tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85634802012-01-14T05:11:01.539-07:00Byron Matthews, a sociologist retired from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a partner in an educational software company, lives near Santa Fe, NM.Byronnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3981100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-11529674800065454512012-01-13T11:37:00.000-07:002012-01-14T05:07:22.162-07:00

There's nothing in Head Start A 50 Year Flop? Say It Ain’t So, Joe to surprise anyone who's followed the evaluations of compensatory education programs over the years, especially programs of the "general enrichment" type like Head Start. Head Start does get the kids seen by a doctor and a dentist, and it provides a few jobs for people in the neighborhood, but that's about it. Cognitive

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-55479667798756567792012-01-09T12:56:00.000-07:002012-01-14T05:11:01.553-07:00

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0106fsjk.html The totalitarian impulse has from the beginning been part and parcel of Left thinking, embodied from the start in those 19th-century utopian experiments that tried to create viable socialist communities and in the Marxist dream of establishing a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat."  The former all failed, and the latter failed

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-64009539660122184652011-12-14T12:09:00.000-07:002011-12-18T09:59:50.819-07:00

Did the Obama administration delay report on Volt fires? See the article for the depressing story. But it's not just electric cars.  Obama's entire subsidy push for green energy is a massively expensive and wasteful disaster from beginning to end.  It's government overreach of the worst kind, with entirely predictable results. New energy technologies will enter the marketplace, the great

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-44953112416973470752011-12-13T17:48:00.000-07:002011-12-18T10:01:35.181-07:00

Kermit Gosnell’s wife pleads guilty to assisting at his abortion shop of horrors I'd forgotten about the awful Gosnell story, which has been grinding through the legal system, free of national media attention as you might predict. I'm pro-choice, but I'm not pro-this.  Nobody is, because nobody but a monster could be. A moral system is never self-sustaining, it has to have external supports.

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-15217357969402440492011-12-07T13:50:00.000-07:002011-12-18T09:58:46.362-07:00

An outbreak of fiscal sanity in California? Supporters of the project warn that shutting down the project now would mean having to return $3 billion in federal grants — but that’s a rather poor argument for committing to a project whose predicted cost has now risen to $99 billion, and the same projection warns that it could run an additional $19 billion more depending on route options. $118

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-16750404379199769852011-12-01T12:51:00.000-07:002011-12-18T09:57:37.925-07:00

Disaster: Early returns show Islamists on track to win “dominant majority” in Egypt elections In another triumph for Obama's "smart power" foreign policy, Mubarak is replaced by an Islamist government loaded with extremist Salafis.  Golly, nobody saw this coming, right? Obie will probably find it a perfect time to throw a few rhetorical brickbats at Israel, just because that's what the Left

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-47764267023924357672011-11-09T11:53:00.000-07:002011-12-18T09:56:52.333-07:00

European Wheels Spin Faster, Still No Traction "But being who and what they are, these countries cannot produce electoral majorities to pass and sustain the ‘right’ laws — and much less can they put them consistently into practice." Cultural differences take generations to overcome, if they ever are. I'll bet that most of the differences among European countries in financial solvency-insolvency

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-64998635912261276542011-10-31T00:38:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:55:16.750-07:00

OCTOBER 30, 2011 FOR HERMAN CAIN, a high-tech lynching? Well, the press didn’t spend much time looking into the past of the last black guy who looked like he might be President, so they’re putting a lot more effort into it this time. . . . Posted at 11:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds --- Oh, yes, indeed. The media went to extraordinary lengths to avoid investigating anything about candidate Obama,

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-64385448652079876042011-10-30T11:28:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:54:13.005-07:00

Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague The Left is always full of passionate intensity, and it has always taken "truth" to be subjective, a fundamentally political construct. That's a view that gives you permission to do all kinds of things. Trouble is, of course, that the physical universe and the laws of economics operate

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-73559172061837789402011-10-21T10:02:00.000-06:002011-10-21T10:40:07.437-06:00

Green-jobs success: Jobs created … in Finland You have to read it to believe it, to believe that any administration could treat the public purse with the irresponsibility of the Obama regime. Al Gore and George Kaiser are both involved in this particular mess, which alone is spending $529 Million in taxpayer money on a loan guarantee to build "green" cars in Finland, cars that get worse mileage

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-24699067989617618712011-10-14T12:04:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:52:50.458-07:00

(1) Issa subpoenas WH aide in Fast & Furious probe This is the WH Aide that screamed and cursed at CBS's Sharyl Attkisson for covering the F&F story, for not being "reasonable" and covering it up, like the NYT and Washington Post. (2) Gunwalking case becomes grenade-walking case? Attkisson's bombshell report this morning about prosecutors standing by and allowing thousands of grenades flow

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-2627449096498154342011-10-09T21:19:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:51:09.749-07:00

