Good morning.

1. Apparently the model driven economists like Mr Krugman hasn’t figured out how to factor in psychology and regulatory uncertainty … therefore it doesn’t exist.
2. Training the spine via repetition.
3. Watching time pass.
4. Christian and gay, but not gay Christian.
5. Information and Colorado.
6. That’s because Mr Obama, being such an avid student of history, realizes how good “bread and circuses” was for Rome. Or perhaps it was essential for Rome in its transition from Republic to Imperial.
7. More grist for that mill.
8. Banking, interest, and time.
9. Economics and unintended consequences of laws.
10. Heh. Grad students have an unreasonable reaction to free cookies, it’s true.
11. Chicago and Chick-Fil-A … and the only reasonable response.
12. Null and theory.
13. Maxfield Parrish without the semi-clothed nymphs.
14. Measured gun laws.
15. Expunging history … is this the lesson from how the Holocaust is remembered (and Holodomor/Katyn is forgotten)?
16. To keep an eye on.

Orange County former Assistant Sheriff, convicted tax-evader, paid $948,000
From the Orange County Register,

Jaramillo was convicted of tax evasion and other charges in state and federal courts. A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in February 2011 set aside Jaramillo’s guilty plea on corruption charges, which forced U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford to modify his 2009 sentence of Jaramillo for his guilty pleas to income tax evasion and corruption charges.

But his boss, the former Sheriff Mike Carona, wasn’t exactly the cream of the crop either.

Carona is serving 5 1/2 years in a federal facility, while Jaramillo was released to a halfway house Oct. 13 after spending 22 months in a federal prison and several months in the halfway house.

Carona fired Jaramillo on March 17, 2004, when the two had a falling-out over several issues dating back to Carona’s request to have Jaramillo try to persuade Orange County prosecutors to take it easy on the son of former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl. Greg Haidl and two other young men were later convicted for sexually assaulting an unconscious girl. The boys were 17 at the time of the attack and the victim was 16.

What is that saying about power and corruption?

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Santa Ana City Councilman exposing himself
From the Orange County Register,

A former executive with the county government and current Santa Ana councilman lured female employees who reported to him into his office, where he groped them and exposed himself, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said at a news conference Tuesday.

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Orange County’s CEO resigns amidst Councilman’s arrest – gets $270,000 severance
Again, from the Orange County Register (do we see a trend here?),

Tom Mauk agreed Thursday to resign as the county’s highest non-elected official, the latest executive departure since former O.C. Public Works manager Carlos Bustamante was charged with 12 felonies for alleged sexual abuse of female employees.

Mauk will receive about $270,000 in severance payments, said John Moorlach, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors. That includes 10 months of pay and 410 hours of accrued vacation time and is a bit less than Mauk would have been entitled to under his contract if he’d been fired, Moorlach said.

And you wonder why we distrust government?

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Well, I suppose a shotgun could be considered a type of ‘super-soaker’

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Election Fraud!!! At a high school?
No, it wasn’t in Chicago.

Scenario:

1. High school students running for office in ASB election.
2. Student # 1 wins the election.
3. Later, student # 2 hacks into the school’s database and discovers that the ASB Faculty Adviser rigged the election, and that student # 3 actually won.
4. Faculty Adviser resigns as adviser yet continues to teach.
5. Student # 2 is immediately given a 5 day suspension for hacking into the school’s database.
6. Student body is, rightfully so, very ticked off.

From the article,

But Troy students remain outraged by the school’s handling of the matter, noting that while Bigham received a five-day suspension immediately after coming forward with allegations of ASB election fraud on April 23, Redmond continued teaching the ASB leadership class for the remainder of the school year.

“The implications of what I did vs. what she did are not on par with each other,” said Bigham, 17, of Buena Park, who was stripped of his post as ASB secretary after exposing the scandal. “I feel changing the results of an election has far more gravity than finding out by whatever means that someone did that.”

Change. You can believe in.

So, did Mr Obama use the Colorado shooting to set the stage for policy changes:

Every day, in fact, every day and a half, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater. For every Columbine or Virginia Tech, there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago and Atlanta, here in New Orleans. For every Tucson or Aurora, there’s daily heartbreak over young Americans shot in Milwaukee or Cleveland.

Hmm. Which policy? Restrict guns or reinforce traditional marriage? Which is more likely a root cause, restrictions on guns or broken families and single/absent parents? The latter is more likely the cause, the former the more likely policy in mind.

Black man # 1 incorrectly thinks the 2nd Amendment is all about providing the opportunity to go hunting and shooting and, more importantly, that weapons such as AK-47s should only be in the hands of soldiers and not criminals (one has to wonder if citizens are then equated with criminals?).

Black man # 2 correctly notes that the 2nd Amendment is all about being the citizen’s last defense against tyranny (and, that would tend to equate citizens as soldiers).

The sorry thing is, black man # 1 is supposed to be a constitutional professor.

Bonus Footnote:  Watch Suzanna Hupp school Texas Legislators on the 2nd Amendment

Good morning.

