Read it. A great counterweight to “progressive ideology”.

The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you.

There you have it in a nutshell. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help ourselves, specifically to the contents of your pockets.”

Read it. Keep your fingers crossed.

Victor Davis Hanson always has something cheerful to say.

Ever seen somebody killed with a plowshare? The surprised look is the most entertaining part.

Read it. Just the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from a Democrat President.

Oh, wait….

Read it. The reason democracy doesn’t work in Africa is because the people in charge of making it work don’t want it to work. Until they fix that, democracy has nowhere to go, and that’s a cultural thing.

Come to think of it, one could say the same about America….

Peggy Noonan ponders the new political season.

Read it. Monopolies are like vampires … it takes a lot to kill them, and even then they tend to rise from the dead.

Read it. The new business model for authors? Doesn’t seem to have harmed Cory Doctorow or John Scalzi.

Read it. More about language and writing in the Tribal World.

Read it. I prefer the PowerSquid myself, but this is pretty cool.

David Pogue is distraught.

Actually, I’ve given up on watching movies. I just watch the trailers — for free — on the Internet, because typically the best parts of the movie will be in the trailer, almost by a law of nature; they want you to see it, so they show you their best stuff.

If it’s really any good, your friends will tell you about it, and you can buy the DVD later — which will have the director’s cut and half a metric ton of supplemental material, for about what you would pay to watch the lame theatrical release in a theater.

Read it.

Read it.

Read it.

Read it. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

Watch it.

Mencius Moldbug explains it all to you.

First, finance is not a science. Secondly, finance is not intrinsically complicated. And third, unless you are a physicist, your life will be pretty much the same whether you understand relativity or not. “You may not be interested in war,” Trotsky once said, “but war is interested in you.” The same is surely true of finance.

To actually understand all of modern finance, you would need a brain the size of a beachball. This would certainly attract notice, and you might have some trouble getting laid.

Read the whole thing.

Read it.

Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist.

Of course, if you don’t insist on going to Harvard, it’s a lot easier.

But it is worth pausing to savor the irony of an institution that charges as much as $45,000 a year asking its applicants to demonstrate their proletarian credentials.

Read it.

Read it. They sure give me a headache….

Read it. Indeed — the swine.

Read it. Journalists appear to be people who didn’t have the grades to get into Ed school.

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

Read it at your own risk. I like this stuff. Others feel differently.

Read it. Can heroin and other vegetable alkaloids be far behind?

Read it. Another reason to avoid living in the People’s Republic.

Read it. When I saw this my first thought was “Navy SEALs”.

Read it. Or don’t — the headline tells you everything you need to know about the Democrat party … and why it’s a bad influence on American history.

Read it. Guess it would be rather petty to say “I told you so” at this point, huh?

Of course, this ISN’T A PROBLEM for the other 49 states that don’t allow “gay marriage”.

Read it. Lord Curzon:

Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace.

Yup. That about sums it up.

Brian Carney chronicles the advance of the Nanny State.

Robert Samuelson joins the tsk-tskers.

What is it with Americans and their homes?

What is it about being around the Ruling Class that gets everybody’s undies in a wad?

Read it. Yeah, banning handgun ownership tends to do that — in the classic phrase, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” A bit of common sense that most of the Ruling Class refuse to acknowledge.

Read it. If there isn’t anything to hide, why are they so determined to hide it?

Read it. I remember  day when it didn’t take Federal legislation to allow states and localities to “curtail investment” anywhere.

Read it. In case you were wondering. I know I was.