Last line.

This Is the 99 Percent? - By Mark Krikorian - The Corner - National Review Online: Really, that was the whole thing. Capitol Hill and the White House are where these guys should be protesting, since it’s government that created the problems they’re complaining about (assuming anyone can tell exactly what it is they’re saying).

The Post reached a new low in MSM glorification of these parasites the other day, when the whole front of the Style section described how “A Square Gets Hip” and “improvises a vibrant urbanism,” illustrated with a huge map showing the encampment, which appears to have named the paths crossing the square after Occupy heroes, including Che Guevara and Angela Davis (what, no Stalin Boulevard?).

Fire hoses and tear gas, the sooner the better.

The Mathematical Case Against The Electoral College

The Mathematical Case Against The Electoral College:

In video form:

Along the same lines, a Gallup poll from a couple weeks ago shows that the Electoral College is highly unpopular:

Nearly 11 years after the 2000 presidential election brought the idiosyncrasies of the United States' Electoral College into full view, 62% of Americans say they would amend the U.S. Constitution to replace that system for electing presidents with a popular vote system. Barely a third, 35%, say they would keep the Electoral College.

Banker's Choice

Banker's Choice: And the way this fits into democratic theory is – well, it doesn’t fit into democratic theory. It’s closer to a coup without tanks. To be sure, these are temporary coups until each nation holds new elections, but Papademos and Monti are not supposed to be mere caretakers until the real leaders arrive. To the contrary, they’re assuming power under instruction from the markets – the markets that have seen Italy’s financing costs rise and the value of stocks everywhere topple – to make sweeping cuts in services and substantial hikes in taxes, cuts so sweeping and hikes so substantial that no elected leader would dare make them. They’ve been instructed by the markets, in essence, to lower the living standards of their peoples.

He still should have followed up.

That Lawyer Dude: A Strong Defense of Joe Paterno: Why Paterno Was Morally & Ethically Right Not To Go Further in The Sandusky Sex Abuse Case: In the comments section of an article in an SI online blog post by Joe Posnanski, Columbia Univ. Adjunct Professor Scott Semer assails Joe Paterno for not taking greater actions in the Jerry Sandusky case (Link is to the actual Grand Jury Report. It is not for the squeamish.)

Semer rests his opinions as a lawyer and an Adjunct Professor of Transactional Law at Columbia Univ. in NYC. He takes what I believe is the majority opinion as to Coach Paterno's decisions which is that he did the least he could do to cover himself but owed a moral duty to do more.

I too am an attorney, a criminal defense lawyer, a former special prosecutor, and an adjunct professor of Trial Advocacy, and as to his judgment of Paterno I completely disagree with Professor Semer. I think Paterno did what was both morally and legally correct.

Joe Posnanski � Posts The End of Paterno �

Joe Posnanski � Posts The End of Paterno �: But — well, I’ve already said that my emotions don’t matter here, that they are nothing like what the victims went through, but for the purposes of this essay I’ll tell you them anyway: I’ve been wrecked the last week. Writing a book comes from the soul. It consumes you — mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of it. I have thought about Joe Paterno, his strengths, his flaws, his triumphs, his failures, his core, pretty much nonstop for months now. I have talked to hundreds of people about him in all walks of life. I have read 25 or 30 books about him, countless articles. I’m not saying I know Joe Paterno. I’m saying I know a whole lot about him.

And what I know is complicated. But, beyond complications — and I really believe this with all my heart — there’s this, and this is exclusively my opinion: Joe Paterno has lived a profoundly decent life.

'Nudge' policies are another name for coercion - opinion - 09 November 2011 - New Scientist

'Nudge' policies are another name for coercion - opinion - 09 November 2011 - New Scientist: All this suggests democratic arrangements, which foster diversity, are better at solving problems than technocratic ones. Libertarian paternalism is seductive because democratic politics is a cumbersome and messy business. Even so, democracy is far better than even the best-intentioned technocracy at discovering people's real interests and how to advance them. It is also, obviously, better at defending those interests when bureaucrats do not mean well.

While democratic institutions need reform to build in dialogue between citizens and experts, they should not be bypassed. By cutting dialogue and diversity for concealed and unaccountable decision-making, "nudge" politics attacks democracy's core. We should not give in to temptation - and save our benevolent meddling for family reunions.

Wow.

