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When was the last time you read anything about Indian Muslims fleeing to Pakistan?

Mencius Moldbug points a finger.

It is too much to expect evil to walk naked in the world. In real life, evil does not wear a skull helmet or speak through a respirator. Why would it? Why not drape itself in silks of good? But this clothing interferes, by its very nature, with the fangs and sting and claws. So the patient watcher is rewarded, every now and then, with a flash of black scales or a yellow demon grin. But most of the time, he sees a kindly, wise and charming pillar of the community. Such is State.

Now, one could continue indefinitely in this vein. But this is UR, not Mark Steyn.

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And about time, too.

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Yeah, welcome to the safety school of the Ivy League.

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Suggestion: Cancel American foreign aid for every country who had a politician in that crowd. Let them sink back into the neolithic existence they enjoyed before.

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Assholes with money. That’s modern America for you.

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If you’re scratching your head about that, so am I.

President Barack Obama sent a letter this week to President Ali Abdullah Saleh pledging to “stand beside Yemen, its unity, security and stability”.

“The security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States,” he said.

Uh … why? It’s a noplace in the middle of nowhere. Why can’t the Saudis, who are right next door, spend some of their oil money and take care of business? Why is it always the U.S. that has to do something about these stone-age bandits? Hello? Hello?

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I am not making this up.

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Be the first on your block….

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A South African IT outfit has shamed telecoms operator Telkom by sending 4GB of data 60 miles by pigeon in two hours – faster than it arrived by the ISP’s broadband service.

We have the technology.

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I am not making this up.

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In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a “philosophical belief in climate change”, allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.

Environmentalism is now considered a religion in Britain.

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

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So much for Global Warming.

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In a telephone interview with FOXNews.com, U.N. spokesman Fahran Haq explained that the MSD has a legal right to hire unlicensed doctors and nurses to work on U.N. property, because “U.N. headquarters is not part of New York.”

The Medical Services Division provides “basic health services,” according to its Web page, but the doctors and nurses who work there are not permitted to assume primary responsibility for U.N. employees during a medical emergency crisis, even though the department’s two-year budget for 2007-2008 accounted for more than $38 million in operating expenses. The U.N. receives most of its funding from national government bodies across the globe.

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Hey, it’s all about priorities. Those book deals don’t grow on trees, you know.

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We have the technology. Of course, he’ll never play the violin again….

The Other McCain has a short fuse.

Remarkable, really, how the Left’s erroneous presumptions haven’t changed at all: If the social welfare state is synonymous with enlightenment, opponents of the welfare state must therefore be unenlightened. The only question remaining for the liberal theorist is to identify the variety of psychopathology that explains this (presumably irrational) opposition.

So it is that Max Blumenthal, who no doubt favors putting the federal government in control of America’s health-care system, effectively nationalizing 1/7th of the economy, presumes to diagnose opponents of such policies as suffering from “the fear of freedom.”

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Guess Communists take their property rights pretty seriously.

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If Mark Hopkins or any of his family contracted cancer, TB, polio, heart disease, or even appendicitis, they would probably die.  All the rage today is to moan about people’s access to health care, but Hopkins had less access to health care than the poorest resident of East St. Louis.  Hopkins died at 64, an old man in an era where the average life span was in the early forties.  He saw at least one of his children die young, as most others of his age did.  In fact, Stanford University owes its founding to the early death (at 15) of the son of Leland Stanford, Hopkin’s business partner and neighbor.  The richest men of his age had more than a ten times greater chance of seeing at least one of their kids die young than the poorest person in the US does today.

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In the meantime, though, greenwashing has become a virtual industry in the political and policy worlds. Take, for example, the growing push for economically regressive and environmentally problematic HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes. HOT lanes are toll lanes on public highways. Prices are set dynamically so that HOT lanes keep moving even if all the other lanes are stuck. Governor Schwarzenegger and many leading Democrats favor the idea and use it to paint themselves green. HOT lanes are also popular with many affluent motorists who love the idea of driving their SUVs in the carpool lane for what amounts to pocket change. It’s an odd alliance.

