Month: May 2010

Contributed by: filbert Friday, May 07 2010 @ 08:33 PM CST

American oligarchy? [*1] — “Noting that the upper reaches of the investment banking industry are overwhelmingly Democratic, Caldwell argues that “there is nothing ‘curious’ about a president seeking to arm his most reliable supporters with political power.” Indeed, according to Caldwell “the intermarriage of financial and executive branch elites could only have happened in the Clinton years, simply because there is not sufficient Republican manpower in New York’s investment banks to permit it.“”

The traditional (and current) party of oligarchies and machine politics is the Democratic Party. The traditional (and current) party of political and social reform is the Republican Party. Sorry to burst everybody’s balloon, there. But the fact remains that by any objective standard, it is the Democrats who wish to–conservatively–extend the current New Deal/progressive policies that have been enacted for the past century, and that are at the root of our current financial (and, arguably, most of our social) problems today. It is the Republicans (or, more accurately, the politically disaffected Tea Partiers, who are trying to drag the Republicans along kicking and screaming) who are the true forces for change, reform, and real progress in America today.

Can We Control the Boom? [*2]

Maya Plumbing: First Pressurized Water Feature Found in New World [*3]

The world doesn’t conform to the left’s prejudiced expectations [*4]

Global Warming: Future Temperatures Could Exceed Livable Limits, Researchers Find [*5] — Buried in this panic piece: “The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios, but explored the impacts of warming.” So, “we still don’t know for sure if warming is really occurring, but if it is, it could be really, really bad.” Gee, golly, do ya think?

Obama Administration Glosses Over Key Concerns for Doctor Shortage [*6]

Black Bears Making Comeback In Missouri: Experts Offer Tips To Avoid Attacks [*7] — “the state Department of Conservation recommends carrying “a weapon or pepper spray.”” Bears don’t know nuthin’ about no Second Amendment, and no First Amendment, neither . . .

Leaving Las Vegas [*8] — “the corporate tax rate (in Macau) ranges from 3 to 12%. Individual tax rates range from 0 to 12%. There are no minimum wage laws in Macao. There is no VAT in Macao. “Resident and non-resident individuals are taxed only on Macau-source income. An individual is considered resident if that person holds an identity card or permanent residence permit issued in Macau.””

Parents Stunned After Son is Accidentally Shot, Killed by Brother [*9] — Kids should not have unsupervised access to firearms. Kids should also not have unsupervised access to power tools, or automobiles. This used to be called “common sense.”

Mayor Defends Red Light Cameras: State Senator Wants Camera Ban [*10]

U.S. International Broadcasting in Leaderless Limbo [*11] — American international broadcasting is just bad. The best I’ve heard around the world is the BBC (no surprise there) and China Radio International. You can pick either one up almost anywhere on Earth with a decent shortwave radio.

Senate backs plan attacking “too big to fail” [*12] — Unfortunately, what they’re referring to is Senatorial egos and self-images being “too big to fail.”

Are We Over-Medicating Our Children? [*13] — Are we overmedicating everyone?

Two New Cruise Ships for Princess Cruises to Enter Service in 2013 & 2014 [*14]

What’s Yours is Mine: The Dangerous Implications of a “Right” to Free Credit Scores [*15]

Governor Palin at the TIME 100 Gala (Update: Who Sat at Palin’s Table?) [*16]

Mizzou living large at the center of Big Ten expansion talk [*17]

Tonight’s election returns [*18]

White House In A Panic? [*19]

Suspicious White Powder Sent to AZ Governor Jan Brewer – FBI Called In (Video) [*20]

Contributed by: filbert Friday, May 07 2010 @ 03:27 PM CST

It’s not morning. And these aren’t the latest links. The next few Whips are Catch-Up Whips from the past few days. This may take a while, but here we go:

Somali pirates hijack Yemeni cargo ship [*1] Palin and Leftist Elites [*2]

The left can’t stand the fact that Palin, like Reagan, isn’t one of them. Like Reagan, she is not an “intellectual.” She doesn’t share what Thomas Sowell dubbed “the vision of the anointed” — progressive elitists’ unshakable faith in their grandiose plans for regimenting our lives. To leftist intellectuals, it’s okay to have a president who thinks he visited 57 states, a vice president who has claimed that Franklin Roosevelt went on television to calm the people after the stock market crash of 1929 (no TV yet, and Hoover was president), and a Speaker of the House who has insisted that we must switch from fossil fuels to natural gas. All ignorance, error, and mental dullness can be forgiven as long as one subscribes to the political catechism, “The government must control economic activity.” What is unacceptable, even evil, to them is someone like Palin, who doesn’t subscribe to the same catechism, who just doesn’t “get it.”

