The case that started the hysteria over child abductions has now been solved, 33 years later. The Etan Patz case began the media saturation of child abductions, and, along with that theme recurring almost nightly on prime-time television, led to a distortion of reality. Despite our fears, only 115 children are kidnapped by strangers each year. The majority are returned home within a day; only 50 are murdered or are never found. To put that in perspective, you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than your child has of being the victim in a "stereotypical" (really, atypical) kidnapping. We don't walk around with lightning rods on our heads (at least most of us do not,) but we lock our kids away, imprisoning them at home, keeping them under constant supervision, stunting their emotional and social development, all in fear of a minimal risk.

Leonore Skanazy (Free Range Kids), Etan: The End « FreeRangeKids:

Readers – As I'm sure almost all of you have heard, there has been an arrest, 33 years too late, of a man who confesses to murdering Etan Patz.

In the wake of 6-year-old Etan’s 1979 disappearance came the era we are living in to this day, the “Don’t let your child out of your sight, he could be snatched like that little boy” era. It’s an outlook reinforced daily by the media (“Up next: Children at risk!”) and the marketplace (“Buy this! Your children are at risk!”). It has been embraced by schools (“No walking allowed! Your children are at risk!”), and day care centers (“We have cameras everywhere. Your children are at risk!”), and by the law (“No letting your kids wait in the car. Your children are at risk!”). In short, the fact that we can see Etan even with our eyes closed has allowed the fascism of fear to flourish.

Knowing how he died provides cold comfort. I’m also not sure there’s any way to make a murder “meaningful.” But it does make me want to take action. For the sake of the next 33 years’ of children, I want to help our culture regain  its perspective. We remember this tragedy more than a generation later precisely because things like this do not, thank God, happen all the time. We cannot raise our children as if they do. And we can’t organize our lives around avoiding random, rare, heartbreaking events. Lisa Belkin makes this point movingly in her Huffington Post piece today.

Let me repeat the words another writer sent here a few weeks back: Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

Let’s not prevent it in Etan’s name anymore.

For my brother:

The part I remember most starts as at about 4:45.

Rarg

Chinese communist leaders denounce U.S. values but send children to U.S. colleges - The Washington Post

Where, if the schools have anything to say about it, they will be perfectly safe from learning anything about American values, while constantly hearing praise for the values of their Chinese masters.

She’s an Indian too | Power Line

Valerie Plame could not be reached for comment.

The PJ Tatler » BOMBSHELL: Al-Qaeda Infiltrator was Working for Brits not CIA, Cover Blown for Election Year Politics

If I had the cartooning ability, I'd redo Obama's Life of Julia like this:

Born into a wealthy family, Julia attended the best schools, including a boarding school. Being taller than average and very athletic, she excelled at sports.

She attended the all-women Smith College, where she earned a degree in English.

After graduating, she worked in advertising and news.

She left her post-college jobs to join the US spy agency. She was posted to Sri Lanka and China. She earned a meritorious service award for her work.

She met and married a fellow spy. After they both left the agency, he took a job in the foreign service in France.

Without a job of her own, Julia attending Le Cordon Bleu cooking school to learn the art of French cooking.

When she and her husband returned to the United States, she began teaching French cooking to others and co-wrote the seminal modern cookbook.

She moved from small cooking classes to television, where she created the seminal food television show.

Having become the founder of both the modern cookbook market and the televised cooking, she became an icon to foodies everywhere.

She continued to make television programs and write cookbooks all of her life.

Her kitchen is now an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum.

She did all of this without a single government handout.

...Cherokees For Trail of Tears

Thanks to Breitbart and Legal Insurrection for this one. It's one of the funniest things to come out of politics in a long time:

Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees For Trail of Tears

I bet right about now Warren is hoping to be judged, not by her ancestry, but by the content of her character. Her problem is, it's her character that's under scrutiny--for having claimed such a tenuous link to Native American heritage in the first place.

EPA Official Armendariz

“You hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.”

Or, they decide at that time that business would be better in Mexico...or Brazil...or Canada... And the US is out another business and several hundred jobs.

Would there be bluegrass as we know it today without Earl Scruggs?  I doubt it.  He was a truly innovative virtuoso. Rest in peace.

Examiner.com:

Angry over steps being taken due to a financial emergency in Detroit, New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz declared he would burn the city down.

I have to wonder...who would even notice? Lost Detroit:

Formerly the Detroit Public School Cass Tech

Wow, this is amazing.  James Cameron went down alone to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean.

(National Geographic pic)

I have long marveled at the feat of the Trieste team, who went there 50 years ago.  Nobody went back, until now.  The Trieste adventure was way ahead of its time.

Is it possible that in 7 years, a person may take it upon himself to go back to the moon, 50 years after the Apollo landing?  How cool would that be!

My belief that this is fake is exceeded by my wish that it were real.



Ann says: The video in this link has died, but the Huffer Post is reporting that the guy that made the film is admitting it was a hoax.

The woolly mammoth video from a couple weeks ago really had me wishing it were true too...even when it was a much more obvious fake than this video.

I got a bit worked up over on Facebook over the post of this picture, posted by someone with the organization name "Americans Against the Tea Party", but linked to by a high-school acquaintance:

My initial response was:

"B.S.

Buy your own d*&^ birth control. What people are pushing for isn't reproductive rights; what they want is to take money out of other people's pockets to pay for their sex life. Pay for it youself [sic, unfortunately]!!"

To that, the usual high-level, high-culture liberal argumentation began: I was asked, literally, and I do mean literally, whether I knew what an org-sm was, then accused of wanting to put women in prison for menstruating. That was actually the answer I got. Since this walking brain also mentioned taxes, I ignored the sexism of her response and responded with a lengthier:

Did I say taxes?

What do you think insurance is? Everyone puts in their money, and the people who need it get it...and it was supposed to be people who NEED it--like people with chronic conditions, accidents, serious illnesses--not just people who want their bills managed by someone else.

What I really, and I mean REALLY don't get, is why people think it is more efficient and will cost less to hand all health care money to a bureaucracy--whether a private insurance agency or the government--then have that bureaucracy take their cut, paying for their salaries, offices, training, pensions, outreach/advertising, etc. instead of simply paying for the regular yearly costs--check ups, the occasional ear infection, routine preventative exams, etc., out of pocket and then leave insurance to be INSURANCE--meaning shared RISK.

