Daily Derp: Weekend Is Over Edition

Good news on the cancer front:

"Cancer cells have been programmed back to normal by scientists in a breakthrough which could lead to new treatments and even reverse tumour growth.

For the first time aggressive breast, lung and bladder cancer cells have been turned back into harmless benign cells by restoring the function which prevents them from multiplying excessively and forming dangerous growths.

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, US, said it was like applying the brakes to a speeding car."

***

I found Obama's passionate but logical comments on the murder of two Virginia reporters to be excellent and worthy of a great leader.


Oh wait.

Sorry. That was in my dream. Obama, who has made it a habit to make sure he sticks his opinion on local matters where blacks are murdered, has been quiet after a deranged gay black man (with a flag of his own. Hey, progressives opened that Pandora's Box) went off on two young white - one female and the other male - Americans.

Not surprising really.

Oh well.

Notice how when Dylan Roof killed innocent Church goers the narrative jumped on the Confederate flag. After Vester Lee Flanagan's rampage, little is made of his race (naturally) and it's all about gun control.

Time to stop thinking along myopic narratives. Roof and Flanagan are one and the same. Looking at race, guns and flags only detracts from the fact they were disturbed human beings. Nothing more, nothing less.

Moving on...

***

Do guns cause violence?

If not "gun deaths," what about "firearm-related homicide"? This too is a nearly useless concept, because gun homicides and non-gun homicides interact with each other. Someone who can't get a gun may simply kill with a different weapon instead. (Even in gun-drenched America, about a third of murders are committed with no gun.) And someone who can get a gun might defend himself against an assailant who doesn't have one. So we should always focus first on total violence, not gun violence, even when we're looking for the effects of guns.

The simple correlation between gun ownership and violence often disappears entirely when you take this into account, as I've shown with data on both states in the U.S. and developed countries. This shows that guns are not a primary driver of differences in murder rates — whatever effect they have is drowned out in the data by things like demographic differences, culture, and so forth."

"...I'm not the only person to reach the conclusion that the role of guns in violence is rather subtle. One interesting example is the Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. He's no fan of the NRA; he's from Canada, for God's sake. But in his book about the decline of violence, The Better Angels of Our Nature, the discussion of "weaponry and disarmament" is practically a footnote — about one page in an 800-page tome, relegated to a section about the "forces that one might have thought would be important [in major trends in violence] ... but as best as I can tell turned not out to be." He doesn't even bother to "endorse the arguments for or against gun control," and he writes that "human behavior is goal-directed, not stimulus-driven," adding that "anyone who is equipped to hunt, harvest crops, chop firewood, or prepare salad has the means to damage a lot of human flesh." Similarly, in Ghettoside, her interesting exploration of black-on-black crime in LA, the journalist Jill Leovy writes — in an actual footnote — that "guns are not a root cause of black homicide." The criminologist Gary Kleck tends to be highly skeptical of claims that guns make a difference, on net, one way or the other.


In short, yes, it's possible that confining gun ownership to the people willing to jump through various government hoops might have some marginal effect on violence. But that effect will probably be so small as to be difficult to detect, and there may be no effect at all."

 He could have added the fact that if you remove gang related gun murders and America's murder rate 'normalizes' and is in-line with the rest of the developed West.

In addition, murder rates among blacks leads Hispanics and whites.

Violent crime rates without guns are actually highers in G7 countries (except Japan) than the USA.

The gun-control side simply don't consider the big picture. They just want to ban because less guns means less deaths by guns in their minds.

It's not necessarily the case as evidence shows.


*** 

Charles C. Cooke offers a rant about what it would entail to repeal the 2nd Amendment:

"...Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don’t fall back on excuses. Don’t play cheap motte-and-bailey games. And don’t pretend that you’re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you’re just appalled by the Heller decision. You’re not. Heller recognized what was obvious to the amendment’s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That “right of the people” means “right of the people,” as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller “interpretation” wouldn’t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution."

Worth a look. Makes you realize how absurd the left is when it comes to gun control. We all know the end game is confiscation and they should stop lying about that.

