The Liberal Synonym Finder

Bob Shrum calls current Supreme Court a "Tea Party Supreme Court." This level of cluelessness is perhaps why this guy has such an abysmal campaign record.

Let's review. The four meaningful changes to the Supreme Court in many many years have been the additions of Justices Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor and Kagan. Only two of these were appointed subsequent to the rise of the Tea Party as an obvious force in American politics - Sotomayor and Kagan. It is hard to reconcile the addition of the Wise Latina and the Harvard Law Honcho with what the Tea Party stands for (Taxed Enough Already). Furthermore, Justices Roberts and Alito were nominated and elevated to the SCOTUS prior to anyone in America ever having heard of the political movement now referred to as the Tea Party. These are traditional, constitutionalist justices appointed by a conservative President who said he'd appoint traditional, constitutionalist justices. Shocker, I know. The only even remote sliver of a thin reed of an inkling of an argument that you can make along Shrum's line is that Alito's appointment was the result of a mulligan when Bush originally appointed Harriet Miers. Miers was such a poor pick that reeked so foully of cronyism and patronage taking precedence over the best interests of the country that even conservatives and Bush loyalists rose up out of sheer disgust. This "rising up" - the spontaneous roar of disapproval at the arrogance and disconnectedness of power - is the only remotely plausible Tea Partyish thing that can be pinned upon the current make-up of the SCOTUS.

So Shrum has just about every fact and element of logic standing against him, but that is not the point. For Shrum and his ilk, "Tea Party" is an adjective, and not a positive one. He wants to say "crappy" or "sucky" or "f**king gawdawful" or something along those lines, but that's not politically nuanced or coded enough for his pay grade. So he gets out his leftist Synonym Finder and under "sucky" he finds "Tea Party." Thus we have a Tea Party SCOTUS that has absolutely zero connection or origin in the Tea Party movement.

Bill Whittle Is Fired Up and On Fire

He's on a Tear, on a Roll, talkin' ABBO...

Told You So - Nebraska Senate Race Edition

You heard it here first.

I Am Nervous

Why am I nervous? Because liberal MSM pundits are resoundingly pessimistic over the fate of ObamaCare before the SCOTUS. When these characters have their minds made up, it usually pays to bet the other way. It would not be surprising for the conventional MSM wisdom to be totally wrong. Thus I am nervous.

Shocker: Tax Hikes on the Rich Backfire in UK

Via Mark Perry, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer is reporting that the UK's recent tax hikes on the rich are back-firing.

Of course they are. We told you they would, not out of some theoretical notion or airy reference to supply-side theory, but from actual personal knowledge of intention. I, Donny Baseball, told you that me and my ilk would avoid taxes. I imagine what is true for me is equally true across the pond. After all, witnessing how the British government spends money would you want to just give them more of your money?

As I Predicted: Romney Money Starting to Flow

Check out what I said about Romney in January:

Plus, you're gonna like Mitt alot more when he has a war chest of $700 million dollars (that Newt Santorum could only dream of raising) and someone like Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Jim DeMint or Marco Rubio on his ticket as VP nominee. (Or, if you like out-of-the-box scenarios...Rand Paul...)

Uh huh.

UPDATE: Here another of my thoughts on all this:

Obama's political skills are awesome, but his political instincts are terrible. He will do quite egregious things

I'm not the only one noticing.

Media Imagery and the Trayvon Martin Case

While not wanting to comment on the Trayvon Martin case, I was discussing it with a friend this weekend and the angle that I was most interested in is the subtle complicity of the media. The main example of this, ala Bonfire of the Vanities (Henry Lamb was miraculously transformed from a neighborhood ne'er-do-well into an honor student), is to portray Trayvon as a saintly, harmless kid. Thus the picture we see, literally, is of a truly precious, saintly-even, looking little boy that is nowhere near the 17 years of age and 6'3" height of the Trayvon that tragically met his end recently in Sanford. Now, however, fresher images are coming out. Compare the first impression image on the left that we've seen for days with the Flavor Flav lookalike on the right. Does this mean that Trayvon deserved his fate? Of course not. Does this mean that this case is less cut and dried and perhaps doesn't fit the neat narrative that the race hustlers and their friends in the media wish us to believe? Yes indeed.

