Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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A secondary school teacher who also worked as an adult film star and stripper has defended his double life, saying that many of his colleagues spend their spare time drinking and smoking.

Oh, yeah, those are totally equivalent.

There’ll always be an England, but it’s quickly getting to look a lot like California.

More whining from the New York Times.

I wasn’t surprised when the administration of George W. Bush sacrificed the environment for corporate profits. But when the same thing happens under a Democratic administration, it’s depressing. With little or no public input, policies that benefit corporations regardless of the consequences continue to be enacted.

This guy’s beat is food, so of course he’s bitching about capitalism and the environment; I guess that comes under ‘all things related’. (What doesn’t? NASA?)

The ‘environment’ in question is, of course, non-gene-mod crops, which are about as ‘natural’ as a Ford Focus; every plant we eat has been tweaked by selective breeding for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And these are the guys who proclaim their devotion to science; God forbid we should use that science to improve our lives.

Read it.

Now that’s comedy.

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Nanny Bloomberg strikes again.

More scary paternalism in the name of public health from the Bloomberg crew: the New York City government has begun “legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood-sugar tests for city residents with diabetes — along with the names, ages, and contact information on those patients. City officials are not only analyzing these data to assess patterns and changes in diabetes prevalence in the city, but are planning ‘interventions.’ … If you wish to keep your medical data confidential, you cannot.” Coercive public-health techniques originally seen as needed to combat communicable and infectious disease will now be deployed in hopes of correcting less-than-healthy individual behavior.

Read it.

Just what we need — another ‘cook’ pissing in the soup. You’d think they would learn.

Alan Krueger, President Barack Obama’s pick to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers, will likely serve as an administration advocate for more aggressive government intervention to revive job growth.

Oh, yeah, that’s worked so very well up to now; let’s have some more. ‘Thank you sir, may I have another?’

Read it.

One of the most dramatic looting and burning sprees during the London riots may have been orchestrated by a gang of professional robbers using the disorder as cover, it has emerged.

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

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“It should come as no surprise that organizers choose not to invite elected officials who have openly attacked worker’s rights or stood idly by while their political party fought to strip public workers of their right to collectively bargain,” Radtke said.

I guess that means Texas can ban Democrats from the Independence Day parade, they being supporters of dependency and fighters against individual rights.

Read it.

One of my favorite sayings has always been ‘Jews breed for intelligence’. This article is causing me to re-evaluate that notion.

Read it.

It’s not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What’s the bridge made of? If it’s ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar’s headstock bone, or could it be ivory? “Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever,” Prof. Thomas has written. “Oh, and you’ll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration.”

I’m all for not destroying the environment — and if Gibson is really doing something bad, then that should be dealt with. But some of these other situations just seem flat out ridiculous. Don’t the feds have more important things to do?

In short, no. To the bureaucrat in these degenerate modern times, all offenses are equally offensive; there is no proportionality. And, with the pervasive modern state, not all offenses can be addressed, so the bureaucrat will address those that give optimal return, i.e. the maximum amount of ‘See, I’m doing something to justify my salary!’ with minimal effort. Hence shutting down kids’ lemonade stands is more important than keeping Mexican drug cartel mules from crossing the border.

Read it.

Among the startups tucked between restaurants, squeezed into office buildings and squatting in storefronts near Mountain View’s main drag is one that might stop you cold: @WalmartLabs.

Yes, Wal-Mart — the behemoth of Bentonville, Ark., the fount of falling prices, the beyond-gigantic retailer — has established an outpost here in its search for startup mojo.

What do you mean, nothing with Walmart in its name could be a startup?

@WalmartLabs talks like a startup. “It’s a great place to come and change the world,” says Anand Rajaraman, who runs the place.

Read it.

Of course not. They’re all dictators themselves; it would set a bad precedent.

Read it.

The 22-year-old television presenter says she wishes that she had been dissuaded from covering her body with “art” work. “Fourteen-year-old girls should not be allowed to have tattoos,” she tells Mandrake. “The ones I have from that age are more like prison tattoos.”

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain…

There is a curious argument used to paint the Tea Party movement and conservatives as racist.

The argument goes that since slave owners and segregationists invoked states rights, and since the Tea Party movement and conservatives invoke states rights, therefore the Tea Party movement and conservatives are racist.

