An Insight On The Eve Of The 'Jobs Summit'

Dean Dad at Inside Higher Education offers compassionate insight into the present job market.

And he's writing about the kids who have the resources of mind, character, and circumstance to actaully graduate college.

It's a good read, as are all of his posts.

The Narrative of Radical Islam

The YewNork Times sometimes surprises me.  I began to peruse a reprint from its Op-Ed page about the mass-murder Islamist Major Hasan, and expected to be treated to a carefully crafted explanation of why the good Major was a victim of our prejudices, why the murdered victims were actually at fault, and why he should be released to begin his book tour before Oprah calls it quits.

But this time, I was surprised. Thomas Friedman treats us to a thoughtful essay on just how totally poisonous radical Islam is, and how the Kool-Aid is distributed.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.


In other words, the Narrative is B.S.

Major Hasan bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Did absolutely everyone who worked with this whack-job day in and out simply not pick up on the fact that he was troubled?

Utterly Stupid Palestinian Political Pooh-Pooh, But Should We Be Surprised?

No one has ever accused the Palestinians of being rocket scientists. After all, if you fire mortars at Israeli villages, you shouldn't be shocked to find Israeli tanks knocking at your door, genius.  This stuff is not hard to comprehend.

But this episode is a new low, even for these clowns.

The Choir of Clare College Cambridge made plans to tour Israel this December with the Israel Camerata, presenting Bach's Christmas Oratorio in both Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

How completely horrible and unacceptable!  University students singing Christmas music in (OMG!!!)...Bethlehem!

Some Palestinian groups raised a stink, so the Bethlehem concert was cancelled.

So what's so threatening to the Palestinians if Clare College Choir(one of the finest choral organizations in the world) sings the Christmas Oratorio in Palestinian territory?

Well, think about it. If you are running a government that specializes in creating and then idolizing suicide bombers, recruiting young people to destroy themselves, the last thing on earth you want showing up on Christmas Eve is Clare College Choir singing Bach.  Some of those kids you're trying to recruit might show up to hear the concert, and hear that glorious music.  Even worse, your potential cannon fodder might see those bright kids their own age, happily singing that glorious music.  

Those kids aren't getting fitted for bomb vests--they're studying for their futures.

Now that's dangerous!

To explore more about this insidious threat to Palestinian aspirations, visit them here.
 

Comic Relief, or Why Beauty Pageants Are Generally A Really Bad Idea

The simultaneously unforgettable and unrecognizable performance by Cindy Elizondo in the 2000 Miss Texas Pageant of Chopin's Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, opus 20.

The really scary part is the enthusiastic applause at the end!

Who needs to learn scales and arpeggios when you can just go ahead and learn big impressive literature?

Reich's Syndrome: Delayed Indignation/Buyer's Remorse

So, what's a prominent liberal with a brain supposed to do these days?

After all, Robert Reich drank deep of the Obama Kool-Aid.  Hell's Bells, he even helped set this bunch set up shop during the transition before heading back to that Valhalla of liberal thought, UC Berkeley. (And, parenthetically, aren't these just the very best days to be working in the University of California system, where the students are rioting at the thought of having to begin to pay for their educations? Well, at least he gets to see all his sacred ideas come to fruition before his eyes...)

Now, finally, it dawns on him that Prez Hopey-Changey, the Great Himself, has no intention of doing anything except continue and expand on the great financial scam.

He's developed Reich's Syndrome, brought on by myopia, the propensity to believe anything preposterous as long as it is propounded by a charismatic Democrat candidate, the utter inability to heed warnings or reason, and the refusal to acknowledge that mathematics exists.  Symptoms include a severe case of buyer's remorse, delayed indignation, and the utter inability to mouth four simple words: Damn, I wuz wrong!  

One common way in which Reich's Syndrome presents is the sufferer's propensity to write self-righteous articles about how bad it all is, carefully avoiding placing the blame directly at the feet of the people he helped put in power, and pressing for even more governmental expenditures and control over the everyday lives of the citizenry.  After all, those four simple words just can't be uttered, even to oneself in the mirror in the morning.  It's just too painful, you know... Better just to double down and tack left, full speed ahead.

No known cure, but quarantine and ridicule are known to prevent its spread.

Sympathy for the patient is unwarranted, and ill-advised. 

I Just Love Denninger!

Really, truly.

He mounts the podium, states that math is the voice of God, and rails against the idiots who have denied that obvious truth.

If you don't read him, begin here, with today's latest post.

The best moment is:

And by the way, those who try to claim that this was "impossible to foresee" are lying.  Fraudie and Phoney were running with leverage ratios of anywhere from 80:1 to 200:1, depending on how you computed it.  At 80:1 you need just a bit over a 1% loss to go bankrupt, and at 200:1 you need only a 0.5% loss.

There is no business in this land that is safe to lend to at these leverage ratios, nor is there any reasonable expectation in any business that you will never suffer a loss of JUST ONE PERCENT - yet such a loss was and is sufficient to bankrupt the firm long before they were taken into conservatorship.

If only some brave soul who sits behind a desk that makes decisions would hear and heed him.

If only some brave book publisher would find a way to make him sit down and edit it all together in a form that can live on our shelves.

Makes Almost As Much Sense As The Health Care Bill

Now we know who Harry and Nancy hired to draft the language of those tomes!

Too Many Blessings To List

It's Thanksgiving Day, 2009. I'm in my armchair with a glass of sherry. My extraordinary wife is busily cooking and cheerfully gossiping with our houseguest, a young lady we have helped raise for the past decade.
I could never have imagined ten years ago just what an accomplished and poised young lady she would become. The credit for all that goes to my extraordinary wife.

I'm fifty-ish. A little over twenty years ago, I wasn't at all certain I'd live to see thirty-five, and wasn't even certain I wished to. (A long story, not worth telling, much less reading.) I wake up every day surprised and grateful to be alive, much less happily married and sipping sherry on Thanksgiving Day.

The list past that stretches past the horizon.

So, Happy Thanksgiving. The world seems to be in the charge of idiots, but the Potentate of Time trumps them all.

Ruh-Roh! (Part Deux)

So, while we're cooking, baking, and happily imbibing, the news comes in that all is not rosy in, of all places, Dubai.

It appears they may be on the brink of default of their sovereign debt.

Now, someone please explain to this country boy how an Arab Emirate, up to its keister in oil and cash since 1970, manages to dig itself into this sort of hole, and is likely to drag a bunch of people with it. The list of banks that hold its debt includes some familiar names like Lloyds and RBS. Well, that makes everything OK, since they have a history of being well-run, and certainly have made provisions for this sort of black swan event.

Or not...

It's interesting to watch the reaction in the European markets. For them, it's just another day in the salt mines.

The purchase (and delivery, by golly) of 300 tons of gold by the Indian government now seems oddly prescient.

Tomorrow morning's open in New York could possibly give new meaning to the term 'Black Friday'....

Bloomberg Futures Here.

Now, what happens when all those shoppers wake up to Good Morning America and see what happened while they were stuffing down the turkey?

This could be interesting.

Awards for Genuine Achievement

To provide a contrast to the Nobel Committee's decision regarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, here is the list of the newly-announced 2009 winners of the Rhodes Scholarship, awarded to outstanding students to enable them to continue their work at Oxford.

You'll have to download the pdf of the winners' bios, but I assure you, it will be an inspiring read.

This group makes the Green Shoots nominee list.