U.S.A.

Via ComingAnarchy.com:

During a private “fly-in” fishing excursion in the [Alaskan] wilderness, a chartered pilot and fishermen left a cooler and bait in the plane. A bear smelled it and destroyed the plane.

An observation by Steve Sailer, interesting even without its context:

Ironically, when I left the "Collapse" exhibit, with its warnings about overpopulation, at Los Angeles's Natural History museum, I turned out of the parking lot onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, where the billboards were in Spanish. In LA, the African Americans have been pushed off even MLK Blvd. by Latin American immigrants.

I read years back that South Central, the notorious crack-and-gang neighborhood in L.A., was rebranded as South Los Angeles. Not necessarily by some wishful-thinking community organizers, but as recognition that Latinos had moved in and improved the character of the place.

TJIC shows his best form ripping the current President and Big Media:

So why, exactly, is this being spun as an Obama victory?

Measured as a percentage of total economic output — the gauge that economists say is most meaningful — the deficit would be 10 percent of gross domestic product… well below the records set during World War II.

Fascinating!

The deficit was 25% when we assembled the largest armed forces in the history of human civilization, and conquered two continents at once.

…and with Obama’s socialist experiments, we’ve only run up a 10% deficit!

That is news – he’s doing a heck of ajob!

Just go read it.

Vox Day writes:

A private sector job which exists solely to comply with government-dictated paperwork is every bit as government-manufactured and unproductive as a public sector job. And that is precisely the type of job which is going to disappear entirely once the debt edifice collapses and the extent of the dollar-denominated imaginary economy is revealed. Just as stripping out the debt-funded component of GDP reveals that there has been no actual economic growth for decades, stripping out the paperwork jobs will demonstrate that the real labor force is still roughly 2/3rd male, just as it was in 1950.

I may need to work up a better-documented rant about this. But I have had enough of people proudly proclaiming their extended unemployment benefits. Getting laid off is not an invitation to twiddle around working on your novel. YOU NEED A JOB!

Twiddling on a novel is not a job. It will not lead to a job. You need to develop a new skill that someone will actually pay you to practice.

If people are afraid to take a job because it pays less than the job they lost and choose to spend another six months on the dole, they are parasites. GET OFF THE PUBLIC TEAT!

The Deepwater Horizon seems to have finally become background noise in the news cycle. The New Orleans Times-Picayune isn’t featuring a “day counter” on their website anymore. Up through about Day 78, it was at the top of the front page.

It‘s Day 84, and BP may be about to close the leak with a new cap. That’s no cause for panic or angst, so I guess it isn’t worth top-value pixels.

And after 84 days of wailing and hand-wringing, how many birds have actually died?

Less than 200:

MaxedOutMama writes:

Current policy makers seem stuck on the idea that if the government does a thing that is highly destructive when a private entity does it, the activity will somehow become economically functional due to the government interference. That defines "Stuck on Stupid".

My quibble is over calling out only current policy makers. For most of organized history, government has been seen as some sort of divine agency, above the laws of men. Only perhaps during the first century of the United States was government not seen as a special exception to the rules of morality and wisdom. The Founders explicitly overturned the Divine Right of Kings.

Sure, the Failed Obama Administration™ is expanding the assumption of state divinity into new territories in the U.S.A.

Via TJIC, a graphic explanation of how a blowout preventer works, and what failed on the Deepwater Horizon.

Take a look. And remember, this thing is installed and operated by remote control a mile under the sea. Cool. Except the “failure” part…

You'll never, ever hear Obama say "I want my life back!".

Quoted from: a comment on a photo of the current President playing golf on Father’s Day.

Back in the day, I lived many of the episodes of Sex and the City. I had friends that paralleled each of the main characters, and I was some shadow version of the various love interests. But not to my friends, so I got to be part of the dishing about their own Aidans and Mr. Bigs.

At the time, it was a blast. I was in step with popular culture. Or at least some pretty and insecure segment of it.

Those days are passed. I think the most awesome description of the series was from a cartoon show (Family Guy?); it’s about three hookers and their mom. So I haven’t been interested in the movie sequels.