There is no RISK involved when everyone gets a checkup--no one has a mega-expensive, bankruptcy-threatening annual physical (I'm perfectly willing for there to be a Medicaid-style program for the people who really can't even afford this.)

The current problems of insurance-distorted pricing--where no-one knows what the real cost of anything is, because there is so much dealing going on between insurance companies and providers--would be solved by the simple expedient of requiring there to be a single published price for any piece of health care (preferably set by the provider.) Knowing the price beforehand would allow consumers to price and quality shop on their own. A much simpler, more-efficient, and more-cost containing system than building an insurance bureaucracy to ride alongside the health care bureaucracy.

At that point I was accused of wanting to run away with newt [sic] to the moon (this was, I believe intended to be sexually suggestive) where we wouldn't have to pay for anyone else's anything.

Keeping a relatively level head, my response was:

It's a waste of money to pay insurance for routine health care (or dental care.) It's much more efficient to stream-line it and pay the provider directly. The indirect route just lets an intermediary take their cut. What is the point or the benefit of that? If someone truly can't afford it, that's one thing. Yes, let's help them. But for people who pay for health insurance, or get it as part of their pay package, it's really dumb to have a first-dollar, third-party health-care payment system. Let's have insurance for things that actually are shared risk, and pay directly for the normal, routine stuff.

Since I'm two time zones to the left of this brilliant debater, they may have gone to bed...or they may have just shut up...or plugged their ears. Regardless, no additional "argument" has yet been posted. Still, I couldn't leave it there...First I posted this:

Is your best argument really that I'm a newt-effing rich b*(&^%?

Then sat down and went on for a while...

Here's a hypothetical, let's say you have two relatively-healthy, middle-income, middle-aged women. Neither has any major medical condition nor do they get into an accident (those things would require real insurance, not first-dollar health-care financing.) They simply have the usual annual costs for health care; they get mammograms, maybe birth control, they get dental check-ups twice a year, occasionally they might have a rash or a minor infection that needs a cream or Z-pack.

Now let's say that the cost of their annual health care is roughly $1,500.

Woman-A buys an insurance policy that covers the first-dollar health care. For her, she gets $1,500 in care, but she also has to pay the overhead of the financing system. She's paying for the person at the financing company who receives the bill from the provider, the person (often an expensive nurse) who checks to make sure it's a valid health-care expense, the accounting department which keeps the balance sheets and cuts the checks, the lawyers to handle lawsuits, the underwriters who write the policies, the marketing department that sell the policies, the managers who keep everything running (or crashing), and the suits who take long vacations on islands in the Caribbean. Now, according to Obamacare, insurance companies are required to spend at least 80% of their revenues on actual health care, but get to spend 20% of their revenues on all of this overhead. So for $1,500 in reimbursements to health care providers, they will actually spend $1,875 (0.80 * X = 1,500. X = 1,500 / 0.6 = 1,875,) or $375 extra on non-medical payments. Since Woman-A is paying for all of her insurance, she is paying all of this, and the extra is reflected in her nice, big premium payments.

Now, let's look at Woman-B. She pays all of the costs out of pocket, she simply hands over the $1,500 directly to her health-care providers. She's done, and she's spending $375 less than Woman-A. Her lower costs are also reflected in her, cheaper, premium payments.

Now, let's reverse the question. Let's say each only can spend $1,500 on medical expenses. For her money, Woman-A has to pay 20% of the $1,500 to the financing agency, meaning she can only get $1,200 worth of health care. Woman-B, on the other hand, gets to spend $300 more on actual health care. She could choose to spend this by going to a better doctor, getting her mammogram at a more-convenient facility, getting a DNA test for BRCA genes...or, she could just keep the savings.

Which system is preferable? A wasteful system where an intermediary gets a cut of every health-care dollar? Or a system where most every-day expenses are simply handled between the patient and the provider without extra overhead? Which system would be cheaper for the country? And, which system would be more-likely to keep costs in check? One where the actual customer/patient doesn't notice how much something costs because they're only paying for it second-hand through their financing premiums, or one where the customer/patient is the one cutting the checks?

As a final point, all of this would be true whether the health-care financing agency is government-run or privately-run. The overhead is still there, and is still unnecessary.

I guess I probably overdid it, but I'm sick of letting this stupidity go unchallenged.

#BeBreitbart

Presidential Embarrassment about Gas - Victor Davis Hanson

The only reasons Obama is embarrassed about fuel, are because, despite his best efforts, we're drilling more oil and gas out of the ground than ever before, and the high gas prices (or is it low dollar) are undermining his re-election hopes.

If it weren't for those two things, he'd be thrilled with low supply and high prices.

One of my flaming-liberal friends posting this tonight:

Taken in order:

1. • The pre-existing conditions system in the act is so bad, they had to shelve it. Yeah, that'll work.
     

     Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decided to pull the plug on a long-term care insurance program seen as a budget drain. She also decided that Washington would not dictate a basic health benefits package for the country, allowing each state to set its own, within limits.

   • Affordable care act "Makes health care more affordable for small businesses". Hello? Is that why so many of them plan to ditch their company-provided health care and dumping their workers in the state exchanges?
   
   
   • I'm sorry, but 25 year-olds are ADULTS!!! The sooner they take responsibility for themselves, the better. Prolonged adolescence is a cancer on our age, cutting off our most-vibrant talent from actually making a contribution to our world.
2. In other words...he's following that idiot Bushitler's time table. Big deal.
3. "Free preventitive care". Oh, the problem is preventitive care...like mammograms, stool tests, and treadmill tests...Nothing to see here...move along.
   
   Meanwhile, the new puritanism is alive and well. Our way, or no way...we can have the stake and tinder ready in an hour....So, you have a moral issue with paying for birth control...tough patooties. We dictate, you obey. End of discussion, compromise, etc.
   
