Breakfast Scramble (Friday)

Krugman destroyed, David Burge destroys Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, from Iowahawk:

The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn’t complete bullshit.

As a son of Iowa, I’m no stranger to bragging about my home state’s ranking on various standardized test. Like Wisconsin we Iowans usually rank near the top of the heap on average ACT/SAT scores. We are usually joined there by Minnesota, Nebraska, and the various Dakotas; Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire…

… beginning to see a pattern? Perhaps because a state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there.

Mr, Krugman, your so-called economic arguments have been completely destroyed by an Internet humorist and wit.    An apology and resignation are in order.

World’s highest price sex show, from Kara Spak,  Chicago Sun-Times:

More than 100 Northwestern University students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her fiancee during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class.

The woman said she showed up at the Feb. 21 lecture in the Ryan Family Auditorium in Evanston expecting just to answer questions, but was game to demonstrate. The course’s professor on Wednesday acknowledged some initial hesitation, but said student feedback was “uniformly positive.”

Northwestern’s tuition is somewhere north of fifty thousand per year.    For fifty thousand the street slut was the only one getting the shaft.   Go to Harry Reid’s Nevada and do it rather than just watch and it will not cost your parents fifty thousand dollars a year.

Michelle Obama needs to butt out, from, Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times:

A few weeks ago I was at the Denver airport when I overheard a conversation between two men sitting near me. They were eating some form of grab-and-go airport lunch when one man, between bites, suddenly raised his voice and called Michelle Obama something that can’t be printed in a family newspaper.

[;;;]

Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann accused Obama of trying to implement a “nanny state.” Sarah Palin gave her a ribbing on her reality show when, while searching for s’mores ingredients for a camping trip, she said, “This is in honor of Michelle Obama, who the other day said we shouldn’t have dessert.”

Oh, and then there’s that paragon of physical fitness, Rush Limbaugh, who suggested last week that the first lady “does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”

Earth to Ms Daum, now consider this.

Rush Limbaugh have have been or may be fat.  However Limbaugh does not purport to give diet advice to anybody.

On the other hoof, FLOTUS, Fat Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama if fat.

Fat people like Mrs. Obama should not be giving dietary advice to anybody but rather seeking it.

Mrs. Obama needs to get her fat butt our of our business.

Mt Vernon, NY–  I’m offloading as this is written.  So near to NY City, you have to run through the Bronx to get here. I had to come in at 3am so as to eliminate most of the traffic worries. Oh, I can handle traffic. It’s being LOST and handling traffic that concerns me.

To describe this place as “rough” underplays “rough” by several degrees.   I am left wondering what the founders of this place would have thought about what has become of their vision.  Depressing, really.

LOOKING AROUND:

I note Ann Althouse, today:

There’s a pattern in the department, at the top level, the chairman and the chief and the Joint Chiefs will recommend some rules of engagement for a certain circumstance. It will then be sent down the chain of command and it will get to the next command level, maybe the Combatant Commander, and the Combatant Commander will look at it, and then he will not want to violate it. So he might take a little tuck in it. And then it goes down to the next level. And it’s got now it’s in a country commander. And he looks at it and he doesn’t want to break the rule so he takes a little tuck in it. You end up with four or five layers down there taking tucks and you end up with some rules of engagement that don’t look like what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or even the Combatant Commander intended. Now why is that? Well, it’s fear. It’s because of our litigious society. It’s because of Congress overseeing things and having hearings.

Damn right, Ann. Something there is about the lawyer…. who by their very nature thinks the law the end all and be all…. that wants to control everything. Such is the reason for the growth of government beyond any reasonable limits, regardless of how practical such a stand is… they never quite learn that simply passing a law isn’t going to fix a damn thing.

And here’s the thing… that dirty little secret: Adherence to arbitrary, feel good laws in warfare are the fastest way to loose a war. The reason for that is really as simple as can be… War is by it’s very definition, the ABSENCE of law… You cannot civilize warfare because war is the ABSENCE of civility.

Of course, the other secret here, is that the winners of the war… winnders by whatever means needed to WIN said war… get to define what is law and what is civility, you see.  But…. that only happens, once the war has been won. I agree, these are harsh realities, but they are realities none the less and must be dealt with as such, because the first time we come up against an enemy who doesn’t follow our version of civility in a dispute, wins. Say, Islamic terrorists for example. Get the picture?

