At a Disadvantage.

American teens simply can’t keep up intellectually with their counterparts in the global community.

Fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 25th among peers from 34 countries on a math test and scored in the middle in science and reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts, raising concern that the U.S. isn’t prepared to succeed in the global economy.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, which represents 34 countries, today released the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment. For the first time, the test broke out the performance of China’s Shanghai region, which topped every country in all academic categories. The U.S. government considers the test one of the most comprehensive measures of international achievement.

The results show that U.S. students must improve to compete in a global economy, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said yesterday in a telephone interview. President Barack Obama’s administration is promoting national curriculum standards and a revamping of teacher pay that stresses performance rather than credentials and seniority.

via U.S. Teens Lag as China Soars on International Test – Bloomberg.

Get that last part?

Unlike in the private sector, where employees are compensated based on how well they do their jobs and let go if they don’t produce successful results, American teachers are instead paid based on how many degrees they have and how many years they’ve survived on the job–regardless of how well they teach students or.

Thank you, teacher’s unions!

The Weight.

To paraphrase the Band’s lyrical question:

“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a . . . banana?”

Weight loss heavyweights, Weight Watchers, on Sunday unveiled a new point system that has changed the way hundreds of thousands of American dieters think about fruits and vegetables.

The new plan, company officials say, is based on scientific findings about how the body processes different foods. The biggest change: All fruits and most vegetables are point-free (or free of PointsPlus, as the new program is called). Processed foods, meanwhile, generally have higher point values, which roughly translates to: should be eaten less.

“If I lived in the Caribbean, maybe I’d be able to make goal,” said Susan J. Slotkis, 64, an interior designer at the Park Avenue South meeting on Wednesday.

I’m fascinated by this.

I mean, I get the projected behavior change that the suits are shooting for. By charging points for ‘healthy’ fruits and vegetables, you’re disincentivizing their consumption. Healthy bodies should consume healthy foods, not discard it in favor of a sugary substitute that happens to have the same amount of artificially established ‘points’.

“You could be holding an apple in one hand, which was two points, and you could be holding a 100-calorie snack pack of Oreos in the other hand, which was also two points,” David Kirchhoff, the president and chief executive of Weight Watchers International, said in a telephone interview.

Now, all of that has been upended. The new system allots points based on a complex formula that considers each item’s mix of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and fat. Making it more confusing, most people are now given more total allowed points — a kind of new math that requires recalculation of what had been ingrained.

I get it.

What I don’t get, I guess, the subtler point of just what the hell was going on in the first place that fruit and vegetables had become such nutritional outlaws. Last week an apple was bad . . . but now I can eat as many as I want? I can gorge myself on apples? I can pack apples into my pockets and sew them into the lining of my overcoat to eat at the movies because they’re suddenly worry-free? Last week an extra ounce of then added weight, but this week . . . not so much?

Alas, the devil is in the details, and the fruit liberation actually comes at the cost of an overall lower total point allowance per week.

Still.

One’s got to wonder about the role Big Fruit played in all this.

No, not really. I just wanted to say “Big Fruit” out loud.

Go ahead, try it.

Rise.

The murderous cult leader was one of thousands of California inmates busted with a cell phone last year, which he used to call unidentified people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s troubling that he had a cellphone since he’s a person who got other people to murder on his behalf,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections.

via “Cell” Phone: Charles Manson Busted with a Mobile | NBC Los Angeles.

It’s actually troubling that he had a cellphone…since he’s in PRISON and cellphones are forbidden regardless of what you did to get there.

But yeah, hurry up and put the government in charge of our health care please. Just can’t do that quickly enough, right?

Idiots.

Deck the Halls.

So of course you knew it was only a matter of time before I got around to posting this gem:

I’m normally against such gratuitous displays of holiday spirit, but thought it appropriate to make an exception this one time.

And for the more adventurous among you, here’s the interactive version.

Don’t ever say I never gave you anything.

Reality Potion.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the machinations of the Yankees’ negotiations with Derek Jeter:

NEW YORK — Negotiations between the Yankees and Derek Jeter are at a standstill until Jeter and his agent, Casey Close, “drink the reality potion,” according to a source close to the negotiations.

According to the source, a baseball industry executive who has knowledge of both sides’ position, the Yankees are not budging from the three-year, $45 million offer they made to Jeter earlier this month, nor has Jeter moved off his demand for a longer contract believed to be in the area of $23-$25 million per season.

No talks took place over the holiday weekend and none are currently scheduled. Neither Yankees general manager Brian Cashman nor Close immediately returned messages seeking comment early Monday.

I remain fascinated by the proceedings because it feeds an ancient yearning to see Yankee fans implode in spluttering disbelief at Captain Smirk wearing another team’s uniform next year.

Bacon Double Cheesburger Deluxe and a Diet Coke.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama has announced a two-year pay freeze for federal employees, saying the step is necessary to help bring the federal deficit under control.

The freeze would apply to all civilian federal employees but would exclude military personnel.

Obama says the sacrifices of limiting government spending must be shared by government workers.

The White House says the freeze would save $5 billion over two years. By delaying wage increases, the freeze would save $28 billion over the next five years, the White House says.

via Citing deficit, Obama freezing federal worker pay.

You know what also would have helped bring the federal deficit under control?

