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In an effort to highlight the hidden burdens imposed by government, Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, together with CFA, has estimated average prices and taxes imposed on 13 popular targets for multiple layers of hidden taxes.

This could prove amusing.

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Note that none of them were American. Heh.

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Well, my car would look lame, anyway, but look at the video and pretend you’re on Serenity.

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Jerry Pournelle has been pushing this scheme for decades. It looks like it’s finally getting some mindshare.

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The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.), in South Carolina, has animals of the Royal Standard Bengal (which is orange and black), the Royal White Bengal (white with black stripes), the Snow White Bengal (all white or with ghost stripes), and the Golden Tabby Bengal (red to pale orange cream stripes and saddle).

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

Pictures here.

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The modern slacker’s dilemma.

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How appropriate that a perceptive article about the financial meltdown should appear in the effete lifestyle magazine Vanity Fair.

“Yes, I know Björk,” a professor of finance at the University of Iceland says in reply to my question, in a weary tone. “She can’t sing, and I know her mother from childhood, and they were both crazy. That she is so well known outside of Iceland tells me more about the world than it does about Björk.”

I know how he feels.

Back away from the Icelandic economy and you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do. Certifying the nonexistence of elves, for instance. (“This will take at least six months—it can be very tricky.”) But not nearly so many as the place needs, given its talent for turning cod into Ph.D.’s. At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it.

Truly, Barack Obama’s dream world. “When everybody’s somebody, then no one’s anybody.”

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That European Union thing is really working out well for them, isn’t it?

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

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In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

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Well. There it is.

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Police have been told not to evict illegal gipsy camps from private land unless they are causing additional problems such as crime.

Gee, I sorta thought that “illegal gipsy camps” were “crime” all by themselves … but apparently not.

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Let me know when they take up smoking again.

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Except farmers, of course — and corporate mega”farmers” like ADM most of all. And their Congresscritters, of course. And environmentalists, of course. And the politically fashionable, of course.

Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn’t cooperate.

Americans are unlikely to use enough gas next year to absorb the 13 billion gallons of ethanol that Congress mandated, because current regulations limit the ethanol content in each gallon of gas at 10%. The industry is asking that this cap be lifted to 15% or even 20%. That way, more ethanol can be mixed with less gas, and producers won’t end up with a glut that the government does not require anyone to buy.

The ethanol boosters aren’t troubled that only a fraction of the 240 million cars and trucks on the road today can run with ethanol blends higher than 10%. It can damage engines and corrode automotive pipes, as well as impair some safety features, especially in older vehicles. It can also overwhelm pollution control systems like catalytic converters. The malfunctions multiply in other products that use gas, such as boats, snowmobiles, lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc.

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This public option will supposedly “compete” with private alternatives. As President Obama likes to put it, those who are happy with the insurance they have now can keep it — and if they happen to prefer the government offering, well, gee whiz, that’s the free market at work. The reality is far different. Not only will the new program become the default coverage for the uninsured, but Democrats intend to game the system to precipitate — or if need be, coerce — an exodus to government from private insurance. Soon enough, that will be the only “option” left.

Well, that’s what Democrats do.

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Quelle surprise. Gaming the system is what activist groups do.

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In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

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The fellow passengers fell into two categories: foreign students or drunkards. Some were both.

Apparently British doctors don’t like adventures.

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Looking like a refugee from an Alien movie: Priceless.

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This creeps me out.

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They’re missing one: Democrat politician — perhaps under the misapprehension that they only attack your wallet.

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Yup, Pakistan will have to be next, after Afghanistan.

Assuming, of course, that the Obamateurs actually win in Afghanistan.

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Donald Payne, from New Jersey and a member of the foreign affairs committee, arrived in Mogadishu for talks with President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his prime minister on rampant piracy off the country’s coast.

You would think that after all this time they would have learned how to shoot better than that.

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Yeah, that’s the first idea that comes into my head when I’m depressed — let’s go jump in a zoo with a bunch of polar bears.

Zoo keepers who saved the life of a woman who jumped into a polar bear enclosure at Berlin Zoo revealed on Monday that they were moments away from shooting the animals.

They ought to have been prepared to shoot the woman instead.

