But New Yorkers apparently are all alike in one way: all are too stupid to make their own economic choices

But New Yorkers apparently are all alike in one way: all are too stupid to make their own economic choices New Yorkers must be a very odd bunch indeed. Mandated higher costs of acquiring some things in Gotham – such as sugary drinks and cigarettes – will cause that city’s residents to cut back on their use of these things. That’s why the city’s government wants to ban the sales of sugary drinks in large containers and to keep cigarettes hidden from view in retail stores. But mandated higher costs of acquiring other things in Gotham – such as hired labor – will have no such effect. This assumed reality is why City Hall will force many firms operating in New York City to give their employees paid sick leave (“Deal Reached to Force Paid Sick Leave in New York City,” March 29). Most members of the City Council reject the idea that employers respond in the same way to higher costs of employing workers as consumers respond to higher costs of getting Big Gulps. But New Yorkers apparently are all alike in one way: all are too stupid to make their own economic choices. As consumers, New Yorkers are too stupid not to consume what their leaders know New Yorkers don’t want to consume. As employees, New Yorkers are too stupid to seek employment terms that their leaders know New Yorkers want to work under. And as employers, New Yorkers are too stupid to compete for workers by offering employment terms that their leaders know New Yorkers want to work under. All of which raises this question: how were New Yorkers wise enough to elect the geniuses who rule them? Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics

POST-BIRTH “ABORTIONS”– AKA INFANTICIDE

POST-BIRTH “ABORTIONS”– AKA INFANTICIDE: No matter what you think of abortion, you need to be disturbed by this video. At a recent committee hearing in the Florida legislature to consider a bill that would require health care providers to provide care to an infant that survives an abortion procedure, the spokesperson for Florida Planned Parenthood, Alisa LaPolt Snow, asserted that the decision about such lifesaving care should be left to the decision of the mother. FLORIDA OUTDOES ITSELF DURING EASTER WEEK!

Three Laws of Politics

Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics: 1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. 2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. 3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

MAYBE THIS TIME IT WILL WORK [insanity prevails]

MAYBE THIS TIME IT WILL WORK [insanity prevails] by Stephen Green The solution to a giant debt bubble is another giant debt bubble. We tried something similar back in the Great Depression, when every Smart Mind in the Country™ was utterly convinced that the cure for spreading poverty was to make everything more expensive. And again I wish I were kidding, but I’m not — that’s why FDR allowed labor unions to run wild, and why he had perfectly good food and farmland destroyed. The result: What should have been a temporary dislocation of a stock-market crash, was turned into a lost decade of bread lines, needless labor strikes, dust bowls, and general human suffering. Bernanke earned his chops as a so-called expert on the Great Depression. But here he is, repeating the nearly the very same mistakes as FDR. And those younger & poorer folks who are caught in the squeeze of high prices and unobtainable debt? Bernanke’s policies are explicitly rigged against them, because they don’t (and now probably can’t) ever own enough assets to benefit from the Fed’s long-promised wealth effects. And Obama? He already got their low-information votes — twice — so he is unmoved by seeing them immolated to the Gods of Goldman-Sachs. It makes amazing economic sense.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. Except that in this case, “Other People” means your money and mine, Daniel Greenfield writes at his Sultan Knish blog: Do you know of any company in America where for a mere few billion, you could become the CEO of a company whose shareholders would be forced to sit back and watch for four years while you run up trillion dollar deficits and parcel out billions to your friends? Without going to jail or being marched out in handcuffs. A company that will allow you to indulge yourself, travel anywhere at company expense, live the good life, and only work when you feel like it. That will legally indemnify you against all shareholder lawsuits, while allowing you to dispose not only of their investments, but of their personal property in any way you see fit. There is only one such company. It’s called the United States Government.

