How far we’ve come!

Gabriel Hanna comments at Althouse:

If a school follows a quota, they don't have to prove they aren’t discriminating.

Unsurprisingly, the federal government is involved.

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Can’t handle the changes

Paco offers an analogy:

You gotta love the last half of this headline at The Hill:

"Progress seen in debt talks, but outrage from Dems over lack of tax hikes”

I swear, they’re like bandits who’ve successfully robbed trains for years and then get pissed off when the railroad goes bankrupt.

Related:  Reader Michael McFatter writes to Instapundit:

Thus far the Democrats have proved intractable on these negotiations.  But more than that, they seem to be living in denial...

None of these people work for a living. Their concept of where money comes from and how wealth is created (and destroyed) is completely divorced from reality because they live in a government bubble...

We’ve been negotiating with the President and The Democrats in Congress on the assumption that they’re sane. ... [But suppose] they’re not sane.  [Suppose] they want five apples and there’s only two plus two but they CAN’T ACCEPT that two plus two equals four. ... I’m worried they’ll pull the trigger on default as just one more "political” step in the march towards freedom from want or whatever other principle they’re operating under.

So, is it malevolence or stupidity?  Ultimately, it may not make any difference.

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Clipfile - July 23, 2011

"Progressives are so addicted to spending our money that they are now obsessed with spending money which does not even exist” - "eon”

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Not how it was supposed to work...

Macedon Ranges Weekly:

AS ELECTRICITY costs surge and the nation wrestles with the carbon tax, Australians are returning to the eternal fuel of winters past.

With electricity prices rising 15 per cent to 18 per cent this month, firewood suppliers already distributing up to 6 million tonnes a year are likely to face heavier demands.
...
Matt Niland, of Four Seasons Nursery at Belrose, which supplies between 500 and 800 tonnes of firewood to householders a year, said the colder winter had brought a 30 per cent increase in the demand.

So let’s see: The government, in the name of "saving the environment,”  makes energy more expensive.  So people to burn more wood, instead of gas (or coal, in a power station).  Saving the environment... how?  Right.

Via:  Blair

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You’d think people in the news business would know something about fair use...

Newseum.org > Today’s Front Pages

Starting today, the Newseum is testing a watermarking system to prevent illegal downloads of the newspaper front pages.
...
Anyone seeking permission to use a front page must credit the Newseum and contact the newspaper directly for permission. U.S. copyright laws apply.

(Didn’t see any watermarks, but they’ve shrunken their "gallery view” images so much that they’re just about worthless.)

Elsewhere (added 110722 17:25):  Bill Quick comments.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 19:17:15 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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“...not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev”

Obama presiding over a doomed party?

Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, "entitlement” consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts.  Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats.

And when other peoples’ money runs out...?

Interesting idea, which James Pethokouris almost gets:

Obama’s tax obsession becomes understandable when you realize the long game he’s playing: Big Taxes to fund Big Government.  Decade after decade.  See, it’s an almost universal belief among left-of-center journalists, economists, policymakers and politicians that Americans must pay higher taxes in coming years to cover... all sorts of brand new social spending and green "investment.”

...although he misses all the "clients” whom such spending "buys.”

Related:

Minters via: Ace

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Seems there’s not much “hope for change” out there...

Insta-poll: So what will happen with the debt ceiling fight?

LATER: Bill Quick leads the Cynical Brigade:

Coming Up Soon

Long winded explanations from various gentry GOP shit sandwiches and RINOsaurs about how "this was the best deal we could get.  Trust us.  Vote for us next year. We have only your best interests in our hearts.”

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Not the same thing

So the House Republicans failed to pass HR.2417 (the lightbulb bill) last Tuesday, but then they redeemed themselves on Friday, so all’s right with the world, right?

Not so fast, Kemosabe: HR.2417 (which would have passed easily had it not been for the leadership‘s suspend-the-rules cuteness) would have repealed the 2012 lightbulb ban. Period. Gone.

Friday’s vote merely blocks the ban’s enforcement (by denying funding), but leaves Fred Upton’s 2007 efficiency standards in place.

Meaning that to keep the ban from going into effect, we will have to write (or amend) a similar restriction into every subsequent budget. Every year.

(And of course there’s always the possibility of some "public interest” group getting a court decision mandating enforcement, regardless.)

Which leaves the situation even more uncertain than the impossible conditions test that Michele Bachmann’s (HR.849) attempt would have imposed.

With the horizon stretching only as far as the next congress, you can bet that there will be no domestic investment in manufacturing old-standard bulbs. Of course, the uncertainty presents no obstacle to importing them from China.  More jobs shifted overseas!

Unfortunately, some of the smart people out there haven’t understood this wrinkle yet.

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Decision point approaching...

Bill Quick:

Imagine if Hitlerian fascism had presented itself as a religion: "You must worship the ancient German storm gods, who require that you conquer the world in their name, and impose their rules controlling all aspects of individual living and worshiping on all nations and peoples.”

So, what is this?  A religion?  Or a ruling ideology with a religious component?  And how should you treat it in terms of American notions of freedom of religion?

These are questions that America’s current reflexive regime of diversity, political correctness, and simple-minded judgment that a religion is a religion is a religion are ill-equipped to grapple with.  But we need to face these issues - or face the potential consequences of our intellectual cowardice.

The question is Islam.  The decision point will be here much sooner than most people anticipate.

Related:

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Thanks for reminding me why I don’t have a cable subscription

Ron Radosh:

AMC’s Breaking Bad — Simply the Best Program on Television
...starring Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher turned top of the line drug kingpin...which he thought he could sell to addicts with the aid of a former student drop-out, who... was also an addict himself...

As Walt gets in deeper, embracing his criminality and signing on to run Gus’ pharmaceutical-grade-meth superlab, Breaking Bad becomes something incredibly compelling

Yuk.

Oh, BTW, Ron...?

With a family to support, and desperately in need of funds to support them, he decided to use his knowledge of chemistry to develop a method of cooking pure crystal meth...

 ...Who wants White’s family to fall into economic collapse because he was given the bad deal of incurable lung cancer?

Celebrating sociopathy while advancing the agitprop that for the "unfortunate,” 21st century America is indistinguishable from 19th century France. Horsefeathers. (And Walter White ain’t no Jean Valjean, either.)

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