Oil spill – a perfect storm (update) [*3]

Today’s Moment Of Chris Christie Awesomeness…Judicial Edition [*4] — “Christie just isn’t playing by the rules the Democrats have set up to rig the game for so long.”

99 vulnerable seats in the House, 99 vulnerable seats … [*5] — “Jim Geraghty of National Review’s Campaign Spot looks at the 435 contests in the upcoming midterms and finds 99 potential wins for the GOP, which would make this one of the most significant midterms in decades. . .”

Where the Contract with American Failed, the Freshmen 50 Will Succeed [*6] — “The Freshmen 50 is a PAC, but unlike most PACs, there is no special interest behind it. It’s just you, me, and the radical notion that “We the People” should represent our neighbors responsibly.”

Internet Censorship Is Now “Substantially Justified” [*7] — Doesn’t that just put an extra bounce in your step? No?

Contessa Brewer Is Frustrated That Times Square Bombing Suspect Is A Muslim UPDATE: Note Brewer’s Double Standard For Islamic Terroists And Militia Members [*8]

Obama Refers to Opposition as “Teabaggers”; Updated [*9] — “Obama may be the most thin-skinned President we’ve ever had. It’ll be funny to see him apologize for his crude, offensive, and juvenile language when this book officially comes out.” The problem here occurs because Obama is the kind of person who will never, ever understand he has done one single little thing to apologize for. Other people always misunderstand him and the wonderful things he’s trying to do. No act of his ever requires any apology, and few acts even require any kind of coherent, straightforward, honest explanation, it seems.

WH reveals exact number of US nuclear warheads [*10]

Unrest in Athens Unlikely to Impact Cruises [*11]

‘Family Guy’ Seth MacFarlane Lies About Arizona Immigration Law [*12] — What? A Hollywood leftist with an off-kilter worldview? That NEVER happens.

Hedge Funds Donate Big to Democrats; Get Exemption from Bank Bill [*13] — That’s how the Democrats work: Demonize a special interest, then collect the extortion money from them as they hope to avoid the worst of the government’s iron fist . . .

Hey, You Know How Cheap It Would Be to Seal the Southwest Border? [*14] — “Five billion, all told, which is “a rounding error” in the GM bailout.”

Time 100 Open Thread (Update: Race Called for Coats) [*15]

Not All Americans Hate Libertarians [*16]

Fox News uses WUWT [*17]

The Gulf oil rig explosion – on the scene photos [*18]

Good news: Obama using the word “teabaggers” now [*19] — This from President We Need More Civility In Our Political Discourse. Pot. Kettle. Melanin-enhanced.

Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, May 04 2010 @ 06:31 AM CST

Beer Bust in Philly, Unregistered Gourmet Brews Confiscated [*1] — “In fact, while there were some real violations, much of the beer was even properly registered, just under a variation on the same name. “Monk’s Cafe Sour Flemish Red Ale” was confiscated, for instance, even though “Monk’s Café Ale” was on the list.”

First they came for Philadelphia’s beer, but I did nothing, since I was in Kansas City . . . Pelosi Caught In Major Lie- Says Bush Didn’t Warn Congress About Financial Crisis… Records Show He Warned Congress 17 Times in 2008 Alone [*2] — Gosh. Pelosi lies. Again. Yawn.

Factually Incorrect With Bill Maher [*3]

Carly Fiorina: “Racist Tone” Has Developed In GOP Regarding Immigration [*4] — Yes, because we all know that only white males should be expected to obey laws . . . sheesh . . .

What ever happened to the third way? [*5] — The single major achievement of Barack Obama’s Presidency is to make Bill Clinton–admitted perjurer while in office and famously referred to as an “uncommonly good liar”[*6] –look like a great American President . . .

Palin Did Not Say “Trust the Oil Industry” [*7] — In my life, I’ve been quoted by “the press” exactly once (it was not about politics). They got it wrong.

Punishing Savers, Again [*8] — “When President Obama took office, the personal savings rate for Americans was an anemic-but-getting-healthier 5 percent. That number peaked a year ago, and is now down to 2.8 percent. This drop is even more striking when you consider that asset prices have, until the beginning of this year, been dropping or flat almost across the board.”

Bloomberg: Hey, maybe the Times Square bomber was upset about the health-care bill [*9] — There are times when the best approach is to keep your damn mouth shut. This is of course a foreign concept to most politicians . . .

Anatomy of a Breakdown: Concerted government policy helped trigger the financial meltdown—and will almost certainly extend it. [*10] — From January, 2009. Lest we forget who got us into this mess. It wasn’t Wall Street–although they were certainly willing accomplices. It was the people under that building with the dome in Washington, DC. Most of them, but not all, Democrats. Remember “anyone who wants a home should be able to buy one?” Anyone remember that?

