Nick Gillespie is fed up. Watch the video.

Read it. And watch the video.

I got chills from this. ‘My gripe is, we were told, not asked.’

That’s my gripe, too.

Read it.

US admiral Bob “Rat” Willard is the most powerful military commander in the world. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s because Australia lives in a peaceful region. If that changes, Willard will become the central figure in our lives.

Willard is the commander of the US Pacific Command, or PACOM as it is known. He has 325,000 personnel, military and civilian, reporting to him. He commands five aircraft carrier battle groups and 180 warships. When you add the aircraft of the US navy and air force, and the dedicated air power that army and marine units command, Willard has thousands of aircraft at his disposal. He is responsible for all US military activity in more than 50 per cent of the surface of Earth, from the west coast of the US through to the western edge of India.

Australians understand the dialectic.

His headquarters is high up in a huge office in Hawaii’s Camp Smith, on a ridge not far from Waikiki, and commanding one of the most beautiful, and tranquil, views in the Pacific. I met Willard there – and noticed all the toy rats and rat-related memorabilia on his desk – for a long discussion about US strategy in Asia.

Who besides me (and the Admiral, obviously) remembers Willard?

Freeberg descends into Content — the swine.

You see where we’re going here — it all comes back to Melissa’s point. Cheerleading is a rough-and-tumble sport now because girls should have a chance to be just as tough as boys…and somehow, cheerleading is the only opportunity they have…not sure how we got there. But, Eating Disorders. Which is code for, it ought to be okay to be a fat, out-of-shape butterball.

Well, news flash: If you want to be injured doing something that requires exertion, your best shot at getting injured is to be out of shape.

The more you read of Liz Jones’ article, the more it becomes apparent that her problem isn’t with bare legs (actually, nylon-covered) or heaving cleavage. Choice versus coercion hasn’t got a lot to do with it either, since she got that essentially backwards and doesn’t seem to care one bit. Nor is it that her precious home turf is being invaded by Hooters. They just got one; one in the entire country.

She, like many people, is extraordinarily upset that somewhere, in proximity, is a place where the male can go and find acceptance, even if it’s only as a paying customer. She comes from a world where, even if a man pays and pays and pays, there is something awful about ever showing appreciation for anything he ever did or to even acknowledge that something has been made possible for others because of his contributions.

So we’re left with a whole lot of contention and disagreement precisely where someone was supposed to be toiling away at bringing harmony. The thing about bare female flesh is most confused of all; at one time, it is a banner of independence, then in a flash it’s suddenly causing eating disorders and is a symbol of male-on-female oppression, because someone’s doing something to make the men happy or something…and…

…wham. The womens’ “liberation” movement turns into the Taliban. All good looking women must wear pant suits, or else the men might get the idea that the women don’t want to make them perpetually unhappy. And who knows where that might lead? If a woman somewhere makes a man happy, then before you know it, women all over the place will start making men happy…and then the two sexes might actually get along with each other! Ick!

Jerry Pournelle addresses some important questions.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, where the teachers unions have the most favorable contracts I know of from a large school district, the District, forced to cut back, chose to do so by laying off teachers from the 3 worst performing schools in the district. The American Civil Liberties Union promptly went to court to upset this, saying they couldn’t solve their problems on the backs of students from schools for the poor. In theory the lawsuit was to protect the students, although what they are being protected from isn’t clear. Apparently they have a right to be taught by ineffective teachers? But the ACLU and the school district reached an agreement in which the District will be able to lay off teachers using complex rules that have some concession to teacher effectiveness rather than strict seniority. The LA teacher union, predictably, threatens court action. Solidarity forever. The student be damned, bad teachers have rights. Students don’t. Students have no right to an effective teacher: the purpose of the student is to justify the payments to their teachers, and teacher effectiveness must never be considered in school management. So it goes.

Read it.

The U.S. Embassy in Dublin has sponsored a seminar on Muslim entrepreneurs and business in Ireland. A main point of the conference was the need for Sharia law compliant financial products to be used.

WTF?

The U.S. Embassy supported the conference as part of President Obama’s outreach to Muslims around the world.

I’m waiting for Barry to figure out whose side he’s on.

There are 45,000 Muslims in Ireland and Islam is the third largest religion reported on census forms.

There’s a mistake.

Read it.

Read it.

That’s modern America for you. Most people these days think that ‘reticence’ is something you use to get rid of fire ants.