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Carolyn Lorimer, a woman who let out her flat to a young couple, evicted them after discovering photographs of wild parties at the property on the social networking website Facebook.

Well. There it is.

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And about time, too. The old doctrine was based on an assumption of a clear and rational foreign policy, and in a world where “Democrat administratoin” => “dithering punctuated by spasms of overreactive violence”, such an assumption is manifestly false. We need to return to the principle expressed by James Madison that we are the friends of liberty everywhere but the guardians only of our own.

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I was intrigued to note when I bought a £216 air ticket to New York that an additional £80 was charged in tax introduced to combat global warming, When I got home it was reported that 5,000 more UK companies, from banks to hotels, are faced with a yearly cost of £660 million to buy “carbon credits” under the EU’s “emissions trading scheme” (ETS).

Doubtless the believers in global warming are quite happy to pay thousands of pounds a year for their faith. But for the rest of us this is all the most shameless excuse for stealing our money since they put a tax on windows.

More here.

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Quite possibly. One of the many ways in which the arrogant narcissism of social media like FaceBook comes back to bite the arrested adolescents who indulge in it.

Mind your own business, and encourage other people to mind theirs. Good fences make good neighbors, and that applies to information as much as to anything else.

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To make that clear, white people are paying $15-25 per session to hold their dog in the same position as other white people.  This is considered a relative bargain.

The Hog is in rare form.

Ladies who choose to live with single men (every man who is not married is single), let me tell you what it means when your live-in boyfriend proposes after a period of years. It means he gave up and decided you were the best he could do. If he had thought you were a catch, he would have married you sooner, to keep someone else from getting you. Or it could mean he hates being with you less than he hates dating.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

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

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That’s some Religion o’ Peace you got there.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Personally, I can’t make head nor tail of the newspaper’s account of his doings. But, from what I’ve learned about the bankers, developers, and “advocates” in the housing racket, when they all agree on something or somebody’s wonderfulness, you’d better get a good grip on your wallet.

Help me out here to see if I understand the process correctly: Developer X announces plans to build an apartment building of the legally maximum height for the neighborhood. Neighbors complain, saying it will block their sunlight, increase congestion, make parking harder to find, etc. and demand that the building be only a fraction of X height.

Shaun Donovan grants the developers’ wish for X height, as long as the developer makes some of the units “affordable” — i.e., charges below-market rates. In other words, because housing development is highly regulated, much of the profit from the development stems from getting permission from the government to build a tall building on a particular piece of land. Because the government can bestow or withhold that permission as it sees fit, it can extract some of the profit from the developers. (Sorry, neighbors, about your new sunshine shortage, but you should have invested more in the right politicians. Maybe next time you’ll be wiser.)

The obvious question, but one that seldom seems to occur to reporters explaining the wonders of the affordable housing racket, is: Who gets these “affordable” units? The right to buy or rent at below market values is hugely valuable so there will be no shortage of applicants. Some allocation method is necessary to choose from all the applicants. If the government doesn’t determine who gets in, the developers will just take under-the-table kickbacks to bring the net price up close to the market level. Am I being overly cynical in assuming that politics plays some role in determining who winds up in the “affordable” units?

Let me make a wild guess that some of those 1,833 were in some way affiliated with “affordable housing advocates.” A common phenomenon that has emerged in recent decades in America, but remains so off-the-radar that I’ve never heard a name for it, is the business of setting up leftwing pressure groups that make their living by reaching mutually profitable agreements with regulated businesses so that the business can do what it wants.

Read it.

We have the technology.

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Incompetence is as perennial as the grass.

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There are things the rich do that working class and middle class folks don’t. Some of them–living off the return on capital rather than wages or salary–are only available to the rich. Others–seeking a first-rate education for your kids, working for yourself rather than others–are things that ordinary folks do to the extent that they can, but their ability is limited. Even so, it’s worth learning the tactics of the rich and applying them where possible.

Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Something to ponder, along with this map.

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It’s pretty bad when companies can make more money through lobbying the government than even through manipulating financial paper, much less actually making and selling stuff.

Yaacov Ben Moshe is right, as always.

