Whew...The NY Times Saves Us Debilitating Mental Anguish

John at Powerline points out the inanity of the thought-process, if it can be called that, at the New York Crimes that is a classic of the genre of the subtle bias that infects our mainstream media institutions.  John has a good, common-sense explanation for what the Crimes is trying to achieve with its word-play, but perhaps he is not hip to the "trigger-warning" necessitating degrees of separation racial content of every word in the English language. 

Let me explain.  "Burly" is, of course, a homonym for burley, which is a type of tobacco, a very small amount of which is grown in Missouri.  Tobacco, of course, was a major crop of the ante-bellum south, which, of course, was harvested in the fields by Negro slaves, and which was an economic engine that sustained the institution of slavery for far too long in our young country's history.  Thus, even hearing the word burly, as a homonym for burley (even though about 3% of the population knows it is a type of tobacco), can bring about deep-seated feelings of anguish, bordering on physical pain, over the horror of American slavery that not a single living American has experienced.  Thus the Crimes's exquisite sensitivity over the use of the word "burly" in the case of Michael Brown, given that there is a chance, however remote, that Michael Brown's ancestors were once slaves picking burley tobacco in the fields for the economic benefit of white slave owners 175 years ago.

Which makes me wonder, should I have prefaced this post with a trigger warning given that I used the word "homonym" twice?

Shocker: LA Schools' iPad Boondoggle Is a Bust

This is what happens when an industry desperately resists doing the basics right.  This kind of crap would be easier to swallow, if the schools were actually doing well at their core function...you know, teaching.

Diversity Obsessives Learn What "Support Function" Means

'Gosh darn it, why aren't there more women CEOs given how many women are high up on the corporate ladder?', asks exquisitely diversityphilic Bloomberg News.

Yet for all the gains made by women in the highest levels of U.S. companies, most are still in the wrong jobs if they want to follow Barra’s career path. ...

That’s because ... 55 percent of them are finance chiefs, top lawyers or heads of human resources

Wait what?  You mean if you want to run the widget-making company, you might oughta have gotten experience in the making of widgets rather than resourcing the widget factory with humans??

Nah, that can't be it, must be #WarOnWomen that shunts otherwise deserving females into these dead-end $400,000/yr.  SVP of Human Resources or General Counsel jobs.

European Austerity Is (Still) Bullshit

I have said it for a long time - European "austerity" is a farce. 

Finally, it is getting some (and I stress only some) MSM exposure, courtesy of Bloomberg News.

But the Keynesians are out in full force attempting to salvage the reputation of their bankrupt economic ideology - see here and here.

We Suck

Yes, Yes, Yes, A Thousand Times, Yes...

All it would take is one or two Daisy Cutters to tame ISIS significantly...

UPDATE:  Ugh.  Weak Horse (wearing a suit, or worse a DOJ golf shirt).

Rifle-Pointing Cop: "I Will Fucking Kill You"

While the ACLU isn't tops on my list of organizations, they did the country a major service by getting this dickhead cop suspended.  Sadly, he will keep his job, eventually get promoted and retire to a very cushy life way ahead of when you and I get to retire...all paid for by you and I.

The only argument that even comes close to mitigating legitimate concern and fear over police militarization is that of professionalism - to wit, you should not be concerned because law enforcement marries their military-grade capabilities with scrupulous professionalism.  Watch this video and tell me if you buy that argument.

Told Ya' So

I have been saying for 15 years now that tattoo removal was going to boom, as people grow up and/or realize that tattoos are as transgressive/counter-culture these days as, say, golf or the Ivy League or being Republican.  Alas, I never figured out how to invest in it.

How Many Lefty Conceits Exploded By This News?

So, we have, potentially, a British jihadi, who was formerly a prisoner at Gitmo, beheading an American journalist as part if ISIS's retaliation against the US for impeding the expansion of the caliphate into Kurdish Iraq.

How many leftist conceits does this fact detonate at once.  I count at least five.  You?

George Soros Rick Perry Connection

Bryan Preston has the story.

Media Head-Scratching: Why Are There So Many Fergusons in America?

