Read it.

Charles Imwalle, 41, of Lake Mary filed a lawsuit Monday against Winn-Dixie and Passion Growers LLC claiming he suffered pain, disfigurement, medical bills and lost wages after pricking his finger on a thorn from a rose he purchased from his local Winn-Dixie in February, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Thursday.

Goodness, what a prick.

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the easy questions.

Exactly how smart is Obama? He is represented, by self and media lickers-and-kissers as “the smartest guy in the room.” Yet as far as I can see, there’s absolutely no documentation for this claim.

The thing is, for the purposes of politics, it doesn’t matter. The Guy On The Left is automatically considered to be the smartest guy in the room, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Consider AlGore — it doesn’t matter that he talks like a retard, and believes absurdities that a six-year-old would turn up his nose at, he’s by definition a Smart Guy because he’s on the Left.

Consider George W. Bush. It doesn’t matter that he graduated from Yale and from Harvard Business School, credentials that most Crustians would give their left nut (if they could find it) for; he’s not on the Left (I’m damned if I say he’s on the Right), so he’s a dumbass.

Consider John Kerry. It doesn’t matter that his GPA at Yale was less than that of George W. Bush, universally accepted as a dumbass; he’s a Smart Guy because he’s on the Left.

And the examples could be multiplied endlessly. It wouldn’t surprise me for some Crustian thumb-sucker to describe Joe Biden as ‘brilliant’, and Joe Biden couldn’t score in a Trivial Pursuit game with a block of tofu.

Read it.

Reading the New York Times is much like reading Pravda back when the old Soviet Union was in power — you know more or less what the Party line is this week (and ‘this week’ is the important part, because it can change, often dramatically and without warning), so the only unknown quantity is how tortured a sophistry is going to be served up in pursuit thereof.

Timothy Egan is billed by the Times as writing ‘on American politics and life, as seen from the West’, the ‘West’ in question apparently stopping at the Hudson River. His trope this week is the common one of ‘well, these right-wing nuts bitch and moan about government spending but they’re getting X amount from a government program’, as if that were some sort of ‘Aha! Caught you in the depths of hypocrisy, we have!’

Uh, no.

First of all, so long as the Crust tout public schools (and lock poor minority kids into those failing schools by killing school voucher programs) while sending their offspring to Sidwell Friends, it continues one of those speck-in-the-other-guy’s-eye-beam-in-your-own moments. I’ll listen to you bitch about my dirty hands once you’re done with your shower, thanks.

Secondly, an obsession with hypocrisy as the most heinous of sins is a distinctively adolescent trait, one that nominal adults ought to have gotten over lang syne. Guys, grow up; there are people out there who are trying to kill us and destroy our civilization, and I suggest that’s a bit more important than domestic witch-hunts.

And thirdly, so long as those opposing government spending continue to do so no matter where their own money comes from, there’s no hypocrisy involved … unless the opposition were merely pro forma and not intended to be effective, which none of these puling whiners can demonstrate.

The law is the law, and it does not say — nor can it say — that only those who support a program are allowed to take advantage of it. For people who work against a program, and who would kill it if they could (which the Crust is very careful not to allow), to leave the advantages of that program while it exists to the jackals of the Crust is a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder. The fundamental argument against any entitlement program is that it is, in the long term, unsustainable; for right-thinking people to shun the program merely delays its inevitable collapse and encourages proponents to say ‘See? It’s not a bad as you said it would be!’

Read it.

And there was much rejoicing.

Oxford comma: Eats, shoots, and leaves.

Inferior comma: Eats, shoots and leaves.

Read it.

And, quite frankly, never gave a shit about….

The Other McCain likes the Bezos position. Watch the video.

What it is, really, is an attempt by state governments to impose a tariff on goods sold by out-of-state mail-order vendors, thus usurping the power to regulate interstate commerce, which the Constitution specifically delegates to the federal government.

Whether individual customers order by mail or over the Internet, the transaction is the same, and there is extensive legal precedent that out-of-state mail-order vendors cannot be compelled to collect state sales taxes on such transactions.

Sometimes the doctrine of pre-emption is your friend.

The Amazon links on my blog are merely advertisements, for which I collect a (small) commission based on the sales generated by readers clicking through. California’s argument is like saying that, if a magazine based in New York published an advertisment for a Texas-based mail-order company, this advertisement constitutes a basis for making the Texas company collect New York sales tax.

I’m convinced.

Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director of the Performance Marketing Association, stated, “The devastation is immediate, because the law went into effect upon signing.We tried to communicate to the Governor that this bill would only lead to dramatic income loss of small businesses and job loss, and he signed the bill anyway.”
Similar legislation has been proposed in numerous other states, only to be rejected because those elected officials recognized these proposals do not generate any additional sales tax revenue and, in fact, harm small businesses. When out-of state retailers stopped advertising on in-state websites, the states collect no new sales tax, and in fact lose income tax revenue.

Funny how that works….

Meanwhile, smart people in California are doing the only thing smart people in California can do: Get the hell out of California!

Indeed. Don’t be the last guy out, or you’ll have to turn off the lights … if there are any left.

Read it.

The wrinkles that develop on wet fingers could be an adaptation to give us better grip in slippery conditions, the latest theory suggests.

So why do our faces get wrinkled as we get older? Some scary thoughts there….

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Ponder a world in which teachers engage in ‘industrial action’.

Read it.

Gotta like that.

Read it.

In other news, Bashar al-Assad claims that time is running out for Hillary Clinton.

Let’ see who leaves office first.

Read it.

Read it.

The problem isn’t that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone.  The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. I’ve written before that the TSA should be abolished. The latest outrage is just more evidence in the case against a government administration we would be better off without. The Transportation Security Administration does not provide transportation security. It provides what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.” The effect of the all the trimmings and trappings at airport security is to give travelers the impression that the government is going about Very Serious Business. The net effect, though, is perhaps a trivial increase in safety achieved at massive costs in terms of time, treasure, and lives: it is well known that driving is more dangerous than flying. By making flying less convenient, we encourage people to drive more.

Read it.

To me, the most offensive of the many abhorrent usages now current is the treatment of “data” as a singular noun. A person who says “data is” is at best an ignoramus and at worst a Philistine.

Preach it, brother.