Memorial Day

We remember: "As Memorial Day nears, a single image that continues to haunt"

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This number is going nowhere but up - Weekly Standard: "Last decade, 65% of federal expenditures went to pay for entitlements."  As we prepare to head deeper into debt, by all means, let's talk about really important matters.

A question on the House finale - How did House know what Wilson was saying at the funeral?  The moment Wilson starts calling him an "ass" the cellphone has a text messages reading "Shut up, you idiot."  Was House at the funeral in disguise?  It seems impossible that House could hobble in, unnoticed.  Anyway, here's a review from Maggie's Farm: "House MD: End of a cantankerous era."

The media discovers Obama is quite the spender - Doug Ross: "Oh my, even the Associated Press mocks Obama's deficit hawk claims."  And in case you missed it, the WashPost Factchecker bestowed three more Pinocchios on the White House spin.

The legend of Fauxcahontas

Three takeaways from this article in the Boston Globe today: "Filings add to questions on Warren's ethnic claims":

1.) Elizabeth Warren self-identified herself as Native American, presumably using the "high cheekbones" criteria: "According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves."
2.) Harvard really wanted to check off the box of adding minorities to the faculty: "In the years before Warren first came to Harvard Law, the school was under intense pressure to diversify its faculty."
3.) Warren had no idea that Harvard was identifying her as a minority despite articles in the Harvard Crimson and a letter to the New York Times.

And, of course, Harvard was so very impressed with Warren's background that it would be churlish to suggest a position was opened for her based on her cookbook contributions.  Here in Massachusetts there's little evidence that this issue is hurting Warren in the polls but I don't see how she can extricate herself from this tangle once the Senate race heats up.

Extra - Legal Insurrection: "Warren listed as 'woman of color' in Harvard student journal."  Another reference she knew nothing about, presumably.

More - From Althouse.

Let's all pay taxes, and by "all" I mean those rich guys

I was listening to NPR this evening and caught this unintentionally humorous interview with California governor Jerry Brown:

Ryssdal: Why is it that this debate, Governor, happens on the far ends of the economic spectrum? We're talking about cutting services for the most needy in our society and taxing the very richest. How do you reconcile that with an electorate that lives mostly in the middle?
Brown: Well, the electorate in the middle is telling every survey that they don't want any more taxes. They are willing to see the taxes on the most affluent increase at least temporarily -- if it's for schools, for public safety and for the most vulnerable. So faced with a gap of $15.7 billion, I can either fold my tent and then just slash away, or I can give the voters an opportunity to say, 'OK, we'd like to shoulder part of that burden.'

And by "we", Brown means a tiny sliver of the Golden State population.  Golly I hope everybody's "willing" to let somebody else pay for California's mess!  Predictably, it's all about "economic fairness."

Blessed are the peacemakers - American Interest: "Peace Prize follies."  (H/T Arts & Letters).

Noted unicorn rider talks about the "real world"

Here's Jim Gereghty on the Corner:

President Barack Obama, who has spent almost all of his career and adult life in academia, law firms, and government, begins his criticism of Mitt Romney by declaring, “those of us who have spent time in the real world . . .”
It would probably be rude of me to think about Michelle Obama’s work, where her salary jumped from $121,910 to $316,962 per year after her husband became a U.S. senator, a job that was strangely left unfilled after she stepped down to focus on her husband’s campaign.
Such positions are quite challenging to find in the . . . real world.

It's a beautiful life and spending other people's (well, taxpayers) money means never having to say you're sorry.

Moving the goalposts again - Initial jobless claims edged down 2,000 last week, resulting in a lot of "jobs improve slightly" headlines.  How'd that happen?  Well, last week's estimate was revised up by 2,000 - voila! - a "better" job picture.  This is the 62nd time out of the last 63 estimates that have been revised in one direction.

Hey big spender - Hot Air: "Correcting the media on Obama's spending record...again."

And James Pethokoukis adds some numbers to the fight: "As I point out in my original post, if Obama wins another term, spending—according to his own budget—would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. If that forecast is right, spending during Obama’s eight years in office would average 23.6% of GDP. That average is higher than any single previous non-war year in American history."

David Brooks *hearts* private equity

The New York Times columnist has a full-throated defense of Bain Capital and firms that promote capitalism, jobs, and growth: "How Change Happens."  I, for one, believe that the Obama camp should keep on pushing this line of attack.

Let's have that debate about how that guy took control of a failing company and a hundred-thousand people lost their jobs.

What Americans want, but not really - Zero Hedge: "Americans want smaller government and lower taxes."  Yet government just continues to grow and grow under both Democrats and Republicans.

