THIS SEEMS FAIR: Woman Who Made False Charge Of Rape Jailed For Two Years. “A woman who cried rape because she regretted having sex with three men at a drunken orgy has been jailed for two years for her ‘wicked’ lies.” They were wicked. She could have ruined three men’s lives because she was unwilling to take responsibility for her own actions.
Archive for 2012
September 21, 2012
AT AMAZON, up to 55% off in Kitchen & Dining.
Also, markdowns on Soup Essentials.
And, today only: Irwin Vise-Grip GrooveLock 8-Piece Plier Set, $64.99.
POINTS AND FIGURES: “Finally Congress is looking at high speed trading and what it is doing to the marketplace. . . . Just in the past week we have learned of new order types not available to regular consumers of the market. We have learned favored participants get data feeds that other market players don’t get. This is patently unfair and gives one part of the market an edge they can arbitrage against the rest of the market.”
I’d institute random one- or two-second delays in execution.
ROLL CALL: Justice IG Sides With Issa On Wiretaps.
Asked by several Republican lawmakers at the hearing whether reading the wiretap applications would have indicated that guns were being “walked,” the tactic employed in Fast and Furious, Horowitz said “yes.”
He then added a more nuanced version included in the report, that someone “who was focused on the question of investigative tactics, particularly one who was already sensitive to the issue of ‘gun walking,'” would have “questions about ATF’s conduct of the investigations.”
Read the whole thing.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Median Income In Ohio Hits 27-Year Low. “The inflation-adjusted figure hasn’t been lower for Ohio since officials began keeping that record in 1984, census officials said.”
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Legal Questions Dog Administration Officials On Campaign Trail. “Executive-branch officials aren’t barred from endorsing candidates; they just can’t do it in their official capacity. But the escalating deployment of top officials for campaign purposes presents an ethical problem, experts say—one thrown into sharp relief by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s recent violation of the Hatch Act.” Then, of course, there are Eric Holder’s various legal issues . . . .
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: It’s official: Obama raises taxes on the middle class.
On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office confirmed what we’ve been saying for years now: President Obama has broken his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class. During his 2008 campaign, Obama promised Americans that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000 a year. Technically, he broke that pledge weeks after taking office, when he signed an increase in cigarette taxes, which fall disproportionately on those with lower incomes. Now, the CBO has released updated estimates showing that Obamacare’s insurance mandate — which the Supreme Court ruled to be a tax — will hit millions of middle-class Americans.
In its report, the CBO determined the mandate tax would cost 6 million Americans a total of $7 billion in 2016, with a minimum payment of $695 apiece. The annual cost will then average about $8 billion from 2017 through 2022. The health care law requires Americans either to purchase government-approved insurance or to pay a penalty. The CBO estimates 30 million will be uninsured by that year, but most will be exempted from the mandate because they are unauthorized immigrants, members of Indian tribes or don’t earn enough income to file taxes, among other reasons.
Among those who will have to pay a mandate penalty, 4.7 million will have incomes below 500 percent of the federal poverty level, according to the CBO.
For those who have forgotten, let’s go to the video:
HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW THEY ALWAYS TRY TO REWRITE THE RULES SO THEY WIN IN ADVANCE? Scandal-plagued Mass. Dem Tries To Take Gambling Questions Off Debate Agenda. “Facing the fight of his political life, scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. John Tierney has moved to block questions about his family’s illegal gambling ring from debates this fall, insisting on ground rules that bar panelists from asking about the controversy. Sponsors of two of the four debates between Tierney and GOP opponent Richard Tisei told the Herald they have agreed to the congressman’s demand that they stick to questions about policy and steer clear of queries on what he knew about his wife and in-laws’ ties to an illegal offshore gambling operation.” Hacks.
CENSORSHIP: Is “The Ron Paul Revolution” Too Dangerous For Auburn University? “What sets Auburn’s censorship apart from other, similar episodes of sign censorship is the university’s sheer laziness about the whole situation.” It’s the prettiest village on the plains, not the smartest . . . .