   How about we treat adults like ADULTS!!! You want to work your way through 1,000 condoms in a year, be my guest...just pay the bill yourself.
4. ...and his position on gay marriage is what, again? Hmmm...anybody? No hands? Really? And the fact that his stated position on it is identical to the hated Bushitler? Nothing to see her, move along.
5. Solyndra....Fisker Karma....Chevy Volt....Yes, thank you O-man for taking money from productive people and pouring it down the rabbit hole.
6. More flexibility, my fat ^&&! He's locking the entire education system in to a sub-standard curriculum which will put even the best US math minds two years behind other developed nations by 8th grade. Wooo Hooo!!! The Common Core is a pathetic and ILLEGAL attempt to dictate to every school district what they should be teaching. My state of California actually had to dumb down their math standards by a full year to adopt the CC. And the Education Department is forbidden by three separate laws from attempting to enforce curriculum standards.
7. Please....tell me what the fair share is...and then tell me the repercussion of that number? Taking money from people who invest nearly all of their money in stocks, bonds, venture capital firms, or real estate development--tell me, is that a good idea, or a bad idea? Their money doesn't grow on trees. Taking it from one place does not make it magically appear somewhere else, as if it's free money. What are the consequences of taking all of that money out of the private sector and handing it over to the government? Already, our high capital gains and business taxes are driving companies off shore. How many more have to leave before "social justice" just looks like shared poverty.
8. Can I just laugh at this one... one of the lowest employment rates in history and the most-prolonged jobs recession...but it's really not his fault!!! Hugs and kisses big-O we love you!!! **swoon**

Fukushima Health Impact: Minimal? -- WSJ Some good news:

Of the first 10,000 people exposed to radioactive plumes in the wake of the Fukushima accident—those assumed to have the highest levels of radiation exposure—only 73 had exposure higher than 10 millisieverts.

Average annual background radiation is about 3-4mSv, in Denver that rises to 1.8 (and oddly Boston hovers around 1.0.) The world leader on background radiation seems to be Iran, where in one town, Ramsar, annual background radiation of 130mSv or more have been measured--the population there appears to be healthy. So, the workers got about as much exposure as people in Boston do in 10 years. Not bad.

The strangest line in the piece, though was this one:

In comparison, the half-million workers who entombed Chernobyl had average exposures more than ten times as high.

It's not the radiation dose that caught my eye, but the idea that it took 500,000 people to drop concrete on a single site. How could it possibly take that many people?

I am waiting for my lunatic leftist friends to begin gloating over Breitbart's death. I expect it to be horrific.

If only this were a month-early April fool's joke which Breitbart was using to smoke out the depravity of the left.

Africa's Amazing Rise and What it Can Teach the World - G. Pascal Zachary - International - The Atlantic

Let's hope this continues and continues to expand. Having rapid growth when you're starting near zero doesn't mean much. It will take decades to pull Africa out. The key is to keep despotic governments at bay and to move from strength to strength. Right now, the greatest chance of sabotaging this growth lies with Africans themselves. All continents have faced the same pressures. The countries that move up and out of poverty are the ones that keep despots out of government. That was true in Europe (Spain, Greece offered as counter examples), Asia (almost everyone for decades), and Central and South America.

Instapundit

DOCUMENTS: Lightsquared Shaping Up As The FCC’s Solyndra. I think we’re going to find that every federal department has its own Solyndra.

Why does this remind me of...

...In a way, all of us have an el Guapo to face some day. For some, shyness might be their el Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their el Guapo. For us, el Guapo is a big dangerous guy who wants to kill us.

I’m OK–You’re OK | Scott Johnson | Power Line

"Mitt is an inspirational candidate. The problem is that what he inspires is intense apathy..."

Lovely quote.

I don't know why exactly, but I really like their logo:

Interesting privacy points here.

The site itself of course is here.

Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It - NYTimes.com

You don't see a Lindstrom byline very often!

Unfortunately, the article's a piece of &^%$

And here's Powerline's take on the same piece.

I took this picture while driving down Highway 14 outside of Madison. Why?

A blow-up explains it:

As they say in the bird books, "unmistakable"

Sad eyed greens bemoan Obama energy remarks « Hot Air

I love this quote:

The pouting continues for some time, going on to blame the GOP for “hyperventilating” and “pounding the administration” over the failures at Solyndra. (Apparently things at the solar panel plant would have been just fine had it not been for you meddling conservative kids, Shaggy.) He then goes on to re-run the mantra that solar, wind and geothermal are ripe and ready to solve all of our problems if only Obama would act “forcefully and decisively” enough. (I assume some amount of clapping until Tinkerbell comes back to life will also be involved, but the author doesn’t specify.)

Some numbers:

$22,050	Poverty line for a family of 4.
$ 5,048	Earned Income Tax Credit for family of 4 making $22,050
$ 3,000	Estimated annual Food Stamps for Family of 4 making $22,050 ($250/month)
$ 1,080	School lunch benefit @ $3/day for 2 kids and 180 school days.
$ 7,951	Average employee contribution to health care for family of 4 (Medicaid benefit)
$39,129	Total effective income of family of 4 with $22,050 in wages.

And that's not counting eligibility for Section 8 housing vouchers. (The program has waiting lists and can be hard to get into.)

So, a family of 4 making $22,050 can have an effective income of 77% more than that amount, or $17,000 more. In fact, the median household income in the US is $31,111, so the "poverty line" denotes families which can make $8,000 more than the median.

Baby doesn't mind the cold...

Cops Believe North Carolina Inmate Hid 10-Inch Revolver In His Rectum. Luckily, It Was Unloaded.

You know, I don't believe it. This is a case where the simplest explanation is probably the right one. Which is more likely, the above scenario or that the jail was lazy, that everyone who checked him in assumed that the other guy had taken care of the search, and that the thing just slipped through the security system?

I wrote both of my senators and my representative about the copyright bills now before the Congress. Here's Diane Feinstein's response:

I received your letter expressing opposition to the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act," commonly known as the "PROTECT IP Act." I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.

The "PROTECT IP Act" (S. 968) gives both copyright and trademark owners and the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to take action against websites that are "dedicated to infringing activities." These are websites that have "no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating" copyright infringement, the sale of goods with a counterfeit trademark, or the evasion of technological measures designed to protect against copying.

The bill does not violate First Amendment rights to free speech because copyright piracy is not speech.

America's copyright industry is an important economic engine, and I believe copyright owners should be able to prevent their works from being illegally duplicated and stolen. The protection of intellectual property is particularly vital to California's thriving film, music, and high-technology industries.

I understand you have concerns about the "PROTECT IP Act." While I voted in favor of this bill when it was before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have also been working with California high-technology businesses to improve the bill and to address the concerns of high-tech businesses, public interest groups and others. I recognize the bill needs further changes to prevent it from imposing undue burdens on legitimate businesses and activities, and I will be working to make the improvements, either by working with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) or through amendments on the Senate floor.

On May 26, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the "PROTECT IP Act" for consideration by the full Senate. Please know I will keep your concerns and thoughts in mind should the Senate proceed to a vote on this legislation. As you may be aware, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced similar legislation, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (H.R. 3261), in the House of Representatives.