Justice Scalia: “Learn to love the gridlock” Go to that link, scroll down to the C-SPAN video, let it buffer for a few seconds, then push it ahead to about 17:30.  Scalia gives a Congressional committee a lesson in the Constitution: What is it that keeps America a free country? It's not the Bill of Rights. Whether you agree with him or not, the guy is an absolute joy to listen to. It's HD,

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-80052403753162669872011-10-08T12:23:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:49:32.672-07:00

WASHINGTON POST: Barack Obama, The Loner President. Beyond the economy, the wars and the polls, President Obama has a problem: people. This president endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors. His relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill is frosty, to be

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-4545470483893301152011-10-07T19:21:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:47:50.889-07:00

Predicting Our Demise Nice article. It reminds me of all those prediction models for stock market prices that work so well when back-tested. Those are really a dime a dozen. But forward testing? Funny how they all fail at that... Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-76485095942991094622011-10-07T10:59:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:46:55.938-07:00

Every Picture Tells A Story Pro-choice.  And, as steady declines in gun violence clearly show, this triumph of commons sense has been bad news for gun criminals.  A few places, like Chicago and Washington, D.C, contribute to the issue by serving as stark examples of how gun prohibitions privilege criminals and create high levels of predatory gun crime. In the early 1980s 90% of Americans lived

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-38941181886876203912011-09-26T17:44:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:45:16.384-07:00

U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During 'Fast and Furious,' Documents Show Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.   This disclosure, revealed in documents

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-81161816011716315702011-09-24T09:43:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:43:41.412-07:00

This is very interesting, analogous to the "broken windows" problem in economics. Which means a socialist won't be able to understand this, either: A counter-terrorism bleg My own favorite economics example of this sort is a story about Henry Ford, whose goal was to produce affordable automobiles. So, when he traveled around, he'd make sure to visit local auto junkyards, where he'd examine

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-19403856291962769232011-09-23T14:55:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:42:13.472-07:00

Special Editorial: Yikes I can't stand to watch these "debates," but by all accounts last night's hootnanny was a disaster for Perry, who's now being referred to as "Texas Toast," and highly unimpressive for Romney, who's had a lot of time to polish his act, but obviously spent it doing other things. In other words, the retreads went flat, and the new guy got his tongue, and maybe his brain,

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-22542800427667778162011-09-23T11:44:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:41:16.865-07:00

We're Sinking Under Obama's Policies The head-scratching continues as stocks take another leg down. Why, they ask, must the market be so negative? With an economy buckling under leftist incompetence, what, we ask, is there to be positive about? Funny, because it’s been going on for almost three years now, but hardly a day goes by without some bit of bad news the media calls ‘unexpected.’ But

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-50277095153548123222011-09-20T11:49:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:39:18.411-07:00

Question:  Is it preferable that people (1) Spend their money in the marketplace on the things and services they desire; or (2) Invest their money to make it available to private enterprise to grow the economy in response to market demand; or (3) Have their money confiscated by government planners to redistribute via an endlessly-expanding list of projects and favored constituencies? Common

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-3421297199658577592011-09-10T11:04:00.000-06:002011-12-18T10:03:49.859-07:00

Hold that space on Mt. Rushmore... “Sobering isn’t it? It’s an unmitigated litany of failure, evidence of economic illiteracy, political incompetence, and ideological extremism. What a legacy.” Shut up, he explained

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-6705048922194303162011-09-02T07:20:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:38:32.776-07:00

Tennessee's state agencies told to prepare for 5 percent cuts "NASHVILLE — State Finance Commissioner Mark Emkes has told state government agencies to prepare for a 5 percent reduction in their state funding for next year and not to propose any new programs unless they can save an equal amount with cuts elsewhere." Imagine a 5% across-the-board cut in every kind and variety of Federal spending

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-17987464484436921142011-08-29T14:42:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:37:04.818-07:00

Worth a look: Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write I have no comment except to note an old distinction between "Contest Mobility" and "Sponsored Mobility." Contest mobility occurs as individuals rise or fall in the education/occupation status system according to their individual performance in what is essentially a competition for positions. Society presumably is better off when the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-89416596716449514722011-08-20T15:03:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:36:05.145-07:00

Time Magazine: Duncan should worry about his mess in Chicago before messing with Texas Another Obama Administration official, that is, who is nothing but an empty-suit political hack from Illinois.  In this case, it's his Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who formerly ran the Chicago Public Schools, which are scandalously bad, perhaps the very worst urban school system in the nation, a

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-73951152679748076372011-08-12T21:15:00.000-06:002011-10-21T11:27:26.937-06:00

Question: Are labor unions progressive or conservative organizations?Answer: Labor unions are deeply conservative institutions, in the worst, reactionary sense of "conservative." Labor unions have aways fought technological change, going back to the Luddite machine wreckers destroying power looms at the turn of the 18th Century, and long before that as guilds resisted changes in production

