On cell phone bans

I found these two almost-unrelated links on Instapundit.  Here's the first:

First, regulating cellphone use is not a federal responsibility, even on federal roads. This is not an issue that Washington has the authority to address.

Second, there’s no compelling reason for it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that 3,092 traffic deaths last year involved distracted drivers. But using a cell phone is only one of many driver distractions. Eating and drinking while behind the wheel are two others, and they are far more dangerous than yapping on a phone.

In fact, a 2009 NHTSA study found that 80% of all car wrecks are caused by drivers eating or drinking — not cellphone use — with coffee-guzzling the top offender.

Then there’s this. According to federal data, traffic deaths have fallen from 2.1 per 100 million vehicle miles in 1990, when virtually no one had a cellphone, to 1.1 in 2009, when almost everyone does.

Here's the second link, a piece of greatness from Frank J. Fleming:

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here.

After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Even aside from pollution, the government wouldn’t allow the risks to safety. . . . Driving is basically a grandfathered freedom from back when people cared less about pollution and danger and valued progress and liberty over safety. They had different equations related to human life then: We could lose 10,000 men in a single battle in a war and call it a victory.

We’re talking foolhardy people who eventually sent men to the moon strapped to a giant rocket that had less computational power than it takes to calculate the trajectory of an Angry Bird. Their kids dangled from jungle gyms over pavement.

Face it: We’re just not those people anymore. We don’t do dangerous things where lots of people could be hurt . . . even if they’re really cool and fun ideas. You can say we value human life more now, but it’s probably more apt to say we’re much sissier.

The picture of the O.S.H.A. Cowboy came from here. 

From one of our colonies: A human rights update

From CNN:


Kabul (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that a rape victim freed from prison after he intervened on her behalf has the right to make her own choice about whether to marry her attacker.
In an exclusive interview from Kabul, Karzai told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that the woman's case appeared to be a "misjudgment" that had to be resolved.
The woman, identified only as Gulnaz for her own protection, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after she reported that her cousin's husband had raped her.
But the 21-year-old was freed this week following the president's intervention, and is now staying at a women's shelter in Kabul, with the daughter she conceived in the attack and gave birth to in prison.
Her plight attracted international attention when it came out that she had agreed to marry her attacker to gain her freedom and legitimize her daughter.

Perhaps this legal concept will catch on in our other colonies like Korea and Germany, and then spread to the U.S.  If a woman turns down a guy's marriage proposal, he can walk away rejected, or....he can rape her. 

"Hey, how did you two meet?"
"You didn't read about it?  He raped me, and we've been together since, for the sake of the children.  It turns out we like a lot of the same TV shows and movies !"

Testing remote blog feature. Testing. Testing.

All you need to know about the Republican establishment

A Hypothetical Question About The Nobel Peace Prize

The last three Democrat adminstrations have produced three Nobel Peace prize winners.

Carter/Mondale - Carter won it, and then went off into full-time Foreign Policy interference. 

Clinton/Gore - Gore won it, and then went off to be a Green Scam Billionaire. 

Obama/Biden - Obama won the Peace Prize, and then went off to bomb the crap out of Libya, get involved in Pakistan, and then carefully maintain the other wars that we had on our plate. 

So....There's long been talk of replacing Biden on the 2012 ballot with someone who is marginally sane.  Now there's talk of replacing Obama on the 2012 ballot with someone who is marginally electable. 

If this happens, and the new Democrate Duo happens to win, is the Nobel automatically awarded to one of the new Statists?  Should it be, just to save time? 

Just wondering. 

Don Surber is despicable. Or maybe just misinformed.

Don Surber, whose writing I ordinarily enjoy, has been pushed over the edge.  It seems that Ron Paul's opposition to Hillary Clinton's and Dick Cheney's and Condi Rice's and George Schultz's and Henry Kissinger's foreign policy screw-ups have driven him over the edge. 

He's got a piece on his site entitled "Ron Paul Is Despicable".  Here's Mr. Surber: 

His (Ron Paul's) weird take on the Constitution is Jacksonian and I do not mean that in a complimentary manner. Republican Congressman Ron Paul envisions a world in which the USA is neutered as she was in the 1990s. He talks as if the last 65 years without a major European war are not worth the sacrifices our nation has made over the years in standing up to communism and in standing up for democracy in Europe and elsewhere.