Once again, thank you for sharing your views. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.

Wishing you a happy 2012.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Skiing: Is this the best ski season ever? - Telegraph

So that's where all the snow has gone! With the kids getting a 4-day weekend this week, we usually go skiing. But all the snow seems to be falling in Europe instead.

Dan Mitchell at his "International Liberty" blog showed a graph charting education spending with achievement of 17-year-olds since 1970. The original graph was from a blog post by Andrew Coulson at Cato's "Cato@Liberty" blog. Here's the graph:

The steep blue line represents all education spending. The flat little lines at the bottom shows the percentage change in achievement. For all the spending, we got bupkis...except for the steep dotted line. That's the percentage increase in the number of education employees.

The bottom line numbers are:

Spending on Ed: +140%
Math scores: 0%
Reading scores: 0%
Science scores: -3%
Ed Employees: +75%

Our schools are the same or worse, but they employ more people than ever. Increasing proof that the national education system isn't about education, it's a jobs machine.

(Cross Posted from Square Dots.)

Haker Park - Located at 4335 South 36th Street (3.25 acres) - Visit Our Parks - City of Greenfield, Wisconsin

It's about 6 miles northwest of Mitchell airport. I had no idea that there was a Haker Park in Milwaukee.

The EPA's Mercury Madness - Investors.com

Good point.

How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission - ProPublica

This was always a stupid idea. It always meant that the groups with the best organization (i.e. unions) would rule. In the article, they said demographics should have resulted in Republicans holding the seats they had. Instead Democrats are expected to pick up half a dozen.

What emerges is a portrait of skilled political professionals armed with modern mapping software and detailed voter information who managed to replicate the results of the smoked-filled rooms of old.

The losers in this once-a-decade reshaping of the electoral map, experts say, were the state’s voters. The intent of the citizens’ commission was to directly link a lawmaker’s political fate to the will of his or her constituents. But as ProPublica’s review makes clear, Democratic incumbents are once again insulated from the will of the electorate.

What goes up, must come down. This time tragically. A girl shot in the head when a gun that was being cleaned 1.5 miles away fired accidentally.

SOPA and the oblivious

It’s bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday were all about allegedly benign and intelligent government interventions suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious legislation that has been captured by a venal and evil interest group.

The bill allows the government to censor the internet.

Christopher Hitchens has died. Very sad.

Independent bookstores vs. Amazon: Buying books online is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you. - Slate Magazine

I'd have to agree. I don't see much point in local bookstores...even B&I doesn't get a visit very often anymore. It's just much easier to say "let's see if it's on the Kindle" and start reading it 30 seconds later, than it is to get in the car and go to the B&I at the mall.

We have Amazon Prime as well, which is a great thing. We do all of our Christmas shopping from the comfort of home, then it appears at mom's house half way across the country just 2 days later. Then there are all the Amazon Prime videos, which seems superior to Netflix anyway.

Steve Says: Yes, I agree too. Going to the bookstore might be "something to do" still, i.e. something to get you out of the house. But the bookstore book selection is clearly inferior (especially for science and math), and I often find the reviews of other readers you find on line quite useful. Links to related books are useful too. You can even peek into most books online now. All in all, it's a winning combination.

What's wrong with this headline?

Manpower hiring survey is most optimistic since 2008 - JSOnline

Here's a quote from the article:

The quarterly poll of employers' expectations compiled by Manpower Inc. found "the most promising hiring outlook" since the period that immediately preceded the financial meltdown of 2008, according to the Milwaukee-based global staffing services company

Spot the problem?

It's right here in blue and red, from my latest employment graph:

Yep, 2008 is the year when employment seriously tanked.

So, pop the champagne corks, we can party like it's 2008 again!!

There were two major summits for Europe last week.

The heads of state of the European Union met last week to try to hammer out an EU and euro-saving agreement. Loaded with mountains of debt and slow growth, the community faces serious threats of a major recession or depression.

Meanwhile, far down south in Durban, South Africa these same heads of state sent bureaucrats down to a climate summit, where they agreed to hamstring their economies and take on more debt, and thus hasten the coming major recession or depression.

Who's to blame for this mess?

Britain and the US and the whole g*& d*&^ Anglo world, of course!!!

Kirsten Powers: Only Question Is If Gingrich Implodes Before Or After Getting GOP Nomination | Mediaite

Yep, that's about it.

So, is today's unemployment report good news or bad news? The answer is neither of the above; it is actually irrelevant. The reason for this are two words: "Seasonally adjusted". The numbers that come out this month and next, the numbers that the media will all jump upon, will get revised next month and again the month after. Historically, November and December have large, very large downward revisions.

(Keep in mind that the Household survey, which is what they use to calculate the unemployment rate does not get revised. So the 8.6% number is already final.)

Last year, the initial job numbers were downgraded by 483,000 jobs by the time they were finalized. The 2009 numbers were downgraded a whopping 1,299,000 jobs. In 2008 it was revised by 412,000 downwards, and in 2007 it went down 430,000. So, the numbers that came out today will very likely be downgraded by at least 300,000, more likely by 400,000 or more. Combine the two and we are talking about the numbers between now and the end of the year probably being wrong by a combined 850,000 jobs.

The media, of course, rarely go back and correct the record. Here is a chart of monthly revisions. Novembers are unrevised, last month has had its first revision, and September's numbers are final. Here is a graph showing the size and direction of the revisions over the last few years:

So, taking into account that the numbers will likely be completely changed over the next two months, the how do the numbers look? We now have as many jobs (Household survey) in the country as we had in June, 2009...and February, 2005. In other words, there are no more jobs in the country today than there were almost 6 years ago. The Employer survey looks worse. We have the same number of jobs today as in May, 2009...and October, 2004. Celebrate!

Here's the graph showing a slow but steady increase in employment on both the Household and the Employment series:

So, we'll have the real November and December numbers solidified on the first Friday of March. Until then, take these with a big lump of pink Himalayan salt.

Instapundit...

I was just discussing this very thing with the 11-year-old today:

Almost everyone I know started with crappy jobs like hauling shingles up a ladder, but if you’re not willing to do the crap work chances are you won’t make it that far. There are lots of jobs advertised but there are lots more that aren’t.

She mentioned that she and a friend were naming jobs they wouldn't want when they get older; she mentioned working in a fast-food restaurant. I pointed out that they were actually okay jobs; that they were good for an entry level; that often if you work hard at one, you can get promoted relatively quickly; that they often have reasonably good benefits; and that people want to know you can do the awful jobs before you can get a better one.

