Top 5 Hiring States in 2013 - All Energy States

Were all energy states, some the new energy states and some the old guard.
1. Texas
2. Louisiana
3. North Dakota
4. Oklahoma
5. Pennsylvania

It's All Going Away...

I wish to end the year with this:

Glenn Reynolds’s forthcoming book The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself vividly details the train wreck that is the institution of higher education in this country. “What can’t go on forever, won’t.” Reynolds makes the economist Herb Stein’s observation a centerpiece of his book.  Repellent pseudo-intellectual horrors like “Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies” cannot go on forever; therefore, they won’t. This ruin of taxpayer money, to say nothing of the intellectual sanity of students and teachers, is too egregious to continue.  It will not continue. “Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies” is just one of many, many signs that the house of intellect in this country has become a sort of Augean Stables, full of malodorous waste and bovine mooing.  It awaits its Hercules to perform a much needed lustration.

If you don't recognize the writing, it's, of course, Roger Kimball.  He speaks whereof he knows, "rancid, misbegotten products of wayward affluence much thought" and the "...truly egregious [that] bubbles up from the dismal pit of pseudo-intellectual academic lucubration" ... "special gem[s] of fatuous, wood-pulp darkening nonsense."

Note that Kimball applies the same Herb Stein logic that I, along with many others, apply to various aspects of wayward, decadent modern America if not the world.  Per Kimball, naturally, “Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies” is of a piece with various forms of stupidity that are destined for the historical scrap heap, like much else.

Enjoy it now folks - particularly if you have gainful employment as an ecofeminist - because, like all other manifestations of stupidity on a grand, institutional scale, it's going away. 

Don't worry, we won't be stuck on stupid for too much longer.  We don't have the time and we don't have the money.  Common sense is coming back, no matter what we do.  It's coming back.  It has to, despite our most fervent wishes.

We won't be stuck on stupid for too much longer.  

It's all going away because we don't have enough money or enough time and I have just barely enough optimism left to be fairly confident that the human race will not jump into the abyss.  It's all going away, just when no one knows, but it is.  The fiscal version of the Big Electron is going to sweep us away.  Cue the George Carlin...oh, and Happy New Year.

Whew! That Was Close.

Because all the Lightworker needs to have his presidency exactly mimic Jimmy Carter's is a hostage crisis.

In A Nutshell

Here is the Lightworking presidency in a nutshell.























I would add: 
- I didn't know there was no such thing as a shovel-ready project
- I didn't know that insurance is complicated to buy

I've long argued that the guy ain't that smart, just a great bullsh*tter.

Wait...Which Party Is A Suicide Cult?

Wait a second.

A bunch of unthinking, low information followers falling under the spell of a charismatic charlatan...to their ultimate destruction?

The GOP?  Really?

I thought the GOP was wracked with infighting?  There is no infighting in a suicide cult, which is why they all kill themselves.

UPDATE:  Whoa Nelly!  "Not a cult" about 200 different ways...

In Technology News

British Petroleum, sorry, BP has discovered oil in the Gulf of Mexico at a depth of 29,221 feet.

Got that?  29,000 feet into the surface of the Earth at a depth of 4,900 feet of water in the middle of the sea.

THAT, dear readers, is cutting edge technology.  Makes 140 characters look kinda stupid, no?

Watch Out Iran!

Meet Obama's new Chief Negotiator for nuclear weapons talks with the Iranians.  You know what they say, "you can't cup some hot cocoa with a clenched fist."

Car Jack City

The recent car-jack slaying of a man at the Short Hills Mall in Short Hills, NJ (boyhood home of a certain blogger) has prompted some news about a carjacking epidemic in Newark.

This is not new.  In fact, it is so not new, they made a movie about it back in 1995.  Thank heavens Cory Booker and all his imaginary friends have done such a good job with Newark.

Polling Shows Obama Where He Ought To Be

In light of the Lightworking Policy Canceller-in-Chief's recent poll numbers, it is worth reprising this bit of analysis from the day after Election Day 2009 (yes, 2009, remember that one?).