UPDATE: The Flavor Flav lookalike photo was scrubbed from the link above. It's here.

UPPDATE: Not for the first time, VDH echoes a theme found here at NBfPB with the Tom Wolfe reference. We have our Henry Lamb. We have our Reginald Bacon (many of them). Any leading candidates for a modern day Peter Fallow? I'm sure there are plenty.

Tale of Two Leaders: Obama in Oklahoma = Theatre, Harper In Thailand = Sales Call

As Obama - shamelessly and confoundingly - tries to bamboozle the US electorate about his energy policies, the reality is playing out around him.

“It’s essential that we be able sell our energy products outside of North America to partners, countries other than the United States,” Harper said today in Bangkok

Sigh.

Funny That. Bill Daley Major Source for WaPo's Story on Obama Debt Failure

If it is not an outright conspiracy, you just have to chalk it up to "with friends like the Clintonites..."

But in the Post’s version of events, Obama is portrayed as worrying he would face a backlash from the left if he pulled the trigger. And former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley provided surprising, on-the-record support of the GOP’s insistence that the president deserves blame for losing his nerve.

Daley said the White House privately fretted that Democrats would go ballistic if the president agreed to $800 billion in new tax revenues when some Republican senators had signaled willingness to go along with as much as $2 trillion.

Surprising? Not to some.

Greatest Beer Commercial Ever?

" yes, a curry is a great way to end the night, but it's way too early for that."
and
"...a text from the missus, that could be the end of his night."
H/T Mark Perry

Wuh-Oh...

Not making excuses but...

"We've taken about 200 Coalition casualties that we know of from insider attacks."

...and the army doesn't seem to be handling it well. Perhaps maybe conceivably this is why that chap snapped...??

If our "partners" are routinely whacking our soldiers and the brass is covering it up, I'm shocked that only one soldier has snapped.

Lefties Use the "Rape-Rape" Gambit Again. More of This Please

Apparently "slut" is different from "cunt" and "twat."

This is classic lefty stuff, like "rape-rape." Keep it up, this stupidity is the best recruiting tool we could hope for on the right.

Bill Gross: I Won't Actually Say the Word "Stagflation", But...

Bill Gross says inflation and muted growth are on the way. What is another way to express "inflation and muted growth"? Stagflation, maybe. You heard it here first, folks. Read my post, we know who is to blame for the stag and who is to blame for the flation.

Hmmmmmmm....

I have talked in the past about how conditions that would argue against an attack on Iran were changing, as well as some precursor actions that the West could take in advance of an attack to mitigate the fallout. One of those actions could be a massive operation to purchase crude oil, transport it out of the Gulf and store it either in the SPR or simply on tankers. I touched on this back in 2009

One of the major fears regarding taking any military action to halt Iran's nuke weapons program is that they will close the straight of Hormuz and crimp oil flows to a global economy struggling to recover. Well, there are many many complex considerations around this issue, but let me just ask, how many tankers just sitting around storing crude oil would be an effective neutralizer of this fear? Could the US and British governments ask the likes of Morgan and others to ramp up this activity so as to have, oh, 70, 80, 90 tankers filled up and sitting quietly just in case Iran got bombed and acted up in the Strait? Just asking.

Well, oil tanker rates have skyrocketed in the last few days, with Saudi Arabia's shipping arm (Vela) making a massive hire of ships (sub. req.) to take increased crude production out of Saudi to the US. Note that the US has not been taking in much if any crude from SA as of late.

Analyst Omar Nokta explains spot earnings have shot up from around $25,000 day to approximately $42,500 daily thanks to a flurry of fixing activity.

