$250 million Medicare dollars squandered. The fiasco leaves some feeling pumped, while others just feel deflated because they have gotten the shaft. Government's response was limp.

The Supercommittee fails, and some kind of enforced spending cuts are supposed to come into play. Yet no one really expects significant defense cuts, nor any significant entitlement cuts. So the whole thing was basically a giant waste of time...time that we don't really have to waste. Fire them all. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

The incredible shrinking work force. The problem with the thinking of too many people, especially Democrats, is that they don't understand that employment is a side-effect of a business concern, not the purpose of it. The purpose of a business is to provide a good or service at a profit. Until the government makes doing business easier in this country -- by cutting through the thicket of regulatory red tape, by instituting a non-punitive tax regime, and by making sure the workforce is educated in the skills businesses need -- the employment picture will not improve. The government cannot 'create' jobs; all they can do is prepare the ground on which commerce can flourish. And so far, they've been sowing salt in the earth so that nothing can grow there.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:55 AM | Comments (333)
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In 2006 and again in 2008, in response to increased violence and drug- and people-trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border, President Bush sent 6,000 National Guard troops to supplement the Border Patrol. It worked. Violence is raging in Mexico, but it dropped dramatically on our side of the fence. And border-crossing is at an all time low.*

Of course, the Washington Post's William Booth doesn't see cause and effect here. He sees an opportunity to return the border to the same state it was in pre-Guard deployment:

Though there has been a spectacular surge in gruesome killings in Mexico, where more than 43,000 have died in drug violence since late 2006, there is little evidence of spillover into the United States.

The National Guard is working the border at a time when arrests of illegal crossers have fallen to historic lows and the number of Border Patrol agents has soared.

There are now 18,152 Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwestern border, up from 9,100 in 2001. Apprehensions of illegal crossers have fallen by two-thirds, from a high of 1.6 million in 2000 to 447,731 last year. This yearÂ’s tally is expected to be lower still, reaching levels not seen since the early 1970s.

Note the mathematics sleight-of-hand. Instead of a more reasonable, and informative, comparison of Border Patrol agents since 2006 or 2008, when the National Guard had to be called in because of out-of-control violence, WaPo stretches all the way back to cite the pre-9/11, pre-REAL ID Act numbers. This is unpardonably deceptive. It's advocacy, not journalism.

Buried in the article is a note that the members of congress from the states in questions and the Obama Administration all want to continue the Guard deployment and will likely do so into 2012. Unlike Booth, they can see success when it's staring them in the face.

*This can't be solely linked to the National Guard presence. We're seeing net negative migration in alien populations for the past two years, largely owing to the economy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:26 AM | Comments (80)
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Oh, Tuesday, you're so good to me. Some news to get you started:

The Administration of the first post-racial president sure has race on its mind a lot. Part of last week's Friday afternoon document dump was these two documents, one from the Department of Justice (PDF) and one from the Department of Education (PDF), reestablishing race-based admissions policies in higher education. You will recall that the Supreme Court largely smacked down affirmative action in higher education during the Bush 43 years. The Obama Administration isn't much interested in that.

Speaking of race-based admissions, the sentencing hearing starts today for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption related to the attempted sale of the President's old Senate seat to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (96)
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The Kind of Government We Actually Have

Via Doug Ross and DragonLaffs comes this apt description of how the Obama administration actually governs.

Although Dilbert captures more of the cynical greed behind the ineptocrats.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:38 PM | Comments (721)
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Corey Fedlmann talks about this -- sort of. He talks about his own abuse, and the abuse of now-dead-by-suicide Corey Haim, but he steadfastly refuses to say which "mogul" molested him.

I suppose that could be due to an NDA signed in exchange for some kind of settlement.

At any rate, if you had suspicions that Hollywood was an extremely dark place in which anyone connected in the industry could get away with anything up to and including child rape, suspicions validated.

Feldman, 40, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, unflinchingly warned of the world of pedophiles who are drawn to the entertainment industry last August. "I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia,” Feldman told ABC’s Nightline. “That's the biggest problem for children in this industry... It's the big secret.”

...

“This has been going on for a very long time,” concurs former “Little House on the Prairie” star Alison Arngrim. “It was the gossip back in the ‘80s. People said, ‘Oh yeah, the Coreys, everyone’s had them.’ People talked about it like it was not a big deal.”

Arngrim, 49, was referring to Feldman and his co-star in “The Lost Boys,” Corey Haim, who died in March 2010 after years of drug abuse.

“I literally heard that they were ‘passed around,’” Arngrim said. “The word was that they were given drugs and being used for sex. It was awful – these were kids, they weren’t 18 yet. There were all sorts of stories about everyone from their, quote, ‘set guardians’ on down that these two had been sexually abused and were totally being corrupted in every possible way.”

Dear God.

Thanks to RD.

Posted by: Ace at 03:18 PM | Comments (396)
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This is still in the "claim" category, but...

A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The guy says Clinton was supposed to help boost Corzine's image (mission accomplished!), and the deal was also intended to just firm up the Ancient-Rome-style connection with the Clinton political family.

Posted by: Ace at 02:58 PM | Comments (56)
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They got rid of the last coach, who drafted Tebow, because they didn't like him, and didn't think much of his quarterback pick, either.

They threw Tebow in because the season was lost anyway and the fans wanted to see him.

Now they're winning, which means they have a problem. It's hard to take a winning team into a completely different direction (and ditch the QB, whom the team seems to really be rallying behind).

By the way: Tebow did a good job of winning a game with his arm (something people doubted he could do).

But check out the video and note how super-colossally ginormously open his receivers were on most of those big-play passes.

Did you see how open they were? There was like an 8 yard cushion around most of those guys. What was Minnesota's scheme, there? "Well, he's religious. If he looks down the field and doesn't see any defenders, he'll think the Rapture came and he missed it."

Did Minnesota's secondary get the company email that this week's game would occur on Sunday, as usual? Because those defensive backs looked like they were just arriving at the field from the parking lot.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (241)
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It's just too dumb.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (120)
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It ought to be a "poor people's Holy Day," he observes.

Hm. I kinda thought it was. A poor people's holy day, a middle class person's holy day, a rich man's holy day. So long as they were Christian, of course, and interested in marking the day of celebration of Christ's birth.

But it turns out it should be a poor people's day of grievances.

Like Festivus, except with much more Marxism.

There is a tradition in some European countries that many (not all, but many) of the official leaders of the faith are kind of agnostic. They just took a job as a clergyman because their father had, or they had tested well for it in school, or their was an opening. It was just a gig to them.

And Jesse Jackson?

Supposedly he's a Reverend. But I never hear him mention Jesus, except in the context of declaring Jesus' preferences on marginal tax rate. Jesus, per se, doesn't seem to interest him.

Posted by: Ace at 12:11 PM | Comments (230)
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Time for the "economic recovery montage" they loved showing under Clinton -- cash registers sweetly beeping as they ring up sales, Help Wanted signs going up, the government printing out millions of dollars in new bills.

(That last one doesn't logically connotes economic recovery as much as it connotes "inflating away debt," but the media finds it useful as a stand-in for what they really want to show: a Las Vegas slot machine hitting a Jackpot and spitting out gold coins.)

And yet, under Bush, they were very meticulous about noting the fact that people opting out of the workforce was a sign of economic weakness, not recovery.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (100)
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