1. Wow, so many stupid thing said in one post, the mind boggles. How about, “and Democrats do not believe all firearms should be confiscated. It should be obvious that this is paranoid delusion.” …  Hello? Chicago? New York? Duh. And secondly, do people stockpile emergency food/water? Do those new people do that? Is there financial instability? Is that noticed by our blogger, … nope.
2. Gangs woke up and realized that urban landscapes do not fill the universe (and see the above).
3. More on complexity and Rome’s fall.
4. A list.
5. OK OK, I agree it’s dumb but, really, who doesn’t bring their own reading material when traveling?
6. The first part of the advice is good for helping anyone anywhere for any reason.
7. Was it a generation ago that the KKK marched in Chicago … d’ya think they’d be allowed today? (and no, I don’t think the two are equivalent).
8. A word for the day.
9. Contrastives and fried chicken. Let me ask you, “do you support traditional marriage?” (and remind you if you don’t you support the fall of your civilization)
10. Weed me.
11. Boards, trucks, and cement.

Good morning.

1. So, the Obama campaign thinks Bain Capital is horrible, right?
2. Meditiations on the fall of (western) Rome.
3. The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting and sportsmanship. It really is about having guns to resist the government when they go off the rails. If you want to back of on citizens owning “assault” rifles, then you should amend the Constitution, because having real weapons meant for war is what the Constitution protected.
4. This opinion apparently taxonomically classifies me as a porcupine.
5. Some gun laws to catch the incredibly stupid criminal, which means the not-criminal (that being crimes of passion).
6. The usual effect of the restrict guns rhetoric.
7. Some data for the discussion.
8. For the Microsoft non-lovers.
9. Faint praise for Obama’s attack ads. I finally saw the ad over vacation. My children confirmed, and I attempted not to lead them, that this ad led them to support Romney more than Obama. The ad was sleazy, felt sleazy, and the “approved by Obama” at the front labeled who to blame.
10. Culture, biology and violence.
11. A love like no other.
12. South Africa.
13. Bikes and remembrance.
14. Walruses are cool.
15. Women and combat. Testostrone is a very powerful performance enhancing drug. Really.

OK. I’m back (and as usual, relatively horrible).

1. Need rest?
2. The Norwegian shooter got 20 some years … in the US you (can) get life for somewhat less.
3. Talking about TDKR (I saw it Monday prior to our flight with my daughters). And no, the science doesn’t check out, reactors don’t suddenly become bombs and no realistic battery works 4 months and predictably dies on schedule. More on similar discussions here.
4. ABC defends Mr Obama remarks. Either Mr Obama can’t count (“that” is singular, the two possible antecedents “your business” and “roads and bridges” … only one is singular which gives us “your business” as the only grammatically correct antecedent.).
5. Fact checking religion reporting for ya.
6. A charity question.
7. Flags and national photoshop.
8. How about “because ‘pragmatism’ is more akin to a tactic than an actual strategy”.
9. So, is the hostility expressed by academia toward the business world found here?
10. Here you find religion and academia examined.
11. Speaking of academia … Seems to me, our education system is part of this problem.
12. Flat tire?
13. The thought that came to me seeing this was “cat’s pajamas”.
14. Yes, we “know” there’s no voter fraud, just like we know the sports drug problem is in Pro cycling not in US sports. Odd that the problems are found where there testing is tight and not where it isn’t. As long as we don’t look and have no tools to look, clearly there’s no fraud. And this “no problems” claim comes for a guy who got a degree in the city where the dead voted (and probably still do).
15. Toughest decision? In hindsight maybe. Back then, not so much. Look at the context of Okinawa, Tokyo fire-bombing, and the rest of the garden variety horrors of WWII.
16. 3-d printers step aside. Think small.
17. How to look really really stupid in a discussion. Query for the anti-gun lobby … cite me one instance were anyone was in a discussion with gun supporters and were threatened with a firearm of any sort.
18. Apparently, “likable” is an adjective describing screen presence, for by all accounts both Mr Obama and Mr Romney are very likable face-to-face. In fact, almost all politicians are, it’s a job requirement. However, that’s not really what likable means, but we all knew that, right?
19. Syria.
20. And we’ll finish with a great discussion topic.

In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Aurora, there are the requisite stories on gun control, etc. CNN.com joined the chorus with an article titled, Fear drives opposition to gun control. One interesting tidbit from the article is the cover photograph used. Here is a screen-capture.

Note the caption:

An assault rifle is equipped with a high-capacity drum magazine and grenade launcher at an El Paso, Texas, gun expo.

A grenade launcher available for sale at a gun expo in the United States?

Disabled car turned into motorcycle?
Supposedly done by a Frenchman after his car broke down in the middle of a desert in Africa.

Reminiscent of The Flight of the Phoenix.

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Family Dinners Don’t Work Magic
The magic of helping bond families together. Of course, no one that I know of has said that the whole family simply sitting down for dinner could take the place of genuine parental love and interest in their children.

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Tree rings show that Earth was warmer for the Romans than now?
Has Al Gore been notified?

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How to explain the tax system with beer

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Africans in the U.S. sending their kids to school in…
Africa.

My, how times have changed.