Nokta says Vela has been at the tip of the sword chartering nine VLCCs in the past week for runs out of Saudi Arabia for the US.

Is the economy really picking up that much that we need all this new oil? Maybe, but we also know that the one country outside of Israel that fears the rise of Iran the most is...Saudi. Hmmm.

More Biden Please

An oldie but a goodie...


on the occasion of Uncle Joe's latest comedy.

UPDATE: Request granted!

Mystery Revealed!!!

I know that I set the blogosphere aflutter the other day when I noted the impending international incident over the wines to be served at the state dinner honoring David Cameron. Well, it looks like the mystery has been solved.

So, did Obama snub Cameron? Wine geeks will no doubt argue amongst themselves but IMHWGO, the answer is "kinda, yeah."

A sparkling wine from Virginia? No offense to the Old Dominion - I spent four lovely years in the beautiful Commonwealth of Virginia and have many friends there - but their wines suck. Leonetti? Fine, I guess. Iron Horse? Eh. With the exception of the Peter Michael chard, I could almost hear the ever-ravishing Mrs. Baseball asking me, as she does (and as we all do) "Honey, do we have any 'Tuesday night' wine in the house, so-and-so is coming over and I don't want to open any of your good wine?" Mrs. Baseball will be appalled to be mentioned in the same post as Michelle "Finally Proud of Her Country Now That She Is in the White House" Obama, but this wine list conjures up images of the FLOTUS saying exactly that.

Conclusion: they served Cameron the cheap stuff. Snub factor on the famous 100-pt. scale? 87 pts. Favored guests at the Hacienda de Baseball drink better than Cammie did.

P.S. There is some apparent diplomatic history to the Iron Horse bottling. So who is Reagan and who is Gorbachev (Evil Empire anyone?) in this scenario? Hmmm.

Greatest Prediction Ever, Part 2

Hey, let's not forget that I made the greatest prediction EVAH!!! It's already come true and it continues to come true, although I can't believe Cameron has put his name to this dumb-ass policy. Shit, I'd not be surprised if the Lightworker empties the damn SPR.

UPDATE: Of course, China is, as we speak, filling it's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, so in essence all we are doing is helping the ChiComs prepare for that rainy day - the amount of oil in the marketplace for consumption will be relatively unaffected. We can't pipe oil in from friendly neighbors, whose only animus toward us is that they like to beat us in hockey, but we'll deplete our STRATEGIC reserves to help our adversary for global leadership build their's up?? Has there ever been an administration that has made more seriously dumb decisions on the BIG STUFF?

UPPDATE: I found another past gem of mine:

Let's face it, it's not the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's Obama's Strategic Political Fortunes Revival Fund. Several billion dollars worth of US taxpayer property, ready to be used, essentially, for Obama's re-election campaign. Happy Monday!

Fun "Name That Party" Edition

I love variations on classic game shows like "Family Feud, Celebrity Edition." So, let's play "Name That Party: Trophy Wife Edition."

My Radical Paradigm Shift, It Turns Out, Was Too Wimpy

In this post, I talked about a "paradigm shift" where the bonds of august corporate institutions could replace government bonds as the "risk-free" benchmark in investors' minds. RTWT because it's a damn good post if I do say so myself, but here's a key tidbit:

So I ask, "Who do you think is a safer bet - the US government or the company that makes Tide, or Tylenol, or the leading brand of toothpaste?" Would you rather hold J&J stock yielding 3.5% or get an identically yielding US Treasury? Frankly, I see less risk in any number of institutions with names like Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Clorox etc. In today's world, these are the less risky bets and the US government ought to pay me a premium for capital that I could otherwise tie up in the equity of these institutions.

When I wrote that I was talking about corporate financial assets and only obliquely referred to Tide in reference to the stock and bonds of its producer, Proctor & Gamble. Little did I know that the situation could get so bad that Tide detergent itself would become a proxy currency for the greenback!!

Holy. F'n. Moley. !.