Julia wept - Nice Deb: "Dozens of Catholic institutions file suits over HHS mandate."  Notre Dame's president frames the argument perfectly: this is not a question about access to contraception, no matter how much the White House spins their "war on women" narrative.  It's about the government compelling religious institutions to violate their tenets.

Obama collects two more Pinocchios

He said that job growth was slower under Bush; the WashPost begs to differ:

There’s no doubt that Bush owns an unimpressive record on job creation. But Obama comes in either last, second-to-last or in the bottom half among presidents since the Great Depression, depending on which way you look at the numbers.
The president said that policies from 2000 through 2008 produced the “most sluggish job growth we’ve ever seen.” Perhaps so, but the worst numbers on record occurred under his watch.

As the article notes, Obama wants to count only private sector job growth and not from the start of his term or even the "end" of the recession but from when jobs started (slowly) coming back.  In other words, everything good is a result of The One's magic while everything bad is that other guy's fault.  And it only cost $5 trillion in new debt.

Incredible: non-cheerleading article appears in the NY Times - How did this one get past the editors?  Campbell Brown: "Obama, stop condescending to women."

Train in vain - Althouse: "Not even a busted fisc can stop Jerry Brown's train to nowhere."  With less than half the cash needed to fund California's high-speed rail boondoggle, I'm getting the distinct impression that Jerry Brown's strategy is the same as Teddy Kennedy's sinkhole, the "Big Dig."

Step one: get the underfunded project started.  Step two: go broke.  Step three: beg the federal government for a bailout.  Step four: Profit!

Take the money and run - Doug Ross: "Ruh roh: Europe's invisible bank run accelerates."

But can he win another? - CNN: "I'll Have Another wins Preakness in close finish."  One more and we'll have the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.

Legendary DJ Pete Fornatale, rest in peace

I just got off the phone with my buddy who told me Pete Fornatale died a couple weeks ago.  Now that I'm living in Massachusetts, the news of New York disc jockeys doesn't make the headlines.  But it should.  This paragraph from his obit in the NY Times brings back all those rock-n-roll memories:

Mr. Fornatale was at the forefront of the FM revolution, along with WNEW-FM colleagues like Scott Muni, Rosko, Vin Scelsa, Dennis Elsas, Jonathan Schwartz and Alison Steele (who called herself “the Nightbird”). They played long versions of songs, and sometimes entire albums, and talked to their audiences in a conversational tone very different from the hard-sell approach of their AM counterparts.

Fornatale! Muni! Elsas!  I grew up in northern New Jersey listening to WNEW and the New York rock stations and there was an intimacy with these DJs that simply does not exist with the loudmouth drive-time jerks which populate the airwaves today.  One of my favorite segments on WNEW was the "Perfect Album Side" where fans would suggest a side to listen to, non-stop and commercial free (e.g. side 1 of "Born to Run.")  And, boy, did they know their music from artist to liner notes.

Dennis Elsas has a tribute to Fornatale up at his WFUV page.  I'm going to listen and remember Pete.

The media's response and responsibility - Tom Maguire has been all over the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case and his coverage is less about the altercation than the subtext of how the media has handled the case.  Which is poorly as he demonstrates today in the WashPost's coverage.  Can't "professional" reporters get even the most basic facts right?  If there are riots after Zimmerman's all-but-certain acquittal, there will be blood on the hands of the media who stoked their narrative first and reported the facts...eventually.

Shocking: people try to avoid paying taxes

I think Facebook founder Eduardo Saverin is a bit of a jerk to renounce his U.S. citizenship to avoid paying taxes on his IPO windfall, but that's his decision.  Of course, NY Senator Chuck Schumer never misses an opportunity to grab a headline with the outrage du jour so he's trying to move some punitive law that will go nowhere.

In turn, Zero Hedge has a "A simple question for Senator Schumer."  "Can Senator Schumer please rep, warrant and guarantee that none of his corporate sponsors, i.e., his Top 100 Contributors, have ever engaged in any form of explicit or implicit tax avoidance, tax offshoring, and tax shelter."  Wow, that's quite a list, including the Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and union-buster Verizon.  Let's see that clean bill of patriotic taxpaying, Senator.

How Pixar almost lost "Toy Story 2"

To un-deletion...and beyond!

Everybody act surprised - Hit & Run: "Of course foreclosure settlement money isn't going to people with foreclosures."  Governments just grab the cash.

Three years without a budget - Powerline: "Senate Democrats achieve a new standard of irresponsibility."