***

Bunch of crazies run the University of Tennessee:

"The University of Tennessee has told its staff and students to stop calling each other 'he', 'she', 'him' and 'her' - and to start referring to one another with terms like 'xe', 'zir' and 'xyr' instead.

The Knoxville branch of the public university, which has 27,400 students, sent a memo round to its members filled with unusual new parts of speech to avoid referring to anybody's gender.

According to a gay rights official at the university, the new language regime will make the university 'welcoming and inclusive' and stop people feeling 'marginalized'."

I don't know what I would have done. I probably would have stuck to my guns and told the school to fuck off and not bother me with such absurd nonsense.

Fall of the West folks.

Fall of...you know the rest.

***

Legendary New York Islanders coach Al Arbour who led one of the all-time great dynasties in the early 1980s died Friday at the age of 82.

***

Another legend has passed on. Former Philadelphia 76ers star Darryl Dawkins (aka Dr. Dunk and Chocolate Thunder) - who used to name all his dunks - died of a heart attack at the age of 58. He was traded to the New Jersey Nets in 1982 after losing in the finals to the LA Lakers. Without Dawkins, the Sixers won the following year against Lakers in a rematch. He also had stints with the Utah Jazz and Detroit Pistons.

***



Well, that was...awkward.

But she still has her apologists. Apparently this is a 'non-story' to some on the left.

I'll wait for the FBI investigation result.

*** 

I see Krugman is still an irresponsible, blabbering idiot:

"There’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt."

Unbelievable.

No Paul. Debt isn't good. Not in the way you advocate for it.

Actually, it's evil the way you spin it.

Paul Krugman's problem (and God knows he's not the only one) is he thinks he's too smart for us who can read through his bull shit.

He knows how to construct his arguments with play word games that appear to have logical consistency even if it's based on false premises of academic economics.

If someone came up to you and said you're household finances are ailing because you're not in debt enough you'd tell that person to (justifiably) you know what. Fuck off, right?

So why do we tolerate it from 'sophisticated' top men? Why is it okay for governments to go into obscene debt enough of it to the point that repaying the debt is impossible (Think of the person who earns 30k a year but manages to rack up 100k of debt)?

The rules of microeconomics don't seem to apply on the macro level according to this line of thinking. In fact, people like Krooooogman will probably assert  individual debt is bad but public debt is good....because Keynes. Stated another way: Intellectuals say we (politicians) have to steal money from you for your own good.

It's outrageous as it is illogical. Everything gets flipped upside down. Mostly because, and this is just a guess on my part, the government is useless at business and economics and they have to spin their fuck ups in a positive way. This is, in a nutshell, Krugman's job. To be a good King's Man.

***

More on gun control: Good intentions end up as bad ideas.


***

Pro-government PenaBots look to silence Mexican activists.

***

Family Budget Calculator (for U.S. residents).

***

The question then becomes - how to convince Hispanics to drop their liberal loyalty (75% of them believe in big government. This is a discomforting statistic because one can interpret this as Hispanic tolerating socialists and dictators as South American countries like Venezuela have.)

It's crucial libertarian, conservative and classical liberal thought attempts to win the hearts and minds of such an influential voting block.

Via Skeptical Eye:




***

Uber hires people with criminal pasts they scream!

And? So what? If prison time is a way of paying one's debt to society then once this debt is served is it not assumed they're rehabilitated and have a right to earn a living? To deny them this basic right is immoral and inhumane.

I don't see what the problem here is. If anything, it's a good thing. Better that than them returning to a live of crime, no?

Beyond this, it would take an absolute idiot or dedicated statist (I know they're the same thing) to think Uber is a flash in the pan. The only way to crush it is to use the coercive force of the state through excessive regulation and other bureaucratic red tape designed to suffocate business.

***

Democrats can't shake their segragation habit. Why should they? They're good at it.

***

More insanity on North American campuses:

"Please Report to Your Resident Assistant to Discuss Your Sexual Identity—It’s Mandatory! Thought Reform at the University of Delaware."