As and added bonus, here is Alex Pollock today in the WSJ wondering why anybody ever bought into the moronic notion of government bonds being "risk-free" in the first place. Indeed. From an elemental principle that is wrong, much disaster flows (to wit, home-ownership is good).

UPDATE: In another prescient long ago post of mine, I said that Ben Bernanke has driven some nails into Barack Obama's coffin. Well, today, the wonderful Amity Shlaes hits the same theme. And the Powerline guys pick up the theme too.

Attention Larry Kudlow: Get With the Program

Attention Larry Kudlow. In this chat session, you failed to give Leisman the proper answer when he stated that Republicans now have a "tough sell" convincing the voters that they are the better choice on the economy. Read this post my friend. Here's the key takeaway:

Finally, and most importantly, there is the little matter of what happened in November 2010. Republicans can make a plausible case that to whatever extent the economy is doing better, it is because Americans rose up on November 3, 2010 and effectively stopped the Obama agenda dead in its tracks, at least legislatively. Remember what we were staring down the barrel of during the first two years of the Obama administration: 1) ObamaCare, 2) Card Check 3) Cap & Trade. This represented a triple-barrel threat to the economy. We got ObamaCare (and businesses are nearly universally saying that it is a job-killer) but we avoided Card Check and Cap & Trade legislation by virtue of electing a bunch of Republicans to the Congress.

Avoiding the devastation of those two last pillars of the original Obama agenda caused a huge sigh of relief in the business world and the economy surely benefited knowing these ideas were dead in the water. Republicans can and will make this very plausible argument.

Learn it, know it, live it Sir Lawrence of the Mustard Seed.

How So Very Small You Are, Sandra Fluke

Good thing our feminists are busy trying to get us all to pay for their birth control, because, ya' know, there are no important women's issues left to tackle.

Is a Major Cameron Snub...er...Fermenting?

Why won't the White House release the wine list for the upcoming state dinner?

Is Obama ashamed of the American wine industry?

Are the pairings with the beef whatever a state secret?

Are they sensitive in this time of economic difficulty? (wait...why should they be? I thought Obama was an economic miracle worker and good times are rolling, baby, which is why we need to re-elect him...?!?!?!?)

None of the above.

We know Obama hates the British and he is preparing to snub PM David Cameron by serving him absolute plonk. It will be the vinous equivalent of returning the Churchill bust or giving the Queen an iPod full of Obama's speeches. Brace for it folks, a mini-diplomatic kerfuffle impends - Obama is going to make Cameron drink shit wine. Most Americans won't know or care what wines get served, but the wine geeks will know, and will understand the message embedded in the wine selections in an instant. Word will go out that the message from the Lightworker to Cameron is "Enjoy your North Carolina Merlot and your Idaho Chardonnay you white, imperialistic, Tory f**k." The right wing blogosphere will go nuts with breathless headlines of "Smart Diplomacy" in re the international incident. Better to just keep it under wraps.

JP Morgan Announces Massive Shrinkage. Why Ever Could That Be?

I have made special and numerous mention of corporate share buybacks over the last several years, and I have also noted why we are seeing an usually large amount of share repurchases rather than investment in growth and jobs.

Well, hot off the wires just now, JP Morgan announced another multi-billion dollar share buyback - $15 billion to be more precise. Our government has attacked and shat upon no industry so much as the banking industry and gone on to codify the rhetorical drubbing in the form of the Dodd-Frank banking "reform" bill. Well, the inevitable and entirely foreseeable has now happened. With nary a growth prospect and a stagnant, strangled business landscape, JP Morgan is returning - entirely responsibly and justifiably, I might add - oceans of unneeded capital back to its shareholders so they can seek higher returns with it in some industry and/or some country that doesn't crap all over investment capital.

UPDATE: US Bancorp announces an @$3 billion buyback.

Good News

The unslutty freeloading, cadging, chiseling, leeching, sponging mooch Sandra Fluke will not be silenced. Brace for more cadging, bumming, mooching, hustling, and hitting up from the decidedly unslutty Ms. Fluke.