CRONYISM, OBAMACARE & OHIO

CRONYISM, OBAMACARE & OHIO News: Watchdog U.S. gave troubled Florida firm $129 million for new Ohio Obamacare health insurance cooperative March 5, 2013 | 5:35 pm Federal officials gave $129 million to a Florida firm with a checkered past to establish an Obamacare cooperative in Ohio, The Washington Examiner has learned. St. Petersburg-based Community Health Solutions of America was selected last October by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, to establish a statewide health cooperative for Ohio residents. It was financed as part of a $2 billion Obamacare program to establish 24 cooperatives to compete with private health insurance companies in selected states. The Ohio co-op -- called the Coordinated Health Plans of Ohio -- is new to the health insurance business. But several of its principals are already well-known in the industry, perhaps for the wrong reasons. Brett Baby, Coordinated Health Plans of Ohio's CEO, for example, previously started an Ohio health insurance company that lasted only a year before state regulators shut it down in 2009. JUST GOOGLE: Ohio's insurance superintendent and “Baby's Physicians Assurance co-op” run by Brett Baby & the sponsor of Community Health Solutions' CEO is Dale F. Schmidt, who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006 for four companies he owned -

OBAMA’S LIGHT FAILING TO BLIND EUROPEANS ANYMORE

OBAMA’S LIGHT FAILING TO BLIND EUROPEANS ANYMORE Cyprus caught in proxy war between old enemies. “...a geopolitical illiterate in the Oval Office who makes Jimmy Carter resemble Bismarck. We should not be surprised if, by the time the EU collapses, the Mediterranean has become a Russian lake.” From SCOTLAND on SUNDAY March 24 Gerald Warner

AFFORDABLECARE ACT & LAYOFFS

AFFORDABLECARE ACT & LAYOFFS Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, writes in an op-ed piece for Forbes magazine. “The Fed’s so-called “beige book” noted that employers across the country have “cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff,” Pipes says, adding that as more businesses learn about Obamacare, “the more they’re coming to realize that affordable care” is the last thing it will provide. Latest: Should ObamaCare Be Repealed? Vote in Urgent National Poll Pipes points out that next year when Obamacare goes into full effect, insurance companies will have to pay $8 billion in so-called premium taxes to the federal treasury, a figure that rises to $11.3 billion in 2015 and 2016, then $13.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion after that. The cost, she writes, will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. Pipes cites an estimate by former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin that the premium tax will add 3 percent to the cost of family coverage over the next decade. She also notes a study by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman that the tax will boost premiums by as much as 3.7 percent 10 years from now. That translates into an additional $5,000 in premiums for a family and nearly $7,000 for small businesses, although those figures could be higher in states like West Virginia and Nebraska, she says. Pipes also asserts that taxes will also rise for seniors on private Medicare Advantage plans and on state governments bearing the costs of the Medicaid managed care plans.

SEIZING ASSETS OF ONE TO PROTECT ANOTHER

Blindness to logic: SEIZING ASSETS OF ONE TO PROTECT ANOTHER This is actual conversation: STATIST: This is only one of many measures. Everyone needs to make sacrifices. If you have a bank deposit, you need to pay a levy; if you have gold, you need to give some of this up. There are no easy options. This is the hard reality, and we need to face up to it. LIBERTARIAN: How about we start cutting entitlements? I say federal workers first. Those 100k plus pensions and free healthcare is a good start. You are on board right? STATIST: Firstly, those pensions are written into legislation, so don't even think of getting your dirty hands near them. Secondly, public sector workers are some of the hardest working average Americans. CEOs get to earn millions, and yet you're saying that a fireman who risks his life for 30 years from the age of 20 can't earn a mere 100k pension?

AUSTERITY IS FOR THE ‘LITTLE PEOPLE’

AUSTERITY IS FOR THE ‘LITTLE PEOPLE’ Vice President Biden and his entourage spent a little time in London in early February during his first foreign trip of the second term of the Obama administration. A document released today revealed that the cost of lodging in London alone was close to half a million dollars. The contract was awarded on January 30, 2013 to the Hyatt Regency London for a total of $459,388.65. As it turns out, Vice President Joe Biden's London stay in February was not the most expensive part of his trip. A government document released on February 14, 2013 shows that the contract for the Hotel Intercontinental Paris Le Grand came in at $585,000.50.

Mayor Bloomberg or Pres. Obama?

Mayor Bloomberg or Pres. Obama? Joseph Epstein’s essay entitled “Intellectuals, Public and Otherwise”: “Even when they have not lent their energies to promoting schemes for human betterment that depend on the mass coercion of real human beings, the intellectuals’ overdependence on ideas, and their consequent detachment from reality, have often turned them into little demons of ignorant subtlety.”

