DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

We have seen the future, and it sucks.

Archive for July, 2012

The Rule of Law

22nd July 2012

Judge Napolitano explains why it’s important.

The greatest distinguishing factor between countries in which there is some freedom and those where authoritarian governments manage personal behavior is the Rule of Law. The idea that the very laws that the government is charged with enforcing could restrain the government itself is uniquely Western and was accepted with near unanimity at the time of the creation of the American Republic. Without that concept underlying the exercise of governmental power, there is little hope for freedom.

 

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God’s Frozen People

22nd July 2012

Charles Coulombe looks at the Episcopal Church … quickly, before it disappears.

How could this citadel of comfort and style seemingly transmogrify into today’s screaming freak show? Well, as with so much of our national life, chronology would seemingly place the change in the 1960s. In Episcopalians’ case, the blame falls in the lap of two bishops: San Francisco’s James Pike and New York’s Paul Moore. The former’s heresy trial in 1967 ended with the verdict that there is no such thing as heresy in the Episcopal Church, absolving that body from any need to conform to doctrinal norms. The latter led the Church away from its former status as “the Republican Party at prayer” into a new wonderland of social and political radicalism. That Bishop Moore was emblematic of the Church’s changes is shown by the touching story his daughter wrote of her posthumous meeting with his longtime clandestine male lover.

One of the most polite fictions in modern life is that the Episcopal Church has something to do with Christianity. But that’s okay — they no longer have to pretend.

Whether or not the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion as a whole is “faithful to the Gospel” or even merely in good taste is beyond the point. From the time of Elizabeth I, Anglicanism’s role has been to bless and approve whatever the Anglosphere’s dominant classes have wanted blessed or approved. Whenever those folk valued good manners, traditional mores, and a certain sense of style and decorum, the Anglican Church leadership complied.

But as those elite classes altered into the sideshow denizens who currently rule the West, “their” churches had to alter to suit them. Our oligarchs are not Christian in any doctrinal sense. They have no use for gender roles, for traditional family life, or indeed for reproduction itself (a bit shortsighted, given the never-ending need for bodies in uniform and obedient taxpayers). So far as many of them are concerned, there is no real distinction between human and animal life. The General Convention’s latest decrees simply put the stamp of religious approval upon the notions of our betters. Far from being a sign of America’s Episcopal Church having gone mad, these measures show she is continuing in her appointed and accustomed role.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen

22nd July 2012

Tom Smith lays it out.

Much could be said about how stupid was President Obama’s recent comments about business founders not really having built their businesses by themselves, but rather owing them in large part to things others, especially the government, did for them. You drove on a public road to meet your 457th potential angel investor. Your third grade public school teacher taught you always to say please. And so government gets a lot of the credit for the thing you sweated blood to create. Big surprize. If you build anything, you can absolutely bet people will line up for the credit, like Al Gores for the internet. Failure, you can keep the credit for that.

But here’s the question to ask — how many more successful businesses, inventions, products, services, toys, tools, insights, and just plain fun would there be, if government did not in the first place make it so ridiculously difficult to start a business and keep it going? I don’t see our young president taking credit on behalf of the state for all the failures it help cause, all the ideas that never got off the ground because the regulatory hurdles were so high, or all the established companies that never had to face competition because they had managed to get their rents written into law. This is part of the seen and not seen insight of Bastiat. What you see is a successful business when it manages to survive, and then people run up, the same people who taxed and regulated it nearly to death, and say I helped! I helped! What you don’t see are all the businesses that perished or never got started because of the heavy hand of the state. And it’s a very heavy hand.

David Bernstein chimes in:

Not to mention the times when government directly destroys businesses. For example, my paternal grandfather opened business after business that failed (but always eventually paid his debts to his creditors, so he was always able to start again). He finally achieved some modest success in his forties. New York City, however, had other plans, and took his business via eminent domain, paying a nominal sum for his inventory and precisely nothing for his most valuable asset, goodwill. Lord knows how many thousands of small businesses were destroyed by (generally) misconceived urban redevelopment projects, with inadequate compensation to their owners. I don’t know the full details, but would anyone be surprised to learn that the developers who built on the condemned land had a lot more political power than the displaced small businessmen? That’s government, too.