Sebelius: Congress Knows Constitutional From Not

Did I say that I was amazed that Kathleen Sebelius hasn't been given the hook as a major liability to the Obama administration? Why yes, I did say that. Anyhew, she's on a roll, giving Debbie Whatshername Schultz a run for her money as the font of talking point idiocy.

Apparently Congress pondered relentlessly over the constitutionality of ObamaCare, or so says Sec. Sebelius. Really? Is that why they had to pass it at midnight after bribing everyone in sight and exploring novel legislative tactics such as "deem and pass"? Really Madam Sebelius? Alcee Hastings doesn't appear to be a paragon of constitutional rectitude in this video...



...and pray tell, how could members of Congress analyze the bill's constitutionality without having read the bill? The laying on of hands and constitutional analysis via osmosis??

Generation L (for Lethargy)?

Uh oh, have the lethargists won? Doubtful, but troubling to even contemplate.

Obama Sends Coded Message

Liberals are always accusing conservatives of "speaking in code". For example, when conservatives say, 'you must show some form of ID to vote' it really means, 'we don't want Hispanics and blacks voting,' and when we say 'let's not spend more money than we take in' it means 'let's dump all the poor people out onto the street to starve and die'. All very curious, but that is not the point of this post, the point is to show that liberals speak in code too. Here is but the latest example. Obviously, Sarah Palin isn't running for any office, but she is a living breathing symbol to liberals that "Republicans are scary." Why that is is another subject altogether (hint: she is a normal, basic, sensible person; she is not an elite who can be trusted to run things, because the elites must run things...), but the important point is that the words "Sarah Palin" and/or her image invokes a Pavlovian reaction running from distaste to disgust among lefties. It is code, their code.

Final irony: apparently the Obama re-election campaign has adopted a putative Republican "war on women" as one of its main tactical themes, and yet they are demonizing a woman in another tactical maneuver. Liberals are nothing if not consistently inconsistent.

UPDATE: On that note of consistently inconsistent, check this out. Laugh first, cry later.

"Prostrate the National Government"

Take a grain of salt with this one, but only a teeny tiny one given what we know about Obama...they, meaning the Obama policy machine, has no plan to prevent financial collapse, but they have a plan for what to do when it happens. Hmmmm.

In any other context this would seem outlandish. There is a solid case to be made that Obama hates America, as most Americans know it, and would like to see it remade. Furthermore, we know that Obama's spending and budget deficits are unprecedented in American history and previously inconceivable (in his first term, Obama will have added @$6.1 trillion to the $10.6 trillion he inherited). Incremental change is nice but radical change in the wake of a crisis is much quicker and more powerful.

This is a plan for tyranny. Alexander Hamilton spelled out the precise recipe centuries ago. I would classify a Greek-style, financial solvency collapse as prostrating the government. I have several neighbors and friends who immigrated from Soviet Russia or other Iron Curtain countries and they routinely point out that we are in the beginning stages of the formation of tyranny here in the US. It comes slow, but when you've seen it before, as these folks have, you see the signs quite clearly.

Oddly, as a student of history, I don't think that an authoritarian government could stand on a national scale here. It could certainly be tried, but the result would likely be a fracturing of the country into different nations. For instance, in the event of a collapse of the federal government and a rising authoritarian regime in Washington D.C., I could see, say, Texas, asserting that it is going to just keep on keeping on all by itself until further notice. Without a functional government and an army to invade, Texas could very much do what they want to do. I'm not sure how a bankrupt federal government could impose its will. And having go it alone, Texas might get a few phone calls, saying, "Hey, can we join you?"

UPDATE: BTW, I'm sure you did the math already, but just in case it slipped your notice...if we re-elect Obama and he continues to spend at the same pace (and why would you presume otherwise), he'll have racked up $12 trillion in new debt over his eight years. I repeat, he will have inherited $10.6 trillion from all of his predecessors since the founding of America and he will have more than doubled it with another $12 trillion. If that comes to pass, it's our own damn fault and we deserve every bit of financial misery and economic ruin that comes our way...every damn bit.