Ok, lets look at the easy stuff first.  There hasn't been a major European war, only a minor one in Yugoslavia/Bosnia/Serbia.   But let's broaden our horizon to include continents that don't include so many white folks.  What about Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and the financial aid and training we've given to dozens of dictators? 

Never mind.  Those folks ain't white, and they talk funny. 

There are places in the world where nothing is more terrifying than the U.S. coming over to "stand up for democracy". 

Back to Mr. Surber:

But even if I agreed with him, I would think of Ron Paul as a despicable human being because of this, which he said to supporters, according to CBS: “Just think of what happened after 9/11. Immediately before there was any assessment there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq.”

Well, if memory serves, we went into Iraq claiming that they had WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.  We never found any.  The flimsy evidence upon which we based our invasion was weak and flawed.  I repeat....WMD's were the only reason we had to invade Iraq at the time.  We went in.  We found nothing.  We were looking for anything, any excuse whatsoever, to go invade the place.  We were "gleeful" to have that excuse, as no others had presented themselves.  We're still there.  We now have the largest fort in the world over there, and it is disguised as an embassy.  We'll be there forever.  Mission accomplished.
And there was very little Al-Qaeda presence there until we showed up and started kicking over anthills. 

He is lucky we outlawed dueling, because I am pretty sure that given the opportunity, Dick Cheney would indeed issue such a challenge.

And if Dick Cheney's dueling skills are anything like his dove hunting skills, Ron Paul has nothing to fear.  Cheney's no better at hitting targets than he was at finding WMD's.   
 

UPDATE: Ron Paul need not worry about repercussions. No one in the Bush administration takes him serious. The London Daily Mail reported that Ari Fleisher, Bush’s spokesman during 9/11, tweeted, “The man is nuts.”

Ron Paul has peddled this bullcrap for years. Recall this exchange during the 2008 presidential debate season:

Ron Paul: “They attack us because we’ve been over there, we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East. I think Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics.”

Rudy Giuliani: “That’s an extraordinary statement of someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”

Ron Paul is a perennial presidential candidate whose first bid was in 1988. He has figured out how to make a buck or two off paranoid rubes who buy this swill. It is a cottage industry that others such as Lyndon LaRouche work quite well.

I defend his right to lie about honorable men because I trust that most people have the wisdom to understand how ignorant he is.

The day after this debate, Ron Paul's campaign took in one million dollars. 
Until Ron Paul dropped out of the race, he had the honor of receiving the most contributions from active military personnel. 

Here's something from the comments beneath Surber's article:

I wish Ron Paul was crazy. I wish Iraq really did have WMD’s. I wish the Federal Reserve really did have the knowledge and ability to maintain stable prices and full employment. I wish that our welfare programs were solvent and sustainable. I wish the sacrifices made by our troops were really necessary. I wish the Patriot Act was patriotic. I wish we didn’t have inflation and unemployment was only at 9%. I wish we could win the war on drugs. I wish the terrorists really did hate us for our freedom. I wish we were defending our national interests in Afghanistan. I wish our big banks really were too big to fail.

But I can’t believe these lies anymore, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who is brave enough to tell the truth. Open your eyes.

A terrifying glimpse into the mind of Barack Obama

Every now and then, someone pulls back the curtain and we get to see how Barack Obama's mind works. 
It is terrifying. 
Here is the Washington Examiner, quoting words that Obama said with his very own mouth:

As Obama called for passage of those bills, he also responded to a recent Republican push to require him to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. "However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline," he said, "they're going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance."

I'm afraid I'll have to spend the rest of my life listening to elected idiots blather about creating jobs, creating jobs, creating jobs. 

If The Obamessiah wanted to create jobs, he could outlaw use of the Interstate Highway System.  He could mandate that all freight be hauled in oxcarts.  He could sign an executive order stating that all fast food be cooked over campfires fueled by buffalo chips.    

All of these proposals would create more jobs than the Keystone pipeline.  But that is not the point of the Keystone pipeline.  The point of the Keystone pipeline is to save money on fuel.  The money saved could then be spent on other things, things that Barack Obama can't predict.  These things would (incidentally) create lots of jobs. 