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The psychology of political attention and labeling here is fascinating. ‘Stimulus’, according to Merriam-Webster, is “something that rouses or incites to activity.” So the very terminology, ‘economic stimulus,’ already decides the debate in favor of the view that it boosts the economy.

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And it’s a beautiful house, at that.

Bryan Caplan examines an interesting thought.

The Other McCain waxes philosophical.

The September issue of Commentary has a symposium in which six writers discuss Norman Podhoretz’s latest book, Why Are Jews Liberals?

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Your life under Islam. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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

Steve Sailer is on the case.

This is well worth buying.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Paul Krugman has a long article in the NYT Magazine entitled “How Did the Economists Get It So Wrong?” which demonstrates quite nicely, by all the topics it avoids mentioning, how the economists got it so wrong.

Not to mention that “how Krugman got it wrong” is a hole with no bottom….

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When reading science fiction stories, I find it very difficult to accept alien species as really alien unless they are at least as incomprehensible as the Japanese.

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Now in its thirty-ninth year of operations, the government-controlled Amtrak provides good service between Boston, New York and Washington, and Los Angeles and San Diego. Elsewhere, it’s a land cruise company.

Beyond the corridors, Amtrak plies routes that were hastily drawn in 1971 to insure that they touch as many congressional interests as possible. That means meandering sleepers from New Orleans to Los Angeles, or Chicago to Seattle, which are a delight to vacationers (myself included), but inconsequential to the business of America, which drives or flies in order to get somewhere. Amtrak handles less than 1% of America’s intercity travel.

Perhaps stagecoaches will be the Next Green Thing — after all, they would reduce our Dependence On Foreign Oil, although the Emissions Problem might cause a few furrowed brows.

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Ah, yes, the ROUS. We know it well.

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Privacy disaster? You betcha.

But ten years ago we’d be horrified by what we nonchalantly share on Facebook and Twitter every day.

Some of us still are.

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I suspect that this is just an excuse to build a Cool Toy at taxpayer expense.

The XSR, which has done 30,000 nautical miles of testing, can be launched and recovered from a warship and the basic cost is estimated at £1.5 million.

But it is a cool toy.

Read it. A very informative chart.

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Let’s hear it for the stimulus.

One of those laid off was David Wahl, 52, who had worked there for a decade and who sat behind the vice president at the town-hall-style meeting, soaking up the optimism of the moment. “With mass transit being pushed so hard,” Mr. Wahl recalled, “I figured I’d be able to work until I was 75.”

‘Put not your trust in Princes nor the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.’ — Psalm 146

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It’s in the New York Times, so it must be true, right?

Gotta love Australians.

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Can a lawsuit be far behind?

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Their motto is “Be Prepared” but Scouts will soon have to survive without their trusty penknives on camping trips thanks to Britain’s growing knife crime culture.

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

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A new exhibition at the British Museum is to depict the contentious last Aztec ruler Moctezuma II in a new light that will cast doubt on claims he was a turncoat who handed over his empire without a fight.

Of course, he still presided over an empire built on conquest, oppression, and plenteous human sacrifice.

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It’s always fun to “run the numbers” with respect to politics; you can wind up with some very interesting stuff.

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

Crew members of the Arctic Sea have since told Russian news reporters that they have been told not to disclose “state secrets” further fuelling the speculation.

A Russian military source told The Sunday Times: “The official version is ridiculous and was given to allow the Kremlin to save face.

Hmmm.

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The collapse of Lehman Brothers, a year ago this week, was the biggest bankruptcy in corporate history. It was 10 times the size of Enron and, more crucially, the tipping point into the global crash, provoking panic in an already battered financial system, freezing short-term lending, and marking the start of the liquidity crisis.

Yet searching questions remain unanswered. Authorities had intervened on both sides of the Atlantic to rescue a litany of stricken institutions, from Northern Rock to Bear Stearns, and mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so why let Lehman go down? And was a rescue by Barclays effectively blocked by the UK authorities?

Indeed. Some people get bailed out, some people get their heads stepped on as they’re circling the drain. Wonder why?

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Stuff about pens to make your brain hurt. Just sayin’.