Punting Obamacare.

Punting the Stimulus.

Punting the bailouts.

Strangely, when the anticipated spending was most damaging to the federal deficit, Obama was blithely unconcerned. Only when the spending is so small as to be statistically meaningless does he trot out the moralizing.

Tell you what, Chief. Save your moralizing.

We’re all too busy choking on your cheeseburger to give a hot damn.

 

 

Coincidence?

As you gather around the table with your family this Thanksgiving, ask yourself this question: are you better off today than you were four years ago? Unfortunately, most Americans are not.

[snip]

If you watch the economic statistics from week to week and month to month, it will seem like sometimes they are getting worse and sometimes they are getting better. However, once you take a longer-term view of things, exactly what is happening to us starts to come clearly into focus. The truth is that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic collapse, and many economic statistics just keep getting worse every single year.

via 11 Statistics That Reveal Just How Far The U.S. Economy Has Fallen Over The Past Four Years.

What happened in November of 2006 that put us on such a downward economic spiral?

Let’s see.

Damn, I hate hard questions.

Wait a minute, I’ve got it!

The Democrats did win majorities that year in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and have controlled the passage (and defeats) of all US legislation since then. Do you think that might have had anything to do with it?

Naa. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Lemonade.

I mean (among other rather obvious things), life did give them lemons.

Ten stewardesses with troubled Mexicana airlines, which filed for bankruptcy in August and suspended operations, launched a sultry aviation-themed calendar Thursday in a bid to call attention to their own plight and that of their airline—one of the world’s oldest.

The 2011 calendar features glossy shots of the flight attendants, clad only in bikinis and aviation shades or abbreviated uniforms, draped over propellers and striking racy poses in the cockpit.

What else could their job description have been at Mexicana except “sexy Mexican girl” anyway, right? This new venture just cuts out the middle man.

I think more people should do this. At least more sexy, unemployed, Mexican stewardesses should.

Happy Black Friday.

TSA . . . T&A?

LAX traveler Corinne Theile has apparently solved the problem of awkward TSA security pat downs.

“I’m wearing my bikini,” Corinne Theile said as she unbuttoned her overcoat outside the terminal to reveal a black two-piece. “It’s not that I’m concerned, it’s that I feel like the TSA is making travelers feel uncomfortable, and I feel like we can have security measures that don’t make people feel uncomfortable.

Have Bikini, Will Travel | NBC Los Angeles.

Let’s hope it’s the start of a beautiful trend.

Go Corinne!

The Country’s In the Very Best of Hands.

Oh. My. God.

Whistling past the graveyard here, folks. Whistling past the graveyard.

BREAKING–Liberal Feminist Loves Her Some Palin.

I’ve always been confused with the rejection by “Big Feminism” of the eminently strong, independent and powerful Sarah Palin.

Perhaps it’s because I just don’t understand what it means to be a feminist. I’m sure that’s what some feminists will tell me, but I don’t buy it. I’m sort of smart and good at figuring stuff out, so it strikes me as odd for feminists to say that EVEN THOUGH Sarah Palin is a strong, independent woman in a position of power (ie—consistent with feminist notions of ideal feminine behavior), she’s nonetheless objectionable to them “as feminists” because of the content of her ideas.

Isn’t that an anti-feminist notion? If not, why not?

Shouldn’t feminists be pleased that a woman like Sarah has become so successful on the merits of her own intellect and individuality and has so thoroughly rejected traditional notions of feminine behavior that she is not only able to dictate the content of her own ideas but to be highly influential in the development of independent ideas in other women? What am I missing here? Has Big Feminism become more concerned with yoking women to another objective ideology than they are with nurturing  the individualism they fought so hard to obtain?

Feminists may of course disagree with the content of Palin’s ideology, but as feminists, shouldn’t they also applaud that she’s in a position to so publicly and effectively espouse it? That they’re not, says more to me of what’s become of the modern feminist movement than anything else.

Which is all to say that I was happy to see this piece in the Atlantic yesterday. I didn’t anticipate quoting so much of it, but it’s so honest and well-written that I didn’t want to sacrifice

To paraphrase Lillian Hellman, I don’t agree with a word that Sarah Palin says, including “and” and “the.” And as a liberal feminist, it drives me absolutely bonkers that Palin is the most visible working mother and female politician in America, that she is the best exemplar of a woman with an equal marriage, that she has put up with less crap from fewer men than those of us who have read The Second Sex and marched in pro-abortion rallies and pretty much been on the right side of all the issues that Palin is wrong about.

So I suppose I should confess: I like Sarah Palin.  I like her because she is such a problem for all these political men . . . with their polls, and their Walter Dean Burnham theories of transformative elections, and their economy this and their values that–and here comes Palin, and logic just doesn’t apply.  She speaks in spoonerisms, she raises wretched children, she’s a quitter, she’s a refudiater, she shoots moose and beats halibut, she has a dumb accent that doesn’t have the charm of Charleston or the Brahmin of Boston–really, she is just a lot of quirks.

But it doesn’t matter.  It will never matter and I bet it never has mattered, because Sarah Palin is hot.  She has sex appeal.  That’s why people like her.  That’s the whole story.  Everyone has to stop trying to deconstruct and decode it, because there is no accounting for chemistry, and Sarah Palin has lots of it going on with her public.