I also pointed out that it was a good second job when you were just starting out. I told her that you often have to take a job that doesn't pay enough when you begin. It might be in your dream line of work at your dream company, but you are still getting paid bupkis. You take it, hoping that you will get promoted and move towards the job you really want. In that case, you often need to work two jobs. So, don that polyester uniform and pay the rent!

Good bye and good riddance.

Did he really think he could run for President while keeping his 13-year extra-marital affair secret? 

What an egotistical horse's ass.

What a colossal waste of everyone's time.  Not to mention those poor saps who worked on his campaign or donated money.

Again, good riddance!

Jetman's latest



Awesome!

This one's for mom

Last night at 1AM, this appeared on Watts Up With That:

The link is to a second Climategate data dump. A whole new batch of about 5,000 e-mails (with about 200,000 more behind firewall protected by an unreleased password) from climate researchers are now out in the open. Lots of good stuff about helping "the cause" is coming out already.

I love the data dump. A subtle little, unexplained link simply appears in the middle of the night and all hell breaks loose. Well done, FOIA!

As OWS tries to find what to do with itself now that Zuccotti park has been cleared out, I offer this:

Quote of the Day, by Lubos Motl:

This sequence of sentences sounds just like this: "If an elephant is a bird, then a cactus must need water at least sometimes to survive. Let's try a thought experiment. Using a cactus, we can create a baby that is a boy exactly when it is not a boy. Therefore, an elephant is a dinosaur. It follows that Obama was born in Kenya."

Who knew? Prior to WWII, the FM band was from about 41.2 to 50.4 MHz:



After the war, the FCC moved the band to the now familiar 88-108 or so. Broadcasters and the 400,000 or so people who had FM receivers at the old band were just out of luck! Wow, I would have been pretty ticked off if I had sunk money in one of those sets.

Anyway, you learn something new every day. See some really nice old radios here, where I got the pic above.

Former Eden Prairie schools chief hired part-time by private company | StarTribune.com

In other words: "This gal got a job!"

I'm still trying to get my chin off the floor after having read "To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan" in today's NYTimes

He [Obama] should enter into closed-door negotiations with Chinese leaders to write off the $1.14 trillion of American debt currently held by China in exchange for a deal to end American military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan and terminate the current United States-Taiwan defense arrangement by 2015.

I really don't have much to say... I am just shocked that anyone would suggest such a thing, especially in a national newspaper. Shouldn't our foreign policy have the tiniest bit of morality worked into it? Yeesh.

What determines which articles in the NYTimes allow comments and which don't? I would like to see the reaction of others.

Ann says:

NRO's Mark Krikorian picks up the story on the Corner.

As does Ed Morrisey at Hot Air.

In the last year or so, I must have seen and heard a couple hundred variations on this theme:

Yet Europe's problem isn't the euro. If it were, Hungary, Iceland and Latvia—none of which use the euro—would have been spared their painful days of reckoning. The same applies for Britain. Europe is in a debt spiral brought about by spendthrift, overweening and inefficient governments.

Bull!

The problem is not the various governments of the euro-zone, the US, Ohio, California, Detroit, or pretty much every other place on the map, because whenever they are talking about this fundamental problem of debt control, they are talking about democracies. The problem is not the governments that people elect, the problem is with the people who believe lunch should always be free.

When the people's representatives dole out favors, tax breaks, subsidies, social welfare programs, etc. they buy votes. But is it the fault of the politicians who throw around tax money like beads during Mardi Gras, or is it the fault of the electorate that greedily feast on the dole and happily reelect the people who give them free stuff!

Democracies get the governments they deserve. Stop blaming the elected politicians for accurately reflecting the desires of the people they represent.

How bad is the problem? Surveys of Tea Partiers--that part of the electorate most vocal about deficit control--show that even they don't actually want to make the kind of cuts that are increasingly necessary. If even the Tea Party is deluded about our financial condition, and if even they always want it to be Fat Tuesday and never Ash Wednesday, what hope do we have? Do you really expect politicians to make serious cuts when there is almost no segment of the population that will support them?

So, hold on to your hats and invest in gold. Europe's fall is inevitable...and so is ours.

I don't know what to make of the sexual harassment charges against Cain. But some of these allegations are pretty lame. That's putting it mildly.

A former employee of the United States Agency for International Development says Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain asked her to help arrange a dinner date for him with a female audience member following a speech he delivered nine years ago.

Is this a joke? Asking someone to help set you up with a date is now suspicious behavior? Isn't this among the most common ways to get together with someone? Friend of a friend? Someone who knows someone?

Or this one:

“Cain said, ‘Darling, do you mind doctoring my tea for me?’” Deace said.

Right, because asking someone to put lemon and sugar in your tea is really some sexual innuendo... or something. Or is it the word "darling" that's offensive? Or the word "doctor"? Wow, that's some serious stuff.

There may be more out there, but these examples are not even news-worthy.

On an interesting cultural note, I've noticed that ladies in the South, especially if they are older than I am, and especially if they are black, will refer to me as "hon'" or "sug'." I am yet to be offended.

Lovely.

China Threatens Massive Venting of Super Greenhouse Gases in Attempt to Extort Billions as UNFCCC Meeting Approaches - MarketWatch

In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom.

Keep in mind that the money they are extorting would come from their pocket, since we are deficit spending on their dime. They would certainly gain on the interest payments, though.

In the interest of fairness... this cutie pie:

From Instapundit:

UPDATE: From the comments: “I think there is a legal Laffer curve, and we are choking on so much law we are now past the inflection point.” Thanks to reader Fred Siesel for pointing this one out.

When did use of the term "inflection point" come into vogue? I am seeing it more and more. Perhaps people think that "inflection point" sounds more learned than "maximum" or "minimum." It may sound cooler, but it doesn't mean the same thing.



An inflection point of a graph is a point where the convexity changes, like this:



With respect to an observer at the bottom of the graph, the curve is concave to the left of x=0, and convex to the right. This makes the point (0,0) an inflection point.

In the comment about the Laffer curve above, it is clear that the author doesn't mean this sort of thing. He simply means maximum point.

The more fancy the term, the more sure you should be about its use.

What's with the Republican love of the "Flat Tax" ?

Perry Proposes 20 Percent Flat Tax. Perry would keep popular deductions for mortgage interest and charitable gifts.

