Good morning.

1. A proxy for Presidential popularity measured.
2. Smash, with color.
3. Hmmm. China’s growth and cost.
4. Uhm, auto-stop features do not require hybrid cars, even though auto-stop is found on all hybrids.
5. Repurpose your bike pump?
6. The priest in the brothel.
7. The Canon of St. Andrew, Ukraine and I’d show you pictures from our parish … but our parish website has no perma-links for photos for the next few days you can see them here.
8. Gender imbalance and economic risk taking.
9. Unintended consequences of consumer protectionism, although I’d suggest those “unintended” consequences were in fact easily predictable.
10. ID and a Constitutional can of worms.
11. Three Lenten meal suggestions.
12. Words to fear.
13. Women in science.
14. Recent discussions on the ontological argument discussed.

Via Hot Air, Senator Rand Paul schools administration officials on the issue of “choice”. Under liberals’ logic, it’s okay to kill babies but we can’t buy light bulbs we want or a toilet that will flush. Click the image to watch.

For weeks, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators have been hiding out in Illinois to prevent a vote on a budget bill that would strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. Republicans became so fed up with the Democrats’ run and hide strategy they decided to separate the collective bargaining provision from the rest of the budget and vote on it anyway:

Wisconsin lawmakers voted Thursday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from the state’s public workers, ending a heated standoff over labor rights and delivering a key victory to Republicans who have targeted unions in efforts to slash government spending nationwide.

The state’s Assembly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s explosive proposal 53-42 without any Democratic support and four no votes from the GOP. Protesters in the gallery erupted into screams of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as Republican lawmakers filed out of the chamber and into the speaker’s office.

The state’s Senate used a procedural move to bypass missing Democrats and move the measure forward Wednesday night, meaning the plan that delivers one of the strongest blows to union power in years now requires only Walker’s signature to take effect.

He says he’ll sign the measure, which he introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall, as quickly as possible — which could be as early as Thursday.

“We were willing to talk, we were willing to work, but in the end at some point the public wants us to move forward,” Walker said before the Assembly’s vote.

This is the first step in Wisconsin’s efforts to regain fiscal sanity and Governor Walker and his fellow Republicans should be applauded for their courage in standing up to the bullying tactics of the unions and the Left.

By the way, if you’re still in doubt about whether public unions are bad for our country, check out this post by Mike Flynn at Big Government which will tell you all that you need to know.

Good morning.

1. Correction and an argument for union protection in the public (not private) sector.
2. The coming demographic crisis in China.
3. Uhm, I can’t imagine the Irish population in either city is a significant percentage.
4. A question for economics and income stratifcation.
5. Torture.
6. Iranian hardware in Afghanistan. Who paid for them?
7. An item in the news lately.
8. Performing for monsters?
9. Kinda like pacifists paying taxes in wartime. Hmm.
10. In the when in a hole, keep digging mode, or not? More seriously, I’m curious at the left, who largely was behind the objections to largely symbolic statues in courthouses because of relgious content now supports  not-just-symblic statutes in the books of the same sort in those same houses. Since when has the left been so supportive of involuntary clitorectomies and highly assymetric divorce laws anyhow? And why? 
11. Looking at warming predictions … 20 years predicted 2-4 degrees warming, the result basically none. 
12. The beautiful results of heresy, specifically the possessor vs non-possessor conflict. As you can see, the possessors won.
13. An Obamacare riddle.
14. Coptic Christians, canary or match?

Palin says Kathy Griffin is a 50 year-old bully
Oh, come on Sarah. Let’s not be denigrating all the bullies out there by associating them with Griffin.

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And iPods for all…
Jesse Jackson Jr. does his best Liberal argument for how the government best needs to provide for its citizens, including the right to have a decent home.

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Thief / burglar / home invader calls 911 to report that the homeowner may be armed
Well, I suppose it follows that if you have a right to a home, then the home doesn’t have to necessarily be owned by you.

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PJs Day at school?
Good idea, or just kinda weird?

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Taliesin is tumbling (and Falling Water is falling apart)
If an architect designs a house and the house, despite being revered as a work of art, falls apart, is it not logical to conclude that the architect, while (perhaps) an artist, was a lousy architect? What is one to make of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin? At least it isn’t yet part of the dreaded A.R.T. Syndrome.

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Anti-gun legislator shoots home invader
Nope. No contradiction here.

Good morning.