I haven’t said much about Charlie Sheen, but I was advised today that I should make a comment. OK, fine. He’s about all this publicity right now because the out of control addict is forever looking for approval. What other means of approval would a Hollywood actor seek, past all the publicity you can get? The guy’s a slimeball, plain and simple, and appears to be on a death spiral of the sort we saw with Robert Downey Jr some years ago The open question is if he succeeds in getting there, where Downey didn’t.

The GAO is saying nearly 10% of Medicare payments are improper.  Frankly, I doubt that’s even scratching the surface of the thing. Look, gang, let’s lay this thing out. Since 1968, in Johnson’s “Great Society” we’ve seen calls for “healthcare reform”, because the costs were too high. But look at the costs of healthcare, vs the amount of governmental involvement back in ’68, and you’ll see that the government isn’t a solution… government in healthcare costs as in most things, is the problem.  Wanna bring healthcare costs down? Get government out of the healthcare business. It’s that simple.

Firing Squad perhaps? From Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, NBC News:

WASHINGTON — The Army on Wednesday filed 22 new charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of illegally downloading tens of thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents that were then publicly released by WikiLeaks, military officials told NBC News.

The most serious of the new charges is “aiding the enemy,” a capital offense that could carry a potential death sentence.

It will be warm where Bradley is going and the sooner the better.

Two Airmen murdered in Germany, from ABC News:

A gunman shouting “Allah Akbar” opened fire on a bus carrying U.S. airmen in Frankfurt, Germany, killing two and wounding two others before his gun jammed and he was subdued, officials said.

An ethnic Albanian from Kosovo was taken into custody and the FBI was heading an investigation because U.S. citizens were killed and to determine whether the shooting was an act of terrorism.

More Lunatic Lutherans.

Dumbo Droppings, discontent in the base, liberals starting to figure out that Dumbo’s not all there, from Ruth Marcus, Washington Post:

For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action – unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.

[…]

He performs best on a stage that permits the grandest sweep. He rises to the big occasion, from his inspiring introduction to the public in his 2004 Democratic convention speech to his healing words in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings.

The president has faltered, though, when called on to translate that rhetoric to more granular levels of specificity: What change, exactly, does he want people to believe in? How, even more exactly, does he propose to get there? “Winning the future” doesn’t quite do it

The “Now is the Time” President seems to have an agenda of causing problems, Obama Care, green house gas regulation, Net neutrality high speed rail (see next), etc, and of avoiding real problems, high unemployment, soaring energy and food prices,

Dumbo’s Cho-Cho Trains, George F. Will, Newsweek:

Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.

Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.

Criticism of this optional and irrational spending—meaning: borrowing —during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.

I enjoyed my model trains set when I was a kid.   It time for Dumbo to quit using the public’s money for his child like obsession with trains.

Dope from Hope Ropes Hill, now I Am not a fan of the Dope from Hope, Mike Huckabee, but the Dope has roped in the Hill, from Michael O’Brien, Hill-

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) incorrectly suggested on Tuesday that President Obama was raised in Kenya for part of his childhood.

Huckabee, speaking in a radio appearance, defended Obama against charges that he wasn’t born in the U.S., but asserted that the president was raised in Kenya.

Now even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  Yet if Huckabee said today was Wednesday, even money says it is Tuesday.   I have no idea where Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama was raised.  Then apparently neither does O’Brien.   While O’Brien provides links pertaining to Obaama’s  Certificate of Live Birth, O”Brien simply asserts that Huckabee’s narrative is false without providing a scintilla of evidence which would refute Huckabee.    In what O’Brien is engaged is neither reporting nor journalism but straight pure advocacy.    Liberal talking points are not synonymous  with facts,  not at least in this universe.

The Green Reaper Cometh, Sister Toldjah:

Study: “Green” initiatives actually costing more jobs than they create

The Smell by the Bay, San Francisco stinks, from Sister Toldjah:

San Francisco stinks – literally!

And no, I’m not talking about the 49ers …

Here’s one more from the Department of Failed Left Coast Liberal Ideas:

It must be illegal for liberals to study economics.  I mean cutting back on the use of water in order to require vastly increases in use of bleach.

So much for the new tone, civility and all that.  Representative Charles Rangel (NY – 15) has, in so many words, called President Barack Obama, a/k/a Dumbo, a slave master, from Jordan Fabian, Hill:-

State governments taking steps to “abolish” collective bargaining rights for workers is similar to slavery, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) contends.

