A Hands-On President–On Your Wallet, That Is | Power Line: "One would think that by now, even the stupid know better–after all, where was all that money supposed to come from? Michael Ramirez explains:"
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Attention, Protestors: You're Probably Part of the 1% - Yahoo! News: "In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?Doofusses. Ingrateful, innumerate doofusses. Read More......
$34,000.
That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 book The Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it's $5,000 per year. Enter the top 10% with $12,000 a year. To be included in the top 0.1% requires an annual income of $70,000."
Libya Finds "Nuclear Materials" - Ricochet.com: "An update clarifies that they were "nuclear materials," not nuclear weapons. It's hard to say what they found from this, but this could challenge a few conventional ideas--among them that Qaddafi had abandoned his nuclear program in response to seeing what happened to Saddam, that he posed no strategic threat to his neighbors, and that the IAEA can find its rear end with two hands and then distinguish it from a hole in the ground."Not. Read More......
Government inflated the college loan bubble -- but Obama isn’t fixing it - NYPOST.com: "At best, it’s a band-aid solution. The real problem is that we’ve been running a higher education bubble, one that -- like the real-estate bubble -- has been pumped up by cheap government money. Since 1999, student loan debt has increased by 511%, while disposable income has increased by only 73%.Dear OWS doofuses: O Duce isn't here to help you. He's laughing up his sleeve at your useful idiocy.
That’s because when the government subsidizes something, producers respond by raising prices to soak up as much of the subsidy as they can. College is no exception. Tuition has been increasing much faster than disposable income, and families -- believing that a college education is a can’t-lose investment, much as they used to think houses were -- have been making up the difference with debt. After all, we’re told, student loan debt is “good debt,” because a college degree guarantees more earnings.
Tell it to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, many of whom note that they’re deep in debt for fancy degrees that didn’t get them jobs."
Articles: Self-Reliance for Dunces: "I think it's a good day when anyone learns something about human nature -- no matter how late in the game.What a riot! H/T Glenn. Read More......
(1) Hand out free stuff and ever increasing number of moochers will come.
(2) There are "professional homeless people."
(3) Those sanctimoniously protesting the greed of others fight as hard as anyone to keep their own special privileges even if those are just organic beet salad with goat cheese.
Three more good tips to put in your growing How to Be Self Reliant folder."
Revolutions: Because it's Friday: Anti-Gravity Slinky: "Here's an interesting quirk of Physics: if you hold a Slinky spring-toy in mid-air and then drop it, the base of the Slinky becomes momentarily suspended in mid-air, apparently defying gravity:"Well, OK ... not quite. But it's fun anyway... But you have to click through to see it.
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Belmont Club » The Tiffin Party: "But though the names may never coincide, the concepts do. Ross Douthat of the NYT, though he never uses the ‘Tea Party’ word, clearly echoes some of their ideas in his latest opinion piece, probably because they are so obvious as to be almost self-evident.Yes. Why isn't the world beating a path to Greece's door? Except perhaps to try to get their money back... Read More......The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers. Some on the left have convinced themselves that this “success” can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival. But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door. …The similarity of the Indian response to the condition of overgrowth in bureaucracy to that of the American Tea Party calls to mind the principle that “form follows function”. Similar problems will create similar solutions."
The story of the last three decades, in other words, is not the story of a benevolent government starved of funds by selfish rich people and fanatical Republicans. It’s a story of a public sector that has consistently done less with more, and a liberalism that has often defended the interests of narrow constituencies — public-employee unions, affluent seniors, the education bureaucracy — rather than the broader middle class.
Was This News Story Scrubbed? Vote On It! | Power Line: "This, though, is the most interesting thing about the Strib article: its ending has changed. When I read it online last night, it ended with an anecdote about a metro transit bus that was blocked by the marchers. That concluding paragraph has now been deleted from the article, but its substance can be recreated with a Google search:The shock never ends... Read More......… Nicollet Mall, they blocked a northbound Metro Transit bus, but the driver was unperturbed. “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m on the clock either way.”Heh. The irony is palpable. That driver’s union leaders were participating in the demonstration that blocked his bus, but he didn’t care. No skin off his nose: he is on the clock either way! That pretty well sums up the overpaid, lethargic public sector. The reporter who wrote the story couldn’t possibly have missed the point."