I must say, I’m surprised that she didn’t get the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“I regret it with all my heart,” she said. “I would never intentionally hurt the people that are mentioned on that.” She has since declined to comment.

Oh, that’s all right, then.

A Duke spokesman said the college was “reaching out to those who’ve been affected by this incident”.

“Our foremost concern is to provide for the wellbeing of our students, and to respect their privacy,” he said.

I must confess that I don’t see how ‘reaching out to them’ respects their privacy. Perhaps that has a non-obvious meaning in an academic context, much like ‘free speech’ and ‘tolerance’.

Read it.

An excellent review of just how much a drag ‘progressive’ policies are on the economy.

Read it.

The Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services disappears a promise from its website.

Funny how that works out.

Read it.

Embarrassing publicity in a tough election year has forced the administration to back down from one of its vaunted consumer protections. If it were not for a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, nearly a million low-wage workers would lose their health insurance thanks to new rules imposed by ObamaCare. McDonald’s and 29 other firms have received waivers from a requirement to up the minimum benefit covered by insurance, making it possible for their employees to continue to buy low-cost coverage. But thousands of other workers are not exempted and will not be able to afford the government’s idea of good insurance.

Read it.

Only a handful of cabins have yet to be sold on a cruise that is to follow the route of the Titanic to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship.

Read it.

A British racing pigeon called Houdini got lost on her first race and ended up thousands of miles away in Panama City.

Sometimes the system doesn’t work.

Read it.

Giving a person an electric shock can help improve their memory, scientists have discovered.

If we combine the two, perhaps people will remember where they broke that bone.

Read it.

Let’s see: A manifesto on how to fix our schools by the people who are already in charge of our schools and presumably responsible for their needing fixing in the first place.

Right.

I have a question: Why are they writing pompous articles for the Washington Post instead of, you know, FIXING OUR SCHOOLS?

I wonder about these things.

Peter Suderman sounds the alarm.

If it’s an economic decision, the federal government can make it for you. That’s the takeaway from a ruling this afternoon by a federal judge in Michigan.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Read it.

1. Get a poofy haircut that only a rockstar could pull off.

11. Read the Communist Manifesto or Atlas Shrugged. Write your own manifesto. Quote the Communist Manifesto or Atlas shrugged when talking about what moved you to write your own powerful manifesto.

17. Rip off wealthy white Americans by promising that they too can live on the beach with desperately poor people.

Read it.

Michael Pollan, of course, is the author of The Carnivore’s Dilemma and other light classics. He’s heavily into plants, though, so he and I don’t travel in the same circles.

Read it.

Thousands of flushed condoms threaten to choke the Commonwealth Games village’s drainage system, media reports said, in the latest problem to hit the venue.

Gives ‘athletic’ a whole new meaning.

Read it.

One of Sicily’s most dangerous mafia bosses was arrested on Thursday after 15 years on the run when police found him hiding in a secret space behind a wardrobe in his wife’s luxury apartment, officials said.

Tumnus will be pissed.

Read it.

An animal-rights activist has claimed he sank his own protest ship in an attempt to “garner sympathy with the public and create better TV” during a clash with a Japanese whaling ship.

Tells you pretty much all you need to know about environmentalists.

Read it.

Won’t stop the FemiNazis from bitching, of course, but it’s progress.

Read it.

And yet a ban on minarets creates a firestorm of criticism.

Don’t bother to read it.

Who?, I hear you ask. And well you might.

There have been 110 Nobel laureates in literature; I have heard of only 26 of them. This is about on a par with the East Coast NASCAR Championship title; no doubt very significant to a narrow circle, but utterly without value to the general population. Mr Nobel, your money is being wasted.

Read it.

A minimalist lifestyle can have many legitimate motivations. Sanctimonious anti-consumerism isn’t one of these, nor is saving money. A laptop computer with a sizeable hard drive replaced my desktop computer, all my DVDs, all my CDs, all my books and (given a scanner too) all my paperwork. This isn’t a “simpler lifestyle” in the sense that a laptop computer is simpler or cheaper than a book. In fact I still have all my DVDs and CDs in storage, in case I need to rip them all over again. Paring down all of one’s clothes to point where they all fit on one clothing rail is good, but the reason it’s good is not that an excess of clothes tarnishes the soul. It shouldn’t be conspicuous and self-congratulatory. A minimalist lifestyle does not make you a better person.