Let me start this post off by saying that, despite my criticisms of the folks of Ferguson, MO, I am firmly in sympathy with them over the militarized takeover of their community.  As a conservo-libertarian Randpublican, I am deeply suspicious of the militarization of local police forces and federal agencies that has been gathering apace over several years.  Seeing this tyrannical apparatus in action should give Americans pause.  First, we saw it shut down the city of Boston and surrounding areas in the pursuit of the Tsarnaev goofballs, and now we see it taking over Ferguson (the looting didn't help, but...).

Now on to my point.  This is typical of the media's teeth gnashing over the segregation that places like Ferguson represent and bring so uncomfortably to the fore again.

St. Louis is a region of division: The depopulated, deindustrialized city (mostly African American) is legally divided from the far more prosperous (mostly white) county, with the city ardently seeking a reunion that the county vehemently spurns. North St. Louis city (largely African American) is estranged from south St. Louis city (mostly white) in a city that is now 48% African American. The maze of suburbs that make up north St. Louis county, where Ferguson is, is mostly African American and estranged from the maze of suburbs that make up south and west St. Louis counties, which are mostly white.

'Why Oh Why?', seemingly is the media's lament over this overt racial balkanization.  The answer, of course, is quite simple albeit quite uncomfortable.    Blacks and whites want different things from government (of course this is generalizing, but generalizing fits the reality), and each tend to get what they want.  The result is racial balkanization because you can't have these things exist in the same locales.  Whites repeatedly vote for business-friendly/law and order politicians and blacks repeatedly vote for the regulatory state and redistributionist economics (they do this in concert with a coalition of white liberals).  The heavy hand of government is what blacks have said over and over is what they want.  For good or ill, whites have, by and large, said 'you may have it' and left places like Detroit, Cleveland, Newark, and ... north St. Louis to their own devices.  The predictable results have been the markers of racial division - a dividing line like 8 Mile, the suburban office parks west of Newark, and the difference between Ferguson and, say, Clayton, MO. 

This is the unfriendly truth and, of course, lefties will see this dripping with racism, but it has nothing to do with race, per se, but rather politics.  The politics that have guided places like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Newark (soon we will add LA, Chicago and Philly to this list) simply do not work, and people, who turn out to be mostly white, don't stick around to see it play out.

I lament this situation, but I don't pretend - like the media does - that the answer is painfully elusive.  It is painfully obvious.

UPDATE:  Kevin Williamson says much the same thing here, but, obviously, it's longer and more nuanced.  For example, there is this nuanced truth...

This is sometimes known as “white flight,” but that is a misnomer: In Detroit, the white middle class got out as quickly as it could — and the black middle class was hot on its heels. Upwardly mobile people and those who expect to be — i.e., those with an investment in the future — care a great deal about schools, economic opportunity, and safety. And they know where the city limits are.

 Indeed, white flight was hardly confined to whites.

It's Enough to Make A Green Feel Blue...

Hey Greens,
Just so you know, the world is awash in oil and it's mostly America's fault. 

What’s changed is the shale fracking boom. The U.S. is pumping the most oil in 27 years, adding more than 3 million barrels of daily supply since 2008. The International Energy Agency said yesterday that a supply glut is shielding the market from disruptions.

Like I always said, this golden age of hydrocarbons under Obama is AWESOME!  All Hail the LightOilworker!

Oh, and Dems are running scared and signing on to our glorious hydrocarbon future (at least for now).

Hmmm, Where Have I Heard This Before?

Bessemer Trust, the gold standard in asset management for the uber-wealthy, is positioning its clients for "geopolitical stress"  (aka, war) and inflation.

From her corner office in New York’s Rockefeller Center, the chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust Co. is putting $55.7 billion in client assets under geopolitical stress.

...

This year Patterson trimmed a portion of the investments to small-and-mid-cap stocks while adding to large-cap equities and commodities such as oil and agriculture because she thinks U.S. inflation is showing signs that it will rise over the next several years.

Oh, and she also recommends energy stocks.

Gee, where have I heard that before...?

Again, Liberal Pundit Starts From Patently Silly Premise

A few days ago I noted the fundamental flaw in the typical analyses advanced by the liberal commentariat - the erroneous premise from which any analysis is bound to be wrong and often looks silly.

Today brings another classic of the genre.  William Galston, the current occupant of the WSJ's token liberal Wednesday column, writes this of Hillary Rodham Clinton, apparently without irony.

The interview revealed a public servant instructed but not chastened by experience, with a clear view of America's role in the world and of the means needed to play that role successfully. If she entered the race and won, she would be better prepared to deal with foreign policy and national defense than any president since...