Girl Friday has a review of the latest one:

My anarchist nature is loving the transparent collapse of the established order under Mr. Obama:

Nobody likes the bumbling crony capitalists at BP, least of all countermoonbats, considering that they gave more money to Comrade Obama than to any other candidate in the past 20 years and were lobbying to enrich themselves at the price of our country's ruin through the Cap & Tax conspiracy. But the rule of law applies to everyone, even lizards low enough to crawl into bed with Obama and then get knifed by him. Like Congressman Joe Barton, I find it alarming in the extreme that the President of the USA can exploit an accident to shake down a corporation for a $20 billion slush fund.

I missed the current President’s speech last Tuesday. Neo-neocon assigned some mandatory reading from the follow-on commentary. Here are my two highlights from the assigned column:

Let me get this straight: as oil gushes forth, we are to use this disaster as a teachable moment to go the wind and solar route. OK, but fairly or not, the message to the shrimpers and hotel owners of the Gulf is: “Your misery has some didactic value for the rest of us, since after your Gulf is destroyed, we will shut down your rigs to ensure permanent poverty follows your misery.”

Neo-neocon poses a question:

Who would have been the best president to handle the oil spill crisis?

Whatever else you may think of her, I think the answer has to be “Sarah Palin.” She’s got the experience dealing with the oil companies, and the requisite gumption to do so.

And, if they were being honest, the left would have to give the same answer: Sarah Palin. And that fact must enrage them no end.

Awesome!

I had forgotten about Palin’s genuine experience in this area:

Using last week’s weak employment data as a launching point, George Will lays out the case against big government: 

Today investors and employers are certain that uncertainties are multiplying.

The Boston Globe has some excellent oily bird pictures that support the Hate BP narrative. And the Google suggests the birdy body count is well over 300:

So far 300 birds, the bulk of them identified as Brown Pelicans and northern gannets have been found along the US Gulf Coast during the first five weeks of the BP oil spill, and 31 have survived. They are currently being counted as casualties because of the proximity in time and location to the spill, but are being tested to confirm results. The mortality rate is expected to rise sharply since this is the middle of breeding season.

With a population of 650,000, this just isn’t that big of a deal. We’re talking about maybe five hundredths of a percent of the pelican stock.

Relatedly, the current President is having shrimp for dinner. Cobb did a little research, and we’re not running out of shrimp, either:

I am surprised that the BP Deepwater blowout has had so much staying power in the headlines, given the dearth of truly ugly images. It’s almost like it is more a fashion/fad to hate BP than to actually care about documented harm.

I see so much hatred, and it strikes me as evidence of the infantile mindset of the U.S. public. People seem to think that if they throw a big-enough tantrum, the oil well will be capped. There’s an underlying assumption that BP isn’t already trying all they can with the knowledge and resources available.

What irony that Obama now represents more value to the Republicans than to the Democrats.

Quoted from: Commenter “Curtis” at Neo-neocon

It’s 1949, and what’s a well-dressed lady going to drive?

The daring ones drive a Nash Airflyte:

Its aerodynamic body shape was developed in a wind tunnel. Nils Wahlberg's theories on reducing an automobile body's drag coefficient resulted in a smooth shape and enclosed front fenders. The "cutting-edge aerodynamics" was the most "alarming" all-new postwar design in the industry.

Remember Iraq?

The current President has been quietly continuing the Bush Administration policy in Iraq. So quietly that it has dropped out of the headlines. No daily body count, no handwringing about unwinnable quagmires, no sensational exposés about the brutality of U.S. forces. It’s almost like a war was won and nobody noticed.

So, what’s really happening?

General Odierno, the top U.S. commander there, says (pdf):

he’s impressed with progress the Iraqi security forces have made, particularly since the new security agreement took effect in January. “Today, they are in charge everywhere in Iraq,” he said. “We no longer conduct large-scale operations in Iraq. They do. We support those operations.”

From an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal comes a stark illustration of how Big Media works according to a narrative:

In news reporting, it's not unusual to encounter constructions such as this AP dispatch from the presidential campaign about Sarah Palin: "She has worshipped at a nondenominational Bible church since 2002, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and supports classroom discussions about creationism."

That's fair as far as it goes. Just once, however, wouldn't it be interesting to see a leading newspaper write something like, "Nancy Pelosi, who opposes any restrictions on abortion, even in cases where a pregnant minor is taken across state lines without a parent's permission or where the fetus is halfway out the mother"?