The best way to improve an economy is to get people like Barack Obama out of the way so he can't take money out of the productive part of the economy.  Then unleash the entrepreneurs.  Millions of jobs will be destroyed, but far more will be created. 

Hell, how many jobs did the internet create in its first decade?  Hardly any.  How many typewriter factory employees became unemployed later on, all because of the internet?  Tens of thousands.  How many more jobs did the internet "create" later on?  Millions.  How many politicians (with plans, plans, and more plans) saw this coming? 

None of them.  Not a single one. 

I'm calling in sick today, as I intend to spend the rest of my time praying for the salvation of our nation. 

Good luck, everybody. 

Nanny State Update, with a light sprinkling of Cronyism

From The Huffington Post, on the actions of those who are trying to protect their contributors you:

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-- In June 2010 the Nashville Metropolitan City Council passed legislation raising the city's minimum fee for limo and sedan rentals, bumping it from $25 to $45. Drivers were prohibited by law from charging less. Other new regulations forbid limo companies from using leased vehicles, require cars to be dispatched only from the place of business, compel companies to wait 15 minutes before picking up a client, and ban parking in front of hotels and bars to wait for customers. More laws that take effect in January 2012 would also require companies to replace all sedans and SUVs over seven-years-old, and all limos 10-years-old and older. Vehicles older than five years cannot enter into service.

Passed under the guise of consumer protection, the net effect is to give large, existing car companies (also known as livery services) a huge advantage over smaller companies, and to effectively prevent any new companies from entering the market. Prior to the new laws, Tennesseans could purchase transportation from downtown Nashville to the airport in a limo or sedan for the same price as an average taxi ride. Nashville residents and visitors will now pay almost double for the same service.

Nashville folks in need of an affordable ride, and drivers looking to earn an independent living in a sagging economy, join a long line of people caught on the wrong end of a nationwide effort by big car services to squeeze extra profit by regulating competitors out of business. It's a case of regulations actually costing jobs and driving up costs, just as Republicans charge they always do. But this time, the regulations are being pushed by the GOP's so-called "job creators," the new name given to big business.

A transportation battle currently playing out across the country pits large, established car service companies against their smaller and independent competitors. State or local governments in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Oregon, have all passed minimum fare regulations. The fight over new laws in Nashville, where a group of smaller car service owners have filed suit in federal court, belies the black-and-white approach the both Democrats and Republicans take to regulation.

Wesley Hottot, an attorney for the Texas Chapter of Institute for Justice, a non-profit libertarian law firm, says the Tennessee Livery Association (TLA), a coalition of expensive limousine companies, pushed the bill through with a number of provisions that benefit only its members. “There is no point in this regulation. It has nothing to do with public safety. It has everything to do with economic protectionism,” Hottot says. Hottot and his team have litigated similar cases involving economic liberty and property rights in federal and state courts across the country.

Such minimum charges for non-taxi car services are common all over the country. In Austin, Texas for example, the minimum fare of livery vehicles is $45, in Houston it's $75, and in Portland, Oregon, the fares must be 35 percent higher than the prevailing taxi cab rate. Little Rock, Arkansas companies can charge no less than $50 for limousines, no matter how long the ride, and no less than $30 for SUVs and sedans.

Think about it.... the only way for an upstart company to squeeze into a marketplace is by better prices or better service.  The Nanny Staters are doing what they can to eliminate the pricing option. 
And speaking of silly licensing and regulatory requirements to protect existing businesses against newcomers, here's a fascinating piece from Style Weekly:

It looked like the least controversial cut on Gov. Bob McDonnell’s reform list. As part of his efforts to slim the state’s $39 billion annual budget, last week McDonnell proposed to deregulate three specific professions: hair braiding, interior design and mold remediation. The state no longer would license or certify people in those professions.

You might think the braiders, designers and remediators would be happy. Who wants more bureaucracy in their lives? But some of them are protesting the change, stirring up a small but fierce debate about government intervention in the free market.

“As a conservative, I understand the desire to deregulate,” says Christopher Good, an associate principal with Glen Allen design firm KSA Interiors. But if the state government steps back, he says, the profession suffers. “We’ll be essentially barred from competition,” he says.