The fact that any non-lobotomized American, let alone a savvy pundit the likes of which Galston purports to be, could dub HRC a public servant immersed in a learning process for the eventual betterment of the nation should we be so fortunate, is astonishing. 

I stopped reading the column after that opener as all that was to follow was bound to be wildly erroneous and embarrassing.  (OK, I actually did read the whole thing, but I shouldn't have.)

#Huh What Girls?

Hey, just a reminder that I said that short of the use of a Navy SEAL team, those Nigerian girls abducted by Boko Haram ain't coming back.  Guess what, they ain't back.

The Clippers and Ferguson, MO

In the wake of the Donald Sterling brouhaha, I said that blacks need to do better.  It was not encouraging that a very silly scandal revealed a surfeit of poor reaction that redounded no one's credit.

Now, we have Ferguson, MO, and although we talking about real tragedy here, a true grievance, I am sad to say that the reaction is similarly poor and discouraging.  The goal here ought to be justice within the system, bolstered accountability to the community, and a reaffirmation of the ideals that this incident reveals we fell short of. 

Instead we are getting the mad dash for free stuff.  The anger is justified, but channeling it into looting and the temporary salve of destruction reflects poorly on the black community.  Think of the message blacks are sending, "don't kill us or we'll burn down your convenience store."  Is that how cheaply they account for the life of one of their own?  Perhaps they should be demanding that police not kill them because each life has dignity, because the police work for them to ensure their safety.  Perhaps they should be demanding that we account for our role in a system that falls short in this regard.  They should be demanding that we do some soul searching, make us look into why we fell short.  Instead, it's a mad dash for a looted stash of goodies.

Joseph Epstein has a similar take today in the WSJ, lamenting the lack of real leadership.

More here.

Israelis Prove Conventional Wisdom (and Obama) Wrong

Paul over at Powerline overlays an analysis of reality onto the template that is conventional wisdom and finds...wait for it...the CW to be almost perfectly wrong.  The CW, as frequently expressed by guess who, maintained  that if Israel didn't abandon its putative hard line on the Palestinian issue it would be increasingly isolated diplomatically.  Turns out that while Israel pounds Hamas into dust, it has an abundance of diplomatic - sotto voce to be sure - support, and unlikely support to boot.

But I would argue that the new alignment cuts in the opposite direction. It shows how marginal the Palestinian question is to Middle East power politics, and thus militates against Israel taking the risks (which, after the latest rocket attacks, are even more manifest) associated with ceding territory to Palestinians.

...

But this was not the case. As noted, Egypt, the Saudis, and even the PA refused to side or even sympathize with Hamas. If anything, they were with Israel, objectively speaking.

The Israelis, it would seem, are thinking outside of the box in how to win friends and influence people.

The Dam (Pipes actually) Is Bursting On Public Sector Unions

Public-sector unionism destroyed Detroit.  Is Los Angeles next?  LA needs $15 billion to upgrade its aging infrastructure and the city is broke already, the unions having siphoned off all the resources that the city ever had.

W.R. Mead Still Thinks Obama Is a Serious Guy, Despite All Evidence to the Contrary

Once again it is time to point out that world affairs scholar Walter Russell Mead can write something like this...

The fact that President Obama thought that the day of an Iraqi coup was a good time to hang on the Vineyard and get on the links is bad news. Either the President blew off warnings from his advisors, or the intel community got blindsided again. Both possibilities reflect badly on the management of the nation’s affairs.

The unraveling of Iraq under the grimmest of circumstances is a major policy challenge for this president and for the United States as a whole. There’s nothing wrong with a president wanting some down time with the kids, but President Obama needs to be and be seen to be taking control of events. Going on vacation as the tanks roll in Baghdad and as Americans fly back into combat over Iraq is not where a leader needs to be.

As I've said many times before, Mead is a super-smart guy, a great writer, and his blog is a must read; but, there is at the heart of most everything he writes about the Lightworker a serious flaw - he thinks Obama is a serious guy attempting to undertake serious work.  He's not.  Which is why WRM has been doing a lot of head-scratching and writing a lot of WTF stories in re the Obama foreign policy.