Reality is not optional

CAFÉ HAYEK Reality is not optional: the greater the power of government to use discretion to do what is thought to be good for society, the greater the number, and the more intent, are the rent-seekers who scramble in and scheme to have government use discretion to do what in fact is harmful to society and good only for the successful rent-seekers. To disregard, or to only lightly regard, this reality when pondering or planning public policy has as much scientific merit as disregarding, or only lightly regarding, the reality of friction when building your dream perpetual-motion machine.

OBAMA’S CRONYISM

OBAMA’S CRONYISM The United States is supposed to be a land of opportunity, where everyone can pursue their dreams. Throughout our history, many have started with nothing and risen to the top. But those on top today are busy rewriting the rules to limit entry into their club.

FRUGALITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE

FRUGALITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: White House refuses to promise that Obama will cut back on ‘lavish vacations.’ “Confronted about President Obama’s $1 million golf trip, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attacked Republicans rather than promise that the president will cut back on ‘lavish vacations’ paid for by taxpayers.”

COMMON PEOPLE AND OBAMA CRONIES

COMMON PEOPLE AND OBAMA CRONIES Since last weekend, Mr and Mrs Regular Citizen have been denied the access people used to be granted to tour the White House, purportedly because of the clampdown on federal spending since the "sequester" that imposed cuts across the board. ... Meanwhile, noble Americans can buy time with the president for a suggested donation of $500,000 to his new campaign group, Organizing for Action. Yes, the announcement offering access to the president for cold, hard cash was made openly and with total transparency. But it was also made without shame.

New speak

New speak Dept. of Ag spokesperson worries about “nutrient runoff.” Judge sentences 2 juveniles for “digital penetration.” 68 teams begin the countdown in “March madness.” The RNC wants the party to “re-brand itself.” Is all lost in this brave new world of new speak? Maybe. What’s lost, of course, IS lost. A moral code underpinning our culture has been substantially lost and no leader can be heard decrying the void. Why? The media? CNN sympathizes with teen rapists ignoring the barbarity of their crime. The victim may have been a ‘tramp’ but the crime was still heinous. CNN is only the tip of the iceberg, a small representation of what we conservatives are up against in the fight for restoration of positive values. Oh well, always look on the bright side because you have everything to lose.

New speak

New speak Dept. of Ag spokesperson worries about “nutrient runoff.” Judge sentences 2 juveniles for “digital penetration.” 68 teams begin the countdown in “March madness.” The RNC wants the party to “re-brand itself.” Is all lost in this brave new world of new speak? Maybe. What’s lost, of course, IS lost. A moral code underpinning our culture has been substantially lost and no leader can be heard decrying the void. Why? The media? CNN sympathizes with teen rapists ignoring the barbarity of their crime. The victim may have been a ‘tramp’ but the crime was still heinous. CNN is only the tip of the iceberg, a small representation of what we conservatives are up against in the fight for restoration of positive values. Oh well, always look on the bright side because you have everything to lose.

New speak

New speak Dept. of Ag spokesperson worries about “nutrient runoff.” Judge sentences 2 juveniles for “digital penetration.” 68 teams begin the countdown in “March madness.” The RNC wants the party to “re-brand itself.” Is all lost in this brave new world of new speak? Maybe. What’s lost, of course, IS lost. A moral code underpinning our culture has been substantially lost and no leader can be heard decrying the void. Why? The media? CNN sympathizes with teen rapists ignoring the barbarity of their crime. The victim may have been a ‘tramp’ but the crime was still heinous. CNN is only the tip of the iceberg, a small representation of what we conservatives are up against in the fight for restoration of positive values. Oh well, always look on the bright side because you have everything to lose.

A “DEMOCRATIC” LOOKS AT “PROGRESSIVE OBAMA”

A “DEMOCRATIC” LOOKS AT “PROGRESSIVE OBAMA” TED VAN DYK: My Unrecognizable Democratic Party. “As a lifelong Democrat, I have a mental picture these days of my president, smiling broadly, at the wheel of a speeding convertible. His passengers are Democratic elected officials and candidates. Ahead of them, concealed by a bend in the road, is a concrete barrier. They didn’t have to take that route. Other Democratic presidents have won bipartisan support for proposals as liberal in their time as some of Mr. Obama’s are now. Why does this administration seem so determined to head toward a potential crash and burn? . . . Mr. Obama was elected in 2008 on the basis of his persona and his pledge to end political and ideological polarization. His apparent everyone-in-it-together idealism was exactly what the country wanted and needed. On taking office, however, the president adopted a my-way-or-the-highway style of governance.”

