David Friedman points out the many ways in which the news business isn’t.

Reading Google News, I am struck by the degree to which dramatic stories crowd out arguably more important material. The top of the page is dominated by the current U.S. debt limit crisis. It is an entertaining example of the game of Chicken as played by politicians but of limited importance otherwise, since both sides are focused not on how to deal with the long term debt problem but on the terms on which they will agree to postpone dealing with it.

Meanwhile there are at least two other stories getting considerably less play but arguably of more real importance.

The Other McCain has a dream.

If you consider the 16th & 17th Amendments, plus the Federal Reserve act in isolation, you can come up with one set of arguments. That’s the mathematical combination of three things, one at a time.

For those who aren’t paying attention, the 16th authorizes the Federal income tax and the 17th changed election of Senators from state legislators to direct popular vote.

Now, if you blow away all three of these federal zombies in one one shotgun chorus (great name for a band there), then you can undo the 1913 Progressive triumph of Woodrow [censored] Wilson. He may have emoted well about the need for Progress, and the imperfections of the Founding Fathers, but his ideas have proven ruinous.

I can supply that missing middle name; in fact, my insertion into that space would run several paragraphs.

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And I’m sure this applies to World of Warcraft mutatis mutandis.

That’s your Rationalization of the Day. We now return you to your originally scheduled boring life.

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We need more deranged leaders: mad science turns its baleful stare upon political science.  Nassir Ghaemi’s thesis is that certain types of mental illness make for better leaders.  Sanity is not only overrated, but saps a leader’s abilities.

Unfortunately, all we get are stupid, corrupt, and greedy ones.

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There’s a stunning lack of transparency when it comes to SEAs reporting basic staffing and budgeting data, making it difficult to analyze agency performance. Federal dollars, usually the dominant funding source for SEAs, are also typically tied to specific programs and employees, giving the state chief little control over how these funds are spent and thus little room to maneuver. Perhaps most important, though, is that these agencies are often overly focused on compliance, not reform.  “The traditional role of the SEA,” we observe, “is to administer state and federal funds, and customarily SEA employees have worked to ensure the SEA complies with the law rather than focusing on how to best help districts and schools increase student achievement.”

Well, he that pays the piper calls the tune. Yet another reason not to send your kid to a government school.

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Assuming, of course, that Commissioner Gordon knows how to use Mathematica.

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Well, that’s what happens when the government provides your health care.

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Behaviors can be classified as “modern sexism,” “neosexism,” or “benevolent sexism.” The study explicitly states its intention to reduce endorsement of these and encourage “individuals ‘to see the unseen.’ ” So, they want men and women to accept and apply certain definitions of sexism in their daily lives. That’s a pretty political aim for a scientific study in a peer-reviewed journal.

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“Perhaps you’ve noticed the trend among certain people these days,” wrote Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times the other day, “to decide that certain other people are not living acceptable lives and must be reformed.”

Yes. There certainly is a lot of that going around.

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In a series of hearings, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley have been systematically dismantling the administration’s preposterous claim that no one in the Justice Department — which oversees the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — knew anything about the so-called gun-tracking operation.

In Fast and Furious, ATF officials encouraged “straw buyers” in Arizona — including two convicted felons who should have been stopped by the FBI — to purchase more than 2,000 heavy-duty firearms, including AK-47 variants and .50-caliber sniper rifles, and then resell them to the Mexican drug cartels, allegedly to trace and stop crossborder arms trafficking.

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We posted a couple of weeks ago about the appearance of “shariah-controlled zone” posters in the Waltham Forest area of East London. There was some speculation in the comments on that post about whether these posters were authentically Islamic, or whether they were perhaps put up by anti-jihad activists trying to discredit Muslims. And they did seem somewhat more explicitly fundamentalist than most Muslim propaganda, with the possible exception of the ravings of the notorious firebrand Anjem Choudary.

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Steve Sailer recognizes that modern politics is a joint effort by the Upper Crust and the Lower Crust against the Middle.

But, here’s another factor that helped drive American women away from programming careers: H-1B. Bill Gates and other zillionaires have added even more billions to their fortunes by getting the government to let in lots of foreign programmers to do for less money the lower level programming that American women tended to be doing. Logically, feminists should therefore have been anti-Bill Gates and anti H-1B, but logic doesn’t play a big role in modern America in determining which Diversity Card trumps which. As a general Hi-Lo v. Middle rule, rich guys playing the race card against average whites are likely to win.