Print - Mercenary - Esquire: Which is why it’s a good thing that the security manager at Palisades Nuclear for the last year and a half is real, too, with real qualifications for the job. His name is William E. Clark, and he has been in the Army, he’s been a cop, he’s done some contracting work for the Department of Energy, he’s gone to Kosovo on a diplomatic mission, and after Katrina, he worked for Blackwater, the security company, outside New Orleans. He started at Palisades in early 2006. He has a new house and a new wife and has told people, “I would shed blood to keep this job.” As a statement of determination, this is reassuring...but what if he means it as a statement of fact? What if William E. Clark has told people -- told me -- that he has in fact shed blood many times, in many places, over the course of many years? What if William E. Clark says that he worked for Blackwater in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in New Orleans and killed so many people that he considers himself a cold-blooded murderer? What if he says that his job as the security manager of a nuclear plant on Lake Michigan is both a reward for all the killing he’s done and a means for keeping him quiet about it?

:(

Israel accidentally kills rabbi mistaken for Palestinian militant: Israel Defense Forces killed a 55-year-old Israeli rabbi and settler, Dan Mertzbach, in what they say was an accidental shooting.

Soldiers opened fire on Mertzbach's car after it failed to stop at a temporary checkpoint between Yatta and Hebron in the southern West Bank, reported Haaretz.

Mertzbach was killed, while two passengers in the vehicle were wounded and taken to hospital.

UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned

UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned: "The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence," UC police Capt. Margo Bennett said. "I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest."

Arab leaders shouldn't kill their people?

That makes it all the more remarkable that these leaders have now
largely accepted the normative principle that regime legitimacy can be
forfeited at a certain level of internal violence. Nobody would say that
the Arab League has acted effectively to defend this new norm --
the ongoing bloodshed in Syria, the decimated civil society of Bahrain,
and the grim stalemate in Yemen attest all too clearly that they have
not.  But they now speak almost all speak the language of international
norms against impunity. Norms do not need perfect behavioral compliance
for them to be significant in international relations.  The simple fact
that both popular and official Arab political discourse now begins from
the premise that domestically violent regimes should be sanctioned or
even removed from power has already significantly changed the game of
Arab politics. 

Peggy Noonan: Happy Days Aren’t Here Again

Peggy Noonan: Happy Days Aren’t Here Again: What is called the tea party is the rightward part of the conservative base. They became angry that they had trusted the Republican establishment during a Republican presidency, only to see that establishment run up huge debt, launch foreign wars, contribute to the surveillance state, and refuse to control America’s borders. What made the anger deeper is that they were angry at themselves. They felt complicit: They had not rebelled, they had trusted the party: “They’re the GOP establishment, they must know what they’re doing.” What the conservative base had learned by 2008 is: Don’t trust the Republican party. Don’t trust its establishments. The old loyalty was over. It may or may not come back.

Dishonest yet successful

John D. Rockefeller: A Character Study Part I.: They were a persuasive body — those South Improvement advocates, and they had great arguments. "Sign these contracts, and we shall control the business, then you will have but one party to deal with. Think of the ease in handling your freight? Sign these contracts and we will divide the trade, thus saving you the wear and tear of securing your quota—preventing rate wars. Think of the profits!" And the contracts were signed — secretly of course. And when they were signed what did Mr. Rockefeller do? He swooped down on a great industry in his home town with the proof that henceforth he was not only to have rates fully one hundred per cent cheaper than his competitors, but he was to have the extra one hundred per cent they paid! And he told them they had better sell — at his price; twenty-one out of twenty-six did, and by March, 1872, young Mr. Rockefeller was practically the only oil refiner in Cleveland, Ohio, where three months before there had been twenty-six.

The 1% are the very best destroyers of�wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

The 1% are the very best destroyers of�wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian: In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

Newt Gingrich: Shining Knight of the Post-Reagan Right | Mother Jones

Newt Gingrich: Shining Knight of the Post-Reagan Right | Mother Jones: Confrontation is not new to Gingrich, and the battle with O'Neill was no accident. Before interviewing Gingrich for this story, I watched him give a speech to a group of conservative activists. "The number one fact about the news media," he told them, "is they love fights." For months, he explained, he had been giving "organized, systematic, researched, one-hour lectures. Did CBS rush in and ask if they could tape one of my one-hour lectures? No. But the minute Tip O'Neill attacked me, he and I got 90 seconds at the close of all three network news shows. You have to give them confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate."

:(

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts: Recent condemnations of Los Alamos have been based on remarkably thin, cartoonish descriptions of its culture. Critics have offered only a flat, unelaborated sense that weapons scientists, with their lifetime sinecures, have a sense of privilege that, in the words of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman (US House of Representatives, 2008), makes them “think they are above it all.” Such phraseology is bizarre when applied to men and women who work very long hours and accept government surveillance of their lives that most of us would not tolerate. (They are not allowed to travel abroad without government permission; government agents can question their friends about their finances, drinking, and sex habits; and they can be tested for alcohol in their blood at a moment’s notice at work.)