1970s TV Icon Set Out to Pasture

The Love Boat meets its end.

Obama Administration: Gingrich Lying to Say Gas Prices Could Be Back at Levels Last Seen in Obama's First Year in Office

So the White House suggested that Newt Gingrich is lying by claiming to have a plan to get gas back to $2.50/gallon. Forget about the substance of Gingrich's claim for a second, should the White House be allowed to get away with dismissing the claim as a lie? Is $2.50 gas a distant memory, a relic of a world we will never see again? Hardly. Gas was last at $2.50/gallon in July of 2009 (you can download the data here, go to tab "Data 3", cell B986.) So, according to the Obama administration, we cannot return to a situation that prevailed less than three years ago? Why? They should say why because their dismissal doesn't pass the smell test. It all reeks of more arrogance from the administration and more reliance on a complicit media to give Obama a pass to me.

What Sebelius Knows and Doesn't Know

Kathleen Sebelius is certain that reducing pregnancies will cut costs and thereby justify subsidies of birth control, and yet she is completely unsure of the basic estimates of the effect of Obamacare on the federal deficit. What has always amazed me is that Barack Obama does not see this woman as a liability for him. Janet Napolitano too but that's another subject, or maybe it is the same subject...

"I stand by my February 2008 profile of Obama as a sociopath dominated by strong women."

I guess when you've never had executive authority, and thus responsibility for evaluating those working for you, you don't develop an ability to know who is good and who is bad at what they do.

Why Do Democrats Hate Poor People?

Or at least, why do Democrats want to make basic services more expensive for poorer people? I told you that banks are reacting to stupid laws like Dodd-Frank that raise their costs by raising prices, which will hurt lower income people the most. Well, here is the latest

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the bank with the most U.S. branches, ended free checking in six eastern U.S. states as it seeks to recover revenue lost to new financial rules.

New and existing customers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia, Delaware and Pennsylvania must pay a $7 fee for a basic checking account if they receive paper statements and $5 if they select electronic statements, Lisa Westermann, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said in a phone interview. Customers can get the fee waived if they direct deposit more than $500 in their account each month, or if they maintain a $1,500 balance, she said.

U.S. banks are seeking more fee revenue from customers after regulators curbed overdraft fees and as a new consumer protection agency comes online. Wells Fargo and rivals Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. abandoned plans last year to levy debit-card fees after consumers protested.

Everybody and their monkey knew that the new regulations would raise costs, but only lefty Dems thought that somehow that banks wouldn't recoup those costs somehow, that they would bow down and submit to providing coerced charity because our lawmakers have said so.

This Just In: MSM Has Very Hard Job To Do Rejuvenating Obama

More proof that while the economy may be improving on the margin or ever-so-slightly, it still feels crappy, because, well, it is still is pretty crappy for a huge chunk of people. Of course the MSM is going to try to make Obama out to be an economic miracle worker for whatever meager uplift there is between now and November, but the Gallup data shows what thin gruel this is. Good luck with that MSM, especially as you defend charges that you were complicit in hiding who Barack Obama was to the American public in 2008 (thank you Andrew Breitbart). Will this play: "Um yeah, we lied to you in 2008, but trust us, the economy is ROCKING and it is all because of Obama!" ??? Doubtful.

Constrained Vs. Unconstrained

It is simply amazing to me how much history, philosophy, and political science Bill Whittle can cram into 8 minutes. This guy can teach our children in 8 minutes what it would take your average public high school teacher a year to teach, if they wanted to teach this at all, which they probably don't.



UPDATE: I just watched this where Bill treats us to this delicious conclusion "we fall for it every time because we've become an Oprah-ized nation of people that can't think their way out of a paper bag because we feel everything."