FROM TRUTH TO NONSENSE IN 100 YEARS

FROM TRUTH TO NONSENSE IN 100 YEARS “Unique stability levy,” “mutually inspired,” “diverse seasonality,” “marriage equality,” and “As well as it should” - these gems of phrasing from supposedly educated speakers just prove that Sarah Palin is our true intellectual leader and 100 years ago every person was a tea party member because our schools were rooted in a conservative, Christian ethos, in a core curriculum of enquiry beginning with the three r’s, in a serious, disciplined atmosphere and in the belief that words matter. Lord, save us now. From Truth to Nonsense in 100 Years.

LEAVING LIBERTY?

Marty Mazorra’s excellent and concise 2013 volume, Leaving Liberty? : “When we’re talking basic economics, politicians are either profoundly ignorant, or they assume we are. Or both.

necessary or inevitable ignorance

H.B. Acton’s insightful writings, The Morals of Markets and Related Essays: Hayek holds that the fact of necessary or inevitable ignorance (he uses both adjectives) provides the chief reason for allowing the fullest possible scope to individual freedom. It is because of this ignorance that it is better to allow society to develop by spontaneous adjustment than to control it all by some central agency. Those who recognize the inevitability of ignorance will not pin their hopes on plans for society as a whole, but will want there to be scope for everyone to gain from the impersonal beneficence of transactions that are imperfectly understood.

TRUST OBAMA- BE SERIOUS MAN!

Jonah Goldberg rightly defends Sen. Rand Paul against conservatives who react with hostility to anyone who questions the presidential use of military authority (“What Rand Paul got right,” March 14). But I remain mystified that Mr. Goldberg and many other sensible conservatives nevertheless, to quote Mr. Goldberg, “agree with much of the substance of Mr. Paul’s critics.” In what universe is a human being, one called “president of the United States,” who cannot be trusted to spend other people’s money wisely – who is held to be rash and irresponsible when pushing legislation to extend health-insurance coverage – who is regarded as arrogant and ignorant for his support of greater government regulation of financial markets – who is accused of being a dangerous social engineer when he launches schemes to redistribute wealth – who is exposed as a typical, high-on-hubris, popularity-grabbing politician who never lets his incomprehension of matters soothe his itch to tax, spend, and issue diktats all in ways that conservatives correctly understand to be destructive – in what universe is such a person to be trusted and saluted as Our Protector and as a paragon of prudence whenever he turns his attention to deploying military force? Like conservatives, I look with deep suspicion upon any politician who exercises authority to spend other people’s money, to regulate wages, or to plan a ‘green’ economy. Unlike too many conservatives, however, I look with even deeper suspicion upon any politician who exercises authority to kill. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics and

$226 billion in new debt in just the 35 days since President Obama

FINANCIAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: “If you want a sense of just how massive the nation’s debt problem is, consider this: The U.S. added $226 billion in new debt in just the 35 days since President Obama missed the legal deadline to submit his budget. That’s more than the government will spend this year on education, homeland security, law enforcement, housing aid, energy and the environment, combined.”

“The Mirage of Social Justice,”

“The Mirage of Social Justice,” 1976) of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty: In a spontaneous order undeserved disappointments cannot be avoided. They are bound to cause grievances and a sense of having been treated unjustly, although nobody has acted unjustly. Those affected will usually, in perfectly good faith and as a matter of justice, put forward claims for remedial measures. But if coercion is to be restricted to the enforcement of uniform rules of just conduct, it is essential that government should not possess the power to accede to such demands. The reduction of the relative position of some about which they complain is the consequence of their having submitted to the same chances to which not only some others now owe the rise in their position, but to which they themselves owed their past position. It is only because countless others constantly submit to disappointments of their reasonable expectations that everyone has as high an income as he has; and it is therefore only fair that he accept the unfavorable turn of events when they go against him.

“public choice theory”

JOEL GEHRKE: Typically, government unions are given the exclusive right to bargain for members in a workforce. If an employee takes a job, they are forced to belong to the union or pay an “agency fee.” This gives local and state unions a lot of power. A conflict of interest would be as follows: First, government union elects politician by funding their campaign and organizing a massive get-out-the-vote drive; second, politician supports employee pay increases, generous pensions and condition of employment; third, union takes dues (read: taxpayer money) and starts the cycle all over again for selected politician. In economics, this problem is described in “public choice theory” – the idea that those receiving concentrated benefits (the union) have more of an incentive to spend time and money lobbying than those paying the diffused costs (taxpayers). Eventually, this leads to bloated government as the incentives for public-sector unions and their employees to perform well is eroded.