***

Protesters: Stop harper from killing your grand children!

My option is someone who will kill my grand children or people who make such proclamations?

I know it's slim pickins' out there but this is ridiculous!

***

When the entire Democrat party was like Donald Trump.

"W]e must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years […], Washington talked tough but failed to act….[O]ur borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again."

Democrat party platform in 1996.

***

Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota.

Let's nationalize it!

***

When liberals were raging racists (and still are through their eugenic/racial based policies):

"Back home, ticker tape parades feted Owens in New York City and Cleveland. Hundreds of thousands of Americans came out to cheer him. Letters, phone calls, and telegrams streamed in from around the world to congratulate him. From one important man, however, no word of recognition ever came. As Owens later put it, “Hitler didn’t snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send a telegram.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leader of a major political party with deep roots in racism, couldn’t bring himself to utter a word of support, which may have been a factor in Owens’s decision to campaign for Republican Alf Landon in the 1936 presidential election.  FDR invited all the white US Olympians to the White House, but not Jesse.

“It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close,” Owens once said about athletic competition. He could have taught FDR a few lessons in character, but the president never gave him the chance. Owens wouldn’t be invited to the White House for almost 20 years — not until Dwight Eisenhower named him “Ambassador of Sports” in 1955."
 
Oh look. A Republican did that in 1955.

Quebec Assaults The Livelihoods Of Its Citizens: Maple Syrup Bootlegging Is A Product Of Bull Shit Price And Supply Fixing Schemes

Notice the 'it's a small band of renegades who won't bow to the all-knowing Federation' attitude of Simon Trepanier - Executive Director of Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers.

So. Let's get this straight. The government of Quebec forcibly stole a producers equipment and directly threatened his family's livelihood because of the racket they set up?

There's but one thing to say. Trepanier and his asshole commies should be fed to a woodchipper.

Look. You want to form a federation to protect your product? Go ahead. But the second that federation uses the force of the government to destroy another producer then to me you're nothing more than a legalized mafia.

If you can't operate in a FREE MARKET you're a useless parasite who relies on state coercion to destroy lives who don't bend to you schemes. Permits, licenses, federations etc. - all rackets that assault private individuals.

Man, this story pisses me off. Alas, this is par for the course in Quebec and North America in general. Government agencies have the power to shut down and destroy family businesses.

But they get to keep their pensions though for doing so.

I'm gonna buy my syrup outside of Quebec from now on.

Evil pricks.

If this report from the New York Times doesn't make your blood boil you have no understanding of what justice is and how free markets are supposed to operate.

(Not So) Daily Derp

I'm baaaaccckkk! Phew. I'm tired.

Intermission!

Already?

/slurps lemonade. 

Why not?

The Go Wows:



***

How do you define irrational?

Lemme help you out:

"...Although experts estimate that only 1 percent of Americans - about 3 million people - actually suffer from celiac disease, 18 percent of adults now buy gluten-free foods."

Not enough?


Alrighty then:


"Subjects would be provided with every single meal for the duration of the trial. Any and all potential dietary triggers for gastrointestinal symptoms would be removed, including lactose (from milk products), certain preservatives like benzoates, propionate, sulfites, and nitrites, and fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates, also known as FODMAPs. And last, but not least, nine days worth of urine and faecal matter would be collected. With this new study, Gibson wasn’t messing around.

The subjects cycled through high-gluten, low-gluten, and no-gluten (placebo) diets, without knowing which diet plan they were on at any given time. In the end, all of the treatment diets - even the placebo diet - caused pain, bloating, nausea, and gas to a similar degree. It didn’t matter if the diet contained gluten. (Read more about the study.)"

***

"Students at Santa Clara University are supposed call to report any and all “bias incidents” to 911.
“If the bias incident is in progress or just occurred: ALWAYS CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY,” the university website states."

"Hello? 911? Someone has a different opinion than the one I hold! Can you arrest them because they hurt my feelings and I can't stand to live next to such barbarians!"