Speaking Monday at a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) event about GOP-proposed budget cuts, Rangel brought up Republican governors’ plans to target public sector workers, as in the case of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-fix plan in Wisconsin.

“It doesn’t really make any sense at all for the president of the United States to talk about creating jobs in order to improve the economy and find out that mayors and governors are talking about laying off people,” Rangel said. “Collective bargaining is something that is so close to slavery in terms of abolishing it, that it is not an American concept to tell people that they cannot discuss their economic position.”

And Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal, via Ed Morrissey Hot Air:

It will no doubt surprise you to learn that President Obama, the great patron of the working man, also happens to be the great CEO of one of the least union-friendly shop floors in the nation.

This is, after all, the president who has berated Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit the collective bargaining rights of public employees, calling the very idea an “assault on unions.” This is also the president who has sicced his political arm, Organizing for America, on Madison, allowing the group to fill buses and plan rallies. Ah, but it’s easy to throw rocks when you live in a stone (White) house.

Fact: President Obama is the boss of a civil work force that numbers up to two million (excluding postal workers and uniformed military). Fact: Those federal workers cannot bargain for wages or benefits. Fact: Washington, D.C. is, in the purest sense, a “right to work zone.” Federal employees are not compelled to join a union, nor to pay union dues. Fact: Neither Mr. Obama, nor the prior Democratic majority, ever acted to give their union chums a better federal deal.

If working for the government without collective bargaining rights is a condition akin to slavery and Obama heads the Executive Department with circa two million employees, denied collective bargaining rights by law. then by extension Obama is a slave master.   And who said blacks can’t be bigots?  Must be Obama’a white half.   More over, you know Obama fully supports the law because Obama has made it clear that he will not enforce laws which he does not support.

Dumbo’s Daffy Energy Policy, is Dumbo b/k/a Barack Obama hostile to business, from Anchorage Daily News:

WASHINGTON — With the unrest in the Middle East as his springboard, Gov. Sean Parnell lashed out at the Obama administration’s stance on domestic oil production, saying the White House approach was having a tangible effect on the country’s foreign policy.

In a speech at the National Press Club, the Republican governor called the federal government “openly hostile” to oil-producing states, particularly for the delays in allowing Shell to drill exploratory wells on leases off Alaska’s northern coast that the company purchased in 2008.

Or simply everybody, from the Detroit News:

Gasoline prices are jumping toward the “Oh my God!” level, and if they continue upward, will soon have an unpleasant impact on consumer behavior. An economy still struggling to recover can’t afford for Americans to get nervous about spending.

High pump prices have that effect. The huge 2008 run-up in oil prices throttled consumer spending, hitting the automobile industry — and thus, Michigan — particularly hard.

The turmoil in the Middle East has pushed oil above $100 per barrel again, and gasoline prices are following suit. In Metro Detroit, many stations are posting prices above $3.30, with predictions that they will move higher unless oil supplies increase.

Unfortunately, at the same time foreign supplies are falling, domestic production is being curtailed by policies of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Energy fuels our economy, and Obama is hell bent on seeing that we have both less energy and more expensive energy.   Not good for economic growth or a second term.

Dumbo steps in it, from Michael O’Brien, Hill:

President Obama warned Monday against vilifying public workers, making his first allusion to the labor dispute in Wisconsin in a week and a half.

[…]

“I don’t think it does anybody any good when public servants are denigrated, or vilified, or have their rights infringed upon,” Obama said.

Obviously when Obama says everybody, he does not to refer to anybody to pay  taxes.    The difference between public sector and private sector unions, from Peter Whoriskey and Amy Gardner, Washington Post:

Throughout U.S. history, the most prominent union clashes largely involved employees squaring off against big corporate owners over how to share profits. The recent state budget controversies feature union members bargaining against state and local governments over wages and benefits provided by taxpayers.

The shift reflects the profound changes in American unionism. Last year, for the first time in American history, a majority of union members worked for the government rather than private firms. About 36 percent of government workers, or 7.6 million people, are members of unions, compared with about 7 percent of private-sector workers, or 7.1 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Government is not a profit center but rather a burden, albeit to some extent, a necessary burden.