Another Correction: Fiorina’s Official Statement Says She Supports the Bill [*11] — “I think she’s talking in a very nuanced way which is why reporters keep reporting contradictory stuff about whether she supports the law or not. But unless she equivocates the heart of the statement away, it seems like she supports the law.”

Invisible Truth [*12] — And that truth really is: we have a huge job ahead of us, helping people un-learn things that just aren’t so, and learning how things really, really work. Sigh.

Too Obvious to be Provable? [*13] — A list of “Obvious Propositions” which are–er–obviously not really that obvious, much to everyone’s collective detriment. Some examples:

Corporate taxes are paid by individual taxpayers.

Rich capitalists do not take their riches from others. They create them. In the history of markets, their rising tide really does lift all boats. While their ebbing tide sinks all boats.

Profiling of various kinds is about seeking the people most likely to be breaking the law or planning harm; the argument should be about what constitutes an accurate profile, not whether it should be done. Opposing ALL profiling is a kind of death wish.

Lefty bias in the media is so prevalent that all its proofs have become too boring and repetitive to make, rendering them invisible, because tiresomely the same, in the public debate. One inevitably becomes more tiresome in the making of the argument than even the obvious evidence is.

Socialism suffocates individuals. Marxism kills them. Communism annihilates them, By the tens of millions.

In its whole history, religion has killed fewer people than the rationalist political philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Tell you anything?

Governments are always more inefficient and expensive than free enterprise. They succeed only when they can treat people like cannon fodder. Which they invariably do whenever they’re in charge.

Governments do not care about people. Governments are made of politicians. Who care about maintaining and expanding their own wealth, power, and privilege. Period.

The greatest human injustices are always perpetrated by bureaucracies.

The founders did not see belief in God as a danger to freedom. They saw government as that. They separated government from religion so that governments could not make themselves into a religion and thereby eliminate freedom entirely.

The Gorgon’s Stare [*14] — “every action and perception is judged in the scales of “the political effects in Washington”. That balance beam drove actions in Iraq; it is driving actions in Afghanistan and to some extent, it will shape the direction of the Times Square investigation. Wars are no longer fought with victory on the battlefield in mind. Rather they are waged with victory in Washington as the foremost consideration.”

Report: Arrest Made In Times Square Bombing [*15] — And it becomes more likely that he has some kind of radical Islamist connections . . . well, more likely than the chance he’s an avid Tea Party attendee, anyway . . .

And if you’re against socialism but not a conservative, then what? [*16]

Jacks face key campus matchups: Softball, baseball teams host crucial Summit games [*17]

BUYCOTT ARIZONA: Is it possible to start purchasing the majority of things you need from Arizona businesses? [*18]

Terry Pratchett vs Who [*19]

Leading the charge for GOP insurgents [*20]

The Eyes of the Movement Are On Ohio [*21]

JUSTICE DEPT. FAIL: Judge orders release of 9 Hutaree militia members. [*22] — Uh. Oops. “. . . the Defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

The Best Quotes From Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals.” [*23] — “The tenth rule of the ethics of rules and means is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral arguments. …the essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was “They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.” And it was. — P.36-37″ When you consider that our current President is an Alinsky disciple, this particular quote is something less than comforting.

Hitler Paranoia: Dangerous Political Rhetoric Whips Protesters Into Vulgar Frenzy [*24] — An Alinskyite at work. Watch, and learn.

Contributed by: filbert Monday, May 03 2010 @ 02:54 PM CST

So much going on, why limit ourselves to one Whip a day?

Here we go . . .

Libertarianism From A to Z With Jeffrey Miron [*1]
The Bully Party: When bipartisan debate fails, Dems fall back on a knuckle-sandwich approach to politics. [*2]

Glenn Reynolds notices the NY Times airbrushing criticism of the Obama Administration out of one of their Gulf oil spill articles . . . [*3]

Top 10 dumbest things said about the Arizona immigration law[*4]

How The Hell Did GM Pay Back Its Loans “in Full And Ahead of Schedule”? Well, It Didn’t. [*5]

Get Ready for a Nuclear Iran: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others will surely follow suit. [*6] — Heckofa job, Barry . . .

Immigration Protesters With Brass Knuckles Mace, Beat & Stomp On Counter-Protesters [*7] — And not in some remote central Asian country. This is San Francisco, home of peace, love, and tolerance. Because, as we all know, only the right stoops to violence.

The Congressional Research Service Doesn’t Know If ObamaCare Is Constitutional [*8]

More Inconvenient Obamacare Truths [*9]

Foster has since been asked to testify before at least four House committees. When they do, there are plenty of other alarms Foster’s report raises about Obamacare including:

* Millions Pay Fines Yet Remain Uncovered: 18 million Americans will pay $33 billion in penalties for failing to comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate.
* Firms Pay Billions to Comply with Employer Mandate: Between 2014-2019 firms that do not offer health insurance and are subject to the “play-or-play” mandate will pay $87 billion in penalties.
* Millions Placed on Welfare: Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through the welfare program Medicaid.
* Millions Lose Medicare Advantage: 7.4 million seniors who currently get such services as coor­dinated care for chronic conditions, routine eye and hearing examinations, and preventive-care services would lose their existing private coverage.
* Seniors Lose Access to Care: Obamacare’s top down price control Medicare cuts will make 15% of all Medicare providers unprofitable thus “jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.”