Idiots.

All courtesy of the enlightened progressive left.

"...The EthicsPoint report form for Student Bias Instances at Santa Clara allows students to report bias incidents even if they weren’t directly involved in the alleged bias; students can report bias incidents that they overheard. Not only can students use EthicsPoint to anonymously turn in the perpetrator of the alleged bias incident but they can also turn in “any persons who have attempted to conceal” the bias incident.


The Santa Clara Police Department referred Campus Reform to the university's Student Life department for comment. 


Campus Reform spoke with Lester Deanes, the Assistant Dean for Student Life, who said that microaggressions are covered under the bias incident policy. Deanes emphasized, however, that the bias incident policy isn’t exclusively limited to microaggressions and that the university intentionally left the definition broad so as to encourage students to come forward with whatever they felt needed to be brought to the university’s attention."

This is so insane and creepy that at some point, all this will balance itself out.

It has to.

People can't be this shallow, sensitive and stupid.

I refuse to believe they are.

***

Trump is leading because he's ball busting. And quite frankly, people are tired of spineless politicians who 'apologize' the second reactionaries that inhibit the SJW ranks go berserk.

Yes, some of his policy ideas are, well, insane, but he's just saying what people say in private all the time.

***

Are illegal immigrants committing crime higher than the average American?

***

Good discussion about Caitlyn Jenner on Joe Rogan's radio show.



I think it's bang on.

***

Obama foreign policy logic at work with Iran:

"Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press."

Iran loves to play the fiddle with America present.

***

Welcome back Rhinoceros Party!

The party that wanted to repeal the Law of Gravity now wants to nationaize Tim Hortons. 

God I love these guys.

***

Thinking of investing in gold and silver and other precious metals?

Here's a guide.

***

The end of religious freedom.

"...Yet instead of exhibiting a basic level of tolerance (or dignity), two priggish bullies decided to call the authorities when Phillips refused to bake them a cake. And the cultural commissars at the Colorado Civil Rights Commission soon ruled that he had discriminated against the couple."

That's exactly what these two dopes are: Intolerant bullies. Sociopaths who want us to follow their pain.

Those two had a choice to just shut up and take their business elsewhere but nooooo. They wanted to make a "point" and destroy a business and a family. Stated another way, I don't believe because someone refuses to bake a cake should lead to him or her being coerced into doing so. And that the courts side with them is equally disturbing.

I don't give a shit about their precious little feelings. No one has a damn right to a fucken cake.

I care about ALL RIGHTS. And in this case they were free to turn the other cheek and move on with their lives and not make an issue of it.

Stuff like this doesn't win them brownie points.

***

Tell you what. If cops keep getting away with some of the obscene actions we've seen over the last little, it will just further erode the public trust in the police force.

In the end, it's what the people think that matters. Not the police chief. If cops choose to make this a 'us v them' issue then this is unfortunate. 

I don't know if it's the training or the kind of people the job attracts but the statistics show being a police officer is not as dangerous as they claim.

From Simple Justice:

"Yes, if police can’t possibly be sufficiently well-trained, sufficiently smart, sufficiently brave to make good choices, Patterico’s trade-offs will happen.  But the innocent non-cop didn’t have a choice in the matter.  She didn’t ask to be wrongfully stopped. She didn’t ask to have a cop misinterpret her innocent movement, her exercise of constitutional rights, her skin color, to feed into a cop’s bad choice.  She didn’t ask to die, and she wants to get home for dinner just as much as the cop does.
 
If there have to be trade-offs, then there is no question who prevails. There is no “officer safety” exception to the Constitution, and along with the authority to use a gun comes the responsibility of making smart choices. The people win."

That's the problem. Stupid laws and stupid policies like the war on drugs, leads to cops enforcing those stupid laws and more often than not, people are incarcerated or killed for...meth and marijuana.

I don't know but to me it's not a good trade-off.

At all.