[snip]

The Democrats are total morons for not finding their own hot mama before the Republicans did so first, or maybe I should have left off the qualifiers and called it straight: the Democrats are just plain morons, at least where women are concerned.

[snip]

[L]iberal men are wimps who can’t handle the hot potato that is a combination of feminine sexuality and female political brilliance.

Anyone with a sense of humor, a sense of fun, and a sense that women should be taken on their own terms really ought to like Palin. I mean, of course, you should hate her at the same time, but you should hope she is the beginning of revolution, grrrl style.

At least she’s herself. Every damn day, if you tune in to any of the 24-hour news outlets, the same pundits retread through the same stuff–they all say the same thing.

[snip]

Into this horror walks Sarah Palin, who is kind of a sexy librarian, kind of a MILF, kind of just crazy, and altogether does what she wants to do. This, actually, is normal behavior.  But we are so used to watching other female politicians compromise in so many ways that there is not enough Vaseline in all of CVS to make the situation comfortable–so Sarah Palin seems completely strange.

 

Number Two.

Boy, if it doesn’t seem that the Yankees are about to give old Number 2 a “number two” of their own, doesn’t it?

For the uninitiated, here’s a good summary to bring you up to speed.

“Derek Jeter is a great Yankee and he’s a great player. With that said and done, now is a different negotiation than 10 years ago,” Randy Levine said last week. “He’s a baseball player, and this is a player negotiation. Everything he is and who he is gets factored in. But this isn’t a licensing deal or a commercial rights deal, he’s a baseball player. With that said, you can’t take away from who he is. He brings a lot to the organization. And we bring a lot to him.”

Derek Jeter has been an iconic baseball player for the New York Yankees since practically day 1.  Since earning starting shortstop honors in 1996, Jeter has played a seminal role in the Yankees renaissance and was arguably the linchpin to their 14 post-season berths and 5 World Series Championships. His contributions are unrivaled in the history of the game.

That being said, Mr. Jeter has not worked for free.

In exchange for his superstar stats, the Yankees to date have paid Derek Jeter a tad north of $205,400,000 in baseball salary alone. This of course does not include off-field earnings by Jeter pursuant to his licensing and endorsement arrangements. Only teammate Alex Rodriguez ($264,416,000) has earned more money in his career playing baseball than Derek Jeter.

So yes, Derek Jeter has been kind of a big deal. The problem now is that he’s no longer under contract to play baseball.

Let that sink in.

Derek Jeter signed his last baseball contract in 2001 at the age of 27–an age when experts say a player is just entering his prime. Having a baseball contract means that it’s easy to determine what you’re worth from year to year. It’s the number that the contract says you’re worth. Derek Jeter was in a tremendous bargaining position in 2001. He got to put a price tag on the prime years of his career based on the expectations that his pre-prime numbers justifiably generated. That contract is now expired, which means that what Derek Jeter is worth to the Yankees now is no longer what the contract paper says he is, but what the two sides agree that he is.

What is Derek Jeter worth today?

He will be 37 years old in June. He is coming off the worst offensive season of his career. His range on defense is league average at best, and a liability at worst. In terms of dollar value for the term of a prospective 4 or 5 year contract, the Yankees might easily replace his production at a fraction of the estimated $18-$20 million a year that Jeter is thought to be seeking. If Jeter was worth every penny of the $208 million he’s made so far in his career, paying him any more than $8-$10 million per year now for 3 more optimum 37-40 year old Jeter seasons is more than generous. The Yankees are a stocked team and won’t need to rely on Jeter as much as they have in the past.

And herein lies the problem. Yankee fans have been making all kinds of noise on talk radio down here that the Yankees should pay Jeter whatever he wants for as many years as he wants and just shut up about it. Mike Francesa today on WFAN claimed that the 3 year $45 million offer currently on the table from the Yankees was a “slap in the face”.  $15 million is a slap in the face, Mike?

Derek Jeter has already been paid for being Derek Jeter. He is owed no additional compensation in the form of over-market dollars out of deference to past glory. The Yankees need a major league shortstop that can contribute on a championship level for the foreseeable future. Derek Jeter is not that shortstop. He once was. He is not anymore. Age, recent trends and historical data suggest that at 37, Derek’s best years are long gone and he’ll only be acceptable as an option now in the short term at reasonable dollars. If he hadn’t been “Derek Jeter” for them for the past 16 years, he wouldn’t even be getting this offer. If he took this offer around town now, nobody would come close to matching it. Not because they can’t match the Yankee pocketbook, but because Derek Jeter’s talent simply no longer justifies that amount of dollars.

Assuming that: 1) there is some point in every player’s career when he breaks down and can no longer perform; and 2) the likelihood of a player’s reaching that threshold increases with each birthday after 37, why would a responsible team ever pay top dollar to a player who is 36 with demonstrably diminished skills?

Yankee fans are beside themselves.

Some have grudgingly admitted that while Jeter may no longer be a top talent, the fact that the Yankees have wasted so much money on busts like Igawa, Pavano, Burnett and a litany of others over the years somehow justifies their “wasting” money on Jeter. This is of course ridiculous. The Yankees didn’t knowingly waste money on any player in the past. In each of the instances listed above, the Yankees committed the money they did because their baseball evaluators determined that the likelihood of receiving sufficient value in return for the dollars was high. That’s just not the case with Jeter now. In fact, every baseball evaluation of Jeter’s talent points to the Yankees limiting his years and dollars. To bust the bank on him out of deference to a past for which he’s already been paid is uniquely stupid.