Of course, there is no logic to this construct.  Just because one use of the 10th Amendment was for racist purposes does not mean that all other invocations of the 10th Amendment are racist.  Unless of course the 10th Amendment and our federalist structure itself is racist.

Nonetheless, it is a theme the Jesse Jacksons of the world push day in and day out in order to play the race card in favor of Democrats, in this case having a crowd repeat “big government is us by another name.”

By ‘us’, of course, Jesse Jackson (Lawn Jockey of the Crust) means himself and his tax-parasite friends.

Read it.

We have the technology.

John Hinderaker at Power Line takes a look at more Crustian goofiness.

Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times–that’s roughly like being Captain of the Titanic, but some people pay attention to him anyway–has gotten a lot of notice with a list of questions that he poses to Republican presidential candidates, collectively and individually. There is much to be said about this. For example: Why only the Republican candidates? Has Keller or anyone else asked similar questions of Howard Dean, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama, whose brushes with religious radicalism are notorious? Does anyone expect Democratic candidates to wax eloquent on religious issues? Not that I am aware of.

Read it.

A man in China was left to die on the operating table after his doctors fled from a fire that had broken out in the next-door room, a hospital official in Shanghai admitted on Friday.

Let’s hear it for government-run health care.

Read it.

A Japanese company is taking the national campaign to reduce power consumption to extremes by prescribing an energy-saving haircut for all its staff.

I’m trying to think of what an ‘energy-saving haircut’ might be, and I’m drawing a blank.

Read it.

Two men were hurt by an explosion in the cab of their pickup. They said it was a drive-by bomb attack.

Hmm.

However, witnesses saw the men throwing something into a nearby field before the police arrived. Police later found unexploded mortar rounds in the field, and a “mortar-like device” in the truck.

Again, hmm.

All this occurred in Michigan, but my knowledge of the state’s ethnic geography is insufficient to determine how culturally-enriched Columbia Township is, or how likely it is the miscreants victims were adherents of the Religion of Peace. I suppose we’ll have to wait for the men to be charged and named by the police, if that ever happens.

Heartland of America, that’s Michigan.

Read it.

News flash to the media: Muslims have no problem with ‘mass executions’. Mohammed did it (per Wikipedia):

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad besieged the Banu Qurayza for 25 days until they surrendered.^[1] One ofMuhammad’s companions decided that “the men should be killed, the property divided, and the women and children taken as captives”. Muhammad approved of the ruling, calling it similar to God’s judgment^{[7][8][9][10][11]}, after which all male members of the tribe who had reached puberty were beheaded ^[2][12]. The Muslim jurist Tabari quotes 600-900 being executed.^[1][3] The Sunni hadith do not give the number killed, but state that all males were killed and 1 woman.^[13] The rest of the woman and children were sold in exchange for weapons and horses, according to Islamic sources.^[1]

… so it’s okay for all Muslims to do it. Just ask them.

Read it.

Why should they, when they know that Stupid Rich White People will do it for them?

Read it.

A graphic from NASA shows sea levels have dropped 6 mm in the last 6 months, wiping out the rise over the past 2 years.

Well. So much for Global Warming flooding out all the Blue states. (Shucks.)

Read it.

Read it.

Environmentalists just aren’t happy with any technology that became useful after 1900. They want us to go back to riding horses and trains. Jerks.

Read it.

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

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George Carlin, where are you when we really need you?

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Jeremy Hill, a 33-year-old father of six, claims he killed the bear when it wandered in the yard where his children are playing. He faces prison over the death of a protected species.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

The Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.

There’s a carbon footprint for you. I’ll bet those jets weren’t powered by ‘green’ energy, either.

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

‘Movin’ on up (movin’ on up)/ to the East Side … we finally got a Piece of the Pie.’

The magazine also reported that Mrs Obama, whose fashion choices are widely followed, had been going on ‘wild shopping sprees’, much to the distress of her husband, who, its sources reveal, is ‘absolutely furious’ at his wife’s ‘out-of-control spending’.

Hey, somebody whose makework job (created specially for her as a politicians wife) was bumped to $317,000 a year when her husband became a Senator (and was then conveniently abolished once she Moved On) isn’t about to flinch from a few perks.

Read it.

Then I realized what had happened. Some computer had shown the airline that it was going was cheaper to bump and re-route everyone on our flight than to try to re-route the people on the Chattanooga flight. That way the airline wouldn’t have to put all of them up in a hotel. That made me feel a bit better about the safety of the airline, but not so good about our chances of making it to Florida on time.