Read it.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Back in January 2007, Mayor Bloomberg issued a report complaining that “the prevalence of meritless securities lawsuits and settlements in the U.S. has driven up the apparent and actual cost of business — and driven away potential investors” — and then his own city law department turned around and sued Apple over the city retirement fund’s investment in Apple stock, which was up 600%.

The university payouts are particularly insidious. Do you expect professors at these programs to denounce Apple for caving in to this legal pressure at the expense of its shareholders when the professors themselves are to be beneficiaries of the payout? It’s interesting that NYU, whose Professor David Yermack virtually invented the options backdating issue at the center of the Apple case, gets no money. These corporate governance programs are supposed to be about protecting shareholders from poorly run companies, yet here is a case in which the corporate governance professors themselves are preparing to accept $2.5 million that is being taken away from the shareholders of Apple. It’s outrageous.

Apple’s management doubtless decided that the settlement, which is puny in the context of Apple’s profits or revenues, would be less costly than the legal fees and management time involved in continuing to defend the litigation. Doubtless some shareholders and non-shareholders would have preferred that the company stand on principle and fight, but at least on can understand Apple’s position on the matter.

Well, they realized that the current political climate favors the Crust, so the decided to pay the Danegeld. Modern corporate governance considers six months to be a long-term view.

Extortionists of the Crust, unite! You have nothing to lose but … well, you really have nothing to lose.

I’m just astonished that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton didn’t try to wet their beaks as well. Although that may be coming.

Read it.

We have posted before on how obese women have a far harder time climbing the career ladder than their slimmer female counterparts, while men actually improve their chances of reaching the corner office when they gain weight.

Now, a new study goes a step further by showing that employers seem to treat women exactly the way the fashion industry does – by rewarding very thin women with higher pay, while penalizing average-weight women with smaller paychecks. Very thin men, on the other hand, tend to get paid less than male workers of average weight. Men earn more as they pack on the pounds – all the way to the point where they become obese, when the pay trend reverses.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Read it.

Diversity and sustainability are the two most characteristic ideas of the modern academy. Diversity asks us to focus on group identity and personal affiliation, and it puts race at the center of the discussion. Sustainability asks us to focus on humanity’s use of natural resources, and it puts climate at the center of discussion. Outwardly, diversity and sustainability belong to separate narratives. They deal with different topics and might, in principle, have no more friction between them than typically exists between English departments and physics labs. Or between polar bears and tropical fish. But in fact, diversity and sustainability have a complicated, decades-old rivalry.

They vie, in effect, for the same conceptual space and the same passions. Both are about repairing the world; both invite exuberant commitment; both are moralistic; and most of all, both are encompassing ideas that crowd out other encompassing ideas. They also compete for the same financial resources.

Means you’ve actually paid out your own money.

It DOES NOT mean “out of touch”, for which a perfectly adequate traditional phrase is available.

Read it.

A total of $69 million (£43 million) paid to welfare recipients in California was spent on holidays, including gambling trips to Las Vegas, jaunts to Hawaii and pleasure cruises.

Hey, welfare leeches need to relax too….

Read it.

The right of doctors to refuse to refer women for abortions on conscientious grounds is under threat from the Council of Europe.

Politicians behind the move argue that growing numbers of doctors are refusing to become involved in abortions, depriving women, particularly from poor backgrounds, of treatment to which they are legally entitled.

I’m sure they do.

The proposal has been drawn up by the council’s British Socialist member Christine McCafferty, the former Labour MP for the Calder Valley who lost her seat at the General Election.

I’m sure it was.

Her proposal comes two years after the council adopted a resolution to recognise abortion as a universal human right, and to grant women unrestricted access to the procedure, so it is widely anticipated to win the vote.

And there’s the problem right there. Every day seems to bring a new ‘human right’ that depends on someone else being forced to provide the good to which said ‘right’ applied. So the language is perverted for a political agenda.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Europe.
2. Thank God we aren’t ruled by British Socialists (although Democrats aren’t any better).
3. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

Read it.

“This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God,” said Rabbi Menachem Froman, a well-known peace activist and one of a handful of settlers who went to Beit Fajjar to show solidarity with their Muslim neighbors.

When was the last time Muslims ever replaced anything that Muslims destroyed? Bueller? Bueller?

Steve Sailer cuts to the chase.

Illegal immigration hasn’t traditionally been a big political issue in New Mexico because there aren’t all that many illegal immigrants in New Mexico because there have been Hispanics in New Mexico for 400 years, so, New Mexico (state motto: Thank God for Mississippi) is a poor state, so illegal immigrants avoid it.