Mulally: Worth Every Penny of $58 Million

This is dead on, he's worth every penny. And I called it. In fact you could argue that in our new world of hyper-sensitivity over executive compensation, Mulally got a raw deal.

Anyway, that ailing business entity known as the United States of America could sorely use the talents of Mr. Mulally, which I also noted way back. A smart presidential candidate would get Mulally on board asap. What are you waiting for Governor?

Coulter Nails It...Libs Want an Anti-Romney, Not Us

I haven't read or otherwise tuned-in to Ann Coulter in years, but this caught my eye, and she's exactly right. I've said it here, I am about as much of a "Don't Tread On Me" Tea-Partyin' kinda guy as you'll find, I am married to the reddest red stater from the reddest red state, and Romney is fine by us. Just Fine. It is liberals that want to tell Republicans and anyone who'll listen that they are looking for an anti-Romney. Maybe it is because Romney is more typical of the type of person we have historically elected to the White House than anyone since Bush I, current occupant very much included. Romney is what we've always done, Obama was a gamble, a wing-ding, a flier...which is why it is liberals who want an anti-Romney.

Thou Shalt Not (Even Slightly) Defend Rushbo

If you are at all interested in what the blogosphere has to offer in the discipline of economics then you must certainly be aware of who Steve Landsburg is. He is one of the most prolific and interesting contributors to economic blogging. Well, apparently he's in hot water with his University's President for committing heresy against one of the academy's more banal orthodoxies. This Seligman cat ought to be ashamed of himself on academic freedom grounds, but he also ought to be a tad more practical - Landsburg is an All-Star economist who could teach anywhere and Rochester is a pretty crappy place to live - UofR is lucky to have him. If I were Landsburg, I'd write a blog response to Seligman (in unstintingly collegial academic language of course) to the effect of "lick my tenured a**."

UPDATE: I'll be looking for evidence in further reporting but I get the sense that the embarrassment level is already going up for UofR, and, this is also my speculation, that Landsburg is far and away more clever than Seligman and could win a PR war should he choose to fight one. We'll see.

Food Deserts? Really?

Holy Moley. Government idiocy is plumbing new depths. Say Anything has the story.

Gas Prices Still Climbing

Ouch. Another bad week for gas prices. $0.07 the wrong way nationally and $.12 the wrong way in the Midwest. Of course this is a big drag on the consumer economy, it is "anti-stimulus" in the way that mainstream economists like to think about the economy.

Pigovian or Pavlovian?

Did I call it or what? Bingo!

Everytime the AGW movement takes it on the reputational chin, Mankiw seems to wax ever more gushy about carbon taxes.

THE Great Moral Imperative of Our Time

I think this ranks right up there with the moral imperatives of our time, at least as important as horny law students' birth control.

“We all know that the medical community has recognized the benefits of red wine for the human heart. Resveratrol is found in the tannins apparently. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Therefore I think it is high time that insurance policies cover red wine. Does the Obama administration have any idea what a good bottle of cabernet sauvignon costs? I spend at least $3000 a year on red wine and it’s breaking the bank. So please Kathleen Sebelius, include free red wine in the HHS mandate. Let’s eradicate heart disease once and for all!”

Us middle-aged carnivorous men who are staring down the barrel of potential heart disease are going bankrupt - Cabs, Brunellos, and Barolos aren't getting any cheaper!

How to Deal With Schmucks

The proper reaction to this is to double your contribution to whoever it is that you want to contribute to. Whenever I read of egregious Wal-Mart bashing, I hop in the car, head to WMT and buy shit. When the eco-tyrants' rants about SUVs get to be too much, I hop in my LR3 and go for a gratuitous drive. I have relatives that buy a gun when the gun-grabbers' get too uppity. People have proposed Israel fire back 5-10 Hellfires for every one Katyusha that gets lobbed in from Gaza.

That my friends is the way to deal with these people...INCREASE the behavior that has ignited their self-righteous authoritarian loins.