The World Is Being Run By Crazy People

There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. Tough penalties supposedly do not deter crime. Abroad, military preparedness or deterrence pales in comparison to “soft” diplomatic power and clever talking. Borrowing trillions is “stimulus” and need not quite be paid back. In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.

If you missed it on the weekend, be sure to also read this essay: America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, by Angelo M. Codevilla. It’s since gone viral, helped in large part by Rush Limbaugh’s massive audience.
h/t EBD

Reader Tips

In 1949 Pete Seeger and Lee Hays wrote If I Had A Hammer, which that lists all the beautiful things that could be accomplished – “I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters” – if only a hammer could be located. In tonight’s musical oddity the performer not only has a hammer, but she looks like she’s itching to use if for less friendly purposes. From a 1964 appearance on Italian public television station Rai 2, here’s Rita Pavone performing her peppy, muscular, and slightly disconcerting “why, I oughta” version of Datemi un martello – literally, Give Me A Hammer.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

If You Own Unbroken Grassland In Washington-Idaho

Plow now.

A large white earthworm native to portions of Idaho and Washington will undergo a status review to determine if the species warrants protection under the Federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) announced Tuesday.
The giant Palouse earthworm, a species first described in 1897, was once thought to be abundant in the Palouse area but has rarely been seen in the intervening 113 years and only at a handful of sites. The most recent sighting, earlier this year, located a group of worms believed to be giant Palouse earthworms near Moscow, Idaho. An earlier survey found the species near Ellensburg, Washington.
[…]
Recently, the giant Palouse earthworm has only been found in undisturbed or untilled habitat. Therefore, whether or not the species becomes listed, conservation of the species should include maintenance of remaining undisturbed habitat.

Not Waiting For The Asteroid


If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.
But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all…

Update: Rush responds

Reader Tips

Tonight’s featured amusement en route to the Tips thread is a three-for-one soul music cover-song extravaganza as performed by four fictional brothers – “non-identical quadruplets” – who turned their musically-confusing uprootedness (they were born in the deep South before being hauled off to Detroit, the home of Motown and soul music) into a humorously mixed-up style of music.
From their 1993 album Into The Twangy-First Century, here are the Burns Brothers, aka Run C&W, performing a three-song soul music Medley consisting of Ray Charles’ What’d I Say, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, and – my favourite part – Diana Ross and the Supremes’ Stop In The Name Of Love.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Not Waiting For The Asteroid


According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

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