All too often, what entrepreneurs build is successful not because of government but in spite of persostent government attempts to get in the way.

Bernstein again, with the bottom line:

Sure, the government can provide useful services, and undoubtedly my father benefited from public schooling and other services (which is not to say that at least some of those services might not have been better-provided privately). But it’s an atrocious logical error to argue that if government does some things with at least minimal competence and efficiency that this somehow justifies any other intervention into civil society by government, or that the fact that most of us appreciate some government means that we should inherently want more government (or for that matter, that we shouldn’t want less government).

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

The Rationing Fallacy

22nd July 2012

Fritz has the right of it.

Economic goods are not rationed by price; price facilitates voluntary transactions between willing buyers and sellers in free markets. Rationing is what happens when a powerful authority (usually a government) steps in to dictate the organization of markets, the specification of goods, and — more extremely — who may buy what goods and at what prices (though dictated prices are essentially meaningless because they do not perform the signaling function that they do in free markets)….

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Quotas Limiting Male Science Enrollment: The New Liberal War on Science

22nd July 2012

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Earlier, writing in Newsweek, President Obama celebrated the fact that 25 percent fewer men than women graduate from college, calling it a “great accomplishment” for America. Ironically, he lamented the fact that a smaller gender disparity — 17 percent fewer women attending college than men — had once existed before Title IX was implemented. To Obama, gender disparities are only bad when they disfavor women. Under his strange idea of equality, equality means men losing out to women.

Based on a campaign promise Obama made to feminist groups in October 2008, Sommers foresaw the Obama Administration moving to artificially cap male enrollment in math and science classes to achieve gender proportionality — the way that Title IX currently caps male participation in intercollegiate athletics. The result could be a substantial reduction in the number of scientists graduating from America’s colleges and universities.

Since a college cannot force a woman to go into math or science, the only way for a college to satisfy a gender quota will be to cut the number of male math and science students, by turning male students away from their favorite subject.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

If You Are Hit By Two Atomic Bombs, Should You Have Kids?

21st July 2012

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If that’s not the perfect article for NPR, I don’t know what is.

Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 5 Comments »

Care About the Future? Then Lower Capital Taxes

21st July 2012

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The logic here is quite straightforward. What causes economic growth? Successful investment. How do you get less of something? Charge more for it. The higher you tax successful investment, the less economic growth you get. QED.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Texas Struggles to Keep Up With Power Demand

21st July 2012

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Well, that’s what happens when you’ve got a state where business is growing like a weed and the EPA will only let you generate electricity using hamster cages turned by bullocks who have been fed on organic bean sprouts from Whole Foods.

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USEFUL STUFF SATURDAY

21st July 2012

Nothing useful happened this week.

Don’t blame me — blame the world.

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The Missing Switch: High-Performance Monolithic Graphene Transistors Created

21st July 2012

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Researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany have created high-performance monolithic graphene transistors using a simple lithographic etching process. This could be the missing step that finally paves the way to post-silicon electronics.

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Threat to ObamaCare Is No ‘Drafting Error’

21st July 2012

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It turns out that ObamaCare makes an essential part of its regulatory scheme—an $800 billion bailout of private health insurance companies—conditional upon state governments creating the health insurance “exchanges” envisioned in the law.

This was no “drafting error.” During congressional consideration of the bill, its lead author, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), acknowledged that he intentionally and purposefully made that bailout conditional on states implementing their own Exchanges.

Now that it appears that as many as 30 states will not create Exchanges, the law is in peril. When states refuse to establish an Exchange, they are blocking not only that bailout, but also the $2,000 per worker tax ObamaCare imposes on employers. If enough states refuse to establish an Exchange, they can effectively force Congress to repeal much or all of the law.

That might explain why the IRS is literally rewriting the statute. On May 24, the IRS finalized a regulation that says the law’s $800 billion insurance-industry bailout will not be conditional on states creating Exchanges. With the stroke of pen, the IRS (1) stripped states of the power Congress gave them to shield employers from that $2,000 per-worker tax, (2) imposed that illegal tax on employers whom Congress exempted, and (3) issued up to $800 billion of tax credits and direct subsidies to private health insurance companies—without any congressional authorization whatsoever.