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-71054627242342344122011-08-09T17:16:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:35:06.807-07:00

Obama sticks by crisis-causing policies "Having managed to create an income-tax system in which fully half of the “taxpayers” pay no tax at all, the left is now trying to decouple the failing entitlement from its taxpayer base as well" Well, it's Obama's One-And-Only Idea: Get ALL revenue from "the rich," who are portrayed as terminally greedy and undeserving, and have Government redistribute

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-11294837240687286382011-08-09T13:43:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:33:40.387-07:00

Is Obama Smart? The piece concludes "not very."  But "smart" is not defined, notice.  I think Obama is plenty smart in the sense of IQ points.  Political smarts are something else, though, and so is wisdom.  Those have to come through experience, and the making of mistakes that the trial-and-error of experience always provides. An over-confident Winston Churchill made a catastrophic mistake at

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-42237804035622724072011-08-09T08:47:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:32:27.533-07:00

Taking an America-hating Euro twit to the woodshed. This is how it's done: An Anatomy of European Nonsense

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-78976281861700657702011-08-07T09:44:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:30:44.809-07:00

If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth What Byron is learning is that he was wrong. The argument I always made was that no economy can support both a socialist welfare state and a global military. I thought that Europe's social democracies could exist only because the U.S. was paying Europe's defense costs. (Which always made it galling to listen to smug

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-86062749329878609682011-08-03T17:57:00.000-06:002011-12-18T09:28:25.599-07:00

Rick Perry: I support constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion "Two caveats to his otherwise strict support for the Tenth Amendment, both of which happen to serve the agenda of social conservatives whose votes he’s depending on. He backed away from his “states’ rights” defense of legalizing gay marriage last week; here’s the inevitable climbdown on abortion too, which he

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-54558332789016051402011-08-03T08:45:00.000-06:002011-10-21T11:22:14.848-06:00

'Civility': The Denouement - The liberal elite grows even angrier and more desperate.Socialism is driven by a moral-political vision of the Good Society, and it has a redistributive economic theory of how to achieve it. If the economic theory worked, the whole world would have become socialist long before now.But, without exception, the economic theory of socialism has been demonstrated not to

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-67487020521413140662011-07-22T22:57:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:32:14.277-06:00

What Washington really fears: being out of money and out on their assConventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic is that an immediate failure to address the liquidity problems faced by both Athens and Washington will plunge the world into a new era of darkness. Conventional wisdom, as it so often is, is wrong. The problem is not illiquidity; it is insolvency.Al Gore's "Lockbox" nonsense was

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-45956372538724434482011-07-10T08:17:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:29:18.780-06:00

If, for the collective good, the government can require individuals to buy health insurance they don't need or want, why can't the government also require companies to hire employees they don't need or want? The additional consumer spending will kick-start the economy, and voila! the additional workers needed will already be there!Problem solved, and wouldn't you know it, the solution was right

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-29468720792272584252011-07-06T12:54:00.002-06:002011-07-23T05:41:44.104-06:00

Maybe this investigation of IPCC's (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) highly questionable estimation methods, which appear to vastly over-estimate warming from CO2, will finally put an end to the global warming fiasco:The IPCC and high biased climate sensitivityThe comments are very good -- here are a few that give the gist of the problem, which is basically poor IPCC estimates of how

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-72824232665349546412011-07-05T12:51:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:40:12.056-06:00

VIA INSTAPUNDIT:JULY 5, 2011STUDY: The more people know about science, the less they believe in global warming.“The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-44479722178699442562011-07-02T14:16:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:27:38.924-06:00

The short clip of Rubio speaking is extremely impressive. And so is Ed Morrissey's commentary. (Btw, why Morrissey hasn't been picked up by some major news organization is beyond me; the guy is consistently first-rate. Instead, we get an endless procession of blow-dry nit wits who don't know much about anything except how to check their make-up and make the stereotyped hand gestures when the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-86416585753992409652011-06-26T15:51:00.001-06:002011-07-23T05:25:35.827-06:00

NY TIMES COLUMNIST: KANSAS, MISSOURI ‘MIDDLE PLACES’ LAND OF ‘LOW SLOPING FOREHEADS’This is very funny, on one level; unintentional self-satire always is. It's the result of living your life inside the liberal media bubble. But even so it's surprising somebody can be this stupid in public.People like David Carr need not wonder why they and their "newspaper" continue on a long slide down the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-43201160267180489472011-06-24T10:36:00.001-06:002011-07-23T05:23:42.726-06:00

Krauthammer: This is outright lawlessness from Obama adminKrauthammer is excellent here, and Myra Eliason's question about "deporting 11 million people" is startlingly foolish (and surprising, because she is not an otherwise stupid person). One has to admire Charles's patience in responding.Nobody is talking about deporting any large number of people. But the idea of legalizing current