1. Some fun to start, here (which reminds me of my own haircare practices) and the old non-sequitor.
2. On that non-sequitor thing… uhm.
3. Considering intervention.
4. The first four days of Lent liturgically in the East, pictures here and here.
5. What is that canon of St. Andrew?
6. The insenstive man.
7. Another strike against unions and regulatory barriers.
8. A college course?
9. Are those the only three possibilities?
10. Culture and schooling.
11. That ice is complicated is just the tip of the berg … which is why making predictions is premature.
12. Spring.
13. Bad news for the Obamacare supporters, yet another reason for its implementation is unwarranted.

Good morning. 

1. Lent begins, and a popular American company gets in the act in Greece.
2. A thought on the Lenten process.
3. Normally critical of Mr Krugman, one person gives him his due.
4. Of rights, place, and a film.
5. Talking union.
6. Way out on the Palin derangement limb or … how un-self-aware a blogger sounds when talking about the putative self-awareness (or lack) of those whom he basically has zero personal knowledge.
7. A good coda for the Krugman/Iowahawk exchange.
8. A odd way to praise a translation.
9. Dimension and scale.
10. Plumbing the depths of young male stupidity.
11. Fisticuffs and gender.
12. The genesis of modern science.

I’ve been a bit of a techie for quite some time (I’m in the biz, so it comes with the territory). I’ve had e-mail in one form or another since the late 80s (using dial-up Unix machines). I keep up with what’s going on, even if I don’t buy the vast majority of it. I like what’s happening in the tech world, generally.

But there’s one thing I’ve not figured out. I’ve always preferred CDs that I can buy and hold. I can play them on a CD player or in my car. Anytime, anywhere. Sure, I’ve had MP3 players for a long time , but I’ve always pulled the audio from the CD first and then copied it to my player; first an old RIO player, then a Sansa, and these days an iPod Touch. Never an issue.

But for some reason, huge music publishers are trying to figure out a way to do exactly that; the same thing I’ve been doing for a decade.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is in talks with record companies to give iTunes music buyers easier access to their songs on multiple devices, three people with knowledge of the plans said.

Apple is negotiating with music companies, including Vivendi SA (VIV)’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd., said the people, who asked for anonymity because the talks are private. An agreement may be announced by midyear, two of the people said.

The arrangement would give users more flexibility in how they access purchased music. Apple and the record labels are eager to maintain demand for digital downloading amid rising popularity for Internet services such as Pandora Media Inc., which don’t sell tracks and instead let users stream songs from the Web, whatever the device.

Talk of streaming music providers aside (and I love Pandora), I already have access to my music on multiple devices. This is because I have the physical media and can do with it what I want. Today, not 4 months from now. It’s for this reason I don’t even intend to buy any music from the iTunes store.

I like the concept of buying just single songs that you like rather than a whole album that you might not like the rest of, but if it requires Apple and at least 5 other music publishing houses to figure out how to get the music you buy onto multiple platforms, did you really buy it in the first place?

Ordnance found on a York city street!
It seems that the police were summoned after a man discovered live ordnance in a puddle of water. From The York Press,

A STARTLED man has told how he found a bullet lying in a York city-centre street.

Tim Stark said he was unloading items into the MOR Music store where he works in Fossgate yesterday morning when he spotted what he believed to be a live .22 bullet gleaming in a puddle.

That’s right – the ordnance was a lone .22LR cartridge, such as is used to “plink” empty cans, shoot gophers, etc.

This, my friends, is what happens when you vilify (and confiscate) firearms.

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I’ll bet they made no bones about shooting the whole 9 yards
An Engadget post about the iPad 2 generated some interesting comments, especially regarding just how broad the knowledge base is of some of its readers. While we live in a Google-rich world, with every bit of information seemingly at the tips of our fingers, it seems that some individuals have issues with commonly used idioms.

First, the original post,

Ignore the fact that the iPad 2 is likely just a few weeks away — we’re talking about the here and now. You’ve read our $0.02 on a few of these, but why not throw a few opinions of your own in comments below?

Then, some of the comments that resulted,

just to let you know the phrase is “two sense” not “two cents”

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the phrase, dear Mike, is “to sense” meaning get yourself some sense before making nonsense corrections.

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No, its definitely $.02 as in 2 cents

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What kind of bonehead are you? Obviously, the correct phrase is “too scents!”

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That doesn’t make any sense! The phrase is “my two cents” it’s originally from an English saying “my two pennies worth”. Get your facts straight before you start correcting people.

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Choosing pets over children – sad article of the week
While the myth of adolescence may certainly be a reality, it seems we have created a generation of self-indulgent perpetual adolescents, intent on driving themselves into the realms of PD James’ Children of Men.

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Rob Bell, oops
Perhaps it was a brilliant publicity stunt, which succeeded in getting a whole lot of free exposure. But I’m wondering if they’ve not shot themselves in the foot for any future work?

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I apologize, really
I truly believed that the people of California would not re-elect Elmo-loving Boxer (m’am).