Why? Interior designers who submit drawings for permits must be state-certified. The commonwealth — as well as the federal government and most localities — also requires certification for interior designers to bid on public projects, Good says: “So I assume they’ll have to rewrite that law.” Otherwise, he says, architects — who still are state-regulated — could snap up all the projects that require certification.

There are about 500 certified interior designers in the state and thousands of employees who work with them, Good says. Don’t call them decorators. Interior designers must know about fire codes, the proper placement of emergency exits and other safety practices. If unqualified and uncertified people begin practicing interior design, Good says, “we run the risk of there being catastrophic consequences.”

Highly unlikely, says Robert McNamara, a lawyer with the libertarian Institute for Justice. “There’s absolutely no evidence that anyone has ever been harmed in any way by an unlicensed interior designer,” McNamara says. McDonnell’s commission found “few, if any complaints” in interior design matters and very few regulatory violations.

The nonprofit Institute for Justice has battled interior-design regulation in several states, though not in Virginia. One Florida case is poised to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Who knew this was such a hot issue?

It’s a matter of economic liberty, McNamara says. Entrepreneurship is a fundamental American value, he says, yet requiring state regulation “serves as a way for established, entrenched businesses to keep new people from entering the marketplace.” He argues that interior designers should be able to practice freely without having to get a four-year degree, prove two years’ work experience and pass two exams — which Virginia requires for certification......

What about hair braiding, which is regulated for health reasons? Deregulation isn’t a good idea, says hair braiding instructor Dionne James Eggleston, who runs a salon and braiding school on Marshall Street in Richmond as well as a salon in Long Island, N.Y. “People need to be held accountable.”

In the hands of an unregulated, untrained hair braider, clients run the risk of being burned by hot water and “catching different things on their scalp,” Eggleston says. Getting licensed isn’t difficult, she says. After receiving 170 hours of training or an equivalent course, an aspiring Virginia braider must take a written exam on state regulations, sanitation practices and braiding techniques. Eggleston charges $2,000 for the 170-hour course.

“The hair braiding industry poses a minimal risk of public harm,” McDonnell’s commission reported. In the last five years, the commission found, Virginia has fined two hair braiders and one salon, and revoked one license.

The Institute for Justice doesn’t have a beef with basic, brief, health and safety training, McNamara says, nor with regulation of medical professionals. But it’s not the state’s job to make sure ordinary professionals, whether braiders or designers, are “good enough” to get an official stamp of approval. “That’s violating people’s basic right to economic liberty,” he says.

Professional regulation is an old Virginia tradition. One regulatory board, which licenses boat pilots in Virginia’s major shipping lanes, was chartered by the king of England in the 1600s. The state regulates dozens of other professions, including auctioneers, body piercers, boxing promoters, cemetery operators and property managers.

To shave $2 million off the budget, the governor also has proposed consolidating or eliminating dozens of other state boards and commissions. His list includes merging the Seed Potato Board and the Potato Board into “a single, unified Potato Board” to handle all research and regulation of Virginia potatoes. This suggestion has failed to spark any debate — yet

All of these links came from the great Radley Balko, to whom we should always be grateful. 

Why Newt Gingrich isn't all bad

Newt Gingrich would be a horrible president. 

He's an egomaniac, he made a vile Global Warming video with Nancy Pelosi, he was censured for major ethics violations, and he wasted a great chance to shrink government back in the 1990's. 

He then helped Fannie/Freddie destroy the economy in the 00's, and was paid millions to do so.  The cronyism that Gingrich represents is one of our biggest problems, and his past behavior shows that he would probably do nothing to end it.   

But....

Even Hitler loved his dog.  Everybody has some redeeming qualities. 

Here's Maureen Dowd, quoting Barney Frank:

Barney Frank told Abby Goodnough in The Times that Gingrich was “the single biggest factor” in destroying a Washington culture where the two parties respected each other’s differing views yet still worked together.

Good job, Mr. Gingrich.  Good job on that one. 

Which variety of wasteful spending creates the most jobs?

Our government employees are now arguing over which type of wasteful spending creates the most jobs - Military waste, or Domestic waste. 

From ThinkProgress:

Facing deep spending cuts, the Department of Defense, including Secretary Leon Panetta, and military-industrial trade associations have complained that tightening the U.S. security budget will cause greater unemployment. And even while toeing the (dubious) conservative line that government spending cannot create jobs, right wingers like Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) insist that military spending must stay high to keep unemployment from increasing.