Other Republicans/Conservatives have embraced the Flat Tax as well. Why? I think Perry's plan is dunderheaded. Keeping those deductions and making the tax flat is just the opposite of what I would like to see. It makes much more sense to me to eliminate as many deductions and loopholes as possible, thus simplifying our tax system, and reducing economic distortions.

I really don't have much problem with a progressive tax rate structure, and it seems a majority of "rich" people don't either. Should I pay a higher rate than someone who makes half what I do? Yes.

Is it so difficult to look up your total tax in a table? Is it that really complicated? More complicated than multiplying by 20%? No.

As I said, I don't get it.

Happy Diwali everyone!



Shivani and Anjali. Click to zoom.

Surf's up at Atwater Beach! I admire their tenacity.

From the front of JSOnline.com

The Reference Frame, a Czech view of anthropogenic global warming

[T]he percentage of the Czechs who believe that there's a climate problem is about 1/2 of the percentage in the U.S.

There's pretty much a consensus across the political spectrum – and especially in the public – that global warming alarmism is a fashionable disease that plagues the brains of pampered and brainwashed people in the West who are either champions of a statist political ideology or their own profits, or those who want to be "hip", who are naive and detached from reality, and who don't understand how it easy it is to hijack a part of the scientific institutions and turn them into tools of shameless and cynical political propaganda.

Protein Wisdom writes:

To be clear: these “grievances” on parade are not the point of the protests, at least, not to those who are orchestrating all this. Instead, the point of the protests is to con weak-willed pragmatic panders like Romney, or weak-willed and frightened “leaders” like Eric Cantor and John Boehner, to allow for the grievances, to sympathize with them, to begin speaking in the language of the left’s carefully crafted narrative, and to make concessions while remaining constantly on the defensive.

I disagree. I think the point of the protests, and the Democrats' support of them boils down to this:

More importantly, the poll shows that the enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters continues to expand. Almost two thirds of Republicans describe themselves as either extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in 2012 (38% and 26%, respectively), a slight increase from June’s results (38% and 23%). [...]

Democratic enthusiasm has moved in the opposite direction. The new poll shows 21% and 22% extremely or very enthusiastic about voting, respectively, which puts the combination below a majority for the first time since the midterms. [source: Hot Air]

There is undoubtedly energy and vigor in the protests, and the Dems know that is exactly their weakness at the moment. They are willing to sign on to these protestors because 1) they whole-heartedly agree with their hatred of capitalism and the disgust of actually having to repay student loans, and 2) they are desperate for some enthusiasm going into 2012.

Messmer/Shorewood's playoff fate up to a judge - JSOnline

Our alma mater is suing the Wisconsin school sports association (WIAA) because Shorewood (or rather, Messmer/Shorewood) believes it has made the playoffs for the first time since I was in 8th grade, and the WIAA wants to leave them out:

The Milwaukee Messmer/Shorewood football team defeated Wayland Academy on Friday night to clinch what it believes is its first playoff berth since 1981.

The question, however, is if a judge will agree.

The controversy centers over a provision in the WIAA bylaws which says that if a school leaves their conference without WIAA approval, then they are ineligible for the playoffs for 4 years.

Shorewood argues that the bylaw is meant for schools who continue to go it alone outside of any conference and Mess/Shore are now in a conference and thus are again eligible. Courts, not just for basketball anymore!

Update (10/19/2012): Messmer/Shorewood won and are playoff bound for the first time since 1981.

I'm tired of a number of movie genres.

Superhero movies. Good lord. Batman came out 25 years ago, and since then we have been getting more and more and more superhero movies. I swear they have done every major and semi-major hero now. There is still an occasional good one (Iron Man), but really nearly all of them are stale these days.

Gangster movies. Enough already. I am completely uninterested in the lives of the mafia and other gangsters. Even Martin Scorcese can't breath life into this genre.

Jane Austen movies. When did "Jane Austen" become a genre? How many remakes of these novels do we need?

Ivory-Merchant films. Only clones of these are being made now, it seems (are those two still alive?). There was a time 15 years ago or so when they were all the rage. I am still sick of them.

Holocaust movies. Yes, this is a genre. Every year we seem to get two or three major holocaust and holocaust-related films. These films can still have great emotional impact, due to the topic. I am no longer interested though, as I don't see anything new being done here.

Idiotman movies. These are movies with comedic male stars whose characters are idiots. You know the ones.

I think the underlying theme here is safety for producers. Movies are so expensive to make now that nobody wants to risk putting out something fresh. It's a common explanation, and mine is a common complaint.



Ann says: You forgot movies made from old TV shows, eg: "Dukes of Hazzard", "A-Team", "Miami Vice." Is there a single good movie based on a TV show?

Steve says: You are surely right. That group contains what many believe to be one of the worst movies ever made:



A shame, since the original show was pretty good. Remember when we drove to Chicago to see the original Car 54, i.e. the squad car used in the show?

Remember this?

I just saw a commercial for a new version:

What goes around, comes around.

Is it just me, or does it seem dumbed down? Fewer buttons, certainly and the example on the picture is much more pre-school than K+.

Racist Republicans Flocking to Cain

I love this line:

Either a lot of Democrats have been slandering millions of American voters as racist, or the Tea Party hasn’t gotten the word that Herman Cain is African American.

Steve Hayward writes about the Democrats' and progressives' problems with democracy. He doesn't get around to the fundamental problem the left has:

They pose themselves as being champions of the people, but the people are inherently conservative.

That's the source of the disconnect and the discontent with democracy. If the people could vote for politicians who actually represented their views (as opposed to different members of Codevilla's "ruling class,") the country would move further to the right, not left.

Since, in the eyes of liberals, the people are so foolish ("what's the matter with Kansas?"), it would be better to suspend democracy for a while to allow time for the left to bring in their utopia.

Giant kraken lair discovered

The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc "pavement" seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.

Long ago a Greek got into his bath, and noticed that the water level rose as his body entered the water. Thus the simple physics of displacement was discovered. The great Archimedes is said to have uttered the phrase: "Eureka!" (which should be pronounced something like: heh'-ur-eeka.)

Today, with less fanfare and with less import, the National Science Foundation rediscovers that piece of basic science:

From Watts Up With That:

Just like Archimedes discovered millennia ago, it is well known today that the Arctic ice cap displaces it’s own weight in the water so that when it melts it will not cause a rise in global sea level.

Not well known at the National Science Foundation, apparently. They formerly wrote:

In addition to altering salinity, melting sea ice also raises worldwide sea levels, with potentially significant effects for coastal cities and towns

This has now been corrected to:

[Editor's note: An inaccurate statement about sea ice and rising seal levels has been deleted. We regret the error.]