...the Obama magic has faded. That's most likely true, but that is not the big story in my opionion. The big story is that anybody thought for a moment that it wouldn't fade. That anybody expected even the most basic level of governance from Obama, let alone monumental and transformative things, is the story of greatest import here. And it is not that the hope, dreams and expectations placed into the Obama vessel were so grand, it is that the vessel that is Obama is so small. I have said it before - in November of '08 I said we bought ourselves a pig in a poke. Later I said that disappointment and pain is what we deserve given that we elected a man of no consequence and no achievement to the highest office in the land. Why we expected a man with no discernable track record or proven record of leadership to lead and to achieve in the name of this massive and complex society is a story of historical proportions. Did we think that plucking just any man off the street - essentially what we did - to wield enormous power was wise? ... 

Why did we think that a man with no knowledge of the private sector would lead a mostly private sector nation out of a severe economic slump? Why did we think that a man who consorted with raving America-haters would inspire a mostly proud and patriotic nation to excellence? Why did we think that a man who views our role in the world as flawed would draw our allies nearer to us? Why did we think these things?

...

The culmination of our wallowing in delusion was the building up of a cipher on a cloud of dreamy unreality into some messianic figure. That edifice is now crumbling.

...
the whole phony edifice of delusion we have constructed is starting to crack. It is not all Obama's fault, it is not even mostly his fault; this has been building for years, and he is merely the embodiment of it all.

 The question for the ages, for the historians, is not why Obama failed, but why we expected anything other than failure.

Who's Crazy Now?

After Newtown, when NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre suggested that gun-free zones were the problem and that we ought to protect our children the same way we protect our airports, stadiums, etc., he was roundly denounced as a crazy man along with receiving the full onslaught of typical leftist response:  ShutUpRacistWhiteGuyAndShutUp.

Scoring a trifecta of #NarrativeFails, the Arapahoe (CO), High School shooter was confronted by an armed security officer and gave up the quest and the ghost.

In Colorado, high school student Karl Pierson was suspended for threatening to murder his debate coach. It turns out they should have arrested him, not just suspended him. Pierson wasn’t kidding. He showed up at Arapahoe High School with a shotgun, looking for the coach, and shot a fellow student, critically wounding her. The incident didn’t turn into mass murder, even though Pierson was armed with a shotgun, a machete and three Molotov cocktails, apparently because there was an armed deputy sheriff stationed at the high school. When the first shotgun blast went off, the deputy sheriff raced to the scene and, reportedly, “the heavily-armed shooter realized he was about to be confronted by an armed officer, and he took his own life.”

Who's crazy now?

Ugh. Simply Ugh.

Can this whole episode get any more embarrassing?   Of course it can.  Apparently this picture comes from the American Embassy in London.  Ugh.

Two Commas, a Wedding, and a Funeral

So, Castro and Obama meet at the funeral of a famous dildo collector and decide to get married. 

Epic Frustrated Fan Rant

This is awesome. This could be straight out of an Eddie Murphy routine...



I could pull one of these about the Giants...minus the "dem niggas" stuff...

Despite Awesome Obama Economy, We Still Need Unemployment Benefits...?

Extended unemployment benefits are a crisis policy response to extraordinary economic weakness (otherwise it's just the dole).  The Obama administration is quick to tout it's 7% unemployment rate, which wouldn't justify extraordinary unemployment benefits.  Either the economy is doing as swell as they say or it isn't, right?  Still, the administration and the media are lamenting the lack of unemployment benefits in the Ryan-Murray budget deal. 

They can't have it both ways, are we doing well or aren't we?

Mary Barra

I am happy that GM chose Mary Barra as CEO and I hope she does well.  Still I feel obliged to cold shower the media frenzy to anoint her the next great mile stone in feminism making headway into the business world. 

First, it is hardly indicative of women's progress to tick off CEO jobs going to women.  There are precious few CEO jobs out there.  If we measured women's progress by this alone, we could severely miss the mark in terms of assessing the conditions on the ground for most women, which is what, I believe, the best intentions of the women's right movement is all about, no?