UPDATE: Reader Bobby Newton emails: “I disagree with their stance on the banner, however, I’m wondering if there is some other motivation by the university related to Paul’s relationship with the Ludwig Von Mises Institute…..which is right across the street from the University.” Good question! And one that should have occurred to me, but hey, that’s why I have smart readers: To suggest the things that didn’t occur to me.
YOU THINK IT’S BAD FOR THE BITTER CLINGERS NOW, JUST WAIT UNTIL OBAMACARE KICKS IN: Life Expectancy Shrinks for Less-Educated Whites in U.S.
I mean, this is a President who’s deliberately written off the white working class.
COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT. First Tim Kaine adopts my everyone-pays-income-tax proposal, and then, voila! we get this: Poll: Kaine jumps ahead in Virginia Senate race. Shared sacrifice, baby!
UPDATE: A Virginia reader emails: “Another ‘coincidence’ about Kaine – every time he runs for office, he campaigns as a far right Democrat, then reverts to type once elected.” Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE PROMISED: Russia expels USAID development agency. “The expulsion follows a government crackdown on pro-democracy groups.”
SHOULDN’T YOU FIRE ERIC HOLDER? Obama Grilled On Univision Over Fast And Furious: Video at the link.
Doing jobs the regular American press won’t do. . . .
A NEW WEBSITE, NO PENSION BAILOUT, shows the states that would win and lose from a federal bailout of underfunded/overgenerous public pensions. Most states, unsurprisingly, would lose.
PRESIDENT GOLFPANTS’ NARRATIVE CONTROL: Lobbyist close to White House behind effort of golfers to quell jokes about Obama. “A coalition of golf lovers are asking Republicans to stop making so many jokes about President Barack Obama’s love for the golf course, saying such comments are bad for the golf industry. But could politics be at play too? The Daily Caller has learned that Tony Podesta, a well-known Democratic lobbyist with strong ties to the Obama White House, is behind the We Are Golf coalition of golfing organizations that has sent letters to Republicans such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio asking them to cut out the criticism of Obama’s golfing habits.”
Everything is fake with these people. But honestly, I’m not sure the old narrative — Obama’s giving golf a bad name! — was all that helpful either.
UPDATE: To be fair, it’s not all about golf: On Peak Day of Embassy Protests, Obama Did an Interview with People Magazine and Posed for a Photo Spread. So, you know, they’ve got that, anyway.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Economic Slump Continues.
ELI LAKE: Obama’s Shaky Libya Narrative. “Ten days after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House’s official story about the incident appears to be falling apart.”
When will Mr. Nakoula get an apology?
RAND SIMBERG: The Democrats’ False Narrative On The Auto Industry.
HEATHER MCDONALD: Diversity Now, Diversity Tomorrow, Diversity Forever!
The University of California, San Diego has done it again. Last year, it announced the creation of a new diversity sinecure: a vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Campus leaders established this post even as state budget cuts resulted in the loss of star scientists to competing universities, as humanities classes and degree programs were eliminated to save money, and as tuition continued its nearly 75 percent, five-year rise. The new vice chancellorship was wildly redundant with UCSD’s already-existing diversity infrastructure. As the campus itself acknowledges: “UC San Diego currently has many active diversity programs and initiatives.” No kidding. A partial list of those “active diversity programs and initiatives” may be accessed here.
Now UCSD has filled the position and announced the new vice chancellor’s salary. Linda Greene, a diversity bureaucrat and law professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will pull in $250,000 a year in regular salary, but that’s just the beginning: she’ll receive both a relocation allowance of $60,000 and 100 percent reimbursement of all moving expenses, a temporary housing allowance of $13,500, two fully paid house-hunting trips for two to the San Diego area, and reimbursement for all business visits to the campus before her start date in January 2013. (By comparison, an internationally known expert in opto-electronics in UCSD’s engineering school, whose recent work has focused on cancer nanotechnology, received a little over $150,000 in salary from UCSD in 2011, according to state databases.) The UCSD press office did not respond to a request for the amount the university paid the “women-owned executive search firm with a diverse consulting team” it used to find Greene.
Read the whole thing, to understand something about what’s inflating costs in the higher education bubble.