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-26523526118997968102011-06-23T11:11:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:10:54.672-06:00

Study: Cost high to fix public pensions — (CNN) — American taxpayers would have to pay anywhere from $329 to $2,475 annually per household for 30 years, depending on what state they live in, to remedy the crises in their public employee pensions, a new study said Wednesday.The study calculated the tax increases needed for the full funding of state and local pension systems in the United States

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-2890383780551525142011-06-16T15:52:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:22:16.579-06:00

...is not the center line. That's true, and it seems to be the thesis of the book Liberal Media Distorts News Bias. But what doesn't seem to be acknowledged is that the location of the center line can change with time and experience. For example, approval of gay marriage is pretty rapidly becoming the center-line opinion. For an opposite example, the demand for control of the Mexican border is

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-87570197878566289722011-06-16T15:12:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:09:58.884-06:00

via Instapundit:SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE?Gallup: U.S. Satisfaction Dips To 20% In June.“Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the country fell to 20% in early June from 26% at the start of May. Seventy-eight percent of Americans are now dissatisfied with the nation’s direction, according to a June 9-12 Gallup poll.”The satisfied 20%?That group was made up of (1)

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-40028306730060666472011-06-14T10:33:00.001-06:002011-06-23T14:08:50.849-06:00

The entire event was an embarrassment.I find these things too excruciating to watch. My prediction is that the liberal moderators who run them will always steer televised GOP debates to spend far too much time on issues of concern to the religious right, with the purpose of making GOP candidates look like a pack of Bible-thumping wahoos.After all, there is certainly no way that a focus on the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-77145121570571540832011-06-11T15:11:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:07:20.295-06:00

Great news: Deficit set to blast past $1 trillion for third straight yearAlmost $1.4 trillion by Sept 30, and that's for just this current fiscal year.The debt ceiling will be raised to allow the insane spending to continue.The article is too depressing and awful to excerpt; I can't do it.Read it if you can stand to.Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-76768342547723481002011-06-11T11:35:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:06:33.508-06:00

Freedom in the 50 StatesThis study comprehensively ranks the American states on their public policies that affect individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. It updates, expands, and improves upon our inaugural 2009 Freedom in the 50 States study.

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-72847409527310788422011-06-11T08:49:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:05:21.305-06:00

The latest "high-speed" (45 mph) rail projectThe latest in lunacy in high-speed rail lunacy: at Joel Kotkin’s newgeography.com Wendell Cox reports that the U.S. Transportation Department is dangling money before the government of Iowa seeking matching funds from the state for a high-speed rail line from Iowa City to Chicago. The “high-speed” trains would average 45 miles per hour and take five

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-12286337264076003802011-06-10T11:11:00.000-06:002011-06-23T14:01:50.117-06:00

House Dems demand end of tax deal for debt-ceiling hikeA group of House Democrats is calling for any deal to raise the debt ceiling to bring about the end of the Bush tax rates for the wealthy.The lawmakers, led by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), also say that, following last week’s weak job report, they are concerned that certain decreases in federal spending could hurt the economy’s

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-68277224989851074152011-06-10T10:35:00.000-06:002011-07-23T05:43:38.505-06:00

Long, but a very good read. A recent survey found that 84% of California companies would locate somewhere else if they could. California is the tragedy of a Promised Land destroyed by overweening, irresponsible Government. California is a deeply insolvent and completely unsustainable Potemkin facade, teetering precariously on a vast and growing mountain of unpayable public debt.A native

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-70124400051469191472011-06-07T10:49:00.000-06:002011-06-23T13:59:44.068-06:00

Obama Economics Advisor Austan Goolsbee Jumping Ship, White House Seeks Another ‘Academic’ to Replace HimThe top economics advisor to President Obama is jumping ship. He hasn’t been in the position very long, and obviously was an utter failure at his job. According the NYT’s The Caucus blog, Goolsbee is going back to world of academia, and the White House is searching for another academic to come

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-78593913327283829242011-06-06T17:03:00.000-06:002011-06-23T13:57:42.187-06:00

Why we must end Medicare ‘as we know it’Burdened by runaway spending, Medicare “as we know it” is going to end. The only questions are when and on whose terms.Samuelson is always good. What will it take for Obama and the Democrats to stop the childish demagoguery and face reality? Where is their plan to deal with this? For that matter, where is their plan for anything besides destroying the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-3903594279408061942011-06-06T11:51:00.000-06:002011-06-23T13:55:36.960-06:00

Hotair.com:CBS delved into the jobless numbers and discovered that the percentage of unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months now exceeds that of the 1930s economic collapse: There is an unfortunate adage for the unemployed: The longer folks are out of a job, the longer it takes them to find a new one. CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports that the chronically

