JOHN HINDERAKER ON PROSPERITY: “For the first time in history, the average Canadian is wealthier than the average American. Canada has a conservative government, and they have passed us like we are standing still. Which we are, at best. . . . Do Barack Obama and his minions want America to be one of the world’s ten most prosperous countries? If you believe, as I do, that actions speak louder than words, the answer is No.”
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ED DRISCOLL: Obama Passes Conservative Blogosphere Full Employment Act. “If true, as I wrote the other day, the sixties are now complete: A president supported by an ex-Weatherman and the New Black Panthers might as well have a Winter Soldier in his cabinet for the complete Radical Chic Meets Geritol experience. If only Leonard Bernstein was still around to savor the moment.”
LOOKING FOR YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATIONS? Consider supporting The Foresight Institute, which addresses all sorts of interesting nanotechnology issues.
I also recommend the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the Lifeboat Foundation. And don’t forget the Cato Institute, and the Institute for Justice.
ON ADVICE GODDESS RADIO, Amy Alkon talks to Mark Sanborn about entrepreneurialism in business, life, and love. Starting in just a minute.
IMPROVEMENTS IN DATA VISUALIZATION.
WHAT CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION LOOKS LIKE: Texas School District Will Let Teachers Carry Guns.
UPDATE: Texas school where teachers carry guns prepared to protect students.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Disappearing Products: What To Hoard Now.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): U.S. Falls Out of Top 10 On Prosperity Index For The First Time. “Over the past four years, prosperity has increased around the globe, while it has remained stagnant in the United States, the Legatum Institute reports. As a result, the Institute ranked the United States 12th out of 142 countries on its 2012 Prosperity Index, putting the country outside the top ten for the first time.”
Forward!
Related: Spreading Misery Widely.
ADVICE FROM JAY LENO: How to Keep Classic Cars Road-Ready.
REASON TV: 5 Rules For Coping With Tragedy.
FROM GARDEN & GUN: New Southern Cookbooks. And recipes!
MATT K. LEWIS: The media should be ashamed of its Connecticut coverage. “What journalistic rationale could compel a reporter to interview young children at a mass-murder scene?”
They’re just Big Evil Corporations who don’t care what happens to children as they pursue profit without end! Lewis proposes some “sensible press controls” to rein in their greed.
GHOULISHLY EXPLOITING TRAGEDY: Bloomberg Uses Tragedy to Tell the 99% How to Live. Plus, a look at his 24-hour armed security, paid for by the taxpayers he likes disarmed.
I COULD DO THIS: Man Ironed Face When Phone Rang.
WHY DO PEOPLE BUY those ugly Christmas sweaters?
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Douglas Hufnagel, Tales From The Shining Hand.
WHAT DID KIDS READ Before Hans Christian Andersen?
“SMART DIPLOMACY!” The Top 5 Foreign Policy Screwups of 2012. Hey, the year isn’t over yet!
IN THE MAIL: From David Weber and Jane Lindskold, Fire Season.
STILL WONDERING WHAT KIND OF GUNS RUPERT MURDOCH’S SECURITY TEAM CARRY. Also, Mike Bloomberg’s. Neither has answered my tweets requesting details . . . .
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Two Types of Artificial Muscle From Nanotechnology.
THE BRITS UNDERSTAND: Susan Rice was brought down by the long shadow of Benghazi, not race or gender.
ADAM GARFINKLE: What’s The Matter With Michigan?
ANN ALTHOUSE EXPLAINS LANGUAGE TO NATE SILVER: “If ‘gun control’ is avoided, it’s because those who would like to push it believe the public doesn’t like it! It’s not that we used to be more neutral and have become more politically charged. . . . There was a time when rights were real to liberals. Now, oh, let’s not talk about some text that may or may not transmit who knows what to us.”
HOW THE ECONOMY killed Gossip Girl.
CRITICIZING THE “DEATH PORN MEDIA.”
THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN “SOUL MATES” ARE 150% more likely to end up divorced.
JUSTIN BINIK-THOMAS: ObamaCare And My Daughter. “In two years, the surgery will cease to be available for the insured due to Obamacare.”
FAILURE MODE: Blue Social Model Driving Banks (and Their Taxes) out of NYC.
New York remains the hub of the nation’s financial industry, but over the past few years, the city has been losing ground to a collection of cities across the country, including Salt Lake City, Columbus, and St. Louis. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the reasons are all too familiar: Banks are fleeing the high taxes, high cost of living, and endless red tape of the city for greener pastures elsewhere. . . .