From comments:

"While it is terrible for the cop who got pistol-whipped by a member of the public, I feel as a member of the public that I should assure the police that this was just an isolated incident involving one bad apple and we shall see to it that this gentleman is given a severe written reprimand and a couple of weeks of paid leave followed by a six-hour refresher course on the policies and procedures followed here in the general public. Now let us put this tragic incident behind us and hear no more about it."

And that in a nutshell summarizes my point above.

Bad cops should be fired. End of story.

Or else, confidence and trust erodes.

Simple math.

***

I still think I have one of the better blogs out there.

Like I mean. Where can you find this sorta shit?




Man, those guys musta been high when they shot this.

***

Break time!

I always relax with a nice cup of Wilkins coffee:



***

Can Hillary really survive this email scandal? If she doesn't, will she blame Bush?

The FBI opens a criminal probe over the scandal.



***

Loathsome SJW of the moment: Sara Parker-Toulson.

"Feminist Sara Parker-Toulson, who has already backed a violent threat against Roosh, supported a Facebook post by fellow SJW Christian Caouette, one which expressed a vehement desire for our proprietor’s future daughter to be raped. Clearly enamored by the biased attention she and other delusional SJWs have received from the negligent Montreal and other Canadian media, she now thinks “hate” can be stopped by wishing rape on unborn children."

Nice people.

Intellectualism is in good hands.

***

Franz Reichelt plummets to his death in 1912:



***

Still can't believe Alberta voted for the NDP.

Unbelievable.

***

Next up for progressives: Emasculating men by asking them (through coercive policy naturally) not to work.

Da fuck is wrong with these people? The other day I read an article by one of these metrosexual males babbling about how grilling is a barbaric make ritual.

/flashes 'L' on forehead.

***

Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States in all his relativist vapidity:

"During a speech Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama leavened his condemnation of the Islamic State's recent atrocities with a word of warning to his fellow Christians who wish to conflate the militant group's actions with Islam as a whole.

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," the president said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

Murderous extremism, he continued, "is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.”

/face palm.

Er, no. At the moment, Islam is the only one acted with extreme barbarity.

This guy.

***

Minimum wage as eugenics:

From The Freeman:

"In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. identifies the government as the enemy of the rights and dignity of blacks. He was locked up for marching without a permit. King cites the injustices of the police and courts in particular. And he inspired a movement to raise public consciousness against state brutality, especially as it involved fire hoses, billy clubs, and jail cells.
Less obvious, however, had been the role of a more covert means of subjugation — forms of state coercion deeply embedded in the law and history of the United States. And they were offered as policies grounded in science and the scientific management of society.

Consider the minimum wage. How much does racism have to do with it? Far more than most people realize. A careful look at its history shows that the minimum wage was originally conceived as part of a eugenics strategy — an attempt to engineer a master race through public policy designed to cleanse the citizenry of undesirables. To that end, the state would have to bring about the isolation, sterilization, and extermination of nonprivileged populations."

"...Leonard documents an alarming series of academic articles and books appearing between the 1890s and the 1920s that were remarkably explicit about a variety of legislative attempts to squeeze people out of the work force. These articles were not written by marginal figures or radicals but by the leaders of the profession, the authors of the great textbooks, and the opinion leaders who shaped public policy.

“...Progressive economists, like their neoclassical critics,” Leonard explains, “believed that binding minimum wages would cause job losses. However, the progressive economists also believed that the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit, as it performed the eugenic service ridding the labor force of the ‘unemployable.’”

"....At least the eugenicists, for all their pseudo-scientific blathering, were not naïve about the effects of wage floors. These days, you can count on media talking heads and countless politicians to proclaim how wonderful the minimum wage is for the poor. Wage floors will improve the standard of living, they say. But back in 1912, they knew better — minimum wages exclude workers — and they favored them precisely because such wage floors drive people out of the job market. People without jobs cannot prosper and are thereby discouraged from reproducing. Minimum wages were designed specifically to purify the demographic landscape of racial inferiors and to keep women at the margins of society."