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A team from the University of Southampton has produced the world’s first fully “printed” airworthy plane – a 1.5-metre-wingspan UAV created in just five days by selective laser sintering (SLS).

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To people who see no real difference between people and animals, this makes perfect sense.

Let’s have him for lunch.

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One of the world’s most famous fossil creatures, widely considered the earliest known bird, is getting a rude present on the 150th birthday of its discovery: A new analysis suggests it isn’t a bird at all.

Chinese scientists are proposing a change to the evolutionary family tree that boots Archaeopteryx off the “bird” branch and onto a closely related branch of birdlike dinosaurs.

Well, that’s a disappointment.

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Well, I’m certainly glad they haven’t anything more important to worry about.

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The law was challenged on the grounds that it does not include an intent requirement, meaning that a defendant can be convicted of a cocaine offense in Florida even if the defendant did not know he was selling cocaine. Or, as the judge put it in her ruling, in Florida, a “person is guilty of a drug offense if he delivers a controlled substance without regard to whether he does so purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently.”

Florida is the only state in the nation to have expressly eliminated intent as an element of drug offenses, according to the ruling.

“Other states have rejected such a draconian and unreasonable construction of the law that would criminalize the ‘unknowing’ possession of a controlled substance,” Judge Scriven wrote, concluding that Florida’s drug law is unconstitutional “on its face.”

Well done, thou good and faithful (public) servant. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of laws on the books, especially federal laws, where you can get it packed up your pooper regardless of intent (which has always been a component of criminal offenses, until the present degenerate age).

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Every Happy Meal shall henceforth contain apple slices, according to a decree from McDonald’s HQ today, which boasts that the change is part of “a comprehensive plan [that] aims to help customers—especially families and children—make nutrition-minded choices whether visiting McDonald’s or eating elsewhere.”

Well, (a) it doesn’t help customers,  it forces customers; apple slices were always an option; and (b) the definition of ‘nutrition-minded’ is that of external advocacy groups, not the company or the purchasers.

And while USA Today reports that the company is claiming the apple incursion is “absolutely not” a response to growing regulatory threats from local, state, and federal governments, the Associated Press is reporting that First Lady Michelle Obama is pleased.

In other words, they caved to outside pressure, and lied to save face. Practicing to be a government agency, you might say.

And always the threat of binding legal requirements lurk in the background.

Sort of a metaphor for life.

McDonald’s changes are voluntary, but they happened because McDonald’s exists in a world where trans fat bans are a reality, and junk food taxes are fodder for The New York Times op-ed page. Regulating food intended for kids is an easier sell, but the state is really just taking away parents’ choices. And once adults are no longer free to choose for their kids, why let them go on choosing for themselves?

Why, indeed? Freedom of choice isn’t a ‘progressive’ value unless it comes to killing  your unborn child.

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We have the technology.

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Or maybe it’s just the French, I don’t know.

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One thing you have to say about jihadists — they innovate.

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Good luck with that. Muslims are perfectly happy to let other Muslims starve to death unless there’s a political point to be made. Millions for jihad but not one riyal for soup.

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Remember: Just because it’s irrational doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

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A Mexican judge on Tuesday sentenced a 14-year-old American boy to three years in prison for homicide, kidnapping and drug and weapons possession.

Authorities say the teen confessed to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found hanging from a bridge.

I wonder where all the ‘prisoners’ rights’ people are.

Jimenez was born in San Diego, California. He and a sister were arrested in December as they tried to board a plane to Tijuana, where they planned to cross the border and reunite with their mother in San Diego.

Yeah, we really need to re-unite these kids with their parents.

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Shoulda moved to New York.

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A Whole Foods employee has sent a blistering 2,343-word email to staff after quitting his job, describing the company as a “faux hippy Wal-Mart.”

Hey, that’s a feature, not a bug.

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A 63-year-old California man has tried to operate on his own hernia by cutting open his stomach with a six-inch butter knife.

Hey, if it was easy, anybody could do it.

Read it. And watch the video.