Evidently the computer had said that our flight was one where they could put the fewest people in a hotel because almost everyone could reach their destination through other flights that afternoon. There was one destination that they couldn’t reach–Panama City Beach where we were going. In all fairness the people who helped arrange a hotel for us were courteous and friendly.  They gave us our tickets for the next day along with vouchers for the hotel and a few meals. I carefully checked the tickets to make sure we were all sitting together and discovered there were no seat numbers. I was told the seats would be assigned the next day.

After an uneventful (but not particularly restful) night in the hotel, we checked in our luggage and got our seat assignments. Unfortunately the person making the seat assignments decided that the best place for us to sit was in the very back–where the engine completely covers the windows and the kids can’t see out at all.  Maybe I didn’t adequately explain that yes we all needed to sit together and yes the ability to see out was somewhat important–something I had put a lot of effort into earlier when selecting our flights.

We finally did make it to the beach a day late. It was a nice week spent talking with family, watching dolphins, playing in the waves, making sand castles and swimming in the pool.

Read it.

It is simply a fact that people who work hard, finish their education, get married, and stay married are rarely — very rarely — poor.  There is no other proven formula for lifting Americans out of poverty.  None.  Food stamps don’t do it.  Medicaid doesn’t do it.  Soup kitchens don’t do it.  Good intentions don’t do it.  Hundreds of billions of dollars of transfer payments have not budged the poverty rate.

Read it.

We’ll swap you one of Obama’s kids for Prince Harry.

Read it.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush denied reports Tuesday that his family had any special grudge against Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“I’ve never heard anybody in my family say anything but good things about Rick Perry,” Bush stated in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel, saying he was grateful to get the opportunity to set the record straight.

When pressed on the issue, Bush related to Cavuto it was possible that former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove had a problem with Perry, but certainly not anyone in the Bush family.

“Not with my brother, my dad. Not with me at all,” Bush said. “I admire him. And I think Texas has got a great story and he can legitimately talk about that story as a candidate for president.”

Another leftie lie bites the dust.

Read it.

 As The Economist reports this week, many women in the richer parts of Asia have gone on “marriage strike”, preferring the single life to the marital yoke. That is one reason why their fertility rates have fallen. And they are not alone. In 83 countries and territories around the world, according to the United Nations, women will not have enough daughters to replace themselves, unless fertility rates rise. In Hong Kong, for example, a cohort of 1,000 women would be expected to give birth to just 547 daughters, at today’s fertility rates. (That gives Hong Kong a “net reproduction rate” of just 0.547, in the language of demographers.) If nothing changed, those 547 daughters would be succeeded by just 299 daughters of their own, and so on. At that rate, according to some back-of-the-envelope calculations by The Economist, it would take about 25 generations for Hong Kong’s female population to shrink from 3.75m to just one. Given that Hong Kong’s average age of childbearing is 31.4 years, it could expect to give birth to its last woman in the year 2798. (That is some time after its neighbour, Macau, which has a higher reproduction rate, but a much smaller population.) By the same unflinching logic, Japan, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain will not see out the next millennium. Even China, which has a recorded history stretching back at least 3,700 years, has only about 1,500 years left—if present trends continued unbroken.

Read it.

 The Obama administration argued that last year’s health care overhaul was a necessary step toward restraining the growth of health spending. One of the ways it was supposed to do that was by encouraging medical providers — physicians, specialists, and hospitals — to find better ways to coordinate the delivery of health care. Highly integrated provider networks, encouraged and regulated by the federal government, would help make health care cheaper and better at the same time.

With the law’s incentives in place, some providers are indeed working on mergers intended to help coordinate care. But it turns out that in some cases, they’re running into resistance… from the federal government, in the form of Federal Trade Commission antitrust action. That’s what’s happening in Toledo, Ohio, where a hospital merger is taking heat from the FTC’s antitrust enforcers. The New York Times looks at the latest round of docs-vs.-the-FTC and reports that ongoing legal battles illustrate “the risks that arise when competing health care providers try to collaborate, as they are racing to do all over the country, in part because of incentives built into the new health law.”

Boy, don’t you just love that government-run health care?

Read it.

How dare a public health official have an opinion on public health? The nerve!

Get one.

Courtesy of John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia.

Read it.

Dr. Jackelinne Pilar Villalobos was one of Brooklyn’s few female English and Spanish-speaking obstetricians. She loved the city and her patients, and never wanted to leave — but 18 months ago, she moved to Houston, where we’re delighted to have her.