War on Profits.

A company is able to provide goods and services to you only if it makes more money by selling those things to you than it costs him to produce those things. Otherwise, why bother, right? If it costs $100 to make a candy bar, but nobody is willing to pay Hershey more than $2 for that candy bar, they obviously won’t be selling candy bars for long.

Selling goods and services at prices higher than the cost of creating those goods and services is necessary to create 2 things, without either of which a company would forego creating and selling anything altogether: 1) money to pay your employees, pay rent, pay for warehouse space, pay your phone bills, gas bills, electric bills, tax bills, etc. (ie. ‘overhead’); and 2) profit. The former item I hope we all obviously recognize as indispensible, and any portion of the price of a thing that is attributable to it is necessary. However, it’s the latter item that’s been under tremendous attack from Washington these days, but which is arguably as indispensible as the former and perhaps more so. Profit.

That portion of the price of a thing that’s “left over” after the cost of creating that thing (the ‘overhead’) is recouped is the thing that motivates individuals to go into the business of selling that thing in the first place. Someone invests X amount of money in the hope that it will return Y. If it doesn’t return Y, individuals will look to invest their money elsewhere. The decision as to what Y must equal before an individual will consider closing up shop is of course up to the individual. Is it worth the stress, effort and expense to produce a thing, if what’s left over at the end of the day is $.10? If you sell a billion things during the year each with $.10 left over then maybe. But if you sell 1,000 things? Is a $100 profit for a year’s worth of work going to sustain your motivation to go on producing those things? Especially when it may cost you tens of millions of dollars just to get to that $100 profit? Of course you will consider better use of your money at some point than pouring it into a thing that makes you so little. This isn’t charity.

Which is all a rather long way of introducing the latest genius government initiative out of the Obama White House:

WASHINGTON — Health insurance premiums should go for actual medical care — not insurers’ overhead and profits — the Obama administration said Monday in rules that for the first time require the companies to give consumers a rebate.

The regulation unveiled by the Health and Human Services Department calls for insurance companies to spend at least 80 cents of the premium dollar on medical care and quality. For employer plans covering more than 50 people, the requirement is 85 cents. Insurers that fall short of the mark will have to issue their customers a rebate.

via Obama Administration Issues Rules on Insurance Company Spending – FoxNews.com.

So let’s get this straight. Regardless of what it costs for me to offer the coverage contained in an insurance policy (something I’m not required to do, but do so only because I expect the profit I receive to justify my investment of funds I could easily put elsewhere), I can only take $.15 of every dollar for overhead AND profits?

How long before insurers reduce the amount of people to whom they offer policies? Or reduce the amount of coverage they offer to those lucky enough to have policies? How much research and development into new products and services are going to result from a company permitted by law to retain only $.15 of every dollar?

By setting a floor on how much of every premium dollar must be spent on benefits, the government is removing the incentive for insurers to remain selling insurance to people who need insurance, and eventually, insurers will choose to invest their money in other markets.

How much profit is “too much”? To a profit generator, need there be an artificially imposed limit such as the one the President is asking insurers to swallow? In a free market, if a producer is taking too much profit and not re-investing enough of their returns back into the product to make it better and stronger and faster, competitors will arise who are willing to do that and displace the excess profit taker as market leader. Or perhaps their prices were too high. That’s of course easily fixed in a free market by having competitors jockey for market position and offering variety to consumers, which increases competition and drives down prices. Therefore, in a free market, everyone is sufficiently motivated to a) create quality products; b) that people want to buy; c) at the cheapest price possible. This limits profits, increases quality and ensures wide access to the best products available, all the while luring new competitors offering better products to the market with the promise of future return.

But we don’t have a free market in health insurance in the US. What we have instead is a President driving private insurers out of the market so that they can be replaced by a wildly inefficient central government insurer that is not responsive to any market and which instead will drive up costs, drive down quality and make us all less healthy.

Dancing With the Moonbats.

I don’t watch Dancing With the Stars, but based on my understanding of other shows of this nature, the format is simple. A bunch of has beens, nearly beens and never was-es are paid to compete in a faux dance “competition” so that gawkers may assemble and ratings may accrue. Actual dance competitions composed of actual dancers and actual judges take place throughout this country every day. They are not televised.  We do not care who wins those competitions.

What makes Dancing With the Stars different?

Stars.

Are you beautiful? You’re in. Actually, this seems to be a staple of the show. If you look incredibly gorgeous wearing practically no clothes and if you’re likely to generate legions of male fans tuning in with the sole purpose of waiting to see if your breasts pop out of your costume, you’re in. Don’t believe me? How else to explain this smorgasbord of bodacious beauties we’ve been treated to over the years: Shannon Elizabeth, Pamela Anderson, Kelly Monaco, Rachel Hunter,Stacy Keibler, Paulina Porizkova, Josie Maran, Erin Andrews, Brooke Burke, Holly Madison, Denise Richards and Kathy Ireland?

Are you a train wreck? Welcome to the show.

Got one leg? Climb aboard.

