Intellectual Crack - By John Derbyshire - The Corner - National Review Online

Intellectual Crack - By John Derbyshire - The Corner - National Review Online: " College is primarily a credentialing rite, a prolonged and fantastically expensive mental bris."

Althouse: "Labor Day parade organizers confirm that no Republicans will be allowed to participate in this year's Labor Day Parade."

Althouse: "Labor Day parade organizers confirm that no Republicans will be allowed to participate in this year's Labor Day Parade.": ""[Marathon County Labor Council] president Randy Radtke says they choose not to invite elected officials who have 'openly attacked worker's rights' or did nothing when state public workers lost most of their right to collectively bargain."

Pretty sure this is viewpoint discrimination, making this a violation of the First Amendment.

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Andy Warhol Quotes (page 2 of 2)

Andy Warhol Quotes (page 2 of 2): ""Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what."
"My mother didn't love me." So what.
"My husband won't ball me. So what.
"I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget." "

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Andy Warhol Quotes

Andy Warhol Quotes: "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good."

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Buchanan: Collected Works, Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Front Matter | Library of Economics and Liberty

Buchanan: Collected Works, Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Front Matter | Library of Economics and Liberty: "Constitutional "choice" in the Calculus is unique in that such choice presupposes a type of generational uncertainty that prevents the decision maker from predicting how the choice will influence his or her welfare in the future. Thus, constitutional choice differs from ordinary political decision making in that it is devoid of direct self-interest."

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The Desperation-of-Deprivation Myth - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

The Desperation-of-Deprivation Myth - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: " President Obama has further incentivized statism as a career through his education “reforms,” under which anyone who goes into “public service” will have their college loans forgiven after ten years.

Why?

As I point out in my book, in the last six decades the size of America’s state and local government workforce has increased over three times faster than the general population. Yet Obama says it’s still not enough: The bureaucracy needs even more of our manpower."

The Desperation-of-Deprivation Myth - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

The Desperation-of-Deprivation Myth - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "Any tourist in London quickly accepts that, unless he hails a cab or gets mugged, he will never be served by a native Londoner: Polish baristas, Balkan waitresses, but, until the mob shows up to torch his hotel, not a lot of Cockneys. A genial Member of Parliament argued that the real issue underlying the riots is “education and jobs,” but large numbers of employers seem to have concluded that, if you’ve got a job to offer, the best person to give it to is someone with the least exposure to a British education."

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Instapundit » Blog Archive » “I WANTED THE PRETTY GIRLS COMING UP TO ME AND SAYING ‘Hi, I see that you’re good at Centipede.’”…

Instapundit » Blog Archive » “I WANTED THE PRETTY GIRLS COMING UP TO ME AND SAYING ‘Hi, I see that you’re good at Centipede.’""

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Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo - The Washington Post

Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo - The Washington Post: "And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11."

Robert Barro: Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics - WSJ.com

Robert Barro: Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics - WSJ.com: Ironically, the administration created one informative data point by dramatically raising unemployment insurance eligibility to 99 weeks in 2009—a much bigger expansion than in previous recessions. Interestingly, the fraction of the unemployed who are long term (more than 26 weeks) has jumped since 2009—to over 44% today, whereas the previous peak had been only 26% during the 1982-83 recession. This pattern suggests that the dramatically longer unemployment-insurance eligibility period adversely affected the labor market. All we need now to get reliable estimates are a hundred more of these experiments.

Robert Barro: Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics - WSJ.com

Robert Barro: Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics - WSJ.com: If valid, this result would be truly miraculous. The recipients of food stamps get, say, $1 billion but they are not the only ones who benefit. Another $1 billion appears that can make the rest of society better off. Unlike the trade-off in regular economics, that extra $1 billion is the ultimate free lunch.

How can it be right? Where was the market failure that allowed the government to improve things just by borrowing money and giving it to people? Keynes, in his "General Theory" (1936), was not so good at explaining why this worked, and subsequent generations of Keynesian economists (including my own youthful efforts) have not been more successful.

Gov't Paying Farmers, Ranchers $112M to Protect Bird Too Numerous to be Threatened | CNSnews.com

Gov't Paying Farmers, Ranchers $112M to Protect Bird Too Numerous to be Threatened | CNSnews.com: “In the past two years, we’ve committed $112 million to this Sage Grouse Initiative in 11 states, using five separate programs.”

Global warming runs out of gas

Global warming runs out of gas: Mr. Gore is not a happy Jeremiah. You hear him on the tape near rage, repeatedly shouting "bulls--t" over the arguments of his critics. He raves about conspiracy - a rebirth of the tactics of the dreaded tobacco industry of a few decades back. He blames "media manipulation" for the refusal of people to take up his gloomy summons. He hisses at "volcanoes and sunspots" as having much or anything to do with climate. "Bulls--!" he cries over and over - perhaps it's the methane content that has him mesmerized with the word. Listen to this aria: "They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it's nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn't trap heat. It may be volcanoes.' Bulls-t! 'It may be sun spots.' Bulls--t! 'It's not getting warmer.' Bulls--t!"

Can a person win the Nobel Peace prize twice? I surely hope so, for this is the E=mc² moment of our green time.

Interview: Samantha Bee, author of I Know I Am, But What Are You? | Memoirville

Interview: Samantha Bee, author of I Know I Am, But What Are You? | Memoirville: The website Cake Wrecks makes me laugh every time I visit it, without fail. Other peoples’ spelling errors thrill me more than I should probably ever admit (see: answer number three. I told you I was a nerd!). But spelling errors on a hideously decorated celebratory cake? I mean, that’s like heroin to me.

Bad luck? Bad faith? - The Washington Post

Bad luck? Bad faith? - The Washington Post: All but five Republican members of the House — moderate, establishment, Tea Party, freshmen alike — voted for a budget containing radical Medicare reform knowing it could very well end many of their careers. Democrats launched gleefully into Mediscare attacks, hardly believing their luck that Republicans should have proposed something so politically risky in pursuit of fiscal solvency. Yet Obama accuses Republicans of acting for nothing but partisan advantage.