Villalobos’ journey to Texas began in 2003, when our Legislature reformed Texas’ legal system — including sweeping medical-malpractice reforms. Back then, doctors in New York and Texas were paying about the same for medical-liability insurance. In Villalobos’ case, it was more than $100,000.

But under the Texas reforms, rates immediately began to fall — 15 percent in the first year alone. Since 2003, medical liability rates in New York have increased more than 60 percent; in Texas, they’ve dropped by 54 percent.

I guess these are some of the ‘freeloaders’ we can expect from places like Michigan.

By 2009, Villalobos’ premium was $186,000 — with a rate hike of 5 percent to 12 percent expected within the year. Even delivering as many as 10 babies a day, she couldn’t practice enough medicine to even cover her cost of doing business.

But she didn’t give up. She took a second job in a free clinic so that the clinic would help pay the insurance premiums — and she went to Albany to explain the need for lawsuit reform.

Her sister, a trial attorney in New York, finally told her to “pack her bags and go” — the trial bar has too much influence in Albany, she warned; the law will never change. Reluctantly, Villalobos left for Texas.

No wonder trial lawyers hate Rick Perry.

Meanwhile, New York has used tax dollars to create a “Patient Compensation Fund” as a type of malpractice coverage and a way of inducing physicians to stay in New York. It’s not working — frivolous suits have not abated; it’s just more money flowing to the plaintiff’s bar, this time from the taxpayers.

Of course — New York has some of the finest legislators that money can buy.

Read it.

They’re probably waiting to see when he’ll trade in his current wife for a new one. The first one lasted 18 years, the second 19; this one has 11 years in, so she’s got another eight or nine left.

Jim Goad speaks for the silent majority.

While reading yet another headline about, oh, I don’t know, a wayward dromedary whose scrotum was implanted with a cell-phone-triggered incendiary device designed to blow up a VW minibus filled with sorghum-harvesting kibbutz workers, it hit me like a suicide bomb:

I don’t care.

It’s not that I’ve ever cared about the Middle East—it’s that I’ve finally realized I don’t care. How much don’t I care? A whole lot. There’s almost an intensity to my not caring. A ferocity, if you will.

I know I’m supposed to care about the Middle East. And I know that if I don’t care, I’m supposed to feel guilty, but I can’t even manage that much. I can’t even feel bad about not feeling bad—that’s how much I don’t feel bad. Should I feel bad about that? I don’t care. I’m sorry for that. Actually, no—I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry at all.

Read it.

Increasingly, skin color has little to do with it — it’s the dysfunctional culture.

One of the most striking things about the England riots is where they did not happen: Yorkshire, the North East, Wales and Scotland. These areas contain some of the worst pockets of unemployment in the country. But they are also characterised by a powerful sense of regional or national identity and difference that cuts across all classes and binds them together. And it is this, I am sure, which has inoculated them against the disease of “gangsta” culture and its attendant, indiscriminate violence.

Read it.

A second quake, in June, caused further damage, shattering stained glass panels.

The city has yet to decide on a long-term replacement for the landmark and has commissioned architect Shigeru Ban to create a structure that will be ready by the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and last until the Anglican cathedral can be restored to its original condition.

Read it.

And Obama plays golf.

Slate continues the Crustian dogpile on Perry: (a) Texas didn’t do all that much better, (b) Even if they did, it was because they had all that oil and gas and shit, and (c) even if they did something right, it had nothing to do with Perry.

Boring. You’d think they could come up with something original.

Perry’s chief virtue is that he doesn’t go out of his way to encourage job-destroying policies, something that no Democrat can resist. Sometimes being King Log is praiseworthy when the alternative is King Stork.

Read it.

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

Read it.

By tapping into Albert Einstein’s idea of “spooky action at a distance,” researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have discovered what might be the key to completely secure data transfer — keeping particles “entangled” for up to an hour.

Read it.

Boy, those strict gun control laws really work, don’t they? They certainly prevent ordinary citizens from defending themselves.

Read it.

