Read it.

Good thing they banned guns. Just imagine how worse it would be if they hadn’t.

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Waters will be the ranking member on the committee that deals with banking issues. Last year, the House Ethics Committee investigated Waters, one of the most partisan members of the Congressional Black Caucus, for allegedly using her position in Congress to bail out a bank in which her husband owned $350,000 worth of stock.

I guess that constitutes qualifications for Democrats. Cheat on your taxes? Become Treasury Secretary! Use your power as Congresscritter to arrange for your own bank to be bailed out? Get put in charge of bank bailouts! Have a long history of unsafe driving? Be in charge of driving safety for the entire state!

I suppose next we can anticipate a crook being named Attorney General. Oh, wait, we’ve already got one….

Electronic Deer Deterrent

Checkon.me

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The federal government suffered a major defeat today at the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States. In their unanimous decision, the justices rejected the government’s sweeping claim that a series of recurring floods induced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not qualify as a taking of property under the Fifth Amendment because the flooding was only temporary in duration.

At last.

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The fact that the Senate wasn’t in recess might have something to do with it.

Not that Obama cares about the Constitution, of course, but there are those pesky judges who refuse to get with the Obamassiah’s program….

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Entrepreneurship is the heart of America.

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It seems intuitively obvious that not everyone has a wireless phone, and hence there is still a residual ‘demand’ for pay public telephones. On the other hand, it seems plain that, in light of the theft and vandalism to which they would undoubtedly be subjected in the low-rent areas in which they would be most useful, no commercial company is going to be interesting in throwing money down that particular rat-hole. This would therefore appear to be a perfect opportunity for those so inclined to engage in a government-has-to-meet-this-public-need-because-the-free-market-will-fail program. #OccupyPhoneBooth?

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She is incapable of reading an intelligent article other than through the lens of ‘progressive’ ideology.

You do not want your children to carry these defective genes.

People like these must be encouraged not to reproduce.

Fortunately, it appears to be a self-correcting problem.

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Just another silly politically fashionable Crustian buzzword, apparently.

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To say that Google’s high-speed Internet and television service has been warmly received in Kansas City is probably an understatement. But why didn’t the search giant take a stab at disrupting phone service, as well? As it turns out, it wasn’t due to lack of vision. A report from the Kansas City Business Journal reveals that Google thought long and hard about rolling out VoIP service to go with its Fiber data service before eventually balking at the regulatory headache it would have to deal with.

“We looked at doing that. The cost of actually delivering telephone services is almost nothing,” said Milo Medin, Google’s VP of Access Services at a conference in Kansas City. “However, in the United States, there are all of these special rules that apply.”

And that’s the flavor of the Obamanation: ‘Company X was going to do Y but decided not to, because of the regulatory headaches it would involve.’

Way to get the economy moving, guys. Forward into the past….

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“I was put on YouTube, I was put on everything without permission. What do I get?” he said. “This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie.”

And that tells you everything you need to know about the Obamanation.

An Informative Chart.

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For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roads.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

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Prominent gender and media studies professors from across the country converged recently to help host what was dubbed by organizers as a “Feminist, Anti-Racist Wikipedia Edit-a-thon” to create or influence dozens of entries on the online encyclopedia.

A Claremont Graduate University endowment fund sponsored the effort, which promoted creating and “improving” entries dedicated to: feminists; feminist theories; science studies; science, technology and society; human sexuality; artificial intelligence; and film theory; according to an email that announced the event to the Claremont Colleges community, as well as the “Edit-a-thon Wikipedia Page.”

God forbid that anyone, anywhere, should get information that wasn’t approved by the thought police.

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A funny thing often happens on the way to soaking the rich: They don’t stick around for the bath. Take Britain, where Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service reports that the number of taxpayers declaring £1 million a year in income fell by more than 60% in fiscal 2010-2011 from the year before.

That was the year that millionaires became liable for the 50% income-tax rate that Gordon Brown’s government introduced in its final days in 2010, up from the previous 40% rate. Lo, the total number of millionaire tax filers plunged to 6,000 in 2010-2011, from 16,000 in 2009-2010.

Amazing how that works.

The new tax was meant to raise about £2.5 billion more revenue. So much for that. In 2009-2010 British millionaires contributed about £13.4 billion to the public coffers, or just under 9% of the total tax liability of all taxpayers that year. At the 50% rate, the shrunken pool yielded £6.5 billion, or about 4.4%.

All that hope and the change is in the wrong direction.

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In conversations with POLITICO, some of the left’s most influential voices in media said that, with the concerns of re-election over, they intend to be more critical of the president’s performance and more aggressive in urging him to pursue a progressive agenda as the clock ticks on his last four years in office.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

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There’s just no pleasing some people.

The posters were designed to foster conversation about the domestic use of drones by law enforcement. Instead, it looks like we will be having the same old conversation about the limits of free speech.

Better not do it with posters.

Read it.