The Future of Freedom

From Fareed Zakaria’s useful 2003 book, The Future of Freedom: Nothing has shaped the modern world more powerfully than capitalism, destroying as it has millennia-old patterns of economic, social, and political life. Over the centuries it has destroyed feudalism and monarchism with their emphasis on bloodlines and birth. It has created an independent class of businesspeople who owe little to the state and who are now the dominant force in every advanced society in the world. It has made made change and dynamism – rather than order and tradition – the governing philosophy of the modern age. Capitalism created a new world, utterly different from the one that had existed for millennia.

PRESIDENT PUNCTUAL

PRESIDENT PUNCTUAL: Obama budget delayed until April. They should pass a bill suspending presidential golf until the budget is submitted.

PART-TIME JOBS NOW STANDARD UNDER OBAMACARE

PART-TIME JOBS NOW STANDARD UNDER OBAMACARE ALREADY HAPPENING IN FAYETTE COUNTY Posted at 9:00 am by Glenn Reynolds UNEMPLOYMENT “TUMBLES” TO 7.7%. Happy days are here again! UPDATE: In February Multiple Jobholders Rose By A Record, As Full-Timers Dropped, Part-Timers Increased. “One wonders: how many actual people got new jobs, as opposed to how many qualified single individuals ended up getting more than one job in February in order to boost that much needed weekly income to sustainable levels.” I suspect this is a side-effect of ObamaCare. Get your hours cut below 30 by employer A, go look for a second job (also under 30) from employer B so you can pay your bills. Two employers happy not to pay benefits, Obama Administration happy at “new jobs created.” Win-win!

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS TWEET OF THE DAY: Perplexing that Rand Paul has to go through this to ask a Nobel Peace Prize winner whether or not he agrees with killing U.S. citizens. The best part was when Rand Paul sought unanimous consent for a sense of the Senate resolution that the President shouldn’t kill American citizens in America — and Democrats, led by Dick Durbin, objected. ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: Three Takeaways From Rand Paul’s Filibuster. Here’s one: “The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn’t a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion – why won’t the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? – transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.”

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS TWEET OF THE DAY: Perplexing that Rand Paul has to go through this to ask a Nobel Peace Prize winner whether or not he agrees with killing U.S. citizens. The best part was when Rand Paul sought unanimous consent for a sense of the Senate resolution that the President shouldn’t kill American citizens in America — and Democrats, led by Dick Durbin, objected. ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: Three Takeaways From Rand Paul’s Filibuster. Here’s one: “The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn’t a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion – why won’t the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? – transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.”

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER SOME COMMENTS TWEET OF THE DAY: Perplexing that Rand Paul has to go through this to ask a Nobel Peace Prize winner whether or not he agrees with killing U.S. citizens. The best part was when Rand Paul sought unanimous consent for a sense of the Senate resolution that the President shouldn’t kill American citizens in America — and Democrats, led by Dick Durbin, objected. ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: Three Takeaways From Rand Paul’s Filibuster. Here’s one: “The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn’t a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion – why won’t the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? – transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.”

NO GOLD DURING SEQUESTER - I LIKE THAT!

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas has offered an amendment to the House's continuing resolution. It reads: None of the funds made available by a division of this Act may be used to transport the President to or from a golf course until public tours of the White House resume.

GOVERNMENT LOGIC

GOVERNMENT LOGIC From Thomas Sowell’s recent column, “Budget Politics“: “Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency’s budget were cut, what would it do? The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.” UPDATE: Tours of the White House will be scaled back because of budget cuts. Seriously, what earthly reason is there for taking the political class seriously? That these people would ‘cut’ first in ways that lengthen queues at airports and that make the public believe that Uncle Sam is so short of cash that he can no longer afford to hire staffers to conduct tours of the White House speaks volumes about politicians’ integrity and motivation.

AND WE LET THESE PEOPLE LEGISLATE AND TEACH SCHOOL!