The US has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products. Amazon’s Kindle 2 couldn’t be made in the US, even if Amazon wanted to:

• The flex circuit connectors are made in China because the US supplier base migrated to Asia.
• The electrophoretic display is made in Taiwan because the expertise developed from producting flat-panel LCDs migrated to Asia with semiconductor manufacturing.
• The highly polished injection-molded case is made in China because the US supplier base eroded as the manufacture of toys, consumer electronics and computers migrated to China.
• The wireless card is made in South Korea because that country  became a center for making mobile phone components and handsets.
• The controller board is made in China because US companies long ago transferred manufacture of printed circuit boards to Asia.
• The Lithium polymer battery is made in China because battery development and manufacturing migrated to China along with the development and manufacture of consumer electronics and notebook computers.

John Derbyshire surveys the state of diversity.

In Britain, the USA, and the other Anglosphere nations, there seem to be Somalis all over.

Here’s one: Mr. Saeed Khaliif. I should actually have said “here’s ten,” as Mr. Khaliif has a wife and eight children. (Though eight is only our best estimate. No one seems to know the exact number.)

The Khaliifs arrived in Britain three years ago as refugees from Somalia. In their three years of residence, neither has had paid employment, nor have they learned to speak English. What they have mainly spent their time doing is gaming Britain’s welfare system. Most recently they have moved into a seven-bedroom house in tony West Hampstead—Emma Thompson lives nearby. The house is worth $3.2 million. Monthly rent—paid for by British taxpayers—is $13,000.

Here is another Somali, Mrs. Hailmo Bokh of Memphis, Tennessee. “Somalian Woman and 11 Kids Call Memphis Home,” reads the headline.

To America’s shame, Mrs. Bokh and her kids have not been given a seven-bedroom house in an upscale neighborhood, only a three-bedroom apartment in a middling neighborhood. Like the Khaliifs, though, the Bokhs will be fed, clothed, and educated courtesy of native taxpayers. “The Catholic Charities of West Tennessee…will help them get on their feet in Memphis,” says the news story, but that’s disingenuous since: (a) CCWT gets at least half its revenues from government grants (see Part VIII here); and (b) as soon as they can—a few months at most—CCWT hands off refugees to the general welfare system.

Read it.

The New York Times continues its service to the Narrative, and a Voice of the Crust plays ‘good cop’.

He’s got good looks, charisma, experience. So how do you explain his penchant for comments that are, well, a bit out there?

The eternal lefty dilemma. How could such a good-looking, articulate, (dare we say it? ‘clean’) and apparently well-qualified guy not be on the Right Side?

Ben Bernanke’s loose-money policy is “treasonous,” and Texans would “treat him pretty roughly” if he came to their state. Global warming is a hoax. Evolution is just an idea “out there.” Social Security is unconstitutional, and the 16th Amendment, which establishes the grounds for federal income taxes, should be repealed. Are these just the words of a newbie to the national stage? Or the future of the Republican Party?

Questions that only somebody inside the Leftist Urban Bubble could ask. After all, anybody who could pen this sentence…

Remember, this is a state where Ron Paul, who believes that NAFTA is part of a plot to force America into a European Union-style arrangement with Canada and Mexico, is regarded as a statesman.

… is obviously talking out of his ass and the Democrat talking-points book (which may be the same, for all we know). Nobody in Texas, not even Ron Paul supporters, considers him a ‘statesman’; certainly not in the Washington Beltway sense of ‘Republican willing to Play Ball’.

This is what passes for journalism in these degenerate modern times.

Of course, stripped of its yee-haw bluster, Mr. Perry’s comments are not all that different from the sort of positions we’ve heard from Bachmann, Herman Cain or even Mitt Romney.

Hey, Perry’s a Republican! What a surprise!

Indeed, Representative Paul may have the last laugh in more ways than one. As he told a New Hampshire crowd, Rick Perry “makes me sound like a moderate.”

News flash, Clay: The only people who could make Ron Paul sound like a moderate spoke German or Russian, and they’re all dead.

Read it.

The Obama administration has chosen a Friday afternoon in the summer to put out the news that it is refusing New York City’s request to prevent food stamp recipients in the city from using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to pay for soda or other sugary drinks. So if you are poor enough for food stamps – which are subject to only an income test, not an asset test — you have a federal entitlement to spend the vouchers on full-calorie Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

‘I want to go to America. I want to see a country where the poor people are fat.’

Again, as a general matter, I don’t think government should tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t eat or drink, and for those reasons I’ve opposed proposed taxes aimed at sugary beverages. But if food stamps are really a Nutritional Assistance program, it’s not really clear to me how Coke and Pepsi fit into that.

Better not tell Michelle.