 

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The Debate We Should Be Having

21st July 2012

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Ordinarily a pseudo-conservative and a quasi-liberal pretending to be Sage Commentators on the Current Scene would not attract my attention, but it’s 3:42 a.m. and I can’t sleep so I’m desperately trying to bore myself into being able to resume snoozing; this looked like the best candidate. (Reading most newspaper columns is like watching a guy carve a statue of Dale Earnhardt out of butter … I’m thinking: He’s actually getting paid to do that. But I digress.)

One statement by Brooks, however, struck me as a Blind Pig Moment:

Obama’s ad is cynicism on stilts. Companies that outsource jobs become more competitive. They grow faster and then end up hiring more people at home. Outsourcing increases employment levels.  Outsourcing increases productivity. It also decreases the prices consumers pay for stuff. Obama knows all this. He’s just paying the economic nationalism card for his own gain.

I was struck by how much that encapsulates modern American politics.

Some politician knows, or ought to know, the truth about Situation X, but ignores it and pretends that some specious falsehood about Situation X is instead the truth because he knows that a lot of people with only a casual interest in the subject — too casual to actually ferret out the facts — will believe his version of the truth because he’s an important politician and we’ve been trained to feel that important politicians are smarter than we are. And the reason the politician does this is because by doing so he can gin up some controversy or outrage or other kerfuffle that he hopes to be able to ride to re-election/increased name-recognition/greater status in the political landscape. ‘Screw what’s right for the country, I’m doing what’s right for ME.’ The people I immediately think of in this context are mostly Democrats (Chuck Schumer! Bill Clinton! I’m lookin’ at YOU!), but there are enough Republicans with the same disease (Lisa Murkowski appears to be a hereditary case) that the notion of the political class being more united by cynical self-serving greed than it’s divided by party identity is one that most people accept without a lot of argument.

The problem is, of course, as I’ve long said, that our political system is so arranged that the incentives are all aligned to promote this sort of behavior. The way one gets power and influence is by attracting votes. Lying will get you more votes than telling the truth. Spending tax money on specific constituencies, whether corporations or the proletariat, will get you more votes than being a careful steward of the public purse. Doing favors for special interest groups, be they the National Association of Tobacco Growers or the Sierra Club, gets you more money (and eventually more money gets you more votes) than doing what’s best for the public generally. Spending 24/7 campaigning for office and getting your face on the evening news gets you more votes than buckling down and doing the job for you were nominally elected. Pandering to the mob gets you more votes than doing the right thing, almost by definition. Markets work, even when you don’t want them to; the political market is rigged to reward bad behavior over good, and while (as with an actual market) you can go counter to entropy for a while, eventually you’re going to lose out to someone who moves with the flow rather than against it.

That’s the problem. So what’s the solution? Dunno. Wish I did. I think it’s a defect inherent in the democratic form of government, and the only sure way to get rid of it is to get rid of democracy itself — and, however bad the disease might be, that ‘cure’ is worse.

Mind you, at times it’s very attractive. One of my abiding interests is the history of the British upper classes, and on more than one occasion — I’m thinking specifically of the 1832 Reform Act and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 — a government controlled by a landowning ‘aristocracy’ took actions that they could not have been forced to take and that were directly contrary to their own interests. The closest modern examples I can think of are tax reform under Reagan and welfare reform under Clinton, where Democrats went along with programs that were directly contrary to their historical and avowed political positions — and they’ve been walking back from those ever since, something that the British upper classes never tried to do. (There’s our pathological political system doing its thing again.)

The practical problem with discarding democracy for some other system is that any alternative would be run by the same people that are running the current system — and, not coincidentally, levering the country into the toilet. No joy there. History teaches us that ‘enlightened government’ eventually winds up in the hands of dim bulbs, and you don’t even get the satisfaction of being able to say, ‘Well, we gave it our best shot.’

So there it is. We’re stuck with a defective system, and appear likely to remain so. Our only available course of action seems to be to try to pick the best possible people for political office in the hope that they will be able to resist the longest being corrupted by the system. ‘Eventually I will betray you’, they will say, if honest, and our only available response is ‘We know that, but we hope to get as much value out of you as we can before you screw us.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Hoops Star Jeremy Lin Saves $1 Million per Year in Taxes Moving to Texas.