AND WE LET THESE PEOPLE LEGISLATE AND TEACH SCHOOL! Minnesota H.F. No. 826, which requires schools — including private schools that get any “public funds or other public resources” — to ban, among other things, “bullying” at school, defined as use of one or a series of words, images, or actions, transmitted directly or indirectly between individuals or through technology, that a reasonable person knows or should know, under the circumstances, will have the effect of interfering with the ability of an individual, including a student who observes the conduct, to participate in a safe and supportive learning environment. Examples of bullying may include, but are not limited to, conduct that: 1.places an individual in reasonable fear of harm to person or property, including through intimidation; 2.has a detrimental effect on the physical, social, or emotional health of a student; 3.interferes with a student’s educational performance or ability to participate in educational opportunities; 4.encourages the deliberate exclusion of a student from a school service, activity, or privilege; 5.creates or exacerbates a real or perceived imbalance of power between students; 6.violates the reasonable expectation of privacy of one or more individuals; or 7.relates to the actual or perceived race, ethnicity, color, creed, religion, national origin, immigration status, sex, age, marital status, familial status, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, academic status, disability, or status with regard to public assistance, age, or any additional characteristic defined in chapter 363A of a person or of a person with whom that person associates, but the conduct does not rise to the level of harassment.

dithering, controlling, risk-averse’ US president

“London Telegraph: Barack Obama a ‘dithering, controlling, risk-averse’ US president. BRITAIN NEWSPAPER HEADLINE THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, OUR PRESIDENT WOULD BE ROUNDLY MOCKED BY THE BRITS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Posted at 8:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

Pop,Pop

Pop,Pop ‘Pop,pop,pop, what is that sound I hear? A gun ? A bird, a plane, no a PopTart! Dangerous as hell, of course. An insane ( and obviously incompetent because of the lack of common sense) teacher who cannot discern the difference between one pastry and another lethal weapon, reports a child for ‘terrorist tactics’ who is then suspended and humiliated. Do not ‘bow, bow, bow’ down to liberals and the Obama agenda of political correctness in our schools. Not me, not you. Striking teachers shouting abuse, insults and threats at substitutes teachers will eventually return to classrooms and monitor students for ‘bullying’ whenever a students say ‘I don’t like your dress’. Such is the mind disassociation of the politically correct. Clearly the striking teachers are bullies blackmailing students, parents and taxpayers with union ‘terrorist tactics.’ Do not ‘bow down’ to progressive, greedy, hypocritical Democrats.

BARACK WILSON & WOODROW OBAMA

BARACK WILSON & WOODROW OBAMA H.L. Mencken’s review of William Bayard Hale’s book about Woodrow Wilson: SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO SEE BARACK & WOODROW AS ALTER EGOS What intrigued such gentlemen [the press corps] in the compositions of Dr. Wilson was the plain fact that he was their superior in their own special field – that he accomplished with a great deal more skill than they did themselves the great task of reducing all the difficulties of the hour to a few sonorous and unintelligible phrases, often with theological overtones – that he knew better than they did how to arrest and enchant the boobery with words that were simply words, and nothing else. The vulgar like and respect that sort of balderdash. A discourse packed with valid ideas, accurately expressed, is quite incomprehensible to them. What they want is the sough of vague and comforting words – words cast into phrases made familiar to them by the whooping of their customary political and ecclesiastical rabble-rousers, and by the highfalutin style of the newspapers that they read. Woodrow knew how to conjure up such words. He knew how to make them glow, and weep. He wasted no time upon the heads of his dupes, but aimed directly at their ears, diaphragms and hearts. But reading his speeches in cold blood offers a curious experience. It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicality. Hale produces sentence after sentence that has no apparent meaning at all – stuff quite as bad as the worst bosh of the Hon. Gamaliel Harding. When Wilson got upon his legs in those days he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and delusions that belong to a frenzied pedagogue. From pages 120-121 of the 1987 edition of the 1968 collection H.L. Mencken’s Smart Set Criticism (William H. Nolte, ed.); specifically, it’s from Mencken’s brilliant 1921 essay “The Style of Woodrow” (available on-line here),