Public sector employees work for the public, and the public. like any other employer, has right to express dissatisfaction with their employees.   In contrast, President Civility likes to attack private citizens,  from the National Review, via Michael in M, AmeriCAN -DO Attitude:

Readers have made some points about my Rush Limbaugh bit in Impromptus today, and a few of these points, I forgot to make myself. In particular, I should have noted this: One of the creepiest, most disturbing things about the “war on Rush” — particularly as orchestrated from the White House? Limbaugh is a private citizen. A reader wrote, “The same people who gasped because the FBI surveilled John Lennon are more than happy to have government employees — including Emanuel and Gibbs — conduct a campaign to demonize and diminish a radio personality for political purposes.”

Rush is a big boy, and he can handle it. But still . . . There is something creepy about bringing the weight of the government down on a radio host, even if that host is prominent, influential, and brave.

Couldn’t President Obama save this heaviness for Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kim Jong Il, and other real villains?

President Obama Is in no position to give lessons in  either economics are civility.

Late Senator Oldsmobile  a reprobate, confirmed by Judicial Watch:

While in Santiago, Kennedy “made arrangements to ‘rent’ a brothel for an entire night”; Sought meetings with “communists and others who had left-wing views”

ReaxL Weasel Zippers:

Filed under “The least shocking story of all time.”

Is there any reason for anybody to be shocked?

Dumbo’s Dream Energy, if Barack Obama is for it, be it Obama Care or his so-called green energy, figure  it will cnost the consumer more to get less, rom Lee Lane and Paul Bernstein, ,RCP:

For all the eye-appeal of the president’s new plan, though, it is far from clear if it can work as energy policy. Think about what it would take to reach the goal of 80% clean power. It is true that lowering emissions from the power sector is likely to be less costly than making equally large cuts in other sectors. Just how costly it will be to lower power sector emissions in the way that the president proposes will depend on how narrowly ‘clean energy’ is defined and how quickly the cuts must be made.

Yet even if such CO2-free sources as nuclear and hydro power turn out to qualify as ‘clean energy’, reaching the target would still mean boosting the output of all such sources from where it stands today, at just over 30% of the total, to the president’s goal of 80%. This transition would require replacing over 60% of existing fossil-fired power plants with non-fossil fuel based energy; further, it would mean doing so within just 25 years.  Analysis of policies like those that Mr. Obama proposes shows that the costs of so large a change in so short a time span could more than double electricity prices.

If  Obama studied anything in college, is sure was not economics.

On Wisconsin, video from the front lines in Madison, video:

Hat tip and loud shout out to Ann Althouse:

Protesters at the Wisconsin Capitol disrespectfully have taped signs on and piled junk against the Veterans Memorial.

Meade and I confront them, and we’re told we’re the first people who’ve had a problem with it. I try to explain how that attempted defense of the behavior is only going to make it look worse. It means that of all these crowds of people in the Capitol, no one else has noticed or cared enough to say anything.

Very well played.

Obami stand mute, from Dana Milbank, RCP:

WASHINGTON — There have been worse times to start a new job in Washington. When Abraham Lincoln arrived in the capital 150 years ago this week, for example, the South had already seceded.

Jay Carney, the new White House press secretary, didn’t have anything quite so dire on his hands when he took over the briefing room podium last week. But President Obama has put his new spokesman in an unenviable position: He is the mouthpiece of an administration that has painfully little to say.

[…]

The passivity wasn’t the fault of the new spokesman. He merely had the uncomfortable task of articulating a coherent policy in the absence of one.

Bush be gone, from Jennifer Rubin Washington Post:

The left, for reasons that are unclear to me, appears bent on making the Koch brothers a campaign issue for 2012. The billionaire brothers who head Koch Industries have been major donors to free-market and other conservative causes. So rather than run against the real 2012 Republican nominee, the left would like to run against the Koch duo. Sound a little weird?

Apparently, the left feels they have exhausted George W. Bush as campaign issue.   Sadly, for the ‘Rats, the ‘Pubs just getting warmed up on Dumbo.

Cuomo’s Crummy Catholicism, it continues to befuddle me why some politicians, such as Mario Junior, b/k/a Andrew Cuomo want to seen as Catholics but don’t actually want to be Catholic from Tamara Abraham and Fiona Roberts, Daily Mail (UK):

A Vatican adviser has condemned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as ‘gravely sacrilegious’ for receiving Holy Communion – because he is not married to his live-in girlfriend, Food Network star Sandra Lee.