Mock Turtleneck . . . Mock President - Ricochet.com: "I thought this was too funny to pass up.Read More......
And spot on.
Enjoy the weekend."
James O'Keefe Strips The New York Times Bare Naked, and It Ain't a Pretty Sight: "Rosen and Shirky also discuss how the Times helped the Occupy Wall Street movement and how the media could help defeat Perry and Bachmann, who they specifically tarred as "crazy".Go James. RTWT. Read More......
Having been stripped bare by O'Keefe, the defenders of legacy media have circled the wagons, claiming Shirky was not a consultant to the Times (Rosen is a regular contributor).
Whether Shirky is a paid consultant or not, he is clearly influential by dint of the heavy references and links to his work in the Times. According to Google's search engine, he has been referenced by the Times more than 5,300 times with a copious numbers of links to his work.
On his blog, Rosen offers a rambling set of explanations for his obvious and dishonest bias masquerading as "journalism".
And how did Rosen publicly react to this particular instance of classic investigative journalism? As you might have expected: he called O'Keefe a terrorist.
Which is about how you'd figure someone who writes for the Times to spin being caught red-handed. And I do mean red.
Whatever these pencil-necked twits are teaching, it ain't journalism."
Belmont Club » The End of the End of History: "What went wrong? One line of thinking is that the project itself created the crisis. By growing like a tumor the European superstate stifled growth. It malinvested in “social programs” which produced no return, only sullen dependencies like Greece and whole classes of people who felt entitled to guaranteed incomes in both old age and early youth. According to this analysis, the EU is dying like the dinosaurs, of gigantism. Richard Epstein of New York University does his best to convince NPR that ordinary life holds up the world in despite of the best efforts by planners to enlist its fruits in the Great Projects."
A unified theory of left-wing causes | Power Line: "Steven Den Beste comments on Steve Hayward’s population bomb post:Run, do not walk to read Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" if you haven't. If you've read it then you need to also read Black's "War Against the Weak". Read More......Isn’t it interesting that no matter what the current global crisis is, according to leftists, the solution is always the same: a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite, and mass transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations.Yeah, I think Jonah Goldberg wrote a good book with this thesis."
That’s what they want to do about global warming. It’s what they wanted to do about overpopulation. It’s what they wanted to do about endangered species.
Xtranormal Explains The European Non-Bailout Best - With A Cartoon | ZeroHedge: "While it is not the bears doing the explaining in this latest all too realistic summary of the European non-bailout, it is the next best thing."
Some amusing weekend observations from TTMYGH's Grant Williams: "The EFSF is basically an empty box filled with promises of money - many of them from the very people who are most likely to need to borrow that same money. Should they need to borrow the money, they won’t be able to make good on their promises so there will be less money for them to borrow. Now the brain trust running Europe have decided, in their collective wisdom, to apply leverage to the non-existent money in the empty box that they have yet to actually borrow, so it can backstop even more of the hundreds of billions of Euros of sovereign debt issued by countries whose finances are in such dire straits that they either require the kind of robust growth that is hardly likely to materialize any time soon or the forgiveness by the holders of that debt of a large part of it.... Of course, granting Greece the package they did this past week, the Eurocrats have rather incredibly found yet another corner into which to back themselves. You can hardly champion the ‘One Europe’ manifesto on the one hand but then, as the next country lines up at the counter, declare “No soup for you!” - but that seems to be the ‘plan’ at this stage."Read More......
And I do mean "high" at the "Occupy" "protest" in front of St. Paul's in London. What else would you possibly expect?