Ungovernable Ethno-religious Entities

Ungovernable Ethno-religious Entities After the Cold War ended, approximately in 1990, journalist Robert Kaplan pointed out that future peacekeeping, no matter how moral or well-intentioned, will not work where religious and ethno-tribal concerns are generating new kinds of civil warfare for which the large nation-states remain ill-prepared. Instead of enjoying economic and social progress in this new era, many countries are degenerating into ungovernable ethno-religious entities that are as yet undefined in the world political arena. In a world in which the two Cold War superpowers no longer divide the globe into two clearly defined blocs with the Third World competing for the attention of both, Americans have learned that the notion of a peace dividend is pure folly. What has transpired is the unexpected reemergence of older and vastly more brutal kinds of racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts. Cultures, not countries, are now battling one another for control of their respective turfs. Armies no longer represent the interests of sovereign nation-states. The entire notion of nation-states is in trouble, as the former Third World cultures fight civil wars in protracted, low-intensity conflicts. Criminals, once in the back water of international relations, have surfaced with high-tech weapons and, in some cases, very sophisticated electronic intelligence and communication services. War and crime will become virtually indistinguishable in the twenty-first century. How far off is Robert Kaplan’s analysis? Consider 9/11? Terrorist attacks real and thwarted here and abroad? Thirteen unlucky ( or lucky so far) years into the 21st century?

GOVERNMENTS MAKE THE BIGGEST MISTAKES

GOVERNMENTS MAKE THE BIGGEST MISTAKES THOMAS SOWELL Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us. Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes? Even in the United States, government policies in the 1930s led to crops being plowed under, thousands of little pigs being slaughtered and buried, and milk being poured down sewers, at a time when many Americans were suffering from hunger and diseases caused by malnutrition. The Great Depression of the 1930s, in which millions of people were plunged into poverty in even the most prosperous nations, was needlessly prolonged by government policies now recognized in retrospect as foolish and irresponsible. One of the key differences between mistakes that we make in our own lives and mistakes made by governments is that bad consequences force us to correct our own mistakes. But government officials cannot admit to making a mistake without jeopardizing their whole careers. Can you imagine a President of the United States saying to the mothers of America, “I am sorry your sons were killed in a war I never should have gotten us into”?

I am not a dictator, I’m the president

“Jessica, I am not a dictator, I’m the president,” ROBERT STACY MCCAIN When Obama succeeds (and these are always political successes), his press-corps fanboys praise him as transcendent Lightworker — omniscient, super-human, his powers beyond the capacity of mere words to describe — but when Obama fails (and these are always policy failures) his media hagiographers attribute this to the infinite evil of his enemies. And on those rare occasions when Obama’s policy failures are also political failures, as with the allegedly cataclysmic “sequester” cuts that don’t really bother anyone, his journalistic idolators erupt in a fury of confusion. “And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.” “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

OHIO IS #2 ! OH,OH THAT’S NOT GOOD

OHIO IS #2 ! OH,OH THAT’S NOT GOOD Teachers outnumbered in schools by administrators, support staff in many states, study shows Each day at school, students in 21 states will see more librarians, bus drivers, coaches, cafeteria workers and office personnel than teachers, according to a new study that examined school hiring patterns over the past 20 years. The report, released Thursday by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, found that Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Maine, Indiana and a number of other states — along with the District of Columbia — employ more nonclassroom personnel than teachers, some by a wide margin. The study put Virginia at the top of the list, with 60,737 fewer teachers than central office staff and other jobs. The next closest was Ohio, with 19,040 more nonteaching jobs. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/teachers-outnumbered-schools-administrators-suppor/#.UTB0X9LyytI.twitter#ixzz2MOLK3Nfw Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/teachers-outnumbered-schools-administrators-suppor/#.UTB0X9LyytI.twitter#ixzz2MOL871wq Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Sarah Palin & Sequestor

Sarah Palin & Sequestor Palin said if Americans cannot “stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.” “If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done,” Palin wrote on Tuesday. “Put a fork in us. We’re finished.”

BUT CONGRESSMEN & OBAMA ARE EXPERTS ON EVERYTHING

BUT CONGRESSMEN & OBAMA ARE EXPERTS ON EVERYTHING so the rules of reality don’t apply to them & they can legislate anything. “Economics isn’t rocket science; it’s a lot harder. We should admit as much and when asked to measure things we cannot measure, we should admit our ignorance.”

FRACKING

FRACKING Earl Pitts - Folk Philospher Think of the earth as a giant Jelly Doughnut with unlimited jelly in the middle. Fracking is just our way of sucking the unlimited good stuff up to the surface so we can have it.