Teacher Union Head Goon Spills Bile Over Common Core

This is infuriating.  Being from these here parts where (NYC) we know all about Mr. Mulgrew.  He's an out-and-out thug.  But let's revert to some first principles to put the debate in its proper perspective.

Teachers (and all the associated bureaucrats) WORK FOR US (parents).  We (parents) employ you.  Through the agency of municipal government, we hire you to do a job.  The agency arrangement makes it difficult and inefficient to make changes, but if we want changes, changes we will make.  It is not yours to tell us what and how to teach our children.  We may ask your opinion, but it is OUR job to see that our children are taught what and how we want them to be taught.  If you don't like that job or our demands, you should enter another line of work.

Like many realms of society today (surveillance for example), people like Mulgrew think we are here to serve him, to answer to him.  He has it backward.  They work for us.  There may be a debate, but when the boss says, do this, you do it as a condition of employment.  Such shrillness tells you what they think of the people who pay their salaries.

And, it also tells you all you need to know about Common Core that the union goon have to threaten violence and get all thuggish to protect it.  Clearly it is a boondoggle for the rank and file (less work) or it fits with their ideological goals (anti-capitalist, anti-American).

The JV has Gone All-State (or All-Caliphate)

The Powerline guys remind us of yet another one of those classic snottily arrogant assertions that, of course, turned out to be entirely wrong that the Lightworker is so well known for.  Remember the dismissal of radical Islamists as the "JV" (for junior varsity)?  Yeah, well the JV is overrunning western Iraq, eastern Syria, parts of Lebanon and beheading, killing, and destroying along the way.  Merely the latest atrocity is the impending genocide of the Yazidis. 

Not bad for the JV squad.

What a dickhead our President is.

Patience Yazidis, Jen Psaki Will Soon Come Up With Clever #Hashtag?

First thought:  Sorry you poor bastards, our core interests here in the USA are 1) subsidized birth-control pills, 2) illegal immigrant relocation services, 3) union pensions and 4) inoperable health-care websites.

Second thought: Do you know what I'll bet these Yazidis wish they had (before they wished they had food and water)?  Guns.

Wait, No Way Did Russia Penetrate Our Airspace...

First there was Chuck Hagel's fuscia golf shirt in the Situation Room, now this...

I said, "Trifecta of Fools" about Kerry, Hagel and Lew.

When can we take back our country back from these dumb-ass nitwits???  OMG.  OMFG!!!!!!

Government Agency Abdicates Duty to Stand With Thuggish Union Goons

Wow.  How's this for a story.

USDA is refusing to conduct grain inspections at a major export facility, effectively shutting down most exports.

The USDA is refusing to send its own grain inspectors into a major grain terminal in Vancouver, Wash., further hindering grain movement during harvest season.

Last month, state grain inspectors from the Washington State Department of Agriculture stopped entering the United Grain facility, fearing the longshoremen who are picketing at the site.

They had previously been escorted into the facility by state troopers, but Washington Gov. Jay Inslee withdrew that protection in early July.

Grain exports must be inspected according to federal law, so the decision effectively shut down shipments from that terminal.

Really?  Grain exports help our economy and feed the world's poor.  Why would any government agency let intimidation tactics hinder an activity that helps our economy and feeds the world's poor?

Fearing for their safety?  Isn't government's basic job... public safety?  Hmmmm.  I think somebody is carrying water for aggrieved union goons.

Not good.  I'd - I don't know - punch back twice as hard.  If I were the company, I'd offer to hire former Israeli commandos to escort inspectors in.

New York Snoozed, Thus It Losed

Pennsylvania - and largely rural and poor parts of the state that desperately needed it - has boomed economically due to the unbelievable growth of natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale formation.  Mark Perry has the latest.

Of course, not only has New York missed out on similar economic benefits, as I have pointed out, the longer New York waits, the less economic benefit they will ever get out of this bonanza.  If they ever frack in New York state, it'll be done by Pennsylvania-based crews, out of offices, depots and equipment pools all in PA.  Pennsylvania, by saying yes early, won the land-grab to be the base for the infrastructure, supplies and workforce needed to support a regional drilling industry.

ObamaCare Premiums Rising Of Course

So I am already on record in proving how ObamaCare premiums are set to skyrocket because...well...it was only ever going to be this way (because it is government).  Now, other state's premium increases are coming in and it looks to be similar throughout the country.  The slow meltdown continues.