Edward Peters, a consultant for the Vatican’s high court, said Mr Cuomo should not take the sacrament of Communion while he is engaged in what he called ‘public concubinage’ with Ms Lee.

If Junior doesn’t want to be Catholic, that is his private affair.   However, Junior should not pretend to be Catholic, while not living as a Catholic.

Squaring the Circle, Fred Krager, Guardian (UK):

The opponents of equality for all Americans lost big on Wednesday with the announcement by President Obama that he has decided that the so-called “Defence of Marriage Act” (Doma) is unconstitutional – and his administration will no longer defend it in federal court.

Hate groups like the National Organisation for Marriage (Nom), which had spent tens of millions of dollars in just the last three years to take away rights from so many Americans, are panicking. They have been very successful in stopping and removing gay marriage in a majority of the states. But with this announcement, the sky has fallen right on their heads.

If I were argue that a  circle is  not a square, would that make me somehow anti-geometry?  Same sex marriage has no natural potential for procreation.  It is therefore not equal to traditional marriage..

Ban the Buggy, low tech lifestyle has its perils as well, from Bruce Schreine and Kristen M Hall, Associated Press:

MAYFIELD, Ky. – A horse-drawn buggy carrying an Amish family home from dinner and using a community telephone toppled in a rain-swollen creek in rural Kentucky, killing four children who were swept away in the swift-moving water, authorities said Friday

Our sympathies.

Dumbo’s Priorities, from Rush Limbaugh:

The price of oil around the world is skyrocketing.  The Saudis are talking about ramping up their production.  How about the crisis in the Middle East?  I mean, for heaven’s sake, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” right?  We have a crisis in the Middle East, we have no job creation, the deficit continues to explode, the price of oil is soaring.  We are doing nothing about compensating for that in our own country.  How about Wisconsin?  If you’re president, the smartest person in the world, you focus on government unions and how they are choking state budgets?  Do you focus on the border where unchecked illegal immigration continues?

You’re The Messiah!  Tell me, what do you focus on?  And what’s the answer?

Gay marriage

Ruth Marcus’ personal problem,  from the Washington Post:

House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health-care costs and swell the welfare rolls.

That wasn’t their intent, of course, and certainly not their stated policy. But it is the predictable and inevitable impact of their twin moves to eliminate funding for the federal family planning program and strip Planned Parenthood of all federal money.

Marcus needs to learn that her pregnancy, its continuation and all potential outcomes, is purely her personal responsibility.  If the decisions to both get pregnant or and stay pregnant are deemed to be private, as indeed they are, then their consequences are Marcus’s personal responsibility

Union thug assaults girl, video:

Camera person, victim and on the scene reporter, Tabitha Hale, Red State:

Today, union thugs descended on the FreedomWorks office. It was the middle of the day, and there was some excitement outside as all the buses pulled up and people started to fill the courtyard. We decided to go out and show our support for freedom. Intern Steve was quickly suited up.

[…]

I was taking pictures and video with my phone, and I heard my coworker getting into a heated exchange with one of the protesters. I turned on my iPhone camera and headed over to film it. They were going back and forth, the protester called my colleague a “little sh*t” just as I walked up, which is where the video starts. Then he noticed I was filming. Here’s what happened:

When union thugs resort to shoving five foot one females, you know they have lost.

Thugocrats, from James Taranto, Wall Street Journal:

The rhetoric around Wisconsin’s government labor dispute is getting more violent. NHJournal.com reports that Rep. Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, said this yesterday at a Boston “solidarity” rally: “I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”

With a street thug from Chicago as Commander-in-Chief, I guess threats of physical violence is to be expected.

The feckless Mrs. Clinton on the murder of four Americans by Somalian pirates, from Los Angeles Times

“This deplorable act by the pirates that stalk vessels in the waters off of Somalia firmly underscores the need for the international community to act more decisively together,” she said. “We’ve got to have a more effective approach to maintaining security on the seas, in the ocean lanes that are so essential to commerce and travel.”

more, Max Boot, Commentary:

Any time you hear a diplomat or leader talking about getting the “international community to act more decisively together,” you can tell she’s not interested in doing anything serious.

Do what Thomas Jefferson did, send in the Marines.

Rochester in the news, outside of Rochester, a plate is off what you eat and garbage is the food you throw away.  Not in Rochester, from 13WHAM:

Rochester, N.Y. – Local favorite Nick Tahou’s will be featured on the Food Network again, because its garbage plate hit the spot for a celebrity chef.

