Boyd

DeLong (professor of economics at UC-Berkeley, was assistant treasury secretary during the Clinton administration):

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and the other millionaires and billionaires of Microsoft are brilliant, hardworking, entrepreneurial and justly wealthy. But only the first 5 percent of their wealth can be justified as an economic incentive to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise. The next 95 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were divided evenly among U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it.

Speechless.

Update: Gates, Allen and Ballmer are worth a combined $82.6 billion. Taking 95% of their wealth comes to $78.47 billion which is a one time payout of $261 per each of 300,000,000 Americans.

And yet the federal government is going to collect around $2 trillion in taxes this year. Cut that by just 4% and we could 'give' everyone $267 annually. That ought to create infinitely more happiness and opportunity.

Horowitz:

Mr. Biden is ... skeptical ... about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Damn you, Joe, for taking yourself out of the running so early. You should have been amusing the nation with your stupidity through the primaries while collecting your 3% of the vote.

Update: Here's another Biden gem:

WALLACE: And, finally, Senator Biden -- finally, we've got about 30 seconds left, but I can't let you go without some politics. As we've mentioned, you're in South Carolina right now, on the campaign trial. Thirty seconds or less, what kind of a chance would a Northeastern liberal like Joe Biden stand in the South if you were running in Democratic primaries against Southerners like Mark Warner and John Edwards.

BIDEN: Better than anybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth- largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.

WALLACE: So you think you could go into the lion's den and against the other lion tamers?

BIDEN: I know I can.

"Yeah, that's right Chris, I can tame that lion because we know a little sumpin' 'bout slavery in Delaware. We were a border state, man."

As opposed to one of those agitating, abolishionist ones.

Simmons:

Closeup shot of Brian Baldinger's hand with the mutant pinky. I couldn't resist. Seeing that thing in person is like seeing Dirk Diggler whip it out at the end of "Boogie Nights" -- you're just never the same afterwards. I want to see a show where former offensive linemen show off their war wounds for an entire hour. Like you wouldn't watch this?

Well, well, well. Have a gander at what my seven-year-old chose to spend his life savings on this evening.

I am receptive to advice that might help keep said offspring out of jail.

Friedman:

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.

Friedman:

The case for free enterprise, for competition, is that it’s the only system that will keep the capitalists from having too much power. There’s the old saying, “If you want to catch a thief, set a thief to catch him.” The virtue of free enterprise capitalism is that it sets one businessman against another and it’s a most effective device for control.

Businessmen hate competition which is why some of the more creative thinking among them have come to love regulation. You play into their hands collectivists!

Tucker:

Environmentalists hate nuclear but they worry about global warming more. Conservatives pooh-pooh global warming but they do like nuclear power. So maybe we could get going on a nuclear economy that would at least free us from coal (the worst polluter) and maybe eventually cut into our imported oil.

Acceptance of global warming as fact seems to be gaining steam. However, this is the dog that catches the car. What now?

At the very least, it seems to me that if you refuse to consider nuclear, you aren't all that serious about the circumstances and prefer having the issue around.

WSJ:

Any thoughts on a China versus India comparison?

Friedman: Yes. Note the contrast. China has maintained political and human collectivism while gradually freeing the economic market. This has so far been very successful but is heading for a clash, since economic freedom and political collectivism are not compatible. India maintained political democracy while running a collectivist economy. It is now unwinding the latter, which will strengthen freedom of all kinds, so in that respect it is in a better position than China.

Powell:

For the last few billion years the Moon’s gravity has been raising tides in Earth’s oceans which the fast spinning Earth attempts to drag ahead of the sluggishly orbiting Moon. The result is that the Moon is being pushed away from Earth by 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) per year and our planet’s rotation is slowing.

If left unabated the Moon would continue in its retreat until it would take bout 47 days to orbit the Earth. Both Earth and Moon would then keep the same faces permanently turned toward one another as Earth’s spin would also have slowed to one rotation every 47 days.

Too bad for surfers.

Simmons:

I can't believe San Diego didn't give LDT 35-40 touches when he was running for six yards a carry and threatening to break every screen pass for a TD. Seriously, which slow white guy was beating him to the corner last Sunday - Bruschi, Vrabel or Izzo?

Exactly. I was pulling for the Chargers because I like San Diego (the city itself), I like LDT and I like Rivers. There is no way they should have lost this game. The interception that should have been knocked down because it was fourth down/ensuing fumble/ensuing most stupid challenge in the history of replay should never have mattered because the Chargers should have been up by three touchdowns.

That being said, in retrospect I'm glad it played out like it did. Colts/Pats in the dome is going to be insane.