A financial sector with more geographic balance is almost certainly a good thing for the country, but it’s bad news for New York, where the city’s recent revival has been financed largely through taxes on businesses and employees of the city’s high-powered banking sector. New York has managed to pursue blue policies longer than many of its peers due to its cash cow Wall Street banks. If these banks leave, their tax revenue will leave with them, and the city’s current policies will begin to look much less affordable.
But then again, it is these very policies that are causing the banks to leave in the first place. If it weren’t for big banks, there could be no Big Blue.
The symbiosis is breaking down. Move your banks to Tennessee. We have no state income tax, and we’re solvent.
HIGHER EDUCATON BUBBLE UPDATE: Nathan Harden: The End of the University as We Know It. “In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.”
A WHILE BACK, I MENTIONED Verily Magazine, but I should have also noted that they have a blog.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Who Can Still Afford State U? As public colleges spend more and get less from the states, tuition costs are shifting to parents and students—often putting higher education out of reach.
A number of factors have helped to fuel the soaring cost of public colleges. Administrative costs have soared nationwide, and many administrators have secured big pay increases—including some at CU, in 2011. Teaching loads have declined for tenured faculty at many schools, adding to costs. Between 2001 and 2011, the Department of Education says, the number of managers at U.S. colleges and universities grew 50% faster than the number of instructors. What’s more, schools have spent liberally on fancier dorms, dining halls and gyms to compete for students.
Administrative bloat is a big problem. But the really interesting story is how higher education is being outcompeted in state budgets by various social-welfare programs of the sort that higher education folks tend to support. Oops!
MAYBE THE “PUBLIC HEALTH” PEOPLE SHOULD FOCUS MORE ON, YOU KNOW, PUBLIC HEALTH, INSTEAD OF GUNS, TWINKIES AND BIG GULPS: Chlamydia And Gonorrhea Are On The Rise. “The CDC believes the rise in gonorrhea cases could be due to increased antibiotic resistance.”
VIOLENCE AND DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION.
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KENNETH ANDERSON AND MATTHEW WAXMAN: Brave New War: What are the ethical and legal considerations of using killer robots?
NATIONAL REVIEW: Eliminate The Deduction For State And Local Taxes. “A tax reform that more than clears the $800 billion mark, falls most heavily upon the wealthy, and has the support of many conservatives: You would think that the Democrats would be quick to embrace such a thing. But to the great surprise of no one, the party’s house organ has editorialized against it.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Todd Zywicki: From Wall Street to College Street: All too often, trustees focus on branding, image, and reputation rather than their academic mission. “I submit that the core principle animating the modern university is a fundamental dishonesty that subverts its core mission.”
PAUL MIRENGOFF: The municipal bond tax loophole — low-hanging fiscal fruit.
MICHAEL WALSH: Where’s Mitt? “The more I ponder the chimerical presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, the more I’ve become convinced it was all a practical joke played on gullible suckers by the GOP’s krack kadre of kampaign konsultants, a phantom ‘run’ designed to hoover as much money out of the fat cats’ wallets as possible and deliver almost nothing in return aside from a few swing-state ad buys. . . . Fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes. The Romney fiasco should be the death knell of the Washington Generals approach to competing against the Democrats, and the whole lot of the Old Guard — starting with weepy John Boehner — should be tossed out and replaced with those who can distinguish between strategy and tactics and who understand that the only acceptable strategic outcome should be total victory over the modern Left and its alien, imported ideology.”
CAYMAN UPDATE: Defiant leader of Cayman Islands under pressure to resign. “Embattled Cayman Islands Premier McKeeva Bush faced growing pressure to resign on Friday after his arrest on suspicion of theft and corruption in the offshore Caribbean financial center. A defiant Bush, who has blamed his troubles on the governor of the British overseas territory, has said since his detention that he did nothing wrong and has no plans to step down.”
BLAME: Obama administration, Congress quietly let school security funds lapse. Well, they needed money for Solyndra.
HELP, I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T TESTIFY ABOUT BENGHAZI! “I can only think of 2 reasons why her people would let us hear this story that she fainted, addled her pate, and can’t face up to Congress on Benghazi: 1. She’s not going to run for President, or 2. What she would have to say about Benghazi is more damaging than this effort to avoid testifying.”
A BRIEF HISTORY of the movie camera.
