JIM TREACHER: Caption This.
Archive for 2012
May 14, 2012
FROM BILL WHITTLE: Firewall: How Did America Become A “Beta Nation?” Entirely by design.
RACE, SEX, AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS in Britain.
THE WASHINGTON-HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION STRIKES AGAIN: Former Obama Speechwriter to Pen White House Sitcom.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN WE’D SEE LAW-FLOUTING COUNTERTERROR OPERATIONS AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “President Obama violated the law by failing to brief Congress on the counterterrorism operation that thwarted an attempted underwear bombing two weeks ago, according to the House Intelligence Committee chairman.”
POLITICO: Obama’s Wall Street Problem. “The giant $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase highlights a central problem in President Barack Obama’s case for a second term: Four years after the financial crisis nearly brought the nation to its knees, very little appears to have changed. . . . And now one of the largest banks in the United States, headed by a Democrat and operating with government guarantees, has turned in the kind of headline-grabbing, casino-style style loss that drives voters crazy and that Obama’s financial reform bill was supposed to stop.” Unexpectedly.
Plus this: “The guy in the street in 2008 and 2009 was worried about his or her deposits, and now it’s clear they should still be worried.”
MICHAEL BARONE: Three Different Ways To Look At The 2012 Campaign.
FAST AND FURIOUS UPDATE: Darrell Issa Continues To Seek Contempt Resolution Against Eric Holder.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ithaca College Drops SAT/ACT Requirement. This will make it easier to hide a decline in the quality of admitted students, and make affirmative action less transparent. Win-win!
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER: John Tamny: For De-Friending The U.S., Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Is An American Hero.
Saverin’s essential maneuver will at first glance hopefully get Americans thinking once again about our wrongheaded system of taxation. As it stands now, Americans, through taxes levied on income and capital gains, are explicitly forced to “prove” their income to the IRS.
Think about the above for a moment. A nation founded on skepticism about politicians and government now has as one of its most powerful institutions a revenue agency meant to badger its citizens about how much they owe a government utterly contemptuous of constitutional limits. To this insatiable beast, Saverin is apparently saying no. Good for him!
Read the whole thing.
THINGS YOU LEARN IN BANKRUPTCY: Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor Loaded With Weapons-Grade Uranium Hidden In a Basement. Reader John Steakley writes: “An unlicensed nuclear reactor in NYC? Said an anonymous bespectacled scientist, ‘Don’t cross the streams.'”
TAX CHEATING: Illegal, but is it immoral? Tim Geithner was unavailable for comment.
DEVAL PATRICK FAILS TO PERSUADE:
Gov. Deval Patrick insisted before a national TV audience yesterday that President Obama’s sudden endorsement of same-sex marriage was “about convictions … not about politics,” but there was little indication he convinced anyone — even advocates who support his message, while political pundits dismissed it as so much election-year spin.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is gullible beyond belief, to coin a phrase.
UPDATE: What Romney should say about Obama and gay marriage:
Marriage has long been a matter that belongs to states. Both Obama and Romney know that and know that it is not what the U.S. Presidency is about. They do not differ on the actual policy. It’s good that Obama has expressed respect for federalism here. If only he would see the value of federalism more generally instead of continually enlarging the role of the federal government. Let’s look at his record of growing federal government at the expense of state and local government and at the expense of private entrepreneurship….
Indeed.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Report says 230,000 unemployed lost benefits over weekend. “Job openings are not taking the place of these cuts.” And with existing economic policies, that’s no surprise.
VIRGINIA POSTREL: How Unhip Amazon Can Walk the Fashion Runway.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mark Cuban: The Coming Meltdown In College Education and Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon. “The point of the numbers is that getting a student loan is easy. Too easy. You know who knows that the money is easy better than anyone? The schools that are taking that student loan money in tuition. Which is exactly why they have no problems raising costs for tuition each and every year.”
ORDERED LIBERTY: Andrew McCarthy is now blogging at PJ Media.
THE SILENCE OF THE SCAMS: Obama begged Jeremiah Wright to stay silent during 2008 election as ally offered bribe, new book says.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Truck Cancellations Hit Two-Year High as Rebound Slows. “North American heavy-truck orders are hitting a speed bump, with cancellations jumping to the fastest pace in about two years as a stagnating economic recovery prompts fleet owners to delay or scrap purchases. The March rate shot up to 9 percent from 6.1 percent a month earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. North American freight shipments fell 1.3 percent in March and grew less than 1 percent in April, according to Cass Information Systems Inc.’s Freight Shipment Index.”
CHANGE: Lagging at school, the butt of cruel jokes: are males the new Second Sex? “They work longer hours, face economic insecurity and suffer worse health. Now their feckless ways are lampooned in the media. A controversial new book argues that men increasingly face a prejudice that dare not speak its name. . . . The American men’s rights author Warren Farrell calls it ‘the glass cellar’. There might be a glass ceiling for women, Farrell once told the Observer, but ‘of the 25 professions ranked lowest [in the US], 24 of them are 85-100% male. That’s things like roofer, welder, garbage collector, sewer maintenance – jobs with very little security, little pay and few people want them.’ . . Another area of concern, according to Duncan Fisher, co-founder of the UK’s Fatherhood Institute, is the ‘gratuitous exclusion’ of men from child-rearing: midwifery services are described as ‘one-to-one care’ and whereas employers frequently allow women flexible working hours if they are mothers, the same option is rarely offered to men in similar situations.”
Related: “Hmmm, but women still aren’t picking up the check.”
EUROPE: Greek Exit Looking More Likely.