President Obama’s campaign has put together “The Life of Julia“, following a woman from cradle to grave to show how she benefits from the enlightened benificence of President Barack Obama. The reality, though, is rather different. Let’s look now at “The Life of Julia”:

I’m not an old or wise man. I’m assuredly not qualified to dole out advice — particularly to people I’ve never met. I was raised in a family where one didn’t readily admit the existence of ones feelings much less talk about them. For everything I’ve learned, I’m still filled with more dysfunctions than I [...]

Over at Megan McArdle’s place, she’s on a leave of absence for some as-yet-unnamed project. In her stead, Katherine Mangu-Ward picks up one of Megan’s common refrains about Americans and obesity: Fat people know they’re fat. They know why they’re fat. And they know that being fat kinda sucks. This may seem obvious, but think [...]

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm-but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” – T.S. [...]

We’re not going black today, over SOPA or PIPA. In case you by some miracle hadn’t noticed it yet, tens of thousands of web sites around the country and around the world, are “going black” or putting up banners explaining that they are not available or there is no content today etc… In protest against [...]

  H/T Facebook user I bet Ludwig von Mises can get more fans than John Maynard Keynes’s

Who joined whom? Gay marriage has always been an ideal niche for liberaltarians. After all, it’s the states, not the feds, that are the ones deciding whether it should be legal, a question that feeds into libertarians’ federalist affinities. And when you strip away the cultural and identity politics, gay marriage is really just a [...]

Just last week I wrote about the false Duke lacrosse accuser, Crystal Mangum being charged with “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.” Durham police are now “more than likely” going to charge Mangum with murder since her alleged victim and boyfriend Reginald Daye has died. Maria White writing for CNN reports: (CNN) [...]

Not political, but I just thought it hilarious. Megan McArdle, discussing an rumored move by Netflix to develop original television content on their own streaming distribution network: A&E was producing some great original content in the 1990s, but eventually abandoned the strategy and retreated to its core business of rebroadcasting Law and Order reruns. If [...]

Even with all the crowing from the authoritarian left about violent rhetoric, I have yet to see a call to violence as clear as this one from leftist Sociologist Frances Fox Piven: So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? [...] Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have [...]

One point that I often try to make when debating policy with friends and family is that virtually all policies have unintended consequences. How could anyone be opposed to such idealistic acts of legislation such as the War on Poverty, Social Security, Medicare, hate crimes legislation, affirmative action, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the [...]

I highly recommend XKCD, a webcomic devoted to romance, sarcasm, math and language. Today’s comic forces people to choose between attacking capitalism and their favorite superstition. Enjoy!

Hal Lewis has resigned from the American Physical Society, disgusted by their embrace of the lucrative fraud that underlays much of the research into Anthropogenic Global Warming. His resignation  letter is worth reading in full:

Stratfor is an incredible policy source that looks deeply into matters of geopolitics. Policy wonks are often able to look at what is going on dispassionately and with eye for understanding what is actually happening and that indispensable ability is in evidence in Robert W. Merry’s analysis of the Tea Party movement: Nearly every American [...]

This piece from Al Jazeera illustrates how comedy can positively affect politics. Like in the United States with comedians like Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, satirists, comedians and cartoonists in Afghanistan are able to go where conventional journalists are afraid to go. With the dreary headlines coming out of the region, it’s good [...]

The hyper-reactionary hatred of Terry Jones and his merry band of bigots down in Florida may have muddled the waters surrounding Islamic fundamentalism and its dangers, showing that we certainly have our own share of anti-intellectual sorcerers. Now that that and the Ground Zero hate festival is over, however, Islamic radicalism’s ugly head is springing [...]

As the economy continues to stagnate, Jon Stewart appears to have developed a very healthy helping of skepticism about progressive economic policies. This on top of his tearing President Obama apart for his continued embrace of executive power (completely counter to the criticism of Bush-era civil liberties violations that got him a standing ovation at [...]

Now, this is just lame: “The City of Emeryville, California, is looking for individuals to serve on its new ‘Food Truck Taskforce’ — a bureaucratic reaction to the increased competition local ‘brick and mortar’ restaurants face from mobile kitchens. Local worker Catherine Hicks tweeted, ‘restaurants are whining that trucks are more popular at lunch!’ But [...]

It seems that this case needs to be made again and again, generation after generation. Well here it is.

A great comment from Obdicut, which I found in the jungle of my last post’s comment thread: Michael, I’m sorry posting this has led to the stalkers having one of their uber-bizarre meltdowns in the thread. It’s a well-reasoned piece. I too, as an atheist who is against extremist religion of all forms, including Islam, [...]