I'd just like to point out that this is grade-school level science.

I laughed aloud at this paragraph:

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis.

Sure, who needs the Constitution, federal laws, international laws, and executive orders... we've got a Secret Memo here! Nicely written, NYTimes. People often bring up the "if Bush did this..." argument. I think it would apply here better than any other place I've seen.

Embedded from Google Shared Spaces. Wonder if this works.

This might be a good time to review one of my all-time favorite South Park episodes:

Die Hippie! Die!!

"If you see one hippie, there're probably a whole lot more you're not seeing."

Gone in 60 nanoseconds - The Washington Post

Charles Krauthammer (yes, that Charles Krauthammer--he is an MD after all) writes of the neutrino experiment that might shake the world. In short, a group of serious and experienced physicists have recorded neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light--which according to all our modern physics should be impossible.

Steve Says: Some skeptical analysis here. I have very little understanding of what they are saying, but the general buzz about this seems to be pretty negative. Fun to follow though.

Via Instapundit, this from Megan McArdle:

“I recently discovered HGTV, a channel I watched devotedly for about three weeks before all the renovations began to look the same to me. Every young couple looking for a house wants stainless steel and granite countertops, and wants them RIGHT NOW."

Boy howdy! Watching House Hunters, I get the same impression. People today "couldn't possibly" live in a house with white appliances, or a master bedroom without a walk-in and and a master bathroom with two sinks.

Megan's point is that she thinks stainless appliances and granite counters are going to be out of fashion soon. Indeed, I am a little tired of the look too. It was new 20 years ago. I often wonder if buyers look for these items because they know little about what to look for in a house, and it is easy to evaluate a home based on these conspicuous items. It's like when people watch gymnastics. The vast majority of people have no idea how to evaluate a gymnastics performance. They only know how to look for a solid landing. So to them the landing becomes the single measure.

I would fall out of my chair if some time on House Hunters somebody asked about the school system for the district containing the house. Or about the condition of the roof, or heating system, or windows. Is there moisture in the basement? Is the foundation solid? What are the property taxes like? These are important questions, yet on House Hunters you are far more likely to hear someone ask about a jetted tub.

Ann says: Then there are the "water features" that they insist on putting in just about every yard. Bleah! I always figure that it is due to the show's and the channel's sponsorship by fountain makers. Certainly the appliance companies are providing some of the funding, too.

Update from Steve: I caught some flak from mom regarding the stainless and granite look. Her beautiful kitchen is one of those. My point is not that this is a bad look, or even that it is dated. The point is that it is the only look that seems to be acceptable these days.

Anwar al-Awlaki has been taken out in Yemen. I'm not crying about it, that's for sure, but most of his "terror ties" seem pretty lame. The NYTimes lays them out:

1. Mr. Awlaki is suspected of helping plan the plot...
2. ...she stabbed a member of Parliament after listening to more than 100 hours of Mr. Awlaki's speeches...
3. ...told investigators that he was inspired by Mr. Awlaki...
4. Mr. Awlaki said that he taught and corresponded with Umar Farouk Abdul mutallab,...
5. ...Fort Hood in Texas, had been investigated by the F.B.I. before the attack in connection with e-mails he exchanged with Mr. Awlaki...
6. ... said they were inspired by Mr. Awlaki's lectures...

I can't be alone in thinking this is pretty weak stuff. Is this really enough justification for the President to order an assassination of a US citizen? I don't think listening to his recordings on the net or reading his writings on the net is much of a terror connection. The correspondence with the Fort Hood shooter must not have been incriminating, or more action would have been taken with regard to Maj Hasan. What does "taught and corresponded" mean? Taught what? Corresponded about what?

The claim that he helped plan a bomb plot is more serious. I would like to see more information about this. For the first time I know of, I think that Glenn Greenwald has a point, writing more than a year ago.

Note also Gary Johnson's position. I wish Mr Johnson were getting more traction.

I wrote

"If shower gel worked well, I might switch. But where is the lather? How can you take a shower without lather? Smear some goo on yourself and rinse it off? It's hard even to tell what's been goo-ed and what hasn't."

Has the world gone mad? Am I the only one who sees just how lousy shower gel performs? It's also expensive.

No thanks.

Michelle Obama is shopping at Target.



Not quite as funny as John Kerry's famous "can I get me a hunting license here?" man-of-the-people episode, but still pretty good.

When the Best is Mediocre - Education Next

American education has problems, almost everyone is willing to concede, but many think those problems are mostly concentrated in our large urban school districts. In the elite suburbs, where wealthy and politically influential people tend to live, the schools are assumed to be world-class.

Unfortunately, what everyone knows is wrong. Even the most elite suburban school districts often produce results that are mediocre when compared with those of our international peers. Our best school districts may look excellent alongside large urban districts, the comparison state accountability systems encourage, but that measure provides false comfort.

My childhood district, which is considered to be a good one, with a high percentage of college-goers, came in at: 61st percentile in math and 74th in reading when compared to students in other developed countries. Los Angeles Unified comes off badly with: 20 & 25. Milwaukee comes off even worse: 16 & 26.

But the point of the article is to look at those nice suburban districts that so many people rely on. It points out that they aren't keeping pace with the educational attainment of students in comparable countries. In other words, the districts that we think are good, aren't.

(cross posted on Square Dots)

I really don't understand the concept of "Teaching to the Test (TTTT)." I often hear the term used in reference to No Child Left Behind. The claim is that No Child Left Behind has increased TTTT, and this is very very bad. Surely it doesn't mean teaching the material that is going to be on the test... that seems to me to be the whole point of curricula and testing. As far as I can tell, TTTT means teaching people how to answer questions on a test without really understanding the material being tested.

For a hilariously biased overview, check out the Wikipedia article on topic. Articles like this give Wikipedia a bad name, but they do provide a good laugh now and then.

It seems to me TTTT is mostly a straw man. Tests today, especially standardized tests used in public schools, are designed to test understanding. To what sort of questions could TTTT possibly apply? I can think of a few. For example, if you know how to add and multiply single-digit numbers together, then you could possibly learn and use the method for multiplying larger numbers together without really understanding what is going on. For math beyond these simple algorithms though, it gets harder for me to think of TTTT-approachable problems. Here is a practice math test put out by the Tennessee government. I don't see much TTTT-approachable material in there.