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-15194999267949948892011-06-06T10:19:00.000-06:002011-06-23T13:52:28.864-06:00

About Paul Revere?Like when she said " Let's party like it's 1773." The media airheads went berserk, hooting about her "stupidity" that time, too. But, of course, she was right -- the Boston Tea Party was in 1773, not 1776 like the media airheads thought.http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/06/historians-agree-palin-was-right-about-revere/Imagine what better shape we'd be in now if Barack

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-80390077597025228012011-05-29T15:43:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:37:48.738-06:00

Instapundit:I PREDICT MORE SUITS LIKE THIS: Unemployed Grad Files $50million Class Action v. Law School for Misrepresenting Placement Data. “Plaintiff would not have attended TJSL and incurred more than $150,000 in school loans if she knew the truth about her job prospects upon graduation.”Good, and past due. Colleges have grown fat on the student debt scam, so this is going to be interesting.

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-49260862893272125342011-05-27T16:23:00.001-06:002011-05-30T14:35:35.138-06:00

The one that surprises me is Miami at no. 6. I would not have figured St. Louis for a spot in the top twenty best-read, either.These are individual cities, not Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs), so ones with relatively big university populations will have an advantage. If it was SMSAs, then I'd guess the Wash, D.C. SMSA would be tops, because Washington, Alexandria, and Arlington

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-27778943715778638642011-05-27T11:18:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:32:11.044-06:00

The US economy is in the best of hands:Pending Home Sales Plunge, Reaching Seven-Month Low...Pending sales of existing U.S. homes dropped far more than expected in April to touch a seven-month low, a trade group said on Friday, dealing a blow to hopes of a recovery in the housing market.The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index dropped 11.6 percent to 81.9 in April, the lowest

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-85456486028604225662011-05-15T10:46:00.001-06:002011-05-30T14:30:36.157-06:00

Not. The only surprise here is that HUD squandering doesn't run into the Billions instead of mere hundreds of millions. (Color me highly skeptical about that, btw.) If I were a developer, the very sound of "Housing and Urban Development" would make my pupils dilate, among other things.Whenever the word 'government' appears in close proximity to the word 'housing' sirens and flares should go off

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-63841515663433367052011-05-11T10:29:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:29:02.562-06:00

AP-Gfk poll: Obama approval hits 60 percentAP finds an amazing turnaround for Obama! On everything: foreign policy, handling the economy, every aspect of governance! Too amazing. Here's how you cook up a mess like that:And the award for the most ridiculous poll sampling goes to … AP!Republicans under-sampled by almost HALF. Hey, whatever it takes, right?This must set a new standard for most

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-65525156557756568552011-05-07T14:04:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:28:07.468-06:00

The guy is completely shameless.The First-Person Presidency"Senator Obama opposed tribunals, renditions, Guantanamo, preventive detention, Predator-drone attacks, the Iraq War, wiretaps, and intercepts — before President Obama either continued or expanded nearly all of them, in addition to embracing targeted assassinations, new body scanning and patdowns at airports, and a third preemptive war

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-73674974317699398142011-05-06T14:24:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:27:05.357-06:00

Lawrence O'Donnell is so pretzel-brained he actually thinks you can put time on fast-forward to see what your current decision should be given future events. It has to be some kind of physical disorder, a disability involving basic time perception and sequencing of events.I do not exaggerate.

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-53962142847485508882011-05-06T09:21:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:26:17.896-06:00

Unemployment back up to 9%.NPR this morning touted the fact that 244,000 jobs were created, more than expected.NPR somehow forgot to mention that 62,000 of those jobs came from McDonald's.Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-18964466179504570272011-05-05T19:34:00.001-06:002011-05-30T14:25:23.077-06:00

Thursday, May 05, 2011Pass the salt shaker?CNN Health: Those who consumed the least salt had a 56 percent higher risk of death from a heart attack or stroke compared with those who had the highest consumption, even after controlling for obesity, cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, and other risk factors.... A few days ago, the news was that omega-3 fish oil, supposedly good for the heart, is

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-17462323762997038962011-05-05T09:26:00.000-06:002011-05-30T14:22:48.135-06:00

Instapundit:UNEXPECTEDLY! NEW JOBLESS CLAIMS JUMP TO 8-MONTH HIGH: “New U.S. claims for unemployment aid unexpectedly rose last week to touch their highest level in eight months, pushed up by factors ranging from spring break layoffs to the introduction of an emergency benefits program, a government report showed on Thursday.” Or, you know, the whole recovery could basically be stalling.Wait,

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-36960313757026061312011-05-03T12:57:00.000-06:002011-05-03T19:01:28.576-06:00