Secondly, I would caution people to celebrate the female CEO as an icon because, frankly, too many have sucked been disappointments.  Andrea Jung.  Indra Nooyi,  Carly Fiorina,  Irene Rosenfeld, Brenda Barnes.  That is not to say that there aren't successful, world-class female CEOs out there.  It is just to say, wait for performance.  It is no virtue to have a crappy female CEO over a crappy male CEO.  Place too much meaning into these appointments are you are sure to be disappointed.  The true signs of progress are that we don't have to write effusive articles when women get CEO jobs, that we don't have to refrain from writing about their failures when they fail.

Ukrainians Hang Tough, Go For Round 2

Good for the Ukrainian protestors.  They are regrouping and reforming after the riot police swept through last night.

They will need perseverance and courage.  It will be a long fight.  Vladimir Putin is one willful motherf**ker and Ukraine is the linchpin of his new Russian Empire wet dreams.

One Small Mile Post on the Way to National Bankruptcy

Today's Ryan-Murray budget "compromise" is a fitting occasion to state for the record, again, that federal spending WILL NOT be gotten under control under the auspices of politicians in Washington DC.  We could send double the amount of "Tea Party" conservatives to Congress, to the unending horror of coastal media elites and it wouldn't make a difference - the federal budget is a runaway beast that can't be tamed until it eats itself.

"Bankruptcy, not politics, is the final arbiter: Individuals, firms, and nations either buy particular bonds or they don’t. And a nation like Greece, in turn, either pays what it has borrowed or it doesn’t. All the op-eds in the New York Times cannot change that fact."

UPDATE:  David Stockman minces no words:  Disaster.  Betrayal. Joke.

Watch the video, Stockman goes off.  OFF!

Puhleeeeze

How dumb does John Kerry think we are?  This President's every move is choreographed down to the slightest detail, but nobody gets within handshake distance to ANY US President without us knowing exactly who they are.

Obama Is Embarrassing...Again (With Helle Thorning-Schmidt)

So, the Policy-Canceller-in-Chief's sophomoric behavior at Mandela's funeral with Helle Thorning-Schmidt allows us to be reminded of this piece of comedy gold and what an embarrassing,  bullshitting horse's ass our President is.

Tears of Joy As Others Pick Up Her Bills

Now that a suitable time has elapsed that the media can point to in order to prove their credibility, it is time to get back on the Obamacare propaganda wagon and roll.  CNBC is wasting no time.  It's tears of joy for Obamacare enrollees.  Read down for this tidbit:

It took two months, weekly visits to the jammed-up federal website and a half-dozen phone calls, but JoAnn Smith finally got health insurance Monday. It'll only cost her $3.19 a month to cover herself and her husband.

$3.19 a month is $38.28 a year.  For two 60 year olds.  $38 is essentially zero in the context of the provision of medical services for two 60 year olds. 

JoAnn Smith is crying tears of joy because other people are paying her bills.  Economically speaking this is no different than if won the lottery, was given a charitable donation, or stole a bunch of money.  Her bills are paid and she didn't have to work extra or cut something else to do it.  There was no magic, no efficiencies, no optimizing genius breakthrough that allowed Mrs. Smith to enjoy medical insurance for $38.  The only thing that allows it is the government forcing someone else to pay more so Mrs. Smith can pay less.

I'd be happy if someone else paid my bills too.  Alas, for all of Mrs. Smith's tears of joy, there are others' tears of pain or clenched jaws of anger over being forced out of acceptable insurance plans into more expensive government mandated plans.

Latest Athlete to Sign In a Low Tax State: Robbie Cano

Once again, low-tax states help their pro teams score marquis players.

The Seattle Mariners’ contract with Robinson Cano is worth about $42 million more in after-tax pay than the New York Yankees’ best offer to the All-Star second baseman, according to Robert Raiola, a certified public accountant who specializes in sports and entertainment. 

The calculation, Raiola said in a telephone interview, is based on the assumption that Cano will become a resident of Washington, which has no state income tax. Cano, in an April New York Daily News article said he lived in New Jersey, where the top tax is 8.97 percent. 

No Cheating Folks!

Mickey Kaus does the math and determines that ObamaCare will encourage - ahem - understatement of income.