One of the more outlandish-sounding startups I met in Helsinki last week was Valkee, a company that makes a device that shines lights onto your brain cells through your ear canals.

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Khaira Arby, one of Africa’s most celebrated musicians, has performed all over the world, but there is one place she cannot visit: her native city of Timbuktu, a place steeped in history and culture but now ruled by religious extremists.

One day, they broke into Arby’s house and destroyed her instruments. Her voice was a threat to Islam, they said, even though one of her most popular songs praised Allah.

“They told my neighbors that if they ever caught me, they would cut my tongue out,” said Arby, sadness etched on her broad face.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

Read it.

Scientists at the Wake Forest University have created a new type of light bulb that promises to be just as efficient as LED equivalents, but without any of the drawbacks. The new field-induced polymer electroluminescent bulbs — FIPEL for short — produce light when an electric current is passed through the nano-engineered plastic layers. The team says that the new type of bulbs are malleable, allowing them to take any shape like compact fluorescent lamps. They also won’t shatter like traditional bulbs, nor will they generate the same hum or flicker.

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‘Progressives’ always have a problem with that. After all, progress is inevitable, right? And socialism represents progress, right? So how can the U.S. be so stuck on the ‘wrong side of history’?

Rick Perlstein, the author of this review, is that strangest of beings, a leftie who (like Christopher Hitchens) can sometimes get a glimpse of reality.

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There are two ways of letting political correctness control your mind.

One is to reject viewpoints, not because they’re false, but because they’re politically incorrect.

The other is to embrace viewpoints, not because they’re true, but because they’re politically incorrect.

We libertarians are seldom guilty of the first mistake. But we are often guilty of the second. Those who commit the second mistake are as much slaves of political correctness as those who commit the first.

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The typically quiet town of Casa Grande, Arizona was rocked by an explosion at the local Social Security Administration office early Friday morning by what appears to an improvised explosive device (IED). No one was hurt in the explosion, which occurred shortly before the office was scheduled to open. The explosion was reportedly heard and felt all over the area.

Ah, those disgruntled Republicans. There’s no pleasing them.

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When times are good and the ship of state only needs to sail straight, mentally healthy people function well as political leaders. But in times of crisis and tumult, those who are mentally abnormal, even ill, become the greatest leaders. We might call this the Inverse Law of Sanity.

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Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at iSec Partners.

Don Bailey and fellow iSec researcher Mathew Solnik say they’ve figured out the protocols that some of these software makers use to remote control the cars, and they’ve produced a video showing how they can unlock a car and turn the engine on via a laptop.

This could have a great deal of entertainment value, since it affects people who have SMS enabled on their phones and those who are too fargin lazy to use a key. I cannot weep for either of those groups.

Ross Douthat points out that the Emperor is not only starkers but also has a really small dick.

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten. This is an inescapable aspect of democratic culture: no matter what reason tells us about the vagaries of politics, something in the American subconscious assumes that the voice of the people really is the voice of God, and that being part of a winning coalition must be a sign that you’re His chosen one as well.

Not that they’re into that whole God thing, you understand.

“Those poor, benighted Republicans!” runs the subtext of their postelection commentary. “They can’t read polls! They can’t reach Hispanics! They don’t understand women! They don’t have a team of Silicon Valley sorcerers running their turnout operations!”

Honesty would have forced them to add ‘They’re unwilling to give away free shit!’ and ‘The only good vote is a fraudulent vote!’, but we’re talking Democrats here, so honesty is a foreign concept.

 Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear.

If you are useless and ignorant and lazy and therefore dependent on handouts for your very existence, then of course you’re going to support the side the promises you more handouts. That’s just a fact. And the side that catches on to this first is going to encourage people to be useless and ignorant and lazy because that increases their support. That’s just a fact, too. Ta-da! Welcome to the modern Democratic Party.

Foseti labels this grouping ‘The Coalition of Third-Worldism and Civilizational Decay’, although I could think of several less polite (and less Politically Correct) ways to say it.

… the Democratic Party’s coalition is one of NAMs (and Asians) and loose women (I feel a Waylon Jennings song coming on, but maybe that’s just the booze talking). Someone can probably come up with a good name for this coalition, but in the meantime, I’ll lamely propose: The Coalition of Third-Worldism and Civilizational Decay. Or perhaps “Idiocracy in Action” is more catchy.

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[David] Friedman also seems to think that if a bunch of people from place A move to place B, it’s most likely that they’ll act like citizens from place B. For example, if a bunch of Nigerians move to Norway, Friedman seems to think that the Nigerians will act like Norwegians. What is it about immigration that makes otherwise (in this case) brilliant people say retarded shit?

That has always been one of my reservations about David Friedman’s writing — for someone who teaches both law and economics, he has a distressing tendency to forget both when he gets on one of his hobby horses.

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I’m endlessly fascinated by the fact that the American Progressive regime has a volunteer thought police.