A dead OBL ends up merely a footnote because, so far, it's a democratic Iraq that's turning out to be the model, as neo-cons like me argued it could. I think there have been two keys to the flow of events.(1) First was Bush's steadfastness and foresight with respect to Iraq. He was spot-on correct from Day One, and he never wavered. History will show that the defeat of Saddam Hussein is where

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-14895508472916551892011-04-18T14:27:00.000-06:002011-05-03T19:00:19.156-06:00

Obama still thinks 9/11 suspects should be tried in New YorkIt would be easy to say "Well, of course he does," and to pass this off as just another bad idea from our reigning Master of Bad Ideas. But I'm starting to think it's worse than that.Rather than let the matter drop without further comment, Obama seems angry about not getting to use this trial to rub something in the face of those

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-7005282175740256002011-04-18T09:27:00.000-06:002011-05-03T18:59:28.490-06:00

Blind Tasters Can't Tell Cheap Wines From ExpensiveOenophiles will never accept this as a general statement. The methodology as reported is wrong, anyway, because it assumes a high correlation between quality and price in the sample of wines tested. The question to start with is whether people can tell the difference between bad wine and good wine, as rated by taste experts. Once it's established

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-78834592373720349152011-04-12T11:15:00.001-06:002011-04-12T16:48:45.542-06:00

John Hawkins: Do you believe reparations should be paid for slavery?Thomas Sowell: The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them. If those who were enslaved were alive, they would deserve huge reparations and their

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-73375312820489617532011-04-11T11:38:00.000-06:002011-04-12T16:47:43.226-06:00

Paul Krugman / New York Times:The President Is Missing — What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular?Hey, Paul! Buddy!C'mon, lost your impish sense of humor all of a sudden? Obama stands foursquare and firm for what he's always stood

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-39662835080718763122011-04-10T18:20:00.000-06:002011-04-12T16:46:14.757-06:00

California high-speed rail: The next stop is bankruptcyThe most utterly ludicrous estimates and assumptions I've ever seen for any project, ever.Simply has to be read to be believed.Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-7787711788224686302011-03-31T16:17:00.000-06:002011-04-12T16:44:58.977-06:00

The Euros eat Obysmal's lunch, leave him holding the empty bag. Presidential leadership at its finest!Obama is admirably smooth and glib. But he's woefully inexperienced and, we are discovering, really not all that smart. He needs a trusted counselor like Dick Cheney whispering real politik in his ear; instead he's got Slow Joe Biden, the buffoon's buffoon. This is not a recipe for success on the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-45158044448731494402011-03-30T23:39:00.000-06:002011-04-12T16:43:10.097-06:00

As Libyan Rebels Stall, Obama Faces Impossible ChoiceIf he escalates, the U.S. could risk another Afghanistan; if he doesn't, we could be seen as complicit in Qaddafi's victory...Obama, utterly clueless as usual, thought for some reason that an untrained, ill-equipped, rag-tag bunch of rebels could beat Qaddafi's army. Now he's standing ankle deep in the cow pie, wondering which way to jump.And

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-80693925863373166362011-03-27T11:07:00.000-06:002011-04-12T16:41:45.732-06:00

In London:Anarchists protesting cuts in government spending.(Think about that for a moment.)The Left killed satire a while ago, now they've rendered the theater of the absurd dead as well. Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-68227198198875685702011-03-08T11:37:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:40:47.762-06:00

In Video: NPR Exec Slams Tea Party, Questions Need For Federal Funds"We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.""Mr. Schiller announced last week that he is leaving NPR for another job."Schiller committed the most deadly sin: Endangering NPR's government pipeline from the taxpayer's wallet.Rancid slurs against the Tea Party, etc.,

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-50927649910173190952011-03-08T11:12:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:39:32.978-06:00

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/Mr. Schiller [NPR Senior Vice President] exec chimes in later saying, "The main point here is that it is not our responsibility to present the opinion of a non-scientist through our science desk. All educated scientists accept that climate change as fact. On the political side, however, where it is not accepted as fact, and the fact that debate is

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-54359628877600612152011-03-02T11:58:00.001-07:002011-04-12T16:37:08.199-06:00

Charlie Rose interviewed Davis Guggenheim, who directed the documentary "Waiting for Superman," about the state of American public education, and why it's the way it is. He is a self-described left-liberal, who won the Academy Award for the Al Gore global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Hollywood just loved that movie.[Davis Guggenheim is an Academy Award-winning American film

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-61363620511142167182011-03-01T11:17:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:35:10.950-06:00

It's panic time, and they're really pulling out all the stops.I used to get paid to do public opinion polling, and there is absolutely no good reason for the finished product to show the consistent direction and magnitudes of sample bias these polls show. There are some bad reasons, though.Let me (1) word the questions, (2) determine the sequence of the questions, and (3) draw the sample, and

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-18310397675683013982011-03-01T09:22:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:33:25.218-06:00