Good morning.

1. TSA, coming where?
2. If it doesn’t do that, what’s the point?
3. Economics and nonsense.
4. Attacked? For what?
5. That’s the attraction of “pragmatism”, after all having principles is just soooo limiting.
6. Jailed in Germany.
7. The FDA strikes again.
8. What you know is wrong, examine for example the Puritan preacher.
9. Happiness and the US.
10. An interesting comparison made by the left.
11. Visiting a memorial.
12. Not the digital revolution we have come to expect.

It’s not every day that I will link to an article by Kirsten Powers but this one is worth reading in its entirety:

During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.

I’ll admit I bought the argument—it makes intuitive sense—and initially opposed cutting off funding for precisely that reason.

Then I did a little research.

Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. This doesn’t mean that access to contraception causes more abortion—though some believe that—but that it doesn’t necessarily reduce it.

In the U.S., the story isn’t much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy; 32 percent had had concerns about contraceptive methods; 26 percent had had unexpected sex, and 1 percent had been forced to have sex. Not one fraction of 1 percent said they got pregnant because they lacked access to contraception. Some described having unexpected sex, but all that can be said about them is that they are irresponsible, not that they felt they lacked access to contraception.

Read the rest of this entry

The Left has been energized lately about Charles and David Koch; the brothers who run Koch Industries and give to right-leaning causes. What’s interesting is that the Left simultaneously ignores the money that comes in from George Soros. Personally, I don’t mind rich people giving their money away to causes they agree with, whether liberal, conservative or otherwise.  But the Left has been apoplectic over the Kochs, or, as John Hinderaker says, they have an unhealthy Koch habit. Charles Koch wrote an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal on Tuesday laying out what his issues are; getting rid of "crony capitalism" and massive government spending & debt so that entrepreneurs aren’t stifled at the expense of the politically connected. So…why is the Left against this?

Medicare is losing $48 billion a year from fraud and otherwise improper payments. And Democrats want to give the government more control over our health care purse? Really?

A Christian politician in Pakistan, the country’s minister for minorities’ affairs, was assassinated yesterday for speaking out against the proposed blasphemy law, that would make it a crime to insult the Prophet Muhammad. This is the second high-profile murder related to this law. This may have been perpetrated by Islamic militants, but moderates within the "religion of peace" are getting a bad name from all of this. The problem is, there are a lot of those militants all over the world.

And finally, a civics lesson. (Click for a larger image.)

Goooood morning.

1. Mr Krugman caught lying with statistics.
2. S;peaking of the skewering of NYTimes punditry.
3. Anti-Semitism and racism.
4. Showing its demographic weakness, so who is supposed to be buying these things, besides the rich wanting to badge as green?
5. Stupid academic folly, more here.
6. Continuing the folly of the non-exceptional status of man.
7. Climate and cycles.
8. Vice or virtue?
9. Mr Obama as neo-con?
10. Billionares and the left, a question.

Back in October, I said this:

If jobs start getting created after big Republican wins in November, it’ll likely be because the "Party of No" will be there to curb this uncertainty.

And now?

Employers in February hired at the fastest pace in almost a year and the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent—a nearly two-year low.

The economy added 192,000 jobs last month, with factories, professional and business services, education and health care among those expanding employment. Retailers, however, trimmed jobs. State and local government, wrestling with budget shortfalls, slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November.

The government’s report Friday bolstered hopes that employers will shift into a more aggressively hiring mode and allow the economic recovery to get on firmer footing.

The unemployment rate has been falling for three months, down from 9.8 percent in November.

I’m no economist, but this sort of clear cause-and-effect is rarely seen in politics. But indeed, taking the uncertainty out of economic policy has done what it should have done; allowed businesses to take a deep breath and jump back in to a hiring mode. The Obama administration’s policies were all over the map and were giving businesses heartburn trying to predict what new regulations would come out that afternoon. The "Party of No" has returned stability to the process, and now unemployment is going down.

Was that so hard to understand, really?

…of Libya’s Human Rights record, such as it is.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has postponed consideration of a report that praises Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s government for its human rights record.

The report was written several months before the uprising in Libya — which has pitted Qaddafi, as well as armed loyalists and mercenaries, in a violent battle against his own people. But it was nevertheless scheduled for consideration and a vote on March 18, even as the U.N. General Assembly voted Monday to suspend Libya from the Human Rights Council.

Because everything was pretty good in Libya under a 40+ year dictator until just a couple weeks ago. Look, real human rights are the result of an underlying belief in the principle. If, at the drop of a hat, you’re dropping bombs on your own people, they never really had human rights to begin with; just a convincing façade.