"...But the minimum wage is in a special category because, these days, its effects are so little understood. One hundred years ago, legislating a price floor on wages was a policy deliberately conceived to impoverish the lower classes and the undesirables, and thereby to disincentivize their reproduction. A polite gulag.

As time went on, the blood lust of the eugenics movement died down, but the persistence of its minimum wage policies did not. A national minimum wage passed in 1931 with the Davis-Bacon Act. It required that firms receiving federal contracts pay prevailing wages, which meant union wages, a principle that later became a national minimum wage."

And now, despite its ugly origins,  it's accepted as 'rational economic justice' in the progressive ranks. It's rather creepy how this became an accepted part of our economic psyche when you think of it. It never was a good thing yet we've come to believe it is.

So why do they cling on to, if not repeat, ideas rooted in suspect premises?

Eh. Human nature. We're prone to such nonsense. My best advice is don't listen to what they say (by looking out for the vapid, blanket statements like 'gender inequality' and 'fair share' and 'economic justice' and so on). Rather, watch what they do and monitor the results.

They were a blithe on human progress back then and they still wreak havoc today.

***

This is as close as you'll come to real life imitating super heroes in comic books.

"The brave British marksman saved the terrified eight-year-old and his father after taking out the crazed jihadi with a head shot from 1,000 metres away. 

The special forces crack shot then killed two other members of the hated terror group, who were also taking part in the sick planned execution. 

ISIS militants had decreed that the little boy and his father must die after branding them "infidels" because they refused to denounce their faith. 

They were just seconds from death when the hero sniper intervened to stop the barbaric killing in the Syrian desert. The pair were part of the minority Shia sect of Islam which ISIS considers to be heretical."

I just wish it would happen with much more frequency.

But Obama warns us not to generalize because Crusades.

***

Meet the Feebles:



Yes. That's the same Peter Jackson who brought you Lord of the Rings.

***

Dorothy Ashby makes the harp sound so bad ass:



***

Man, this Brady and the Patriots thing has jumped the shark and is bigger than it's worth.

***

"An ordained United Church of Canada minister who believes in neither God nor Bible said Wednesday she is prepared to fight an unprecedented attempt to boot her from the pulpit for her beliefs.

In an interview at her West Hill church, Rev. Gretta Vosper said congregants support her view that how you live is more important than what you believe in.

Honey, seriously?

Man, people really are into themselves waaaayyyy too much.

Move on lady.

***

Is deep dish really pizza?

My take? Yeah, it's pizza and it's tasty (had some at Lou Malnati's in Chicago). But it doesn't fit the classic definition of what constitutes pizza.

***

Oh look at the President go all 'appeal to emotions'.

"In an attempt to appeal to American Jewish leaders, President Obama warned of the consequences Israel would face should Congress reject the Iran nuclear deal.

"I can assure that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical response that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities," Obama told roughly 20 American Jewish leaders during a two hour meeting at the White House Tuesday night.

Is he for real?

/looks down on pad.

Yes. Yes he is.

***



***

Cecil the Lion brought out the salty tears and downright weirdos.

Call it Outrage Imperialism.


Comments from first link (NYT):

"Carol Brooklyn 2 hours ago

Lions, like humans, are creations and should not be murdered for sport. In the US people are hunted and killed for sport just like Cecil. They are generally people of color whose lives are not considered to be worth much just like Cecil's life was considered to be sport for billionaire Americans. If people are attacked by lions and other wild animals, the people should be protected by staying away from these animals. Why should the world be deprived of seeing such magnificent creatures because humans lack the common sense to stay away from them.

Tom J. Berwyn, IL 6 hours ago
I think the issue at hand is disgust that yet another wealthy guy did as he pleased with no concern about the consequences. In this case, to a renowned lion. In other cases, to the middle class worker, or to our financial system, stock market, real estate market, the list goes on. It is a national resentment that is building. The lion is a metaphor.

Ah. A metaphor.

***

Quote from the Internet:

"Progressives are so unaware of their own totalitarian tendencies. I once heard a very similar comment from an 80+ year old retired Ivy League professor.