The Obamacare cheating bonus–$5,328, in the above example–dwarfs either of those incentives, and almost doubles the payoff for understating your income. Save on income taxes and FICA and get near-free health insurance too!

Of course, it’s mainly the self-employed who are able to fudge their incomes–no annoying w-2 forms, lots of loosely characterizable deductions. Don’t expect to see a lot of freelancers with $46,000 incomes next year.

Loosely characterizable deductions?  What are those?

Checking In: Obama Melts Down, Stocks Melt Up

Time for a quick look into the stock market again in light of what is happening politically.  I have consistently and lengthily laid out the theory and evidence that the stock market trends higher as Obama trends lower in popularity. 

The stock market, albeit haltingly, is nonetheless melting upward, up over 7% since Oct. 1.

In the meantime, about the three worst developments that could befall Obama politically are coming to pass.  They are 1) his signature legislation is crash and burning, 2) the electorate's perception of him as likeable and trustworthy is eroding, and 3) disapproval among his core support base - minorities, youth, women - is rising rapidly.

Coincidence?  I think not!

Explaining Features and Bugs to Walter Russell Mead

Each day (and I read him each day), I get slightly more confused by Walter Russell Mead.  Here is one of the most perspicacious critics of Obama and an unrelenting point-outer that the "Blue Model" is careening rapidly towards a fiery crash.  And the guy is a lifelong Democrat and Obama voter.  The guy can analyze the tar out of current events/policy and do so with an engaging prose style, but seems to be oblivious to the hierarchy of big ideas/truths.

Once again, a curious look at his offerings.  This on income inequality.

Actually, there’s plenty of evidence that unwed childbearing, father absence and fraying kinship and community networks exacerbate the problems of low-income people and make it incredibly hard for them to gain a foothold in the middle class. These are thorny problems that aren’t easily solved by the kinds of government measures Obama champions. So his speech says very little about the ways that strong marriages, family stability, or a robust role for churches in helping struggling Americans improve their lives can all improve economic mobility in this country. These social and cultural factors are arguably root causes of inequality, and it’s a pretty conspicuous omission to ignore that in a presidential speech on the subject.

How can a guy this educated and ostensibly clear thinking not know that socialists of all stripes (whether they be modern, light-touch socialists going by the name "progressives" or unapologetic Marxists) want three core things.  They are:
1)  The elimination of private wealth
2)  The banishment of religion
3)  The destruction of the nuclear family

In one way or another and to varying degrees, these are what the broad spectrum of the collectivist left ultimately wants.  Full stop.  Always has been, always will be, despite the constantly shifting and evolving branding of such.

So I ask.  Why would Obama, who is the standard bearer of the collectivist left in America, decry familial instability and waning religiosity for its ill effects?  Of course, he wouldn't, these are the features, not bugs, to all that Obama represents.  So, next question is why would any educated person expect him to?  Hmm, WRM?

(H/T Instapundit)

Income Inequality...Again...Sigh

I told you in 2011 exactly how the Obamacrats were creating a more unequal society economically speaking.  It might have been by design and through malice or it might have been through well-intentioned ignorance.  I doubt we will ever know, but the recipe was easy to read, the outcome was never in doubt.

Now that Obama is decrying income inequality yet again, people are starting to put the blame where it ought to be.

Income inequality is a subject that is discussed without a shred of nuance and sophistication these days.  It is used to lend a nice-sounding quasi-philosophical veneer to the same old wealth redistribution policies of the left.  But just a quick few takeaways on income inequality that I have discussed at length here before...

- "Income Inequality" isn't good, but it is better than "poverty."  Relatively speaking we don't have poverty in this country to any meaningful extent.  So, income inequality is a high class problem.

- "Income inequality" is a political problem, not an economic one.  A thriving economy tends to reduce income inequality, but reducing income inequality does not spur the economy.  Leftward politicians tell us that it is an economic problem, but they tell us alot of asinine stuff.