Vincent Pastore and Warren Sapp have been on this show.

Have you wondered aloud or to yourself recently whatever became of Steve Guttenberg. Let not your heart be troubled. He’s been on the show too.

So it should have been no surprise to anyone that Bristol Palin was chosen to be on this show. She didn’t win any regional elimination tournaments to get here. She’s a kid with a famous mom who had a kid out of wedlock with some dipshit who went on to do low grade porn. Still with me? Bristol Palin is the perfect contestant for this show and they probably paid her lots of money to do it.

That’s why it’s cacklingly delicious that the left is in a twist about the possibility that Bristol may actually win:

The controversy surrounding Dancing with the Stars contestant Bristol Palin isn’t letting up and there is a growing backlash regarding Brandy’s elimination.  Some fans of the show have expressed great concern that Tea Party followers have taken control of the shows outcome by voting for Bristol based upon her mother’s political platform.  We know the GOP has reclaimed control of the House of Representatives but have they gained control over Dancing with the Stars as well?

The backlash against Bristol has grown rampant and some have suggested they will no longer watch the show should she win.  On Tuesday night’s result show, Tom Bergereon announced they had record breaking votes cast but still it wasn’t enough to save Brandy.  The theory then is that those record numbers of votes were cast by Tea Party members in a ploy dubbed “Operation Bristol” where everyone is rallying to vote her in.

Could Bristol Palin be practice for the Tea Party movement and the 2012 election?  Is this practice for a possible Sarah Palin presidential run or have conspiracy theories gone too far out of hand?

Now we also learn that Bristol has also received death threats.

If the left spent half as much time on governing with the consent of the governed as it does being deranged about another popular Palin, they just might be dangerous. Yet I’m getting the distinct impression that they are instead akin to petulant children, completely detached from real human interaction and painfully unaware of their own shortcomings.

Go Bristol.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

The TSA screenings are absurd.

The offense however, rests not on the premise that the State does not have an interest in preventing terrorists from boarding planes with weapons (it does), but instead on the foolish notion that the State must not discriminate whom it subjects to its terrorist prevention measures.

My high school had a baseball team. Each year, there were tryouts.  If you thought you were good enough to play for the team, you subjected your skills to the scrutiny of the coaches. The team that resulted was composed of the players with the best baseball talent in the school. You know what didn’t happen? The coaches didn’t line up lunch ladies, the kids with scoliosis or the ones who smoked in the parking lot, the young, the old, the out of shape or the disinterested and ask them all to play catch.  No, instead, the coaches profiled. They understood they were looking for baseball players. They asked for baseball players. They got….baseball players. Sure, lining everyone up and putting them through drills would have assured that you didn’t discriminate, but when you’re looking for good baseball talent, why is it not OK to discriminate? Discrimination is actually a good and logical approach when it’s done for a legitimate legal purpose like looking for talent, looking for a lost dog or looking for people likely to carry a weapon on a plane.

Here’s George Will:

What the TSA is doing is mostly security theater, a pageant to reassure passengers that flying is safe. Reassurance is necessary if commerce is going to flourish and if we are going to get to grandma’s house on Thursday to give thanks for the Pilgrims and for freedom. If grandma is coming to our house, she may be wanded while barefoot at the airport because democracy – or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment; anyway, something – requires the amiable nonsense of pretending that no one has the foggiest idea what an actual potential terrorist might look like.

via George F. Will – The T.S. of A takes control.

Eloi Nation.

Love her or hate her, Anne Coulter’s on the money with this one.  What all perpetrators of terrorism against the United States in the last 10 years have in common is NOT that they use weapons but that they are Muslim. To pretend that’s not relevant is horrifying on an Eloi scale.

It’s . . .  pointless to treat all Americans as if they’re potential terrorists while trying to find and confiscate anything that could be used as a weapon. We can’t search all passengers for explosives because Muslims stick explosives up their anuses. (Talk about jobs Americans just won’t do.)

You have to search for the terrorists.

Fortunately, that’s the one advantage we have in this war. In a lucky stroke, all the terrorists are swarthy, foreign-born, Muslim males. (Think: “Guys Madonna would date.”)

This would give us a major leg up – if only the country weren’t insane.

[snip]

If the government did nothing more than have a five-minute conversation with the one passenger per flight born outside the U.S., you’d need 90 percent fewer Transportation Security Administration agents and airlines would be far safer than they are now.

via Napolitano: The ball’s in my court now.

You remember the Eloi, don’t you? In H.G. Wells’  The Time Machine, after who knows how many thousands of years, the time traveler discovers that the human race has degenerated into 2 sub-species. The Eloi, who live above ground, are happy, beautiful and content. The Morlocks, who live below ground, are ugly, violent and mad. At first, the traveler is impressed with the easy lives of the Eloi. Their cares are few. They eat and sleep and are generally excellent to eachother. Why do the Morlocks hate them so?  Eventually, we find out. It’s not that the Eloi have no cares, it’s that their ability to care has been washed out of their humanity over the course of centuries.  They’ve exchanged the uncertainty of life and the defenses that rational people permit themselves to develop in reaction to that uncertainty for a bargain. If you remove the necessity of our having to worry and make plans for our safety, I’ll sacrifice a few of us to you every once in awhile as payment. And so the Eloi became cattle—cultivated by the Morlocks like a crop to be harvested. The Eloi don’t resist because they don’t want to. They’ve traded the worry and uncertainty inherent in such resistance for the brain-dead life of the incurious. All at the expense of the periodic sacrifice of a few of them.