RTWT. Read More......Reporting From St. Paul’s | Power Line: "A key activity is sitting around smoking joints and knocking back lager. Complaints circulate about drunk people urinating on the steps of the cathedral and on each other’s tents. It becomes clear that undisciplined behaviour is affecting the camp’s image and driving some of its residents away. Among the professional protesters, those from the anarchist group Anonymous form a tight knot of tents and are distinguishable by the plastic Guy Fawkes masks they carry and sometimes wear to obscure their faces.... The reporter confirms that this is a Potemkin protest. Thermal imaging has indicated that only one-tenth of the tents that protesters have pitched are occupied overnight. The reporter says that his tent touches five others, and he has never seen anyone enter or leave three of them.
The only uniformity in the camp is that just about everyone, when not inhaling marijuana, smokes cigarettes (roll-ups, of course). The mornings are a cacophony of hacking coughs."
One consistent feature of these gatherings of leftists is squalor...
Herman Cain sounds off on race, a debate win, and the need to simplify government | Byron York | Politics | Washington Examiner: ""Here's my theory," said Cain, leaning forward in his chair. "Let's talk about the current field of Republican candidates. They can't go after Obama as hard as I can because they're not black. I think that, either subconsciously or deliberately, they are being coached to not say it a certain way, that you're going to be labeled a racist and the liberal media is going to try to bring you down, because they still want to protect their precious Obama."Yup. Read More......
Cain believes his audiences are a different story. "The voters, they hear my message first, not 'He could take it to Obama,' because they are more concerned about stopping Obama than taking it to Obama," he explained. "This is what I'm hearing and this is what I'm feeling. And the race card is going to be short-lived if Herman Cain gets the nomination."
But wouldn't liberals and Democrats still find a racially-based way to attack Cain? They certainly found a way to attack Clarence Thomas, the black, conservative Supreme Court justice.
"They're going to come after me more viciously than they would a white candidate," Cain responded. "You're right. Clarence Thomas. And so, to use Clarence Thomas as an example, I'm ready for the same high-tech lynching that he went through -- for the good of this country." Cain smiled broadly. "I'm ready for the same high-tech lynching."
Great news: Obama’s student-loan changes puts $8 in borrower pockets per month « Hot Air: "The president understands that he’s not dealing with people who took out loans for math degrees.This comment is on an analysis that Obama's hyped student loan interest reduction will save the average progressive education victim $8/month. A trip to Quiznos as another commenter put it.
myrenovations on October 27, 2011 at 10:13 AM"
1. antonNigel debating the TOTUS would be an absolute hoot!
Since we have broken the rule about electing foreigners President why don’t we take a stab at getting Nigel the job? He seems to have a mush better grasp on things that the current Resident, I would bet that he would do just fine.
October 26, 2011 - 8:27 am Link to this Comment
Instapundit » Blog Archive » EUROPE: Merkel wants ‘permanent’ supervision of Greece, warns of war. Wait, this sounds familiar s…: "EUROPE: Merkel wants ‘permanent’ supervision of Greece, warns of war. Wait, this sounds familiar somehow. . .Read More......
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:21 pm"
Inflation Concerns Go Beyond Rise in Consumer Price Index | Mercatus: "What’s troubling is that the goods in the earliest stages of production jumped the most, which might foreshadow increases in the inflation rate for the goods in the CPI down the road.Read More......
Specifically, year-to-year increases for three areas in particular might be cause for concern: Finished goods are up almost 7%, intermediate goods are up 10.5%, and crude goods are up nearly 21%.
In a paper I wrote last year entitled “Why Inflation Matters,” I noted that moderate to high inflation is one of the surest ways to cause havoc in an otherwise productive economy and to undermine most people’s standard of living, especially those in the middle and lower class and those on fixed incomes.
As such, even if high inflation is not an immediate threat, the explosion in the deficit and debt over the last few years provides a reason to remind ourselves of the problems it can cause."
Cain’s Yellow Flowers - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online: "Katrina – Thanks for the explainer on Cain’s smoking ad. Can you get me the Cliff’s Notes on this one now?"
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