Colts/Saints in the Superbowl is going to be a dream.

Update: Simmons again:

I can't believe how many readers predicted the following ending of the Pats-Colts game: Vinatieri shanks the game-winning field goal, rips off his jersey to reveal a Pats jersey, then runs across to the Pats sideline and jumps into Belichick's arms as Jim Nantz screams "Noooooooooo! Noooooooooo!" and Peyton Manning breaks out the greatest Manning Face of all-time. Would I sacrifice three months of my life for this to happen? Yeah, probably.

Me too, but throw in Vince McMahon standing behind Roger Goodell at the commissioner's next press conference and I'd give you a year.

Economist:

...the greater the number of people threatened by globalisation, the less each of them is likely to gain from getting their governments to stand in its way.

Murray:

The ability to present an employer with evidence that you are good at something, without benefit of a college degree, will continue to increase, and so will the number of skills to which that evidence can be attached. Every time that happens, the false premium attached to the college degree will diminish.

Every time I hear Dick Vitale praise some kid for turning down the NBA to stay in school to work towards his sociology degree, it makes me want to puke. If you were a first-year business major and GE came to you and offered you a million dollars to work for them on the condition that you drop out right away, people would say you're an idiot if you passed them up. Sure, if you like college and can afford it, stay and mess around with the co-eds and listen to Bob Marley in the spring in the quad, but let's quit this idiotic notion that a degree has all that much intrinsic value.

I was a music major for about half a second way back when. It didn't take a rocket scientist or me to figure out that the people eating their dinner while you were playing didn't really care how much music theory you knew. If you can play a guitar, you can play a guitar. If you can play ball, you can play ball. If you can write, you can write. Etc.

Kling:

...my take on the Republican Party in the 2006 elections was, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"

Concerned Duke Faculty:

As a statement about campus culture, the ad deplores a "Social Disaster," as described in the student statements, which feature racism, segregation, isolation, and sexism as ongoing problems before the scandal broke, exacerbated by the heightened tensions in its immediate aftermath. The disaster is the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus.

What of the disaster that is the atmosphere that allows someone to make anonymous accusations of rape against innocent folks and be believed in the absence of all evidence (in spite of the evidence even!) because the whole story fits the activist and media and prosecutorial Bonfire of the Vanities fantasy of rich whites being cruel to poor blacks.

Social disaster. Uh huh. More like possible career disaster for the concerned faculty which requires the academics to explain how they've been misunderstood by the rubes.

Tucker:

So we're going to send in 20,000 more troops. Why? To disarm the Shi'ite militia. These are the people we supposedly went in to liberate!

Hell, I don't know what to do and I sure don't want to see tens of thousands of Iraqis die in an all-out civil war and I definitely don't want to sell out the Kurds and I absolutely don't want this to mushroom into a regional conflict, but what is the point of the 20,000 other than Bush trying to make it to November, 2008 without having to really deal with this mess?

In the article, Tucker offers one great suggestion - let the Iraqis vote. Do we stay or do we go? They say we stay, we get a renewed commitment from them and the rest of the world and maybe they get serious about providing for their own security. They say we go, we leave. Simple as that. The chips are going to fall where they may. They ought to fall on Bush's watch.

Go here. Under Latest Video Reports to the left, click on World and then Nuclear Jihad.

The only thing more shocking than how extensive and user-friendly the AQ Kahn network was, is how surprised our intelligence and government officials were at how extensive and user-friendly the AQ Kahn network was.

If we were this clueless about what was happening, even after our senses were heightened following 9/11, then we're just waiting. This thing is Hurricane Katrina + 9/11 * 1000. We know it's coming. We don't know where and when and what we're going to do about it.

This economy and lifestyle we have in the US and the West in general is a powerful thing. More people are living well in the West than have lived well in the history of the world. This is the pinnacle of human achievement and one wonders what can happen to derail it. This is it. Once the bomb goes off, we'll look back at this period of innocence and naivete with longing. Enjoy it while it's happening.

Cass:

What could have been important enough for Berger to take the risks he did? What could have been important enough for a lawyer of his distinction to risk disgrace, disbarment, and prison?

I was shocked to see Brian's mug above the fold this morning. Fortunately his good looking family was with him for balance.

The article itself discusses the new recommendation of testing for Down syndrome for every pregnancy and the profound question as to whether to abort or not. Currently 80 to 90% of women who learn of this diagnosis choose to terminate their pregnancies.

Only sure way to rid Greensboro of hippies. Turn it up.

God, I hate hippies.