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Geek News of the Week – Cassini sees daytime lightning on Saturn

Well, the plan was to snorkel all day, but the weather forecast was for all day T-storms, which since the morning when we aborted have been suspiciously absent. So, the alternative is museums after lunch.

1. Censorship.
2. Why expect the lull to be temporary? High tech suits are banned for example, banning tech advances may be the norm, in which case the lull would not be temporary.
3. Queue evil laughter, or something like that.
4. Man’s best friend.
5. My guess is that the difference is not about (c) or not (c) … but the extend of those services which should rightly be provided.
6. Our finest.
7. Obama’s kicking taxes down the road, the economy’s current downturn, and misunderestimations.
8. Numismatech?
9. Remember how Mr Obama kept saying he thinks/thought about jobs every day … it’s a lie, you see.
10. A manual to set alongside the oft noted but rarely actually read COIN manual.
11. To big to fail?
12. “If you build it they will come” … the antecedent for “it” shouldn’t be WMD, but seems to be.
13. Dictatorship HOWTO for the modern era.
14. A suggestion for kickbacks.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today, link-wise.

Not to discount the severity of the killings in Aurora, but how long will it take before we hear the media and/or the Left paint the shooter out to be a right-wing fanatic, a tea partier, or someone influenced by hate-filled Republican rhetoric? How long before we hear that stricter gun control laws would have prevented this mass killing?

Good morning,? err, day.

1. Profiling.
2. Just like AGW believers driving 10+ over the speed limit instead of 5 under … Gen-X has been brainwashed about green and energy from K-12 and beyond, but it doesn’t apply normative actions.
3. On vacation, yesterday we visited this, today pictures of construction and assembly. US WWII manufacturing for the war was mind boggling.
4. Out of the Black, a sci-fic book puts forth that “potty mouth” word usage is a sign of poor education and vocabulary. Do y’all concur?
5. So women, stop on-line hacking … date nerds. Come on. Do your part.
6. Hmm. Meta-links and I thought the problem with macro-economics is that in chem/physics equations measure relationships between independently measureable quantities, whereas in macro they are used to define new the variables.
7. A whole lot of links and some remarks in response to Mr Obama’s anti-entrepreneurial remarks.
8. So am I.
9. My wife’s chrismation saint, icon and some background.
10. We have a para-Olympics, how about hypodermic Olympics.
11. How about a modest proposal, a fourth branch along with the courts to balance our out-of-control Executive and Legislative? An actuarial/financial branch with veto powers over unsupportable spending.
12. “Admits” … that he does what every other player does and has done since, well, the beginning of the sport.
13. Philippine nationals and Syria.

Good morning.

1. Do you concur, well, not perhaps with the whole premise, but that changes to the Hobbit of that nature was unnecessary?
2. Honey … I’m home! The rest of us have to get a dog, so someone at least will notice when we come home.
3. A fight on the offing.
4. On Mr Obama’s remarks regarding credit and personal accomlishments, here and here. Take an abstracted example, … school grades. How then do we distinguish the student who gets and A (to which we credit parents, books, schools, and teachers) and the student who gets a C (who also benefited from the same factors). Do the thought experiment suggested at the first link, where does 100% acceptance of the presumptions required as listed get you?
5. What is a hero? (answer: a sandwich from one who has some insight).
6. Healing?
7. How about meta-wonder?
8. And that wonder might be applied to our rational universe?
9. Does this connect to the Penn State debacle.
10. Markets for guar. And now you know what guar might be.

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, speaking to the NAACP on the racism of voter ID laws.

“Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them,” Holder said in a speech to the NAACP on Tuesday, referring specifically to a law being implemented in Texas. “We call those poll taxes.”

But not just anyone was allowed in to hear Mr. Holder rail against proper identification. The journalists listening to him, in order to get in, had to provide … wait for it … proper identification. So it is racist to require ID, and if so, what if the NAACP requires it? The answer … could get you charged with a hate crime.

Y’know, if you want to rent a movie, buy a beer and cigarettes, or fly on an airplane, you have to have an ID. Are each of them more important than your right to vote? Is that the message Holder and the NAACP are trying to send.

Check out this site for a list of myths about voter ID laws, and why they are indeed myths. And the next time you go to the Will Call window to pick up your tickets to the game or concert, and have to show your ID, consider whether that so-called hassle is worth it to protect your constitutional right to vote.

Mornings are slower in vacation, eh?

1. Altering content to make a point, robs one of credibility. A theme disputed earlier in comment threads in other contexts. It remains true.
2. I think I remember it mostly for music complementing images of running.
3. Amidst complaints of Ms Clinton’s pallid accomplishments in her current role, do you agree with her call or Ang Sang Suu Kyi’s?
4. Oooh, sleazy campaigning and it’s only July.
5. Don’t worry, you’re probably a nice enough person and therefore safe.
6. Mixing popular with academic.
7. I’m not sure I need to hear the expression “grown into his ears” ever again.
8. Lamy? I’ve stuck with Pelikan.
9. In which liberal means “not that, but I’m not bothered to find an alternative”.
10. An occasion and location.
11. Socialist paradise … or not.
12. Education loans and a recent court ruling.
13. A scary girl for Iran?
14. The Russian Patriarch at Katyn.