Heckofa job, Barry.

Video: Six reasons to repeal the capital-gain tax [*10]

Obama to 80% of Americans: You’re Extreme, Inciting Violence and You Hate Yourselves [*11]

Continental losing Houston home in United merger [*12]

Video: The creepy “we know where you live” tax amnesty ad [*13]

Standing Up To Obamacare: What The States Can Do [*14]

And yet some wonder why a lot of us are more fearful of big government than we are of big business. First, big businesses are not in the habit of providing for you services you don’t explicitly contract for (even if that contract is in really tiny print in that purchase agreement that nobody ever seems to read). Governments are notorious for “helping” people by giving them things they don’t want or need every single day.

Even if you’re so foolish and irresponsible as to not pay the bills sent to you for services you’ve actually wanted and asked for, big business usually doesn’t come after you with guns (lawyers, yes, guns, no). Governments can, and do eventually send out nice, well dressed men and women with guns to discuss your failure to pay taxes. Ask anyone who’s been imprisoned for failing to pay taxes about government guns.

Now, note the subtle difference between big business and big government. Some will of course argue that if you don’t pay your bills long enough, big business will sic big government on you, and you’ll wind up in the big house with those big government guns pointing at you. The difference is: big business can only send you to prison for not paying for things that you’ve actually promised to pay for. Governments are under no such restriction. Don’t like spending on the military? Tough. Hand it over. Don’t like spending on abortions? Oh, so sorry, but pay up anyway. Don’t want that highway built? Pay now, argue later.

See the difference? It is the difference between voluntary association and . . . yeah, it’s a scary, intimidating-looking word . . . coercion.

That is why Henry David Thoreau famously said “That government is best that governs least” (no, it wasn’t Thomas Jefferson, although he quite likely would have heartily agreed with that sentiment). Coercion is a dangerous thing to play around with. It is far too easy to do just a teensy bit more of it, here and there, over the years, for one good cause or another. Things rarely go in the other direction without some fairly drastic–if not historic–events.

This is the fundamental problem many have with Obamacare. It tightens down the torture-rack of coercion a full turn, for benefits which can charitably be described as dubious. There is no good reason to have enacted it the way the Democrats did it. There are lots of bad reasons, however.

Contributed by: filbert Monday, May 03 2010 @ 08:58 AM CST

A tentative return of the Whip after an extended and much-needed vacation. I’m still playing with the format (as I’ll probably be doing until the end of time, mainly because I can’t stand being bored). This one is more of a stream-of-consciousness format . . . it’s just things that catch my eye as they come into the Google Reader.

Here we go:

Seven Deadly Sins (If You’re a First Chapter) [*1]

Sawyer hits two homers as Jacks down Centenary [*2]

Park and Cruise — Is it really worth it? [*3]

UAL, Continental to form largest airline [*4]

Waiting to see what becomes of “big” leagues [*5]

Writing Your Book, part VII: The Beginning of the End [*6]

Sarah Palin Is on a Roll [*7] — “The left has done its best to demonize, ridicule, and reduce her, to no avail. The more that fair-minded Americans hear her, the more they are drawn to her. They no longer listen to Obama, but they do listen to her.”

The Extreme Left: A Ticking Time Bomb [*8] — There are ticking time bombs everywhere, it would seem. We need more than anything else steady nerves, do we not?

United name will live on, but the logo won’t [*9]

Some Social Aspects of Medical Socialism [*10] — “. . .the most effective argument for compulsory medicine is still to provide for people in the low income brackets who cannot provide for themselves. But in practice, and from the outset, the schemes always include a majority of members who could very well take care of themselves. And almost always they leave out a minority, especially the lowest income group, that still has to fall back on poor relief or private charity.”

Frontier initiates KC-Columbus flight [*11] — For all you Kansas City-area Ohio State fans . . .

Torches, smashed windows – must have been a Tea Party! [*12] — Oh, wait, it was those peaceful, harmless, in fact beneficial “undocumented immigrants” and their big-hearted American-citizen supporters. Oh. That’s OK, then.

Obamacare Will Kill Medical Technology [*13]

Limited Liability, Oil Spills, and Moral Hazard [*14]

Police: Man In Superman Cape Steals Big Rig [*15]

Mutual of Omaha’s Alex Gordon [*16]

China guards against “overseas hostile forces” on Web [*17]