WHY SO FEW DIED AT THE CLACKAMAS MALL SHOOTING: Clackamas Shooter Was Confronted by CCW Holder.
NOTE THAT THIS WAS NOT DEMANDED BY A BOY: Hasbro to meet with girl, 13, on gender-neutral Easy-Bake ovens. Make them available in camo.
UPDATE: Reader Melissa Lambert points out that boys would like this toy grill. But I’m sure that counts as perpetuating gender stereotypes or something.
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POLITIFACT, WRONG? THERE’S A SHOCK. Mike Riggs: Dear Politifact: Your Analysis of Obama’s Drug War Record Is Factually Wrong.
IS CUSTOMER SERVICE ACTUALLY GETTING BETTER? Or has it just hit rock bottom? My experiences have been good lately, for whatever that’s worth.
PHOTO ESSAY: Poor Little Rich Girls Of Mexico. “There has been a melodramatic pattern of saying these women are evil; they represent corruption; they represent 70 years of PRI rule. …”
MARK SHIELDS HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT: “In the United States of America in 2012, it’s easier in many states . . . to buy an automatic weapon than it is to rent an automobile.”
Er, no, it’s not.
He and Rupert Murdoch need to do a little bit of studying before trying to capitalize on this tragedy.
UPDATE: Reader Bruce Goldston snarks: “Why should you need ID to buy a gun when you don’t need ID to vote for the people who want to take away your right to buy a gun?” (Bumped).
SCIENCE: Junk Food Can Make You Dumber. “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: 26 States Decline ObamaCare Exchange; ‘Administrative Nightmare’ Seen.
PREHISTORIC CHEESE: Humans made cheese 7,500 years ago, researchers say.
POLIWOOD: Roger Simon talks about his new play, The Party Line. On YouTube.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Arrogant Unilateralist Obama Defies the UN . . . and thank goodness he did.
The U.S., along with Canada, the UK, and a handful of other sensible countries, has walked away from the deranged plan to “occupy the internet” strongly supported by that wonderful thing, the “global community.”
The International Telecommunications Union (“committed to connecting the world”), another innocently named UN bureaucracy with great destructive potential, won’t be a vehicle to strengthen the repressive powers of UN members like China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. . . . Of course, autocracies can still try to control the internet domestically, and they can even try to cooperate with other friendly autocracies. But it appears they won’t be able to leverage the UN to help them do it. Harebrained schemes like taxing international internet traffic, legitimizing government censorship, and putting UN bureaucrats in charge of running the internet have been warded off for now.
This shows that on the issues he cares about President Obama is as much of a cowboy as Ronald Reagan. Indeed, cowboy American unilateralism isn’t confined to the Right. Remember that Ted Kennedy voted against the Kyoto protocol.
Alas, the threat is only halted, not abolished.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG IN THE ATLANTIC: What Can We Do To Stop Massacres?
We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons. This is crucially important, but very difficult, because it would require the cooperation of the medical community — of psychiatrists, therapists, school counselors and the like — and the privacy issues (among other issues) are enormous. But: It has to be made more difficult for sociopaths, psychopaths and the violently mentally-ill (who, in total, make up a small portion of the mentally ill population) to buy weapons.
People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read The Atlantic article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don’t know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.
More at the link.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Gun-free zones provide false sense of security.
GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE: IPCC Admission Has Climate World Buzzing. “So the IPCC, at the moment at least, stands ready to admit that the evidence supports a much larger role for solar activity, and a correspondingly much smaller role for CO2. Of course, other sections of the report implicitly contradict this admission.” Hmm.
ROLL CALL: Michigan Fight Symbolizes Coming Changes In Delegation. “Michigan once served as a national bastion for organized labor, economic prosperity and moderate Republicans. Not anymore.”
AGAIN WITH THE BLOOD LIBELS: Michael Moore: “The NRA Hates Freedom.”
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Steven Crowder Files Criminal Complaint Against Pro-Union Protester.
PIERS MORGAN, PLEASE TAKE NOTE: British Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade. Despite draconian gun-control laws.
BOB ZUBRIN TO THE GOP: Don’t Jump Off The Cliff: “Better to take the deal on middle class tax cuts now and work for something better later.”
STILL WONDERING what kind of guns Rupert Murdoch’s security team carries.
LOOKING DEEPLY INTO THE MEANING OF “Cornball Brother.”