Food Network cameras filmed video and interviews at West Main Street restaurant in Rochester Wednesday.

[…]

Celebrity pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, who is based in New York City, ranked the white hot garbage plate on his list of best things

The phrase Garbage Plate is trademarked by Nick Tahou’s.   As  such, they are the only restaurant with them on the menu.  However imitations abound, with like sound names.  While these restaurant can not offer a garbage plate, they will serve one when ordered   Or just call it a plate.

Scott Walker for President, from George Will, Journal Sentinel:

[Wisconsin Governor Scott] Walker’s calm comportment in this crisis is reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s during his 1981 stand against the illegal strike by air traffic controllers, and Margaret Thatcher’s in the1984 showdown with the miners’ union over whether unions or Parliament would govern Britain. Walker, by a fiscal seriousness contrasting with Obama’s lack thereof, and Obama, by inciting defenders of the indefensible, have made three things clear:

First, the Democratic Party is the party of government, not only because of its extravagant sense of government’s competence and proper scope but also because the party’s base is government employees. Second, government employees have an increasingly adversarial relationship with the governed. Third, Obama’s “move to the center” is fictitious.

Klubbing Klein, from Ezra Klein, Washington Post:

You can’t separate public and private unions

One of the themes some commentators have adopted is that private-sector unions are fine — important, even — but public-sector unions have to be stopped. Or at least it’s all right if they’re stopped. The difference, as Joe Klein puts it, is that “Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed … of the public?”

[…]

And let’s let go of the idea that the public is on the hook for unions made up of government workers but not for unions made up of janitors in Las Vegas hotels. If private-sector unions negotiate higher wages that lead to higher corporate costs, those costs are passed on to the consumer. If public unions negotiate higher wages that lead to higher taxes, those taxes are paid for by the taxpayer. If public or private unions negotiate work rules that stifle innovation or impede good service, the public bears the brunt of that, too.

Well maybe Klein can’t but I can.    If a union contract jacks up the price of Ford’s labor and hence the price of their cars, the consumer can, and did, switch to buying a Toyota.    However if the teacher’s union drives up the cost of teacher’s salaries, the taxpayer is stuck with the bill.   In a private market the consumer has a choice.   In the public market he does not.

More, from Morning Journal:

We, the people, are the employer of all those public sector workers. Do public workers need union protection from us? Are we a threat to their well-being? Will they be starved and their families driven into the streets if they don’t have collective bargaining? No.

In the private sector, what little union bargaining remains, takes place within the bottom-line realization that the business must keep its costs in control so it will remain competitive and viable. Otherwise, the business fails and everyone is out of work.

Wage and benefit demands in the public sector are made on what is assumed to be a bottomless well of taxpayer funding. The government is in no danger of going out of business.

Michelle Obama is fat Digby is all upset at Ruch Limbaugh for calling attention the fact that FLOTUS, to wit Fat Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama is fat,Hullabaloo:

That’s very cute, and he was being exceptionally careful, but the message comes through loud and clear: Michelle isn’t “lithe” like a Sports Illustrated model or someone Alex Rodriguez would date so that proves there’s no evidence she’s following a healthy diet. In other words, she’s fat — you can even see her eating ribs (chuckle, chuckle.)

Fat people like Michelle Obama has utterly no business telling other people how to eat.

Jessup, MD– Tonight, I’m at a delivery site, to deliver in the morning. First time i’ve been in this neck of the woods for 25 years or so. I was at Ft Meade, just down the road, back in the early 70’s. I don’t recall the exact date, but I recall seeing “The Candidate”, a Robert Redford film during my stay.

Tonight, we’ve got freezing rain, and it’s not helping my mood, trust me.

• You know, there are some idiots I simply don’t understand, and never will.  This is NOT a low taxes problem. This is a spending problem. I guess, though the only way to reinforce liberal non-thought anymore is to embrace this fantasy of theirs.
• Yes, Glenn, Jen does that. It’s why she’s on our regular reads list.
• MICHELLE MOORE COULD USE A KIDNEY DONOR. And no, that’s not the Great Rotundo.
• Wanna know what’s what with the unions and their fight to raise your taxes? Here you go.