20th July 2012

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Indeed, we all save from living in Texas rather than New York — and that’s even ignoring the ‘cost of living’.

Pretty smart, especially for a Harvard guy.

Verb. sap.

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Nation’s Worst Outsourcer? You.

20th July 2012

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If Obama and Romney really want to create jobs, then they should propose a ban on interstate trucking.

 

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Will the Islamophobia Never Cease?

20th July 2012

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Top Ten Things That Obama Has Not Released

20th July 2012

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As the Obama campaign and the media continue to press Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns, and to suggest–without a shred of evidence–that he is a “felon,” it is worth noting how much critical information Barack Obama has withheld from view–both as a candidate in 2008, and during his term in office.

Just because Obama is easy to see through doesn’t mean he’s being transparent.

Posted in Think about it. | 3 Comments »

Rich French Flee Country to Escape New Tax Hikes

20th July 2012

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Funny how that works. Since the U.S. is the only First World country that taxes money made by its citizens wherever they can be hunted down, Europeans can easily vote with their feet when countries raise their taxes to non-competitive rates. You’d think their politicians would have learned this by now — the Beatles and the Stones were doing it in the 1960s, for crying out loud — but they never do.

And it’s got to be pretty bad when Britain can be described as ‘wealth-friendly’.

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Meet John Hutchings: Lining Union Pockets With YOUR Money

20th July 2012

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John Hutchings, the boss of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, says that New York’s 2009 “Green Jobs/Green New York” law, costing taxpayers some $112 million, is “bulls**t,” according to James O’Keefe’s and the Project Veritas’s latest blockbuster video.

But this waste of taxpayer dollars didn’t upset Mr. Hutchings. To the contrary – as a member of the Working Families Party, which actually drafted the legislation, he was quite pleased about it. And no wonder; much of this wasted cash went right to union pockets. Green Jobs/Green Work sought to create 60,000 jobs and 14,250 “living wage” jobs, all of them dues paying. The Obama Labor Department, meanwhile, would require any contract doing weatherization to pay union wages.

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Obama’s Vision of the State as Master, Not as Servant

20th July 2012

William Jacobson lays it out.

Obama, doing his Elizabeth Warren imitation, was insulting the people who make this country work, and was rejecting the heart of our system.

Obama needs to learn a few things, and the first is that the source of national wealth and prosperity is not the government. That doesn’t mean that government has no role, but is does mean that anyone who values our system understands that roads were built with tax dollars confiscated from private citizens who created wealth.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

The Incredible Bain Jobs Machine

20th July 2012

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In a competitive economy, $5,000 computers become $500 tablets. Consumers get to spend the difference elsewhere in the economy.

Did Mitt Romney and Bain Capital help office-supply retailer Staples create 88,000 jobs? 43,000? 252? Actually, Staples probably destroyed 100,000 jobs while creating millions of new ones.

Not that they’ll get any thanks for it. Everybody hears the complaints of the Crust about losing their ‘friendly neighborhood bookstore/stationery store/whatever’ and nobody (certainly nobody in the Voice of the Crust Media) pays attention to consumers, more often than not poor people, who now have more money to spend on other things

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Five ‘Reasonable Accommodations’ an Employer Never Dreamed It Would Have to Make

20th July 2012

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The ADA is one of the reasons that George H.W. Bush will burn in Hell.

My favorite:

Extra time to take a promotional examination. Dan Schwartz of the excellent Connecticut Employment Law Blog has reported that the City of Stamford, Connecticut, got nailed a few years ago for not allowing a firefighter with Attention Deficit Disorder to have extra time to complete an examination required for promotion. The City said that time was of the essence when fighting a fire, but the state Human Rights Office contended that the City didn’t present enough evidence to support its position.

Emphasis added, just so it’s obvious what a crock this is. It ought to be obvious to anybody with a greater-than-room-temperature IQ that time is of the essence when fighting a fire, but the Benefit Bureaucrats obviously don’t meet that standard.