Megan McArdle does a synoptic review of the Government Motors situation.

Read it.

In a situation where there is a drowning victim, having a boat nearby doesn’t always help. In fact, the drowning victim’s life usually hinges on the strength and accuracy of someone’s throwing arm. Here is a better way to throw a precious life-ring: shoot it with this bazooka.

Read it.

A 19-year old from Lancashire has been sentenced to 16 weeks in a young offenders institution for refusing to give police the password to an encrypted file on his computer.

Question for the reader: How long would he get for having child porn on his computer?

What are the chances that police will find something to hang him on if they really want to?

Freeberg says it all.

2. Using “y’know,” “totally” or “basically” more than three times within five sentences.

9. (Men) Wearing a baseball cap backwards.

21. Three thousand dollar rims on a one thousand dollar car.

29. Climbing into the cage to make friends with the wild animal at the zoo.

37. “Irregardless.”

Read it.

Read it.

An excellent appreciation of how the Obamanation is destroying the American economy in favor of foreigners.

Read it.

Ah, yes, the writing life! Never a dull minute! Adventure everywhere!

Read it.

Sorkin has teamed up with veteran director David Fincher (Fight Club) to strike back at Kids These Days by making a supremely accomplished bit of up-market razzle-dazzle, The Social Network, an enjoyably bogus hatchet job on 26-year-old zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.com. Hyped as The Film that Defines a Generation, The Social Network is more an entertaining compendium of the worries of the new generation’s upper middle class parents: elite colleges, IQ, money, the social status of their kids on the marriage market, and why young people never go outside anymore.

The hubbub over The Social Network is a reminder that, despite all the technological innovations in ways to amuse yourself in your own room, movies that you have to leave your house to see remain the apex predators of popular culture.

There’s much debate in the press about how realistically the film portrays the tycoon. The obvious answer is that Sorkin is projecting onto Zuckerberg his own (perhaps not wholly undeserved) self-loathing over sex, drugs, and ethnicity.

Watch it.

Read it.

In death notices from around the nation, the recently deceased are reaching back to canvass the living.

“In lieu of flowers, Hal has requested that donations be made to your local animal shelter or to any candidate running against Barack Obama in 2012,” reads the death notice of Harold Groves, a retired Air Force fighter pilot who died at age 77 on Aug. 26 in Myrtle Beach, Fla.

Donations should be sent to “the American Cancer Society or who ever is running against President Barack Obama in 2012,” echoes the notice for Donald Charles Unsworth of Rome, Pa., also an Air Force veteran, who died at age 78.

Read it.

Perhaps even more than the fight between Republicans and Democrats is the fight within the Republican Party, which has been simmering (and sometimes breaking out into an open boil) since the time when Teddy Roosevelt decided to become a Bull Moose.

One of the characteristics of the history of organized labor in America is the so-called ‘company union’, an organization of a company’s employees that appeared to be an independent body but was actually created and controlled by the company’s management. Company unions typically served to make it appear that the company was unionized while not inconveniencing management the way an actually independent union would. Grass-roots Republicans have long charged that the party ‘establishment’ were the political equivalent of a company union, having more in common with their Crustian analogs in the Democrat party than with most other Republicans. (The poster child for this situation was Bob Michel, the long-time Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives who was ousted by Newt Gingrich in the same election that brought Republicans to power in the House for the first time in decades.)

Read it.

A Pakistani woman has died in Italy after her husband beat her with a brick for opposing the arranged marriage of her daughter, triggering a wave of outrage among Italian politicians on Monday.

Read it.

A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, commissioned by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and others, finds astounding proof of the total administrative failure of the administration in implementing Obamacare. According to the report, HHS has missed one-third of the deadlines contained within the legislation for the first six months under Obama’s new health care regime.

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

Robin Hanson is one of the more eminent thumb-suckers of the modern world.

Of course, the classic statement is that there are two types of people, those who divide people into two types and those who don’t, but that’s not what he means.

This is quite obviously a warming-over of the whole Noble Savage idea most frequently associated with Rousseau (and which ought to have died with him), an idea that modern ‘progressives’ embrace because it tarts up their unrealistic assumptions in a Clever Plastic Disguise.

Memorandum that civilization did not arise among the hunter-gatherers, but among the farmers; if you want to know what ‘progressive’ policies produce, go look at the Khoisan in southern Africa.