What we really need are fewer people. Say what you want about the Chinese government, but they had the single child policy absolutely correct. Fewer people would be the biggest solution to unemployment and global warming."

They totally believe this.


***

History lesson time!

Great Zimbabwe.

And.

School of Salamanca.

***

Is the FDA retarded?

"Pizza makers could face fines and prison time under a new Food and Drug Administration rule for failing to provide calorie counts for their billions of combinations of pizza orders.

Under FDA regulations, chain restaurants, retail stores with 20 or more locations, movie theaters, and vending machines are required to provide calorie information for every menu item. Pizza parlors will be hit hardest because of the unfathomable combinations of pizza that customers can order."

/looks down on pad. Dons sun glasses.

Yes. Yes they are.

***

Gotta love the irony in the EPA fiascoes. 

***

More on the 'bake me a cake or else' madness.

***

Has Obama's tenure weakened the Democrat brand?

"...The first signs of the slowly unfolding debacle that has meant the decimation of the Democratic Party nationally began early—with the special election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s empty Senate seat in Massachusetts. That early loss, even though the seat was won back eventually by Elizabeth Warren, presaged the 2010 midterms, which saw the loss of 63 House and six Senate seats. It was disaster that came as no surprise to the White House, but also proved a signal of what was to come."

***

More climate change shenaningans:

"Why would they do that? Well the answer is in the next sentence, when they tell ministers that the parliamentary questions were "an attempt to undermine the general recognition by the scientific community that the rise in global surface temperatures over the last century is significant". So while the statistics showed that the warming was not significant, there was a "general recognition" among scientists that it was. And they must have been telling ministers this in the full knowledge that the "simple linear model" is recognised by statisticians on all sides as being wholly inadequate therefore seems wholly culpable. This is astonishingly culpable.

I think we can see that DECC officials were unconcerned about the science. What actually concerned them was that an honest response might give "ammunition to the sceptics" (as someone once said). Seen in this light, what Greenpeace has revealed is as damning an indictment of the integrity of DECC officials as you could ever hope to find."

***

"...my colleague Charlie Cooke offered a perfectly clear and depressing summary of the young, low-information, progressive-by-default mindset. (I’m paraphrasing here; refer to his columns for his precise words.)A significant number of young people now conclude, ‘The government will pay for and take care of all the big things in life – health care, college education, retirement income, day care. This will require higher taxes, but all of those taxes cover all the important things. I’ll get to keep what’s left over. That’s my allowance.’

Game. Over.

Sounds a lot like Quebec, eh? 

***

No shit:

"Climatologists estimate that the administration’s climate regulations will avert less than two hundredths of a degree Celsius by 2100."

"...In fact, all the plan will do is bring about higher energy bills, lost income, fewer jobs and a weaker economy – with little to no impact on the Earth’s temperature.
The role of the federal government should be not to promote or restrict any energy source or technology, but instead to enforce free-market policies that generate innovation and provide competitive prices.

In fact, the federal government has done much more to restrict the development of these energy sources than promote them, with Obama’s climate regulations being the latest blow."

"...This will likely spell the end of new coal-fired power plants since no credible basis exists to state that CCS is adequately demonstrated today.

CCS faces questions about technical scalability, regulatory challenges, long-term liability of storing the captured CO2 and above all, cost that make it a non-option.

And that CCS yields no environmental benefit makes the requirement farcical.
The new regulations would drop that to 27 percent by 2030, forcing states to switch to more expensive, less reliable renewable power.

But “the war on coal,” as many are dubbing the regulations, is truly a war on American families and businesses."

The cumulative economic impact of higher energy prices will be hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and more than $2.5 trillion in lost economic growth."

Obama has led America through some questionable paths but, to me, none is more dubious than the one he's taken on the environment.

Be Back Shortly

I should have mentioned this before I left for a two week vacation in Delaware's Rehoboth Beach.

But I've been hard at *work* collecting and stashing some links to share which I will post perhaps as soon as tomorrow.