But a new study (PDF) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) highlighted by economist Dean Baker shows that, contra the conservative talking point, non-military spending can create more jobs than money going to defense programs. (Blah blah blah blah blah....Hit the link at the top to read the whole thing.)  Among them, military spending was the lowest, creating fewer jobs per billion dollars spent than even consumer-oriented tax cuts.


Here’s a chart from the study showing how many jobs each area produced from a billion dollars in spending:

Great God Almighty, where to begin, where to begin....

Let's start with the motivations of entrepreneurs in the real world.  Think of the people you know who have started their own businesses.  I've never heard someone describe the experience by saying "Well, you know, I had this overwhelming urge to work 80 hour weeks, with no guarantee of a reward, so that I could hire a lot of people."
But letting entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses are the only way to grow the economy, and that's the only way out of the current swamp where we find ourselves.  Uncle Sam's remedies are politcally-oriented, not economically-oriented.  The Obamamedia have done such an outstanding job of parroting Barry's "jobs created or saved" bullshit, no Congressman will ever again stand in front of a microphone and boast of lowering taxes on businesses so they can grow and make a lot of money (and incidentally, maybe hire people). 

On to the next point....  Do domestic spending boondoggles create more jobs than military boondoggles?  That's an interesting question, one that I hope will be fully answered in the next life. 
In the meantime, debating such gibberish is contributing to the problem. 
It doesn't matter if we're going to the Middle East to blow up brown children, or preserving the Department of Education to destroy our own children.  If we're doing either of these to create jobs in the U.S., we're screwing up.  It would destroy fewer resources and minds if we paid the soldiers and education bureaucrats to stay home.  Long-term welfare, according to a lot of experts, is harmful.  But it's not as harmful as maintaining bad programs to "create jobs", right? 

Third, nowhere in this idiotic article does the author acknowledge that the money from this crap comes from someplace else: taxes, loans, or Bernanke's printing press. 
Taxes are a necessary evil, even at the lowest rates.  At worst, they stifle growth. 
Taking out loans to be paid by unborn fetuses?  Let's go ahead and call that bad. 
Bernanke's printing presses should be carefully disassembled, and the component parts distributed to the bottoms of lakes and oceans all over the world. 

I hope that I never wake up in the morning and read something like this again. 

Harry Browne and P.J. O'Rourke on Free Trade

Harry Browne on Free Trade - "We have only two choices.  Either you are free to buy whaterever you want from whomever you want, wherever that seller is in the U.S. or the world - or we turn over to the politicians the power to decide what you can buy.  If we do the latter, you know from all experience that what you can buy will then be decided by those who have the most political influence."

This reminds me of P.J. O'Rourke's quip that "If politicians can determine what can be bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold will be politicians." 

An honest question about the effectiveness of pepper-spray

Buzzfeed has published what they call The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011.  There are some great photos in there. 
Three of them caught my attention.....

A protester gets sprayed in the face with pepper spray at an Occupy Portland protest. (Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

A University of California Davis police officer pepper-sprays students during their sit-in at an "Occupy UCD" demonstration in Davis, California. (Jasna Hodzic)

84-year-old Dorli Rainey was pepper sprayed during a peaceful march in Seattle, Washington. She would have been thrown to the ground and trampled, but luckily a fellow protester and Iraq vet was there to save her. (Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com)

I've got one question.... Our government is pepper-spraying protesters who are rallying for more and more government power and control.  I repeat....Our government is pepper-spraying protesters who are rallying for more and more government power and control.
Have the protesters changed their minds already, or do they need to be pepper-sprayed some more? 

Hit this link to see the other pics.  There are some great ones in the Buzzfeed collection.
A fresh coat of Whitening to my friend Mike Coyne for opening my eyes to this phenomenon.   

You got served !!

From the greatness of Reason magazine, on how to deal with Nanny State legislators who don't know how to find their way out of a sack, but who believe they know what's best for you to eat:

San Francisco's ban on giving away a free toy with a child's meal containing a certain number of calories, salt, and other particulars is set to kick in tomorrow. McDonald's, the clear target of the ban, had a year to figure out a way to change its business practices. Seems like they used the time wisely, reports the SF Examiner.