IT’S NOT SOLUTIONS THEY’RE AFTER: Dr. Keith Ablow: “..Those who call for gun control after incidents like this contribute nothing to the solution.”
“PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS” IDENTIFY WRONG MAN AS NEWTOWN SHOOTER, THREATS ENSUE. The story headline blames the “Internet,” but that’s not really what happened, is it? “CNN, the Huffington Post, Slate and other news organizations” are not the Internet.
And it’s not a question of “where on the internet the misidentified innocents can go to reclaim their online reputations.” They should go to court and sue. This sort of feeding frenzy — which we’ve seen before — is the very picture of “reckless disregard.”
STACY MCCAIN: Chris Rock Was Right.
ROGER KIMBALL ON THE NEWTOWN SHOOTINGS:
Details about the horrible school shooting in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, Connecticut are still emerging. According to some reports, the shooter had “a dispute” with his mother, and so targeted her and her kindergarten class. As of this writing, it seems that 20 children and 7 adults, including the 20-year-old mad man who murdered them, are dead.
What can one say? The horror is particularly close to home for me and my family if only because until this year our son went to school in Newtown (but not at Sandy Hook). Mute horror seems appropriate as a first response to such obscene displays of malevolence. But already one is hearing the predictable homilies about “gun control,” as if depriving people of their liberties would somehow contravene evil.
It’s magical thinking. Or an effort to take advantage of people who engage in magical thinking.
ARE AMERICANS “OVERTAXED AND UNDER-REPRESENTED?”
THIS, MY BOY, IS WHAT WE CALL “CHANGE:” The USA Probably passed Saudi Arabia as the Number One Total Oil liquids Producing Country in the first week of December 2012.
JOHN PODHORETZ: Gehenna In Connecticut. “The idea that civilization is dedicated to the protection and preservation the weak and the innocent, and not about fulfilling evil impulses to defile and destroy innocence, is the root and core of the West.”
IT IS NOW FOUR DECADES SINCE WE LEFT THE MOON. But we have a lot of social-welfare bureaucrats on the payroll that we didn’t have back then.
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LOST IN WASHINGTON? The Disappearing Director-General of UNESCO.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Gun-free zones provide false sense of security.
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IN RESPONSE TO TODAY’S SHOOTING, WHICH DIDN’T INVOLVE AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, Rupert Murdoch asks: “When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons?” Appalling ignorance.
UPDATE: Reader John Rumpelein says the answer to Murdoch’s question is “1934.” Heh.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Murdoch keeps deleting my replies to his tweets. Tacky.
MORE: Reader Mike Puckett wonders what kind of weapons Murdoch’s bodyguards carry. I’d ask via Twitter, but, well . . . But hey, Rupert: What kind of guns do your bodyguards carry? And why are you more deserving of armed protection than ordinary Americans? You can email me through the blog.
MORE STILL: Well, I tried asking via Twitter anyway, but he deleted that, too.
STILL MORE: Reader Jason Young writes:
Murdoch’s non-response is a perfect illustration of the problem with the old guard media, and a tremendously ironic “no comment” from someone who would never take that from a subject. We need the New Media to start holding old media reporters’ feet to the fire by treating them exactly the way that they should be treating our elected representatives. Sit outside their houses and offices until they answer questions. Hound them with cameras and lights. Shout questions like “Why no coverage of Iran shooting down our drone?” or “Don’t you think the Benghazi survivors deserve to be interviewed?” or even “Why do you think the majority of the American public doesn’t trust you any longer?”. Get it on tape and post their non-responses for all the world to see.
Now that we have an alternative media channel we need to expose and shame these traitors into DOING THEIR JOBS.
Doing my best. But they’re kinda shameless.
AND EVEN MORE: Here’s a picture of “Rupert Murdoch, surrounded by his personal security team.”
There seem to be a lot of them. Hey, Rupert: Why is your life more deserving of protection than a battered woman’s or a 7-11 clerk’s? (Bumped).
DONALD SENSING mocks Hollywood over “gun culture” remarks. They’re mockable. Also, Tom Cruise is way too short to be a plausible Jack Reacher.
Also, Jim Treacher mocks David Frum. Easy, but still worth it.
TWO NEWSPAPERS IN ONE!
CHICAGO-STYLE GOVERNANCE: City of Chicago Wants to Vacate Ruling Against Cops’ “Code of Silence.”
ADVICE: The Koch Brothers Should Buy MSNBC.
Well, they certainly seem to be doing well enough to afford it.