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Smoking to Be Banned in Santa Monica Apartments, Condos

19th July 2012

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The Nanny State advances on the Left Coast. On the other hand, if you were to open up a marijuana dispensary there, it would probably make a number of heads explode as they tried to do the doublethink trick. That would be amusing.

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Replica of Western Wall Planned in Kansas

19th July 2012

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Plans for a full-size replica of the Western Wall in Jerusalem are being drawn up in Wichita, Kan. But women who have had abortions — rather than Jews — are the target audience.

The proposed replica is part of a monumental “International Pro-Life Memorial and National Life Center” being planned by evangelical activists in Wichita’s anti-abortion community. The envisioned shrine is meant to promote and solidify Wichita’s reputation as the city in America that is most hostile to abortion, say the activists. The project planners have decided that the most vivid way to invoke the scale of the abortion tragedy, as they see it, is to reference Jewish suffering — embodied in their minds by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.

Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | 1 Comment »

You Didn’t Build That

19th July 2012

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The “you didn’t build that” passage of President Obama’s Roanoke speech has gone viral on the Internet, with the Republican National Committee posting posters of Steve Jobs, the Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial calling it “the line of the year.”

And anyone who said that Obama is not a socialist is now shown to be a fool … or a liar.

 

Posted in Think about it. | 4 Comments »

The Universal Tea Machine

19th July 2012

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What do you get if you cross Alan Turing with the London Olympics?

We have the technology.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Paris Police Arrest Seven Over Sabotage of City’s Celebrated Velib Cycle Hire Scheme

19th July 2012

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The group of seven suspects somehow found a way around the sophisticated electronic system which supposedly keeps the bicycles secure. It meant they were able to help themselves to any of the 18,000 bikes kept at cycle hire stations across the French capital.

Many of the stolen bikes were later found abandoned, dumped in gardens or parks, and often sabotaged. Dozens of Vélib cycle hire stations were put out of use as the bikes disappeared. Last night seven alleged members of the gang were in custody, with their crime spree apparently at an end.

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

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

Hands-On With Organic Transit’s Pedal-Solar Electric Hybrid Vehicle, “The Elf”

19th July 2012

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The vehicles come in two models currently, The Elf which can hold up to 150lbs, and the TruckIt, which can handle an 800lb payload. Both have solar charged batteries that can last for 30 miles before switching to pedaling mode, and they have turn signals, brake lights and front headlights. They even have side mirrors.

Great for a Soap Box Derby.

It’s one of those products that — given the right financing and marketing — could be completely disruptive in Urban areas.

Message: Hey, there’s government money available for ‘green’ products! Let’s go get us some!

‘Financing’ : Getting a sufficiently high government subsidy. ‘Marketing’ : Hiring the right lobbyists to get on the gravy train. ‘Completely disruptive’ : the effect on your family budget when taxes go through the roof to pay for this horseshit.

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Senator: ‘Country Will Have to Face the Consequences’ if GOP Supports Bush Tax Cuts

19th July 2012

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Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) threatened on Monday that Democrats would let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody if Republicans did not compromise with Democrats and not extend the tax cuts for those in income brackets above $250,000.

Message: It’s more important for ‘the rich’ to get hurt, even if everyone gets hurt, than take the chance that  everybody might get a benefit that ‘the rich’ might also get.

Democrats: The Kindergarten Recess Party.

Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 1 Comment »

Destroyed by ‘Occupiers’, L.A. Unveils New $550,000 City Hall Lawn

19th July 2012

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I guess they were to busy raping and pillaging on public property to #OccupyObamaFundraiser.

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The Planet Is Fine!

19th July 2012

Freeberg reminds us that there are ‘progressives’ who still have two brain cells to rub together.

Like George Carlin. I miss George.

Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | 3 Comments »

French City of Angers That Was Home of Plantagenets Demands Return of Crown Jewels

19th July 2012

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Angers, in the Loire valley, was the capital of Anjou province and the geographical base of the Plantagenets, who ruled England from 1154 until 1485, providing some of the most celebrated monarchs in British history, including Richard the Lionheart and Henry V.

But when Edward Plantagenet, the Earl of Warwick, was executed for treason in the Tower of London in 1499, the house’s legitimate male line came to an end. “As redress for the execution of Edward, Angers today demands that the Crown Jewels of England be transferred to Angers,” reads a petition posted on the city’s official website.