- While "income inequality" is a political problem, it is not a political mandate.  "All men are created equal" does not mean that 'all men must earn the same.'  Equality of economic outcomes is not a founding principle of our republic.  We did not fight a civil war over salary gaps, and we have not asserted ourselves on the world stage over the Gini Coefficient.  American values do not dictate income leveling, they dictate opportunity leveling and liberty extension and preservation.

UPDATE:  Here is a riff on point number one above (and here was my previous take).  In America, most of our poor peoples' problems are that they are too fat and watch too much TV.  These are first world problems.

Sure Obama Is Lying, But Are Americans Even Listening to the Lies?

The guys at Powerline have been doing non-stop yeoman's work exposing the lies of ObamaCare, from its foundational lies to its ongoing lies.  In this post, John takes on the question of whether people believe Obama any more.

Obama surely knows that his lies have been exposed, and that Obamacare’s unpopularity is in part the result of that exposure. There is something downright weird about his giving a speech–one in which he talked about how terrible it is when people lose their health insurance–without even mentioning the elephant in the room. He is like a trial lawyer whose client is damned by one horrible fact which has been emphasized repeatedly by the opposing party, and who delivers a closing argument in which he fails to mention the key evidence in the case. You just can’t do that. In some fashion, you have to deal with it. Today, Obama didn’t even try.

The question of whether people believe him any more presupposes that people are even listening.  Maybe they are, but I have my doubts.  I have long posited that a key piece of evidence that the Lightworker is not nearly as smart as all the fawners claim (or dream) he is, is his lack of understanding that the more you talk, the less weight people give your words.

This is the most overexposed Presidency in the history of the nation.  For five long years, this man has been on our TV sets, in our papers, on the web, yammering on about anything and everything (Cambridge, MA cops, the Redskins, electric cars, yadayada).  Is anybody listening any more?

Just when Obama needs the attention of the American people the most (to at least be listening as he lies his balls off), chances are they are tuned out after five years of him droning on.  He should have saved up some political capital, some vaunted standing, for just this moment, but he has squandered it in an epic run of constant verbosity.  Not too smart.

UPDATE:  Others are catching on.

WHYouth: Creepy...Mockery: Awesome

Obama: Lick My 39% Approved Ass

I predicted Obama would be in the 30s in approval.  I also predicted that it would occur before the 2012 election and that he wouldn't be re-elected.  I got that wrong, but I got the 30s call right, clearly.

It should be pretty obvious why they delayed the major pieces of Obamacare to rollout after the election - they knew it was going to be a shit show and they knew they were lying about it.

But now that the Lightworker is safely re-elected, a 3 handle is less of a worry.  They can enforce or not enforce laws as they please.  It's not legal, but shut up and f**k off.

Christie Pushing Astorino to Challenge Cuomo?

Hey, did I say that Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino is a mini-Chris Christie?  Um, yes I did.

And did I say that Astorino has a truly good shot at returning the Governor's mansion in Albany to Republican hands?  Um, yes I did.

Now, Fred Dicker at the NY Post is reporting that Christie is urging Astorino to take on Cuomo and promising to back him.

You heard it here first folks.

France Needs Men With Guns to Protect Its Ships

France will allow men with guns to protect its shipping fleet.  No ship with an armed security team has been hijacked.  A French ship was recently hijacked and France seems to want to protect its own tankers in order to have a secure oil supply.  In other words, real practical considerations force them to drop the moral preening over the deployment/use of guns.  Of course, euphemisms abound, they can't actually bring themselves to say "guns".

"We will allow recourse to private teams capable of complementing the navy's missions," Ayrault said in an interview with Ouest France regional newspaper. "There has been a strong appeal from shipowners and we have heard it."

The NFL Grows Lamer By the Day

Hard to argue with the Good Professor - the NFL has become a bunch of lefty wusses.  Why?  Roger Goodell (my neighbor btw) is the son a Republican Senator...

I guess it has something to do with morphing into a media/entertainment complex rather than just being a game that TV people would like to offer to their audiences.  Become an entertainer, think like an entertainer, adopt the goofy politics of the entertainment industry.

Juan Williams Has a Narrow View of Women

Juan Williams hasn't been reading his exit polls and election results.  He seems to think that the Democratic party is the party of the modern American woman.