This is a mugshot of Nour Hadid. Nour lives near Chicago. She is a muslim woman who has confessed to beating her two-year-old niece, Bhia Hadid, to death over a four day period of torture.

Nour’s husband, Alaeddin Hadid, who surely must have been away on a business trip or was so deeply immersed in the study of islamic texts that he did not notice the “head to toe”bruises, screams and what must (at least by the third day of beatings!) have been severely altered behavior, is very upset. Is he upset by the death of little Bhia? Is he devastated that his wife has confessed to this brutal, extended torture and murder?

No, actually, Alaeddin seems to be most upset by the photograph above. He prefers focussing and raging on the fact that his wife’s mug shot was released by the police and published in the press. He is upset because the mug shot shows her without her Hijab and with her shoulders exposed by the tank top she was wearing. He has been quoted as saying that the police are “really going to be in big trouble” because this is against their religion. He’s going to sue.

Read it.

This is why the Democrats, the party of corruption, cannot be trusted with government.

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Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

Darwin Award nominee.

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Mount this on a ship, and send it to Somalia.

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When the woman who calls herself Queen Omega moved into a three-bedroom house here last December, she introduced herself to the neighbors, signed contracts for electricity and water and ordered an Internet connection.

What she did not tell anyone was that she had no legal right to be in the home.

Ms. Omega, 48, is one of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure crisis. Through a small advocacy group of local volunteers called Take Back the Land, she moved from a friend’s couch into a newly empty house that sold just a few years ago for more than $400,000.

In other words, she’s a thief. This is the reduction ad absurdam of the entitlement culture: If you want something, just take it. If somebody has something that you don’t have, you have somehow been cheated of it, you’re entitled to “take it back”.

In a functional culture, the legal system takes care of such systems, quickly and surely. In a dysfunctional culture, such as we are rapidly becoming, the law is ineffective. When it comes to be seen as ineffective, and when people whose property is being stolen grasp that emotionally, then you get vigilante groups enforcing the property rights that the official government can’t or won’t. And then Hell descends upon the just and the unjust alike.

These people are sowing the wind, and forgetting that they will reap the whirlwind.

The Hog isn’t doing politics any more.

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

Timothy Burke is rather an odd fellow but occasionally he hits a jackpot. Here he discusses buying fantasy books.

Other things that are likely to drive me off:

1) “Book One in the Dark Swords of Black Terror Trilogy”.
2) Mostly, if the word “vampire” appears anywhere in the cover, title or blurb. It stops being “mostly” if “vampire” appears in the same blurb with “elf”.
3) Titles or blurbs that contain the name of a fantasy kingdom that sounds more like a prescription medicine for depression or impotence.
4) Anything that contains three of the following four elements in the blurb: plucky but innocent young heroine, farmboy with a destiny, dark lord of evil, wise ancient wizard. “Handsome voodoo priest” is a bonus demerit.
5) The word, “Drizzt”.

I have to confess, I’m with him there. He also has the virtue of being of one mind with me regarding the defects in most modern fantasy fiction:

The problem with Acacia is a problem that a lot of genre fantasy has: it too often reads like the detailed notes of a Dungeons & Dragons’ gamemaster about his campaign world rather than as a work of narrative fiction. The tedious (but accurate) old dictum to “show, not tell” is violated with astonishing aggressiveness within the first hundred pages, but not in any consistent or deliberate fashion. You know you’re in trouble when the king’s chief advisor Thaddeus murders a messenger who carries vital news and following a description of the act, Durham continues, “Thaddeus was not entirely the loyal servant of the king that he seemed” (and more still along those lines following). No shit, Sherlock. Of the many things that could go unsaid in the novel, this is only the beginning. Almost any of them–the lengthy expositional asides about the cultures, practices or peoples in the novel, the omniscient descriptions of characters and actions that suddenly erupt out of (a great many) viewpoint characters, could be unsaid or said minimally to vastly greater effect. As a sparce, fast-moving narrative that concentrated on its plot, it wouldn’t be half-bad. As a diagrammatic and pointlessly long act of world-creation, it’s clumsy and tedious at many points.

Read it.

So I guess Pakistan is next after Afghanistan, right.

Yeah, right.

Read it.