Aljazeera:

Bush’s most recent speech at the White House, in which he announced the deployment of a few thousand extra troops in Iraq triggered extensive debate among U.S. intelligence, military and foreign policy circles, with many suggesting that the American President’s recent remarks, or actually recent moves carried a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

Also rumored is that if you play Bush's speech backwards you can hear him say, "Gerald is dead."

Holt:

(Kling) tentatively admits "that if health insurance were relatively unregulated and unsubsidized, then many people would opt to do without health insurance." Anybody observing American health insurance today knows that this is true. Of course, that means that in order to cover everybody with health insurance, the market for it does need to be heavily regulated and subsidized. The reason for this is not just the free-rider problem that Kling mentions, but also the ongoing intellectual problem that I have yet to find any " free marketeer" explain away. That problem is of course that health-care spending is highly concentrated amongst a very few people. So, by definition, almost all the money spent on medical care needs to be transferred within an insurance pool from healthy to sick people.

We also compel education and a great many other things. Hopefully Libertarians won't allow themselves to be stalemated with an 'intellectual problem' in regards to health care like they are with so many other things. The way to get the benefits of a free market in health care while making sure sick kids go see the doctor is through needs-based vouchers.

Update: The vouchers are to go buy insurance with.

Rabinowitz:

Mr. Nifong is no anomaly--merely a product of the political times, a prosecutor who has absorbed all the clues about the sanctified status now accorded charges involving rape, child sex-abuse and accusations of racism. Which has in turn ensured their transformation into weapons of unequalled power.

Tzu:

...I have heard of military campaigns that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen military campaigns that were skilled but protracted.

Schmitt:

And if we are to restore the promise of activist government that can solve problems and help families make it in a difficult, dynamic economy, then taxes are going up even more, beyond what can be raised by letting the tax cuts expire.

Activist government. Beautiful.

Sager:

Former Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas—a man who is intimately familiar with the workings of both united and divided government as we’ve experienced it during the last 10 years—put it eloquently. “When I used to stand up and say ‘hell no’ to Bill Clinton, I was always applauded by all the people I love,” Armey recalled when I interviewed him in 2005. “When I stood up and said ‘hell no’ to George Bush, I was berated by all the people I love.”

Kling:

The health coverage most Americans have is what I call “insulation,” not insurance. Rather than insuring them against risk, most families’ health plans insulate them from paying for most health care bills, large and small.

and...

Real insurance would pay for treatments that are unavoidable, prohibitively expensive, or for illnesses that occur relatively rarely. Instead, insulation reimburses even relatively low-cost services, such as a test for strep throat or a new pair of eyeglasses. Insulation pays for treatment even if it is commonplace or discretionary.

See you this afternoon, after I have my free lunch.

Bailey:

...77 percent of the world’s known oil reserves are in the hands of state-owned oil companies. Such “companies” do not respond with alacrity to market signals and so are under-investing in new production technologies and even in maintaining the production facilities that they currently have.

The Economist breaks down country music:

Once they pass a certain age, most Americans stop worrying about being cool. This is often when they start (or go back to) listening to country music.

It's an open question as to the tack European diplomats will take with the U.S. once they finish analyzing the current country song catalog.

A recent Number 1:

...I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Perhaps they'll think we're all hopelessly violent and beyond help or maybe they'll just be happy that we don't let our women handle the nukes.

Simon and Burns:

We've made war against drugs in a social and economic vacuum, until hopelessness and rage have the damned of our cities fighting for nothing more or less than human desire and profit, against which no one has ever developed a single viable weapons system.

Bowden:

Nine years ago, in the epilogue to "Black Hawk Down," I quoted an unnamed State Department official (he was Michael Sheehan, ambassador for counter-terrorism) as follows: "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in the fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she will say, 'Yes, of course, I pray for it daily.' All the things you would expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.' People in these countries . . . don't want peace. They want victory. They want power..."

The stupider you are, the funnier he is.

Update: I realize that some of you may be unpersuaded. Here is the evidence (SFW pretty much):



Yep, that's as good as it gets. I kid you not. Don't even waste your time looking for something funny in an attempt to rebut me.

Look, I'm not saying the guy shouldn't be performing. There are a lot of bad stand-ups. I'm jus' sayin' that the guy shouldn't have the kind of money to not really be worrying about whether his jokes are good or not.

If he was making $200 a night and driving from gig to gig across the Midwest in a Kia, I'd be OK with that.

Sowell:

The leading newspaper in town, which had supported Nifong in its editorials before these new revelations, now called his actions “flawed” and “inexplicable.”

Nifong’s actions are inexplicable only if you assume that his purpose was to get at the truth...