Read it. Everything you never wanted to know about Urdu, and then some.

Read it.

Read it. I wish I got paid for doing that sort of thing….

Read it. And the hits just keep on comin’.

WSJ (sub required, but well worth the money).

The subprime industry succeeded in defeating state efforts to limit risky lending to borrowers with weak credit during the housing boom. Ameriquest, until recently one of the biggest lenders, distributed over $20 million in political donations and swayed lawmakers in New Jersey and Georgia.

That’s the way the system works — the government causes a problem, and then makes a big deal about how they have to step in and “fix” it.

Kausfiles contains many delightful things. Today’s treat:

Letting the presidential nominee be picked by the Iowa caucusers is like letting your antiwar tactics be picked by the last people left at the end of a 4-hour SDS meeting in 1970.

Whoa, that brings back memories. But he’s absolutely right.

Read it. One of the fun parts of living in a partisan world is that one can always depend on one side to find the holes in the other side’s plans. In the old days this meant that the Useless Class (the Democrats) got their ideas out, and the side of the Useful Class (the Republicans) got squat. But the Internet has changed all that.

Read it. A healthy trend.

Read it. The world is not as they tell you it is. But you knew that.

Read it. For some reason, people are always surprised when a Communist country acts like, you know, a Communist country.

Read it. Cool — Pakistan is just Watts in Urdu. No wonder they can’t get anything done.

Read it. I don’t even need to say anything, do I? Except to point out that you’re paying for all of this. Aren’t you proud?

Read it. All of my illusions, shattered.

Read it. Hey, it’s not easy finding the right kind of lipstick for a pig.

Inside Politics.

Read it. Looks like Tom Cruise from here.

Read it. It was good enough for Yasser, and it’s good enough for me.

Read it.

 As an aside, while I was in St. Louis we had dinner with a retired doctor. She told of an incident where, as a patient, she went to see a dermatologist about a rash. The dermatologist looked at her and told she was fine. This proved to be correct. However, he billed Medicare for $700 for surgery. She called Medicare to report the fraud, and, after she finally got through after considerable time in voice-mail hell, the person told her that, “No, everything is fine. Our records show that you had the surgery.”

You’re paying for this, folks. Hope you’re proud.

Steve Sailer just keeps on coming up with good stuff.

I’m a morning person. My wife is a night person. My late first wife was a night person, often excessively so. Both of my brothers are night people. I think I may be adopted.

Read it. Important news in a subject you didn’t know anything about.

Read it.

My major problem with Open Office is that it’s gawdawful slow.

I don’t know whether it’s because everything is wrapped up into one application, or what.

I find myself activating my Windows VM under Parallels and using Word and Excel in preference to NeoOffice (Open Office customized for the Mac — it is, sad to say, quicker than the regular Open Office) just because the combined operation only takes about half the time.

Unfortunately I’m too cheap to shell out Microsoft-extortionate prices for Mac Office, so there you are — I’m just a prisoner of value rigidity.

Steve Sailer keeps coming up with all this great stuff.

Read it. And attempt to figure out how this local government differs from any other local government — if you can.

IS MONTGOMERY County so jazzed about snagging a world-class music hall for downtown Silver Spring that it is about to finalize a sweetheart deal that treats taxpayers’ dollars like Monopoly money?

A good point. Wonder how the Washington Post can publish something like this and still give the Feds a pass — this sounds like a classic “earmark” to me. Or you could substitute “sports stadium” for “world-class music hall” and plug in the name of any major metropolitan behavioral sink with no cognitive dissonance whatsoever.

Read it. Surprising to see such a pro-freedom piece in the Washington Post. Enjoy it while you can.

Steve Sailer has a GREAT idea.

ParaPundit likes it, too.

Read it. An interesting concept.

The parallel with campaign advertisements is just too much of a cheap shot, however.

Read it. I guess enforcement works after all.

Read it. Sounds like the basis for a new series of videos, “Bureaucrats Gone Wild”.

Paid for with your tax money, of course; we don’t want to break too much with tradition.

Read it. Markets surface even where you don’t want them to.

Read it. A perennial problem in these “countries” that are soldered together by some megalomaniac’s ambitious fantasy.

The official point of view is that there is one Pakistani nation united by the bonds of Islam and the national language, Urdu.

Urdu being a variant of Hindi that is chiefly distinguished by being written in Arabic letters, and has about as many native speakers in Pakistan as there are native speakers of Spanish in the U.S.

In this case the culprit was Jinnah, but India suffered from Mohandas Gandhi’s fantasies even more; by rights, it ought to be about 12 different states, and I suspect would be a happier (and less troublesome) place.

Read it. One of those heartwarming stories that encapsulate the spirit of the season.

Steve Sailer ponders a modern trend in Artificially-Cobbled-Together-stan … and points west.

Peggy Noonan.

We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane.

Hm. That doesn’t leave a lot.

Read it. Don’t they have Skraelings in Paris?

Who killed Benazir Bhutto? It’s like a board game.

Between this and the Iowa caucuses, don’t expect to find any real news in the “news media” for about a week.

Read it. We can only hope.

“He tends to think like a gangster,” said Jim Thomas, a former senior defense planner who worked with Vickers. “He can understand trends then change the rules of the game so they are advantageous for your side.”

At last, someone with a clue.

Read it. We’re screwed, basically.

Read it. Perhaps Michigan will stop before it goes over the cliff.

Read it. You don’t have to be a moron to be a journalist, but it’s certainly no drawback, either.

Read it. This reiterates the vital distinction between invention and innovation. Coming up with a clever idea is fun but not important. What’s important is getting it out there to make people’s lives better. This is why more people speak European languages than Chinese.

Read it. Not a whole lot, apparently.

Read it. If you understand it, please explain it to me.

Read it. And, of course, once he’s formally a Muslim, if he tries to switch back, he’ll be killed. Fine religion, that Islam.

Read it. Dependency on jizyah, like any other welfare system, corrupts those who receive it even more than those who pay it.

Read it. Economists like to arrange things neatly. This includes thoughts. I like this approach.

Read it. Can’t say that I blame them. If the British can do this, can Americans be far behind?

Read it. This is a great idea.

Read it. Remember, you’re paying for all of this.

Read it. Sometimes when you push the envelope, the envelope pushes back.

Read it. I guess enforcement works.