Fine. They can give back the western half of modern France — including the city of Anger, and it’s surrounding district — that was at one time the possession of the English royal family.

Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | 1 Comment »

Study: Millions in Voter ID Nightmare

19th July 2012

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Or so The Politico would have you believe. (Agenda? What agenda?) Sorry, guys; it’s only a nightmare for Democrat demagogues who need those votes in order to access the public trough.

In the states with significant voter ID laws, more than 10 million eligible citizens live 10 or more miles from an office issuing the proper photo IDs and about half a million of those voters don’t have access to a vehicle, according to a study out Wednesday.

So how do they get to the polls on election day? Both political parties have ‘get out the vote’ efforts; getting voters registered would seem a perfect application of that. But no; opening the system up to fraud is the only ‘fair’ solution.

In the report, the Brennan Center — which is regarded as a liberal think tank and is against the new voter ID laws — states free photo IDs are not easily accessible to the 11 percent of voters who do not currently have them.

So how do they cash a check, drive a car, fly on a plane, get into an R-rated movie, see the President, or attend a Union meeting, all of which require a photo ID? I guess voting is less important than any of those other things.

The government offices where voters can obtain the proper IDs have limited business hours, the Brennan Center stated, citing an example in Sauk City, Wisconsin where the ID office is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month — but only four months in 2012 have that fifth Wednesday.

Oh, gee, the government’s operations are inconvenient. Who would ever have thought it? And Wisconsin is a blue state — surely it couldn’t be that Democrat bureaucrats are deliberately making getting a government ID difficult so as to support studies like these? Naw, that could never happen.

Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 4 Comments »

Bulgarian Bus Bombing the Work of Suicide Bomber, Minister Says

19th July 2012

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Another person died from the blast overnight, he said, bringing the death toll to eight. The dead are six Israelis, a Bulgarian bus driver and the suicide bomber.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace you got there, Mohammed.

The suspect in the attack had a Michigan driver’s license, which FBI officials on the scene have identified as fake, Tsvetanov said.

Of course they would say that. Can’t say the I-word or the M-word in the same breath as Michigan.

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Bulgarian Bus Bombing the Work of Suicide Bomber, Minister Says

Hundreds of bars of silver rescued from WWII shipwreck

19th July 2012

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The operation to retrieve the 1,203 bars from the SS Gairsoppa was the heaviest and deepest underwater mission to remove precious metal from sunken vessels.

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The Average Canadian is Now Richer than the Average American

18th July 2012

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We’ll send them Obama. He’ll take care of it.

Posted in News You Can Use. | 9 Comments »

First World Problem: Girl Panhandles for Boob Job

17th July 2012

Watch it.

I am not making this up.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 4 Comments »

4+3 Be What?

17th July 2012

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Ebonics comes to Canada.

Progressives delight in constantly and arbitrarily reengineering the English language. This rigged game of musical chairs ensures that we reactionary racist rubes always land on our rhetorical butts.

So when black Torontonians and their liberal enablers started clamoring for “Africentric” schools a few years back, the local paper was obliged to run a helpful sidebar explaining why the right word wasn’t “Afrocentric” anymore:

“[I]t’s African-centered education, and there is no “o” in the word Africa,” said Dr. Patrick Kakembo, director of the African Canadian Services in Nova Scotia. “Why should it be Afro? That’s a hair-do.”

Now you know.

Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | 2 Comments »

France’s Proposed Tax Hikes Spark ‘Exodus’ of Wealthy

16th July 2012

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Saw that coming.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Why a Typewriter Is the Ultimate Hipster Accessory

16th July 2012

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Just as long as you’re using it ironically.

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Hacker Opens High Security Handcuffs With 3D-Printed and Laser-Cut Keys

16th July 2012

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We have the technology.