Most regimes have had to pay or threaten citizens into acting as thought police. However, many American Progressives take to the internet every day looking (far and wide, it would seem) for things to be offended by. What motivates these people?

All ideological regimes cultivate such proclivities, starting with Useful Idiots and hopefully winding up with Petains and Quislings; the ultimate poster child is the kid who rats out his parents to the Authorities for thinking unauthorized thoughts or failing to get with the state’s programs.

Activities during the Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’ under Mao are, tellingly enough, matched by some of the activities of children under Islamist tutelage — totalitarians have a standard toolbox that they all wind up using, no matter what the Clever Plastic Disguise might be.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Our first exposure to the folks from FEMA was a few days after Hurricane Sandy, which devastated our neighborhood on Long Island Sound. A platoon of FEMA agents, readily identifiable by their official-looking jackets with “FEMA” emblazoned on the back, spread out across the neighborhood offering the distraught residents oodles of sympathy—oodles—and plenty of forms to fill out and web sites to visit.

…

Yesterday I spoke to, let’s see, eight, maybe nine different FEMA agents. Each one was there to help. Each was polite, sympathetic. Oodles of sympathy. Almost all had a form for me to fill out, a web site to visit. Each of the long, long line of people who came to see these agents went away with forms to fill out, web sites to visit.

…

You then talked to one nice person after the next. There was this form, and that form, and a web site you could visit, and handbook you could read. At one stop I was given, for free!, a longish pamphlet explaining what I could do to make my property less liable to flood damage: “Mitigation Ideas For Reducing Flood Loss” it said on its cover. After a flood, it told me, a house needs to be dried out and cleaned. “Move things you want to save to a safe dry place.” Noted. “The longer they sit in water, the more damaged they become.” I was glad to know that.

Steve Sailer challenges you.

If you ace that one, try to pick out Susan Rice’s ‘black’ kids from any other group of pink ones.

Read it.

Putting some punch into the term ‘helicopter parent’.

I hope it has a speaker. ‘Hey, you! Get away from my kid or I put a missile up your ass!’

From #62:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.

Aw, who cares what a bunch of dead white men think, anyway….

Steve Sailer explains the facts of life to you.

 This is all part of Sailer’s Rule of Unions that unions are strongest for the guys who seemingly need them the least: baseball players, Chicago Symphony musicians, and so forth.

The Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach represents an enormous fixed investment that can’t be easily replaced anywhere (although the government of Mexico has been trying to build a competitor for many years now, and the government of Panama is expanding the Canal to siphon off business). Therefore, the Harbor generates huge amounts of wealth and the various parties involved clash over how to divvy it up. The dockworkers are a tough bunch  and when they are not happy, unfortunate things seem to happen. When the workers are unhappy you should probably, you know, watch your step, because accidents can happen. Thus, they get paid well.

Look for … the Union label….

 Public sympathies have turned very anti-union over my lifetime. In fact, I’m not sure they were ever all that pro-union. Strikes are extremely agitating for 3rd parties, partly because they happen on the strikers’ schedule, not the bystanders. Presumably, the dock clerks picked the Christmas Rush for a strike precisely because so many businesses across the country are desperate to get deliveries before December 24.

Similarly, if you own a business, you don’t want to be in a perfectly competitive market, either. You want to figure out a way to grab a little bit of monopoly power. You want to be Apple not Dell, Microsoft not Digital Resources, Carlos Slim not some unconnected telecom entrepreneur.

I know they teach you all about the wonders of perfectly competitive markets in Econ 101, but, you know what? You don’t want to be stuck competing in a perfectly competitive market. You want to be well set up in a defensible corner where you aren’t facing perfect competition.

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The settlement was a bonanza for those who negotiated it. The dominant tobacco companies, especially Philip Morris (now Altria) got a virtual cartel that allowed them to immediately raise cigarette prices without facing competition from smaller companies, since the AGs wrote into the pact clauses that required new companies to pay into the settlement even though they had nothing to do with the alleged behavior behind the lawsuits. The private lawyers who represented the states are still pulling several hundred millions of dollars in fees a year from the settlement, which is scheduled to run at least through 2023. Other winners included the states, which are still getting billions of dollars in additional revenue from mostly lower-income smokers (although they could have gotten that without paying private legal fees, simply by raising tobacco taxes), and the National Association of Attorneys General, which negotiated its own $103 million payment that has since grown into a pool of money that funds much of the AG professional association’s budget.

The same old story: Big companies don’t mind regulation; big companies LOVE regulation (like Warren Buffett loves high tax rates), because they can afford it and their smaller competitors can’t.

It’s not about health; it’s about MONEY — money for the tobacco companies, and money for the government. (And money for the criminals who smuggle cigarettes when taxes go up and up and up.)

Read it.

Knoxville, Tenn., Pittsburgh, Penn., and Dallas, Texas are the only U.S. cities that have fully recovered from the recession, according to the latest report from the Brookings Institution.

Hmm. No mention of Michigan here. Wonder why.