We should not wash out of our humanity the inherent and natural skepticism we should have of likely danger. Pretending that Muslims are not any more likely to carry out the next terror attack against the US than non-Muslims is suicide. As the Eloi rested their heads easily at night no longer burdened with the responsibility for their own survival, so too do we try to rest in the intellectual satisfaction that we’ve not offended anyone.  Will that keep us safe? Were the Eloi safe?

Survival is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. We can’t pretend to make it easy by overlaying it with idiotic rules designed to keep us the OPPOSITE of safe.

Incentives.

The 2010 census has shown that people are leaving states with high income tax rates and settling in states with low income tax rates.

Low-tax states will gain seats, high-tax states will lose them | Washington Examiner.

Eight states are projected to gain at least one congressional seat under reapportionment following the 2010 Census: Texas (four seats), Florida (two seats), Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington (one seat each). Their average top state personal income tax rate: 2.8 percent.

By contrast, New York and Ohio are likely to lose two seats each, while Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania will be down one apiece. The average top state personal income tax rate in these loser states: 6.05 percent.

The state and local tax burden is nearly a third lower in states with growing populations, ATR found. As a result, per capita government spending is also lower: $4,008 for states gaining congressional seats, $5,117 for states losing them.

And, as ATR notes, “in eight of ten losers, workers can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. In 7 of the 8 gainers, workers are given a choice whether to join or contribute financially to a union.”

This is why the Obama claim that extending Bush tax cuts for all earners regardless of income level will “cost” the government billions of dollars. That’s just false. When faced with the choice of enduring confiscatory taxation or taking measures to avoid it, people who CAN avoid it WILL avoid it. See the numbers above for justification of this simple observation.

Those who CAN avoid taxation are the top earners. Therefore, bombarding them with horrific tax rates will only succeed in LOWERING the tax revenue you receive from them as they take steps to avoid being taxed by either reducing exposure to tax by limiting their business activity or simply moving out of the country.

Lower tax rates increase tax revenue.

Blame Game.

Whatever you thought of President George W. Bush, he never, not once, ever blamed Bill Clinton for the 8 years of foreign policy ineptitude that led inevitably to 9/11–though he quite justifiably could have done so.

The 1990′s were filled with terrorist acts and not all were either directed against the US or committed by Al-Qaeda, but enough of them were that a clear line should have been visible to Clinton upon his taking office in 1993. There was a radical Islamic group that was plotting to do us serious harm. This was not a crime wave. It was an act of war. Below are some of the truly “red light” issues that should have caused President Clinton to react a lot more strongly than he did. That he did not react strongly is the reason Al-Qaeda was emboldened and successfully hit us on 9/11—less than 8 months after Bush took office.

Bill Clinton is sworn in on January 20, 1993.

2/26/93—First World Trade Center bombing. Criminal investigation follows. Prosecution of Ramzi Yousef.

6/1993— Failed NYC Landmark Bomb Plot. Criminal investigation follows. Prosecution of the  “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman.

6/25/1996—Khobar Towers bombing, Saudi Arabia. 19 US servicemen killed. Criminal investigation. Al-Qaeda.

8/7/1998—US Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. 225 killed.  Al-Qaeda. Clinton announces retaliatory missile strike in Sudan, succeeds in destroying a pharmaceutical factory he claimed was manufacturing chemical weapons. No such weapons found. In a final twist, confessed Tanzania conspirator Ahmed Ghailani (captured as an enemy combatant in Pakistan in 2004) was acquitted yesterday of 285 of 286 charges stemming from the bombings in a gross miscarriage of justice. He didn’t commit a crime. He committed an act of war.

12/14/1999—Ahmed Ressam is arrested in Washington at the Canadian border with a carload of explosives he planned to detonate at LAX Airport as part of the Millenium Attack Plot. The plot was disrupted, but by now the threat should have been crystal clear.

1/3/2000—Also part of the Millenium Attach Plot was the planned bombing of the USS The Sullivans Destroyer in Yemen.  This plot failed because the Al-Qaeda boat carrying the explosives sank before it reached target.

10/12/2000—USS Cole Bombing. 17 US servicemen killed. Al-Qaeda.  Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Muhammed reportedly pause their already advanced 9/11 plan making to shake in boots as Clinton releases this terrifying statement: “If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable“. Clinton takes no further action.

9/11/2001.

Which brings me to the real point of all this—how is it that President Obama, in 2010…a full 2 years after he took office STILL blaming President Bush for the economy? He blamed him on the campaign trail in 2008. He blamed him after taking office. He blamed him all throughout the passage of the monstrously ineffective Stimulus bill. He blamed him during the Health Care debates. One suspects he’ll go on blaming him for the next 2 years also. I mean, why wouldn’t he?