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US Navy Deploys Seafox Submarines to Persian Gulf for Universal Mine Control

16th July 2012

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Tasked with mine detection and eradication in the Persian Gulf, the US Navy has sent a fleet of unmanned submarines to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open in Iran. Dubbed the SeaFox, each vehicle houses an underwater TV camera, sonar and a dose of explosives. Tipping the scales at less than 100 pounds, the subs are about four feet in length and are controlled via fiber optic cable that sends the live feed back to the captain of each ship. SeaFoxes can dive to depths of 300 meters and boasts a top speed of six knots. The units are thrust into action from helicopters, small rubber boats and off the rear of minesweepers and are capable of disposing of the aforementioned weapons of both the floating and drifting sort. There is one small catch: the $100,000 submarine destroys itself in the process, making each successful trek a suicide mission of sorts.

The US Navy has forgotten more than the Iranian Navy ever knew about laying — and sweeping — mines.

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Labor Update: Spreading the Wealth Around

16th July 2012

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Under a law signed by former President George W. Bush, all unions must publicly disclose their assets and expenses. Such disclosures reveal the  political contributions made by unions and the salaries  of top union officials.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal used the public data to examine the broad array of political contributions of the two most powerful teachers’ unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Over the weekend, Fox News used the data to show that union bosses make ten times more than the average American worker.

For the Union makes us wrong….

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

Jon Lord RIP

16th July 2012

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English rocker Jon Lord, who founded Deep Purple and co-wrote their most famous song, Smoke On The Water, has died aged 71.

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Airbus Designer Hopes to See Planes Roll Out of Hanger-Sized 3D Printers by 2050

16th July 2012

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We almost have the technology.

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Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

16th July 2012

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Hint: No.

IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.

It’s hip, and trendy.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

Guess it’s not working.

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Meet Obama’s Marxist Mentor

16th July 2012

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He was skeptical of preachers and their effect on God-and-gun clinging Americans, and saw the Catholic Church as an obstacle to his policies, plans, and vision for the state.

At the same time, he argued that Christians should support his ideas and enthusiastically sought the support of the “social justice” Religious Left for various causes and campaigns. And yet, many people were unclear about his personal religious beliefs, including whether he was a Christian. Some even dared to call him a communist, while he described himself as “progressive.”

Sound familiar? Who is this man? If you answered “Barack Obama,” you’re only half right. The answer is Frank Marshall Davis, Hawaii mentor to a young Barack Obama, and Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member 47544.

The fruit doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

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From Patriots to Expatriates

15th July 2012

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Eduardo Saverin is the most notable tax expatriate this year. The Facebook cofounder renounced his US citizenship after learning that his earnings on the company’s IPO would be taxed upwards of $67 million. Since Singapore has no capital gains tax, Saverin moved. Now he gets to keep everything he earned. Saverin now seems interested only in Brazilian start-ups looking to get involved in the Asian market, so American companies can forget about any extra investment opportunities his wealth would have provided to them.

This was bad news for American entrepreneurs, but we saw no apologies from DC’s parasitic bureaucrats. Instead of loosening the tax collector’s death grip around our only source of economic growth, maggots such as Senator Chuck Schumer decided it’d be best to prevent wealthy expatriates from ever returning to the country.

Acts of personal sovereignty such as Rich’s and Saverin’s threaten government officials because they imply that individuals will move as they wish. It suggests that successful businessmen really will leave the farm when they’re pushed around for too long.

Used to be, people wanted to move here. Now the government has arranged things so that people want to move elsewhere.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 3 Comments »

The Annoying Thing About Self-Driving Cars: They Obey the Speed Limit

15th July 2012

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Every silver lining comes wrapped in a cloud….

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Officer Marches Into Woman’s Home and Yells at Her to Wake Up Because Her Grass Is Too Long

15th July 2012

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A woman got the shock of her life when she woke up to find a stranger in her bedroom, yelling at her to wake up because her grass was too long.

Erica Masters was asleep when Columbia County Code Compliance Officer Jimmy Vowell entered her Martinez, Georgia, home without permission to serve a violation notice for her overgrown lawn.

After knocking on the woman’s door a few times, Vowell let himself and made his way into her bedroom, which was captured on surveillance video.

I just can’t wait until bureaucrats are in charge of our health care. Can’t wait. Seriously.

Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 2 Comments »

The Olympics

15th July 2012

Unless it’s a bunch of nude Greek pagans sweating in Thessaly, it ain’t the Olympics.

Get over it.

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