24 May 2010

When math gets scary ...

The problem facing the Western world isn't very difficult to figure out: we've spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we've already burned through. When you're spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you've no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it. In Greece, the arithmetic is starker. To prop up unsustainable welfare states, most of the Western world isn't "printing money" but instead printing credit cards and pre-approving our unborn grandchildren. That would be a dodgy proposition at the best of times. But in the Mediterranean those grandchildren are never going to be born. As I pointed out in my bestselling hate crime America Alone four years ago, Greece has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet—1.3 children per couple, which places it in the "lowest-low" demographic category from which no society has recovered and, according to the UN, 178th out of 195 countries. In practical terms, it means 100 grandparents have 42 grandkids. Greek public sector employees are entitled not only to 14 monthly paycheques per annum during their "working" lives, but also 14 monthly retirement cheques per annum till death. Who's going to be around to pay for that?
from Mark Steyn 

21 May 2010

Another shocker

"Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster."
from here

20 May 2010

What he said ...

here
I particularly like this bit:
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing government.
When the election results were in, the one thing I was happy about was that the stranger (a black man) I spoke to at Burger King several months before turned out to be wrong when he told me he didn't think this country was ready to elect a black man president. I hoped we would finally be able to start getting past identity politics. I haven't seen much evidence that that's happened, yet.

Unexpectedly ... you keep using that word ...

A report on weekly jobless claims showed the number of people filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly by 25,000 to 471,000 last week.
from here

Seriously, though, why are the numbers always 'unexpectedly' bad. 
I mean, I expect it. 
Who doesn't? 
And why does anyone continue to care about their 'analysis' if it's always wrong?

17 May 2010

What's going on with the police?

POLICE: MORE MILITARIZED THAN THE MILITARY? Radley Balko has a letter from a military officer:
I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.
For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they're after is present at the location, and that it's too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)
Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call "cordon and knock": they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't happen until after the sun comes up.
Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.
What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.
I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they can't use similar methods.
Quite different from using door-busting tactics to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders. Of course, one difference is that we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . . .
another post shamelessly lifted from Instapundit 

Why government should be small....

BUT REMEMBER, THE SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM IS MORE REGULATION: "The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows. In fact, the agency's inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records. . . . In fact, last year MMS awarded the rig an award for its safety history."

15 May 2010

Global Green Meltdown Gains Momentum

About time. 
We trust the experts less and less, but they keep coming to us for money.
In this atmosphere, the fight for a massive global treaty to fight climate change that involves annual payments of $100 billion and more to (mostly) corrupt and incompetent governments in developing countries that make Greece look as tidy as Sweden has no chance.
see rest here

13 May 2010

Why should all of our Supreme Court justices be from two schools?

What's so special about Harvard and Yale?
Seems to fly in the face of anything resembling intellectual diversity ...

Bureaucracy and Tyranny

The Founding Fathers well described "swarms of officers sent hither to harass the people." It is worth pondering how bureaucracy may have inside it a tyranny trying to get out.
read the rest, it's short.

Why aren't Communists more closely associated with Nazis?

"In the world's collective consciousness, the word "Nazi" is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis' ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history."
Read the rest ...
 
The holocaust killed 6 million Jews, and is rightly reviled as one of the most horrifying tragedies in the history of mankind.
Where, then, is the outrage for the 150 million killed by Communists? Why do they get a pass? How is Nazism's racial genocide worse than the ideological genocide of Communists the world over?
We would be wise to remember where Communism tends to end up and to be suspicious of those who look kindly on it.

Afghan opium trade

Just ran across this old article on the opium trade in Afghanistan and was struck by a couple of quotes:
"When I have water and roads provided to me, I will stop growing poppies."
and
"I don't want my children to be in this trade and I hope that some day the world will help us. Only then can we stop the opium trade."

I don't especially care if they grow opium or not, but I love how it's not their fault. If only 'the world' would give them water and roads they'd find a new line of work. Can't decide if they've been coached on those answers or if they were born with the entitlement gene. 

12 May 2010

So, do you really have to go to Harvard or Yale to be President?

I'd think most people would respond, "Of course not!" But the numbers are hard to ignore ...

April deficit bigger than expected.

"Bigger than expected" seems to be a theme these days. This time they were off by 30 billion with a B. The actual deficit was nearly 60% higher than analyst estimates. That's a significant amount to be off by. 
Story here.

10 May 2010

The new lawless administration, same as (worse than) the last lawless administration

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, we'd get an Attorney General who'd want to curtail Miranda rights. And they were right!
Attorney General Eric Holder said that Congress should "give serious consideration" to updating the Miranda warning which requires law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights – including the right to remain silent.
In an interview on "This Week," Holder said that the U.S. needs to exam whether the current rules regarding Miranda warnings give law enforcement agents the "necessary flexibility" when dealing with terrorism cases.
Ah, remember all that talk about the "lawless Bush Administration" trampling civil rights, and the fierce moral urgency of change? Well, if you believed that stuff when they were peddling it. . . hey, rube!
from Instapundit 

05 May 2010

Hmm. This explains a lot

a 1999 study by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts showed that the most popular kids were also the most effective liars.

and then, I'm guessing,  they went into politics ...
From this article on the Top 10 Secrets of Effective Liars. Arm yourself for tonight's news and the upcoming elections. :-)