Splash headline:CBS poll: 60% oppose stripping any collective bargaining rights from public workersWow. Oh, wait. It's a NYT/CBS poll.Now, here's how you do a poll to get results like those:A peek under the hood of the NYT/CBS pollGood grief.And just in case you missed it, Jane Fonda was on NPR this morning. She was described as "controversial" because "she protested the Viet Nam War." That's

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-50340561335000603532011-02-25T11:27:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:31:43.351-06:00

Rubicon: A river in WisconsinIn the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largess in the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-51805428816197755452011-02-23T11:15:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:30:23.471-06:00

Makes me a proud taxpayer... Michael Barone:But [Obama] did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s public employee unions. Walker was staging “an assault on unions,” he said, and added that “public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”Enormous

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-83134845250600300502011-02-23T09:34:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:29:20.805-06:00

Rumsfeld Flummoxes Andrea Mitchell

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-88385993087236721692011-02-21T17:46:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:28:14.518-06:00

Hitler or Stalin: Who Killed More?Interesting article, but it's not quite the right question. The better question is the toll of Fascism vs. Communism. Add Mao's count and Communism wins the competition by a good margin. But even that's not quite right, since both Nazism and Communism were different forms of the same thing, centrally-administered, totalitarian Socialism. So the true number of

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-53424977396628809392011-02-17T11:05:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:24:19.831-06:00

This illegal and tone-deaf action seems sure to backfire with taxpayers and lawmakers. Arrogance tends to result in tactical errors of this sort. The governor should immediately order them back to work, require lost time to be made up on their own weekends, and fire anybody who refuses to comply. If you can fire and replace the nation's air traffic controllers, you can sure as hell fire and

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-74973230813478764062011-02-14T17:21:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:17:12.364-06:00

Slow-Joe Biden, of course, is all for it. His reputation as a moron is well-earned and rock-solid.High-speed rail is a fast track to government wasteGoverning ought to be about making wise choices. What's disheartening about the Obama administration's embrace of high-speed rail is that it ignores history, evidence and logic. The case against it is overwhelming. The case in favor rests on

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-84237745369059391762011-02-14T12:30:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:16:15.678-06:00

Terrific interview. The guy could hardly be better:Video: Ryan slams Obama for “punt” on budget crisis

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-16325059829595988232011-02-09T12:55:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:15:26.224-06:00

It's widely argued that Gosnell's operation would never have been allowed to operate had it been located in one of the white suburbs of Philadelphia, instead of in the inner city. That's no doubt true. But Ed Morrissey below thinks there's more to it than that:Philly DA: State agencies responsible for Gosnell’s atrocitiesThe reason why the state of Pennsylvania didn’t bother to inspect Gosnell’s

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-48477342161691324262011-02-08T17:29:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:14:18.081-06:00

71% OF ALL VEGAS HOMEOWNERS UNDER WATER...Headlines like that would be a lot less worrying if we had an economy and job market roaring back from recession, as we had under other administrations. Instead we have stagnation and a monstrous over-hanging debt from throwing money down the government-expanding Obamanomics rat hole. "Obamanomics": It's to economics as socialism is to common sense:Job

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-22734268332137169262011-02-05T12:08:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:13:21.827-06:00

As usual. As Reynolds says, the fall of Mubarak is not the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is, after all, the Arab Mideast. Mubarak is a cocktail of bad and good. Whoever follows him will be another cocktail of bad and good. In that part of the world, it's always a matter of identifying the lesser evil. Was Ayatollah Khomeini a lesser evil than the Shah? Is Ahmadinejad a lesser evil than the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-73047602525771953312011-02-04T12:19:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:09:00.974-06:00

This is a farce. $74 billion is a pittance, a token. It's obvious that Democrats are not even a little bit serious about getting spending under control. It's like they're on crack.Byron Senate Dems reject GOP budget proposal, warn against government shutdownSetting the stage for another showdown over government spending, top Senate Democrats rejected the House Republicans’ new budget proposal

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-65630259640373681332011-02-04T11:10:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:11:13.763-06:00

Coming Soon: A 300-Percent Increase in ForeclosuresSo what will this mean when the last moratorium is lifted, the last show-me-the-note lawsuit gets thrown out of court, and the last loan modification has failed? . . there could be roughly three times as many homes on the market as there are now. Lawler points to 1,445,000 completed foreclosures and short sales at the end of 2010, compared with

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-42647080650602388042011-02-04T09:38:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:09:51.459-06:00

This morning, NPR trumpeted a drop in the unemployment rate to 9.0%, as if that means the economy is in recovery. Spinning the news, an NPR tradition -- "...And we do it on your dime!"Yes, the unemployment rate dropped to 9.0%, but the economy only added 36,000 jobs. Canada, with one-tenth our population, added 69,200 (via drudgereport.com).The only way the unemployment rate can drop when only