Prices for rare earth elements have gone through the roof in recent years, with China basically monopolizing the market for these rare substances (the country currently produces a whopping 97 percent of all rare earths used globally). But in the field of electric vehicles, the dependence on rare earths could be a thing of the past soon: Professor Nobukazu Hoshi’s Lab from the Tokyo University of Science has developed an electric car that doesn’t require any kind of rare earths.

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In sum, temporally and spatially backward statements cause  readers and listeners to do the work that is properly done by writers and speakers — if they care about the clarity and accuracy of what they write and say. It is all too evident that many writers and speakers do not care about being understood; they prefer to deliver verbiage and let the audience sort it.

A word of sense in these degenerate modern times.

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Is nothing sacred? Some fiends apparently fake Scotch brands. Fortunately, researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland have devised some new methods involving optic fibers for distinguishing between authentic and counterfeit Scotch whisky brands

The Other McCain has video.

One hesitates to say President Kabuki has hit rock bottom, because there’s probably no limit on how far down the low road he’s willing to go.

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Well, to start with, he’s a non-Hispanic white male.

While 1,500 CEOs say that creativity is the single most important quality for success today – and studies bear out the greater success of creative, innovative leaders – the study found that when it came to hiring and promoting practices businesses consistently marked down the creative managers and bypassed them, selecting less creative types!

Quelle surprise.

Don’t forget, the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs some 20 years ago to give his role to a less creative, but more “professional,” John Scully.  Mr. Scully was subsequently fired by the Board for creatively investing too heavily in the innovative Newton – the first PDA – to be replaced by a leadership team willing to jettison this new product market and refocus all attention on the Macintosh.  Both CEO decisions turned out to be horrible for Apple, and it was only after Mr. Jobs returned to the company that its fortunes re-blossomed when the company replaced outdated industrial management philosophies with innovation.  But, oh-so-close the company came to complete failure before re-igniting the innovation jets.

Scott Johnson of Powerline draws back the curtain on the Obamanation.

Obama’s speech last night was permeated with the deep dishonesty and poll-tested euphemisms that constitute his contribution to the debt ceiling debate. Here are a few of the euphemisms Obama has contributed: revenue (taxes), shared sacrifice (taxes), asking for something (taxes), millionaires and billionaires (taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year or couples earning more than $250,000 a year), the balanced approach (taxes).

You can tell when Obama is lying — his lips are moving.

Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy has a fundamental insight.

I call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would seriously entertain default.  You call Washington all f**ked up and mean, because no rational person would agree to these kinds of deficits.  We think — in the current twitter-talk of a pox on both their DC houses — Washington is a mess because we can’t find a compromise.  The truth is, however, we don’t actually think there is much room to compromise and, given that our principles on this represent a fairly sizable difference in world view, that’s probably right.  The structural problem of Washington is that everyone has a hold-up; “let’s vote and majority policy wins” doesn’t work because we’ve allowed a consensus system informally to take hold, rather than a majoritarian one (albeit one revisable at least in part by a future majority).

And that’s the fundamental problem — searching for a consensus that doesn’t exist, and an unwillingness to let the side with more votes win. Granted that the latter isn’t a panacea — Democrats had two years where they complete control of the government, and they still didn’t do anything — nevertheless it’s better than what we have now. Politicians just aren’t willing to put their names on a policy and push it through, because if it fails they own it; they’d rather dither and moan and let things fall apart, because then they can keep pointing the finger at the other side in hopes of improving their chances of re-election.

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Guess he’s not all that disabled, after all.

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We’ve all been there; You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Yammer or what ever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever “gone to the bathroom” in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter?

Remember when the critical mass of smokers used to leave the table or meeting in groups to go indulge their habit? I straight up open my laptop at bars and parties, and then feel more guilty about that than drinking.

Soon we will have implants — call them the ‘electronic cigarettes’ of the tech world.

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(Don’t you just love the way they picked a photograph that makes it appear as if he’s wearing a red armband, just like — wait for it — the Nazi party members used to do? And this is the Telegraph, not your Usual Suspect. Pure class, the media.)

Glenn Beck has a problem, and I don’t see that it’s a problem he’ll be able to fix. However much he may have noticed this resemblance — and there is a resemblance, although (considering the ideologies involved) I’d have characterized it as ‘Young Pioneers’ rather than ‘Hitler Youth’ — and however reasonable it may be to mention this in private conversation, he ought to have known that to say it in public would be … unhelpful, let us say.