Madison on the Nile, question that is the difference between the thugs who protested in the streets of Cairo and the thugs protesting in Madison?  The thugs in Egypt at least pretended to support democracy.

Chicago Thug, you take the thug out of Chicago, but a thug is still a thug.

Meltdown with Ed Schultz, if the host were Rush Limbaugh Stink Progress would be all over it and it would lead on Memeorandum.  Alas, video:

Hat tipa:  Ed Dristoll,and Right Scoop.

Megan McArdle, Atlantic argues that a support, or lack thereof  same, for abortion depends how easy, or hard you view child birth:

What I don’t think it reflects is simply that pro-lifers are wrapping themselves in some gauzy, glamorized notion of birth.  Most women over 50 have given birth, and they are split about evenly on the question of legalized abortion.  The women I know who have given birth, whether pro-life or pro-choice, do not romanticize it.  They speak, of course, of the miracle that it is.  But they also speak, often rather too frankly, of how difficult and often disgusting the process is.  If a substantial number of pro-lifers are women who have given birth–and they are–then we pro-choicers can’t simply tell ourselves that it’s because they haven’t really thought about what birth entails.

Clue Meagan, he is  real living person, from Joan Beck, Orlando Sentinel

Obstetricians understand better than anyone else that an unborn baby isn’t a blob of tissue or a growing tumor or an unnecessary appendix. Whatever the euphemisms, they know that it is living, that it is human, that it is unique and that abortion kills it.

Hat tip and more: Jill, Pundit & Pundette:

Response from husband Pundit, who had an up-close-and-personal view of the births of our seven children and was never disgusted:
making an argument on behalf of Planned Parenthood?

[…]

Support for abortion is a form of self-loathing. The life pro-choicers hate may be their own.

The good news,the pro-choicers may choose to breed themselves out of existence.

First, some great news to pass along. I’ve been assigned a new (to me) truck… and boy it’s a beauty. I had the chance to drive it for a day last summer and fell in love.  Never figured I’d get this one for my own assignment, but here it is, in a pic taken last summer. I do have more recent pics but this looks better because of less salt on the paint. It needs a bath right now.

Eric's New Truck

It’s an ’06 International 9400.  Big Cummins Engine, 13speed Eaton/Fuller, heated leather seats.  Essentially it drives like a big car, and a bit of a hotrod, at that.  Just beautiful. I’m still moving into it, just now, but ‘ll post some pics of the inside soon.

POLITICS:

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of Obama’s pork spending bill, he called “stimulus”. What exactly did this monster stimulate? Taxes. Debt, and it grew government. Past that, not much. The White House and congressional Democrats like to tell us the jobs created. The fact is we’ve lost 2.5 million jobs in the two years since this thing was rammed down our throats. The unemployment is being reported as being at 9%… a figure we know to be flawed at least and  a flat out lie in truth.

This is what Democrats regard as success.

As bad as domestic policy is under Obama, the foreign policy is as bad. In looking at Egypt, and the events surrounding the departure of Mubarik, let’s go back in time to another foreign policy genius, Jimmah Carter, whose list of disasters includes the abject stupidity involved with our handling of the Shah, and the Iranian Revolution. Most of you weren’t around at the time, but do some reading, folks. The noises Carter’s White House was making are not at all dissimilar to what Obama is making now….making ouut like the removal of the shah was some kind of vitory for western style democracy. Look at the Iran we saw at the end of Carter’s mishandling of the office of POTUS, and look at it today, and explain to me what the hell either one has to do with western style democracy. Similar policies, beget similar results, and hence Egypt, today. With other nations joining the list of those being threatened by extremist muslims.

Enough. I gotta get up at 2am.

Lara Logan assault, from New York Post:

“60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, “Jew! Jew!” as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday, CBS and sources said yesterday.

The TV crew with Logan, who is also the network’s chief foreign correspondent, had its cameras rolling moments before she was dragged off — and caught her on tape looking tense and trying to head away from a crowd of men behind her in Tahrir Square.

Disheartening, but not shocking,

The political dog  that didn’t bark,  Mark Levin nukes Shelly Shrrrod, video:

Hat tip:   William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection.

Mrs. Sherrod has had no problem suing the federal government.   Previously she had been party, Pigford, to suing the Department of  Agriculture.    It was the USDA which fired Mrs. Sherrod, and not Andrew Breitbart.    So why is Mrs. Sherrod now giving the USDA and the Obama White House a free pass?