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-59745453751706933422011-02-02T15:24:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:07:00.344-06:00

Taking Federalism Seriously: Lopez and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban ActThe Framers, after all, certainly considered the limited nature of the federal government to be the primary protector of individual freedom; the Bill of Rights was merely a back-up system. We have now reached the point at which the back-up system is virtually all that is left of the original liberty-protecting scheme. And as

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-34441444142253272432011-02-01T18:14:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:05:38.340-06:00

The Weak Link in Judge Vinson’s Opinion Striking Down the MandateI'm not a lawyer, but the gist seems to be that Judge Vinson's ruling hinges on his view that the Federal Government does not have unlimited regulatory powers under the Commerce Clause, only limited and enumerated ones.Problem is, previous rulings by the Supreme Court have already given the Federal Government those unlimited powers

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-17489137195738608882011-01-30T12:04:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:03:47.087-06:00

The two links below are to slide shows that tell the story better than anything I've seen.It's pretty incredible, and what it says about the vast inventory of foreclosed houses is almost surreal:A Frightening Satellite Tour Of America's Foreclosure WastelandsCase Shiller: Here Are The 15 Housing Markets That Will Fall The Most By 2012

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-49437125124641514352011-01-26T15:02:00.000-07:002011-04-12T16:01:32.182-06:00

Smoke, mirrors, and cheap deceptive blather. Obama is completely hopeless. He suffers from the same mental disease that's been common to socialists all the way back, from Babeuf to Robert Owen to Marx/Engels and on forward. It's the twin delusions that people are malleable to any degree in their motivations, and that capitalism is a magical, eternal fount of money that can be confiscated and

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-53469893353870274002011-01-26T11:53:00.000-07:002011-04-12T15:55:23.002-06:00

CBS did an online poll during Obama's speech, where 500 people representing viewers nationally (self-identified 44% Dem, 25% GOP):The results are being touted all over the place this morning: 91% approve of the proposals the president made in his speech, only 9% disapprove.This is obviously a completely ridiculous poll, and a suitably ridiculous outcome. As William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-53753087205001258322011-01-26T09:35:00.000-07:002011-04-12T15:52:58.781-06:00

A truly dreary, disconnected SOTU speech. He even dragged out that debunked CBO estimate that ObamaCare would save money -- the CBO itself disclaimed it as a product of bad numbers. This president has nothing left.Even AP (!) isn't buying whatever it was that Obama thought he was selling.FACT CHECK: Obama and his imbalanced ledger

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-25529300286272791482011-01-25T00:33:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:37:46.589-06:00

Is this (below) what Dr. Gosnell's defense will be build around? That he was performing a perfectly legal form of abortion? "I spoke with three labor and delivery nurses who are familiar with the procedures, two of them had also read the grand jury's indictment. All remarked at how similar the procedures were." So his practice was guilty of nothing more than, perhaps, criminal negligence in the

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-46035536362766136012011-01-24T16:22:00.001-07:002011-04-12T12:36:25.624-06:00

How a Trillion dollars went down the drain. Families used the money to pay down credit card debt and hunker down. Grants to states were used to temporarily shore up state finances, -- without requiring them to cut spending -- and to expand Medicare. Federal and state purchases of goods and services, which could have been stimulative, were negligible. The state finances are in ruin, the Federal

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-83014146456572932592011-01-23T09:50:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:34:53.962-06:00

Corbett demands probe of failure to regulate abortion clinics in PennsylvaniaThe argument by both departments that they didn’t think their jurisdiction extended to abortion clinics is a bald-faced lie. They knew full well that they had the authority to conduct investigations and to prosecute violations. They just didn’t want to do it. As the grand jury concluded, the neglect by both DoH and

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-51873481000465379662011-01-20T09:44:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:33:19.981-06:00

Here is the report of the grand jury. I haven't read it all, but clearly the biggest question it raises is why the medical/legal authorities did not take action long, long before they did. If you consider where this butcher shop was located, and who the women were that made up its clientele, it's hard not to come to a very ugly conclusion about that.Byron

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-91120603262548110592011-01-18T12:10:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:32:20.359-06:00

Very:Student tracking finds limited learning in collegeThe study, an unusually large-scale effort to track student learning over time, comes as the federal government, reformers and others argue that the U.S. must produce more college graduates to remain competitive globally. But if students aren't learning much, that calls into question whether boosting graduation rates will provide that edge."

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8563480.post-18364007124159883412011-01-17T11:21:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:31:06.110-06:00

Labor Department awards millions of dollars in college grants for scarce ‘green jobs’The Department of Labor has issued several million dollars in grants to community colleges and specialized universities around the country to train students for “green jobs” in renewable energy fields. While the grants are supposed to fund the future “rank and file” workers of the renewable energy industry, there

Byronnoreply@blogger.com0