The San Francisco ban on providing free toys to entice children to eat unhealthy foods goes into effect Thursday, but McDonald’s plans to comply with the law by charging 10 cents a toy for their Happy Meals and donating the money to the nonprofit Ronald McDonald House.

(Catch that nice bit of editorializing about what's "unhealthy" there?)

And from the SF Weekly:

In any event, it appears the fast food chain's sharpie lawyers have McTopped San Francisco's legislators. Count this city's lawmakers as the latest among the billions and billions served.

Good for McDonald's.  They got around the toy ban by charging a dime for the toy. 

 The Aggie grew up eating McDonald's Happy Meals, and has now upgraded to McDonald's Value Meals (or the WhataBurger equivalent) and she now has the body fat of a mop handle and can do enough pull-ups to qualify for Navy Seal training.  Out of 120 people who tried to make it into the YMCA's lifeguard training program, she's one of 12 who qualified, and one of only 7 who finally passed the class.  (Not that I'm proud or anything....)

There's a lot that's unknown about proper diet and health, but this much is clear:

1) The San Francisco City Council doesn't know jack shit about this topic.  The Federal Government knows even less.  Go here for a personal testimony. 

2) Michelle Obama tried to hop on the Food Nazi Bandwagon last year, releasing some guidelines from her throne for all of us who truly love our children to follow.  Go here for the pics of Barack feeding a hot dog into The Teleprompter's orifice a few days later.

3) When I was in the Literary Retail business, I sold every diet and nutrition book that was brought to market.  The new ones couldn't be kept on the shelf, they sold so quickly.  They had totally different content than the old ones published the year before.  The old ones couldn't be given away, mostly because they were old and had different contents than the new ones that were recently featured and slobbered over by Oprah Winfrey.  The only things these books had in common were dietician authors and a short shelf life. 

4) I grew up being told to eat my fruit, eat my fruit, eat my fruit.  But that stuff turns to sugar as soon as it is digested.  I don't eat quite as much fruit now.  I feel better.
    
5) All laws, rules and regulations have unintended consequences and create different incentives from the ones intended by the prophets who bring them down from the mountain.  As an example, Happy Meal toys are now cloaked in the righteousness of the Ronald McDonald Houses.  Good work, guys !

Here's the great Jonathan Edwards, doing his 1971 mega-hit "Sunshine".  (I especially like the line "Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life, he don't know what he's askin'.  He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine.") 

One last thing, totally off-topic....Edwards mentions performing this at an anti-war rally.  Are we going to have any more of those rallies, or do we have to elect a Republican president first????

On taking a chance by hiring a 55 year old

I had an interesting conversation today with a new employee.  He's 55 years old, works in another department, and he mentioned that he really felt grateful to have a job with us since many companies are no longer willing to take a chance on a 55 year old. 

The guy has plenty of experience, and probably has great references and credentials. 

So why wouldn't other companies take a chance on him? 

It's because if he doesn't work out and he has to be fired, he can sue his employer for age discrimination. 

Doh ! 

In my previous job, I hired, trained and promoted enough gays to staff the Disneyworld parade.  But the powers-that-be got nervous.  Very nervous.  I eventually got sat down and told about the realities of Civil Rights law, and that I might want to take it easy on hiring those fine folks.  Lots of lawsuits over minority firings were in the works.  (Comic episode:  I'm ashamed that I actually tried to comply with this.  I promoted 3 consecutive people who came out of the closet 15 minutes after I promoted them.  Ha !  I hope you're out there reading this, Betsy Batchelder.)

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, more companies would promote more racial minorites to better positions if the companies couldn't be sued for changing their minds later on????

If I decide to stop giving money to Joe's Plumbing Service and start purchasing the same service from Bill's Plumbing Service, do I have to prove that I didn't do so because of Joe's age, race, weight, sexual orientation, religion, voting record, or attitudes toward dachshund ownership?  No.  That's why excellent plumbing services owned by old, black, fat, gay, Mormon, Libertarian dachshund owners are likely to stay in business just as long as excellent plumbing services owned by young, Hispanic,healthy, straight, Presbyterian, Democrat cat owners.  Customers aren't punished if they take a chance on a minority employee and change their minds later.  (And if you hire a plumber, you are an employer.  The plumber is your employee.  Please hurry up and wrap your head around that concept !!)

