed on a short-term contract.

Battersby uncovered evidence that the agency’s former director, Hamed Sow, who is now the energy minister of the west African country of Mali, approved the award of lucrative European Union contracts to a company in which he had a financial interest.

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As I get older, I become more convinced that hypocrisy and irony must be as blind as a bat, for those who practice it seem oblivious to the fact that they wear it like a clown suit at a formal wedding; plain as day, badly out of place and amusing to boot. This election year, we have provided with a classic example of this phenomenon, as evidenced by the Bobbsey Twins, Obama and Hillary, from here on referred to simply as OH for practicality, simplicity and accuracy.

He’s forgetting their older brother, John McCain.

Unity is another popular slogan but, if this pair is any indication, the only thing uniting liberals is their individual selfishness and arrogance undermining their collective interest and agenda. If too many cooks spoil the soup, then this soup has become a diluted, jumbled and highly intoxicating superficial stew.

He’s forgetting their older brother, John McCain, who likes to pee in the soup before serving it, just to show how much of a maverick he is.

Read it. 

The Nanny State strikes again.

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But a vague commitment to multilateralism obscures one of the most difficult challenges the next president will face: While international institutions have never been more needed, they have seldom been less effective.

Well, that’s pretty plain: If international institutions suck (and they do), then it’s America’s fault.

Michael Gerson is obviously the Washington Post‘s idea of a conservative —  go ahead and criticize the left’s pets, so long as America ultimately takes the blame.

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Notice how Democrats aren’t really all that keen on democracy when it impairs the chances of the Overclass to get and keep power.

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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has supported environmental certification and carbon-trading programs, and last year offered land concessions throughout the Amazon to private logging companies that promised sustainable timber harvesting.

Apparently this eccentric definition of “capitalism” is what passes for science at the Washington Post.

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Gee, it’s such a pity that Ireland is no longer the romantic  primitive backwater it used to be. Where will the Overclass go for its frisson of condescension now?

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Trees are the new potholes.

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Actually, it sort of looks like an AlGore map of Europe after Global Warming has melted all of the ice and driven up the sea levels.

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And how about sidewalks? They ought to have air bags too!

I’ve got an idea: Require the cyclists to wear an airbag suit. That will cover all contingencies, and put the responsibility (and the cost) where it belongs.

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Wonder whether the Usual Suspects will take a break from protesting American involvement in Iraq to complain about Chinese involvement in Zimbabwe. Somehow I doubt it.

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Be careful what you wish for….

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Even Ruth Marcus can see that McCain doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to economics.

The only thing that saves him is that Hillary and Barack are even worse.

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Two leading presidential candidates have now wandered into an exceptionally emotional medical debate in which they have no known scientific expertise.

Huh? Seems to me that that’s what presidential candidates — hell, candidates at any level — do best.

This is news?

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The Australian navy has been suffering from a serious geek shortage for several years now. With a total strength of 13,000, being short a few dozen people in some job categories can have serious repercussions, and that’s what happened to the submarine force. For example, the navy is short about a third of the marine engineering officers it needs. There are less serious shortages in officers specializing in electrical systems and weapons systems.  Australian warships have been active in the war on terror, resulting in many crews being away from home for up to six months at a time. There are shortages of both officers and sailors with technical skills. 

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Odds that this is true: Very small.

Note how nobody seems interested in the little detail “captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002”. What was he doing there that led to him being captured?

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Funny how the Overclass suddenly fudges its principles when there comes a pinch in the pocketbook — or the ol’ lifestyle.

Ever see AlGore ride a horse? Wouldn’t you pay for the privilege? I sure would.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that environmentalists are all a bunch of narcissistic sociopaths. No, I would never do that.

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I guess regressives are just as shallow as the rest of us.

As a charter member of the ‘attractive but unsociable’ set, I find this comforting. Not that I would ever go to one of these parties, but it’s nice to know that I could if I wanted to. Which I don’t.

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

Read ’em & weep, girls.

Read it.

An innovative analysis by Eric Cadora highlights “million-dollar blocks” — individual city blocks where more than one million dollars per block per year are spent to incarcerate individuals from that block.

Care to guess how many People of Pallor live on such blocks?

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

The funny thing is that I bet Rev. Wright considers Obama an ungrateful tightwad. After all, Obama makes $3.9 million in one year off his two books, for one of which Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon provides the title and for the other it provides the central climax.

Does Obama do the Christian thing and tithe? Hardly. Instead of 10%, Obama chips in 0.7% of his income.

Betrayed, I tell you. Betrayed.

On the other hand, it ought to come as a comfort to be shown that Senator Obama doesn’t falue race-hatred all that highly.

Read it.

Which shows you how far Chicago has degenerated.

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But never at the right people — the environmentalist wackos and the politicians who kiss their asses.

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As a result of the DDT ban, more than 30 million children in Africa and Asia have died from DDT-preventable malaria, and an estimated 500 million adults are today chronically ill from this disease. The ban of DDT was the worst act of technological genocide in human history.

 Hundreds of millions of human beings live today on the very edge of existence — with all of their available resources consumed in the quest for food, shelter, and the minimum necessities of life. Without world technology and the energy that makes that technology possible, these people will slip from the lower rungs of human existence and will die. By abruptly lowering world hydrocarbon use, the human-caused global warmers are going to kill these people.

Politicians in the United States have given us a first taste of the horrible suffering of human beings that is to come. By responding to the myth of human-caused global warming by mildly diminishing American grain supplies — in a futile, politicized attempt to burn grain as fuel, American politicians have given the world a slight taste of the starvation and slaughter that is to come.

Read it.

Now imagine how bad it would be if Mexico weren’t exporting most of their poor people to the United States.

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Imagine my distress.

This is the worst news I’ve seen since I read about the closing of the hula-hoop museum.

Quelle domage.

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Seder as fashion statement.  That’s the OverClass for you.

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Wonder whether there’s any way to speed that up….

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Geez — they bitch about burning oil because it causes Global Warming, and then they bitch about high oil prices (which reduce the amount of burning oil, which supposedly causes Global Warming).

Hey, guys, make up your minds.

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Not that anyone will be allowed to do anything about it.

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Obama does fulfill liberalism’s transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

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

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Proof that McCain is an idiot.

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Forward into the past….

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A conversation only White People could face.

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Well, better late than never, I suppose.

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Mike Williams, a Florida union member, compared the DNC’s refusal to seat the delegates from those two states as similar to when a company locks outs striking union employees.

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That ought to come as no surprise. Israel isn’t a member of the bend-over-and-grease-up crowd in the U.N.

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This sort of folk mythology is, I suspect, behind the otherwise inexplicable pro-unionism of otherwise intelligent people, such as the author Eric Flint.

Any system is capable of exploitation, and a system that allows considerable freedom allows considerable room for exploitation, depending on the personal morality of the people involved.

Unfortunately, pro-union regressives are very quick to jump on the exploitation that occurred in the system they don’t like, and very slow to jump on the exploitation that occurs in the system they do.