Indeed, George W. Bush was president when the economy began to go south at the end of 2008. However, the law making body of the US government was controlled exclusively by Democrats beginning in 2006 and was controlling which laws were created and passed during the time leading up to the recession and during its initial stages. Among those law makers was Democrat Senator Barack Obama. If the economy can said to be in the control of the government, and if a bad economy can be said to be preventable by a government, then the power to control and prevent lies in the making of laws to determine policy. It does not lie in the executive power. The executive power is the power to carry out the laws, not to make th em. Presidents don’t cause recessions. They don’t prevent them. Policies do all that. And policies are determined by what laws are in place. The recession of 2009 was caused by bad policies. Policies which Democrats alone had the power to control and prevent via their exclusive stranglehold of legislation beginning in 2006. They neither controlled nor prevented the recession. They caused it.

President Bush might have made this argument at the time, but to his credit, he didn’t. The buck stopped with him, and he took full responsibility as the economy cratered at the end of 2008.

President Bush, based on the time line above, also might have made the argument that Clinton’s misdeeds had caused 9/11. He didn’t. Once again, I feel that this was to his credit. He didn’t cause the problem, but he was going to fix the problem.

Instead of taking the example of President Bush, President Obama has instead played the blame card…in a situation where unlike Bush, he can’t even make an argument that it’s true.

Five Angels.

Frankie Five Angels

Watching this idiot parade around like 10 pounds of shit stuffed in a 5 pound bag has gotten me thinking about the absurdity of life.

It didn’t always used to be this way. Hell, maybe it did. Maybe I was just too blind to see it. Maybe the apparatus of media spin was more efficient in the old days when we had 3 TV stations and Newsday and we were happy so long as nobody pissed on our parades.

Then I guess the internet came along and with it an unrelenting torrent of spooge and scum from which it was impossible to hide ever again.

By the time the dust had settled, our better angels had all taken the last train to the coast and we were left holding the bag of our collective ineptitude.

Charlie Rangel.  Or is it Frankie Pentangeli? I’m suddenly lost in a Scooby Doo haze…

SENATOR KANE
Mr. Rangel, you are contradicting your confessions to our investigators; I ask you again, were you a member of a crime organization headed by Nancy Pelosi?

RANGEL
No.  I never heard of it.  I never heard of nothing like that.  I was in the olive oil business with her father a long time ago.  That’s all.

SENATOR KANE
We have your confession that you murdered on the orders of Nancy Pelosi.  Do you deny that confession and do you know what denying that confession will mean to you?

RANGEL
The FBI guys promised me a deal. So I made up a lot of stuff about Nancy Pelosi.  Because then, that’s what they wanted.  But it was all lies.  Everything.  They said Nancy Pelosi did this, Nancy Pelosi did that.  So I said, “Yeah, sure.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Be well, Charlie Five Angels. Looks like it’s time for that warm bath now.

Blogging again soon.

It’s been too long, my friends. I’ll get back to doing this regularly again soon. Stay tuned…

My Disney Adventure

Ok….so when we began planning this thing in JULY, we weren’t exactly anticipating getting derailed by a Nor’easter that’s going to dump 2 feet of snow in our path.

But we play the hands we’re dealt, and tomorrow, the little man, my wife and I embark on a car trip to Disney World. My parents did it for me when I was 7 and my sister was 5, so yeah, I guess we’re pushing it with Nico, who’s 3, but he’s super psyched and we’ll take lots of pictures so he’ll have this forever in some shape or form.

Didn’t expect this snow though. Man…if forecasts are right, we’re going to get absolutely dumped on. We planned on leaving NYC at 8pm, but that’s out, so now it’s a half day for me (Amy took off) and leaving NYC at 2. That still puts us right in the breadbasket of what’s shaping up to be a monumental disaster in DC.

Screw it. If it’s too bad, we stop and then make a mad dash on Saturday morning to get our reservation at the Polynesian by Saturday night. I wouldn’t mind so much just missing Saturday night (we’ve got nothing planned for Saturday afternoon anyway), except that it’s sort of expensive to stay at the Polynesian and had we known, we’d have booked one less night there and subbed in a Comfort Inn or something.

But it didn’t work out that way and I’m not going to cry about it too much. We’ll stay safe and warm and do the best we can. If I get a chance I’ll post updates and maybe some pix of the blizzard, and if we see anything REALLY strange, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Forever Young

I like sometimes to sit and type (is it writing?) and listen to old songs on iTunes. Tonight it’s FOREVER YOUNG by Alphaville. Now, I was never an Alphaville fan. In fact, I don’t think if you asked me in 1985 or whenever that song came out what Alphaville was I’d have had an answer for you. But somewhere along the line this damn song got caught in my head and pricked a mid-80′s mainline for me. How did that happen? Best not to dwell on it. But there it is. Can’t listen to it now without a tear in my eye. Is it the Scorpions-esque German accents hiding behind sentimental English lyrics?

Do you really want to live forever?

Answer? Yes. I actually do. I want to be Connor Mac-fucking Leod and be married to bonny Heather for all eternity and smash my fists as she gets old and dies while I stay the same age. There can be only one, Sean Connery. There can be only one. So you’ll please forgive me if I dispatch you right now and spend the rest of my life tied to a rail and run out of town.

Sometimes when I think about it, it shocks the hell out of me that I’m a hair away from 40. I was in CVS the other day and saw a Goody brush. Remember them? I had one in my back pocket throughout Junior High. That white plastic handle and that orange rubber knob at the end holding those cheap plastic bristles that broke off in your pocket. Screw it. The best damn brush any 14 year old could want. At 14 I would have died for someone to notice and think I was cool for carrying that damned brush. For all I know, someone did think that. At 40, so beyond all that nonsense and bullshit, would you believe I’d still think it was cool to find out someone noticed?