I guess.  If the modern American woman is single and lives in a blue state.

As numerous recent elections have shown, i.e. the 2012 presidential election, married women vote Republican in greater numbers.  Women in red states vote Republican in greater numbers.  But, as we all know, these type of women are really women - they're phony, fake, dismissable women.  Single women in reliable Democratic states, like Sandra Fluke, who want other people to pay for her birth control, those are real women.  And yes, the Democrats are the party of those women.

But the propaganda rolls on.  Women will continue to be told that free shit and being defined by their lady parts are all that matters and that Democrats are the folks to administer the free shit and lady part state apparatus, so they can swim in birth control pills and abortion clinics until all their hopes and dreams of a gajillion sexual partners and ten abortions and a promising career in counseling other women about birth control and abortions is a beauteous reality.

MetroNorth Dysfunction Kills People...Again

Well, the biggest news on the national scene as of right now is in my backyard.

As this article points out, MetroNorth is just north of a clusterfuck.  MetroNorth is part of my life five days a week.  None of this surprises me.  MetroNorth is a creature of the typically corrupt, union-dominated, patronage-seeking dysfunction that pervades "government services" in the NYC metro region and New York state as a whole.

The unions have bled dry the money available for maintenance of infrastructure, they have taken all accountability out of the staffing of this critical service, and they abuse the railroad as a patronage tool.  There are thousands of do-nothing jobs on MetroNorth and you couldn't get fired if you tried.  That's why day to day the service suck, the costs keep rising, and safety has deteriorated to the point that, too regularly, the piper has to be paid in lives.

Every morning I get off the train and am greeted by the site of numerous loafing union members in their little neon orange vests standing around doing nothing drinking coffee.  I'd say inefficiency is a fair trade if the trains managed to stay on the tracks and people didn't die, but, alas, they don't.

Will Lefties Ever Free Me from Buycotts?

Jeez, these lefty jerks are making it hard for me to keep track of where to spend my dollars.  I'm fresh off spending a gratuitous $100 at Hobby Lobby, now it looks like I'll be having lunch at Wendy's on Thursday.

I might as well just roll it all up into one big Annoy a Lefty Day and eat at Chik-fil-A for all three meals, drop $$ Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby and Whole Foods, buy a gun and do it all traveling around in my gas-guzzling SUV with my three kids (OMG Breeders!).

Come to think of it, that sounds like a pretty awesome day!

Healthcare.eatme

BTW, just FYI...back after the long drive from North Cackalacky where the Baseball Clan spent a nice Thanksgiving holiday with the extended family.

The most humorous moments of the holiday not emanating from the mouth of someone under the age of 12 was when one of the many adults mockingly broached the subject of healthcare.  Granted this was not a sympathic audience, but usually we get a robust political discussion going.  This year, it was "Fuck Obama and pass the stuffing."

After five years, everyone is too exhausted to bitch about what an ass our President is.

Financial Repression Is Repressing Financially

I told you that greedy and unrestrained governments have been stealing from people who followed the most elementary principles of saving and investing.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are in this pickle noted above because of decades of conventional wisdom that the retirement of the Baby Boomers would precipitate a massive secular shift from stocks to bonds, that all these wealthy, healthy, active children of the 1950s would sock their wealth into fixed income so they could live in retirement bliss with all the Viagara, Prilosec, sushi dinners and Third World travel they could handle, all funded by ample, reliable streams of regular income.  This was conventional wisdom for decades - boomers will drive down stocks in favor of bonds.  And it has been happening - the mutual fund flows tell the story - but something bad happened on the way to Boomer Retirement Bliss.  They don't have enough bonds paying them enough interest to afford the retirements they expected.  The generation just before them - the WW2 generation - sucked up the last of the sweet-paying bonds, they're keeping them and nothing like them will be issued again in time for the Boomers.  In other words, the Boomers are stuck.

Now, this is starting to become better understood.

Frankly, I have some sympathy for actual individuals but not for the Baby Boomers in general.  They fucked up the country.  More on that later, after I read P.J. O'Rourke's piece in the weekend WSJ...