I can't think of any TTTT-approachable reading exam questions. You read a paragraph and answer questions about what you have read. How can you approach that other than by learning to read?

I have, a few times recently, visited a public library in one of the wealthier parts of town. I was surprised to see that the place was packed! One of these times was in the middle of the week.

I had thought that the rise of the internet would kill a lot of library business. It seems that is not so.

Grass doesn't look greener with L.A. stadium plans - JSOnline

Meanwhile, because of a 1996 deal to erect Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Bengals, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ohio's Hamilton County - where one in seven people lives below the poverty line - has cut funding for social programs, partly due to huge debt payments on the new building.

Nice to know everyone has their priorities straight.

In the tiny suburb I grew up in, at least when they went on a building binge it was for a library. But the massive boondoggle is now massively driving up property taxes and driving down home values--the real estate market is at a standstill, because nobody wants a property tax bill bigger than their mortgage.

Do politicians care? Apparently not. They seem to believe there is always enough money around to take more, and that taking more will bear no consequences.

"I've forgotten more about this than you know about this!"

Or something like that. What a bizarre expression. Suppose what we know can be measured on a linear scale, with zero being "knowing nothing" and 10 being "knowing everything." Suppose what you know is an 8 on the scale. The guy who has forgotten more than that has forgotten 9 or 10 points worth, and so his knowledge is now rated at zero or one on the scale. So essentially, in this case, the other guy is calling himself ignorant.

Now if your knowledge is a 2, and his knowledge used to be 10 and he has forgotten 3, then yes he is still a 7 and knows more than you do. Note however that the expression is that he has forgotten more than you know. Surely it is better for him to have forgotten less than you know than to have forgotten more than you know! If more, it is possible that he has forgotten 9, in which case he is now a 1 and knows less than you do.

Perhaps this expression was once used humorously, but I don't think it is used that way most often any more. I think it is intended to be clever, but it just leaves me scratching my head.

Yes, I have thought about this too much now...

Update... I've thought even more while waiting for my family to wake up...

Let's say your knowledge is Y, and his used to be H but he has forgotten F, with F positive. What we want is

Y < H - F

so that what he knows now (H-F) is greater than what you know. An even stronger statement would be

Y < H - F - F

Putting one of those F's on the other side gives

Y + F < H - F

and this gives us a more reasonable witticism

"If you knew what I've forgotten, I'd still know more than you"

which might be used when one is accused of having forgotten a lot about some topic.

Geekiest post of the year!

BBC News - Harewood Junior School bans leather footballs from playground

Kids want to play with a soccer ball? Don't they know how dangerous they are? Are they crazy!! Ban the blasted balls before some death-defying kid gets hurt!

It used to be that the UK would laugh at the US's stupid rules and regulations and our litigious society. Now who's laughing?

The Shame of College Sports - Magazine - The Atlantic

It's time to call them professionals, with a guarantee of 6 years free tuition, room, and board should they ever want to go back to college.

I have two new posts on Square Dots.

Premier Preschool Produced Functionally Illiterate Adults

and

Spending time with Aleks

WEAC has its own union troubles - JSOnline

Delicious irony:

This week, National Support Organization, which bills itself as the world's largest union of union staffers, posted an online notice discouraging its members from seeking work with the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

"Don't apply for WEAC vacancies!" screams the headline.

The reason for the boycott?

Chuck Agerstrand, president of the National Support Organization, is accusing WEAC officials of "breaching staff contracts and destroying any working relationship with its employees."

The Left's argument, in a nutshell:

"Ponzi schemes bad. Social Security good. Therefore, Social Security is
not a Ponzi scheme."

Flawless logic, given the premise.

I also often read about how Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme because it is currently solvent. Bernie Madoff's scheme was solvent too... until it wasn't.

Ann says: I'd love to see the feds move towards the same type of accounting practices as businesses are required by federal law to use. In that case, the massive unfunded liabilities would scream off the ledger books, and it would make it hard to deny the massive crater we're in.

Who said this:

To the Members of the [...] State Senate:

I am returning Senate Bill 105 without my signature.

This measure would impose criminal penalites on a child under the age of 18 and his or her parents if the child skis or snowboards without a helmet.

While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet, I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state. Not every human problem deserves a law.

I believe parents have the ability and the responsibility to make good choices for their children.

Sincerely,

Answer at the link.

Is Barack Obama Dumb?

A mere four months ago, most readers looking at the above headline would undoubtedly shake their heads and think the author was a gun-for-hire Tea Party provocateur and quickly click away from the page. But the political climate has changed dramatically this summer, and even hard-core liberals are wondering about the smarts of President Obama as they consider the perceived nightmare of President Rick Perry (who was victim of the same headline last week on Politico). [...]

There are usual caveats: Of course Obama isn’t illiterate or Bush-dumb because as Jesse Louis Jackson once said, “God doesn’t make junk,” and the intelligence-challenged just aren’t allowed near Harvard, much less become editor of that university’s Law Review.

Yeah, they wouldn't let a dolt like 43 anywhere near Harvard!

Ahem...

George W. Bush: Yale undergrad, class of 1968, A.B.
George W. Bush: Harvard Business School, class of 1975, M.B.A.

Whoops! ObamaCare Backers in Wisconsin Produce Report Showing That the Health Care Overhaul Will Make Health Insurance More Expensive

Included in the price increase are people who will be getting subsidies. That is to say, if the law had never been passed, this segment would pay less that they will under ObamaCare.

This is due to the minimum coverage requirements and the fact that you can't buy real insurance anymore.

Insurance is risk sharing. In true health insurance, everyone would pay out of pocket for the year-to-year health maintenance and minor bumps and scrapes. Insurance only kicks in for the bigger things, the things only some people will get. Not everyone will get diabetes, cancer, or heart disease; everyone gets check-ups, flu shots, the occasional stitches, etc. The former gets covered in a true insurance scheme. If everything gets covered, it's not insurance anymore, but health care financing.

Before the law, you could buy a minimal policy that just covered major medical problems, and left you to pay out of pocket for the rest. That is no longer permitted by the government.

This study shows that there are few, if any, winners from Obamacare.

Young evangelical adults stand apart from elders on same-sex marriage

The poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 44 percent – nearly half – of young evangelicals between the ages of 18 to 29 favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry.

And heads explode all throughout the left.

The Climate Scam Marches On | Power Line

Yep.

Proms: Palestinian protest at Royal Albert Hall forces BBC to abandon live broadcast

Disgusting.