At any rate…yeah…listening and writing….thinking of $2 brushes and memories that burn forever. Thanks for tuning in.

I Hate When My Baby Is Sick.

He’s going to be 3 in a few weeks and he’s a big kid, but still. To me, he’s that same little guy staring out at me from behind the plastic of that tub they wheeled him out in. I’ll always remember that first time I saw him….after they cleaned him up and I caught my breath and all the blood and guts were sponged away, that is. The real first time I saw him I was in shock. I guess at that point I didn’t really see HIM as much as I saw my wife and her terrorized expression and the blood and the nurse lifting him and wrapping him away. The first time I’m actually talking about was later that night while my wife lay exhausted in the recovery room and I was on pins and needles about what I’d say…what I’d do…how I’d be better to him than anyone ever was to me. And then he came in with that little beanie and his face so small and clean and his eyes shut tight. The nurse was careful to roll him into the middle of the small room so that we could both understand what had happened. Nothing prepared me for that moment. No pre-natal classes, no internet bulletin boards, no  books. I looked at him through the plastic. I got down low so I could look right across into his eyes and don’t you know that he opened them at that moment and gazed out at me like I was an alien or something (what must have been going through his mind??). Now my boy has shaggy brown hair and eyes like chocolate kisses, but then, looking out at me from behind the plastic, his eyes were slate gray. He was about 2 hours old and his eyes were like candy marbles. Blue gray and exquisite. I know he didn’t see me and I know he couldn’t know me even if he did, but at that moment, he had me. I looked and locked into my son and I promised him I’d never leave him. Not for anything.

And he’s sick tonight. Coughing this awful gurgling mess every hour or so. I guess it’s better than the fever he had for 3 days before tonight, but I’ll need some convincing. Fever’s gone, but the cough’s descended like devil on my little boy. All I can do is rush in there, prop his head up, and whisper that it’ll all be ok.

Damn, I hate it when my baby is sick. He just wants it to end and can’t understand why I’m not making it all go away. I can’t do it all, baby, even though I want to so very much. Sleep when you can and I’ll kiss you in the morning.

Biting the Hand.

Obama released his budget proposal today for FY 2011.

We should all be petrified.

Ostensibly to help fund his proposed $3.8million in federal outlays, Obama has announced a tax increase of nearly a trillion dollars on the so-called wealthy families and small businesses out there having the audacity to earn $250k. This will largely be accomplished by permitting the Bush tax cuts to expire.

According to the AP:

The tax increases on wealthy families would fulfill a campaign pledge by Obama, who has blamed Bush’s tax cuts and Medicare prescription drug program for swelling the government’s debt by $7.5 trillion.

“While we extend middle-class tax cuts in this budget, we will not continue costly tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers and those making over $250,000 a year,” Obama said. “We just can’t afford it.

Is he more concerned with fulfilling campaign promises and locking up the “class envy” vote than he is making sound economic policy?

Wait, don’t answer that.

In his mind, I think he really does believe that taxing top earners at higher rates will result in more federal tax revenue. Despite the fact that higher tax rates provide incentives for top earners to earn less (and thus to be taxed less), he persists in this nonsense as if history is actually on his side.

The reality is that the surest way to increase tax revenue dollars is to tax the top earners (the ones who make things and hire people) at a lower rate so that they are incentized to earn more (and thus pay more tax dollars).

What Obama actually “can’t afford” is to tax the top 5% of earners (those contributing over 60% of all tax revenues as it is) MORE than they’re already being taxed. What he wants them to start finding tax shelters? Or maybe to not develop new products? Not employ new people? Start ticking back their productivity?

I thought that was the LAST thing this economy needed, actually.

The real heartache is that he’s got people who believe this sort of tripe about raising tax revenue by raising tax rates on the highest earners.

None other than President Kennedy had the following to say on the occasion of his proposal to reduce the top tax rate from 90% (!) to 70% in 1962 (such reduction signed into law posthumously in 1964):

From the same speech:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

Obama’s budget, thankfully, is merely a proposal. Lots of weary Democrats sit in Congress today looking out at the political landscape in advance of November’s elections. What do they see? Constituencies eager to expand government….or reduce it?

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

The New York Times demonstrates once again that it’s on the wrong side of the issue–whatever issue that might be. This time, it’s jobs.

President Obama has a jobs problem. Fifteen million Americans want work. Few companies want to hire. The burden shifts to the government. What can it do?

Short answer?

Get the hell out of the way.

People are out of work because of policies the government itself has implemented. The Obama administration has created such chaos and uncertainty with its threatened bank taxes, cap and trade legislation and health care reform, that small businesses (the biggest generator of job growth)  literally do not know whether to shit or go blind. What sort of capital would you invest in this economy if you knew that Dear Leader was on the sidelines licking his chops and twisting his hands like Mr. Burns waiting to sop up your evil, “excess” profits like a vindictive sponge?

The burden is on government….to get out of the business of business so that Americans can start hiring people and making things again in a predictable economic climate. Other than that, government is not qualified to do much else with the economy….except screw it up.