Now, if he had been a commentator on CNN or MSNBC positing a resemblance of a gathering of Young Republicans to Hitler Youth, nobody would have blinked an eye. But that’s the world we live in, and Beck has been in that world long enough to realize it, and to learn to deal with it. Sadly, he hasn’t.

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Sometimes it’s possible to figure out what Mencius Moldbug is saying, and sometimes it’s not. But it’s almost always worth the effort.

All power is rooted in violence – even electoral power (to the extent that any such thing still exists). There is most definitely a continuum between democratic activism and civil war. The struggle for power is one. The whole point of the classic picket sign is that the writing on the cardboard sends one message; the two-by-four it’s stapled to sends another.

And we can tell that left rules right, because we can see that Noam Chomsky has the right to trumpet his ideas to Osama bin Laden, whereas Robert Spencer does not have the right to trumpet his ideas to Anders Behring Breivik. Did he think he had that right? He had not the might, so he had not the right. He’s finding that out right now, as he stares down the barrel of a very angry New York Times.

The trumpeter game, version left, is played ad nauseam in every school system in the world today. All our noble workers and peasants are constantly inculcated with two messages. First, you are the victim of injustice. Second, even though you are the victim of injustice, violence is evil and you must under no circumstances punish the guilty. Human beings are human beings, of course, so the second message doesn’t always take. Aww. Another “random attack.”

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Are there any lawyers in the House who write laws that benefit lawyers?  Even if the House members aren’t practicing law now, might they be interested in doing so in the future?

I think there may be a couple.  So I guess that’s ok, then.  St. Helena should get rid of its grape-grower Congressman and elect a lawyer.  He will understand the problems of all the lawyers in the district.  I’m sure the folks there will be happier with that.

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The Food and Drug Administration has banned the only over-the-counter asthma inhaler, Primatene Mist, on the grounds that it releases chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and is thus bad for the ozone layer.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … everybody but you.

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Fifty years ago, Congress passed legislation that allowed the public to give voluntary gifts to lower the federal debt. The government has set up a P.O. box and even an online site where citizens concerned about the debt can make contributions to pay it down.  Every month, about 30 to 50 gifts come in, averaging less than $500, often accompanied by letters from citizens expressing their gratitude for our country and their desire to lift the burden of debt from the shoulders of future generations.

So what does Washington do with the money that citizens send in to reduce the debt?  Turns out the federal government … spends it.

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

The next time Obama – or Bill Gates Sr., or Warren Buffet, or any other rich mouthfarter– complains that his taxes are too low, tell him ‘Write a check!’

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I am not making this up.

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An excellent article (how surprising to find it in the New York Times) about one of the central issues in the Civil War, and the ways that it really affected the people in the trenches, so to speak.

It is almost impossible for us today to appreciate how people of the mid-19th century felt about slavery, most especially those who supported it; the obvious contradictions inherent in being a pro-slavery American are so clear to us, that we literally cannot conceive how anyone could see it any other way. And yet there were enough of them to fight a war. Wrapping our heads around that is the first step on the road to understanding similar evils in the modern world, from the Judenhasse that still afflicts the European upper classes to the way Muslims look at, well, everybody.

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Siegel-Spaeth ideology scores that indicate “progressive” ideology were negatively correlated with the Stanford-Benet estimates.  The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (-0.61) provides strong evidence of a negative relationship between progressive ideology and intelligence.

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Boy, those unions — putting people to work, eh?

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I have said before, and the schedule does not permit any rummaging through the archives for a link, that many of our modern problems have to do with certain charismatic individuals assuming mantles of real authority when they are not only inexperienced in making sensible decisions, but powerfully motivated toward making non-sensical ones. If the solution to a problem is only too obvious, say for example Orwell’s simple equation of two and two make four; then some of the charisma would have to be sacrificed in providing the correct answer of four. Four is what an ordinary person would say. To those whose position has been defined and perhaps created due to an illusion of their uniqueness, four is therefore out of the question because it would injure the definition. Some flimsy justification must therefore be sought for saying three, five or ten.

In other words: We’re screwed before you even get to the liberal-versus-conservative stuff. Once we elect the “There’s Just Something About Him” types, we’re already over the cliff. We’ve already made our commitment to nonsense.