Purchasing labor and effort should be just like purchasing pizzas or lug nuts.

If I decide to switch from Kroger to Wal-Mart, I don't have to fill out any paperwork.  I just purchase goods and services from Wal-Mart.  Same thing for the people who replace my roof after every hailstorm.  I don't think I've ever used the same people twice.  I probably change my mind every time, and it's none of Harry Reid and John Boehner's business.     

Civil Rights law doesn't apply to those situations, thank God.  It only applies to certain labor agreements. 

If you ever allow yourself to be placed in a protected category by the government, you might be in big, big trouble.    There is a good chance that The Law Of Unintended Consequences is going to kick you very hard.  Good luck. 

Damn, that's gotta hurt

I think it'll leave a mark. 

As an office-holder for the Libertarians, I can't endorse anybody running as a Republicrat or a Demoblican.
But this ad is freakin' vicious. 

Ron Paul didn't pull out all the stops in this one, and he didn't make fun of the early '90's laughable "Republican Revolution". 

Otherwise, it is pure, undiluted greatness. 

Well done, sir.  Well done. 

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain !!!

Sam Clemens was born 176 years ago today. 
Be grateful. 

A Modest Proposal For The Defense Of South Korea

We're spending a fortune defending South Korea from North Korea. 

We've been spending billions per year there ever since our unsuccessful Foreign Policy Adventure there in the 1950's. 

You can go here and here to learn more about the relatively small amount that the Republic Of Korea contributes toward this effort.  The rest is an outright massive subsidy of the Korean government.  And Korean industry. 

As long as Lockheed, Bell, Halliburton, etc. are contributing toward election campaigns, this isn't likely to change.

We keep sending our children over there to not fight, and then they retire at age 45 with massive pensions. 

We're 15 trillion in debt.  What to do, what to do? 

Here's a suggestion.....  Let's outsource the defense of Korea to the Koreans !!!!

Seriously.  We could start paying the Koreans to defend their own country.  It would cost less. 

We wouldn't have to move so many people around.  It would be a "green" movement. 

We wouldn't necessarily have to pay pensions for Korean retirees. 

As a cost-cutting measure, I see nothing wrong with this idea. 

In which the Occupy Wall Street movement starts to get a clue

I've had a glorious time ridiculing the Occupy Wall Street movement for the last few months.  They have no idea what they want, no idea about the root cause of their complaints, and their problem with homeless people mooching the food that was donated to THEM ONLY, well, that makes me wake up in the middle of the night with fits of The Giggles. 

But now they're getting somewhere.  See the chart below.  Bear in mind, this is only the "discretionary" spending. 

We're responsible for more than 40% of the world's military expenditures.  We have 6% of the world's population.  We have a massive % of the world's debt. 

Isn't it time for this sacred cow to get slaughtered?  Or at least put on a reasonable diet?

Where the hell did the Peace Movement go?  Are we going to have to elect a Republican before we hear from those people again?  Where's the freakin' outrage over Libya and Pakistan?   

p.s. - We really shouldn't spend this much on the other stuff either. 

Some More Settled Science Updates

Willis Eisenbach has published an open letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the University Of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. 
It's one of the most devastating things I've ever read. 

These guys invented global warming.  They just sat around made up some data, and scared the living shit out of everybody with it.  Now they can't find it.  They are cornered. 

They simply made it up.  Billions and billions have been spent on this scam. 

They made it up.  It really is that simple. 

If you're not totally sickened yet, go here.   Or you can go here.   
This one won't tell you anything you don't already know, but is a nice summary of the Return Of The Son Of Climategate emails. 

Remember when skepticism was seen by most scientists as a virtue and not a vice?  If you value Free Inquiry, I defy you to read these articles without crying. 

We no longer make decisisions

From John Shuey's Facebook page:

The US no longer does decisions. It can neither stop the drug traffic nor legalize it. It can neither win wars nor abandon them, neither make money nor stop spending it, neither stop immigration nor assimilate the immigrants. Washington can beat its thumb with a hammer, and notice that it hurts, but it can't stop beating its thumb. That would take a decision, and Washington doesn't do decisions."