.......not so much

Guernica / Frances Fox Piven: How the 99% Could Stop the War Against the Poor: We’ve been at war for decades now—not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed—until now.

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts: Nuclear weapons scientists at Los Alamos now say that morale there is the worst it has ever been in the lab’s seven-decade history, and that Los Alamos’s ability to function as an institution and to superintend the nuclear stockpile has been substantially undermined. This institutional havoc has been wrought not by the left but by congressmen and government officials claiming to act in the name of national security and efficiency. They framed Los Alamos as an institution in need of reform and, by “improving” management practices, reduced the laboratory’s effectiveness. Their counterproductive actions were often justified by an assumption, largely erroneous, that Los Alamos had an organizational culture characterized by arrogance and carelessness.

:)

BBC News - India and Pakistan PMs pledge 'new chapter': Pakistan's prime minister and his Indian counterpart have met in the Maldives, pledging to open a "new chapter" between the two nations.

Yusuf Raza Gilani said after meeting Manmohan Singh the next full round of talks would be "more constructive".

Mr Singh said he welcomed the "positive movement" from the meeting.

Talks between the two nations were suspended after the 2008 Mumbai (Bombay) attacks which India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

But earlier this year, leaders vowed to resume their dialogue and find ways to build trust and promote peace.

Cain Has Shown His Limitations � Commentary Magazine

Cain Has Shown His Limitations � Commentary Magazine: In the 1980s, one of the Republican Party’s main sources of attraction to younger conservatives like myself was its growing reputation for intellectual seriousness. “Of a sudden,” wrote Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, in 1981, “the GOP has become a party of ideas.” The way such things happen is by rewarding intellectual excellence among those vying for the presidency rather than making excuses for their lack of knowledge.

Dissent Of The Day

Dissent Of The Day:

A reader writes:

As a Pennsylvanian, as a Penn State fan, and as a survivor, I feel strongly compelled to provide some perspective here. What's happening at Penn State is a tragedy of epic proportions. The community is really struggling to reconcile the horror of the actions and inactions with a coach, a program, and a university that have done so much for so many players, students, and communities literally for generations now. As Shakespeare wrote at the end of Romeo and Juliet, "All are punished."

Those who cheer Joe's immediate departure as well as those who insist that he stay are BOTH off key. Given Joe's admission that this is the tragedy of his life, and that he wishes he had done more, the Board of Trustees had no choice but to let him go immediately. But to cast extreme judgment on him and the Penn State community at this very particular, very hurtful, and very confusing moment in time is to be blind to who he has been and what he has done over the past 60+ years. And it's also to be callous to a glorious community about which you apparently know very little, and most importantly, to the victims of Sandusky and all victims, everywhere.

There are countless, non-cultish reasons why Joe Paterno and Penn State are so revered. From his insistence on academic excellence, to a squeaky clean record in terms of abindance to the rules in an era when they are regularly bent and broken, to his investment in his players rather than an exploitation of them, to the millions of ways he has given back to the community, to his loyalty to what was once a sleepy agricultural school to what is now one of the premier universities in the country (which also happens to have the largest alumni membership in the world), Joe Paterno has demonstrated and personified what it is to do things the right way AND win while doing it. If there aren't already, there will be books written about Joe and the fundamental goodness of the Penn State community that he helped build. Joe's example has been without match, which is why this epic mistake is so pointed and devastating to anyone who's ever been impacted by him.

As for the reaction of the students, they are kids - give them time and space to sort through this and process what has happened. If you've never been disappointed by anyone you've ever held in the utmost of esteem, you might not understand. But if you have, try to remember the confusion, disappointment, and compassion you likely felt all at once in that moment of time.

Finally, one thing is for certain, and you can trust me on this: hysteria and self-righteous proclamations from any side in instances like this do NOTHING for the victims. Nothing. They only make it worse. They pick at wounds, and they stunt the healing process that survivors need. Yes - survivors want justice for their perpetrators and greater awareness of a problem that is everywhere. But more than anything, we want calm, compassion, and healing. For everyone. Even the perp and those who could have done more. It's the only way that we as survivors, or as a family, or as a community, can move on positively and constructively.

So if you want to actually do something constructive about this rather than disparage a grieving and confused community as cultists and immoral neanderthals, you can encourage everyone to wear blue - the color of child abuse awareness - this Saturday. It's a start...