Great. Our government depends on who can turn out the most dummies. Most. Depressing. Thought. Ever.

What the frack was that? 
 
That, my good Razib, was trainwreck, a trainwreck of the sort we haven’t seen since the Matrix sequels. 
 
It was really no surprise to anyone watching the show critically. After the Caine episodes, the BSG’s story arc went to hell. Moore became too eager to turn the show into a space-bound version of Law & Order, trying to shove every current controversy into his show. 
 
Another poster lauded the show for its focus on characters. Why? Few of the characters made any sense. For example, would a serious ship commander turn over his fleet to a subordinate who’d been sleeping with an enemy prisoner just so he could hang around in space waiting for his true love to appear? This is typical of the idiotic moves most of these “well developed” characters would make. The “cheesy” 1970s original had far better characters, and it even had a story that made more sense.

I don't know how you can take a list like this seriously, as it doesn't include Michelle Malkin, Thomas Sowell, and Ann Coulter, but does include Kathleen Parker.

Yes, I skew to the right, but I'm sure there are some lefty equivalents out there.

In a fair world, Bigelow would win for her excellent film. Unfortunately, I think what South Park has called "Dances with Smurfs" will get more awards.

Lot of alpha males–the jocks and rebel types–actually don't do so well after high school. They may have been kings among schoolmates but they weren't really hitting the books. They usually become auto mechanics or something like that.

Yeah, because we all know that auto mechanics live from hand to mouth.

Whiskey, please. One of McCain's first acts, if not his first act, would have been to pass an Amnesty. The health bill sux, but it will make it all the harder to pass amnesty, since it'll kill the false, but critical claims to fiscal control made by Obama and the Democrats. It doesn't make amnesty impossible, but it makes it far less likely than it would have been under McCain.

Now I should think that the US has quite a good reason to want to keep that military elite well disposed toward Americans.

We've been playing that game since Sayyid Qutb was shocked by the brazen sexuality on display in 1940s Colorado. Maybe it's time to try a new tact.

The NYT article practices the usual slight of hand. The important point remains:

In the poll, a majority of Americans in all age groups described illegal immigration as a “very serious” problem.

No group likes illegal immigration. All we have are differences in degree, not kind. There's no real gap.

As for the "random" interviewees, their selection has all the spontaneity of of a paint-by-numbers picture. There was one funny line, though:

Still, in interviews across the nation, young people emphasized the benefits of immigrants. Andrea Bonvecchio, 17, the daughter of a naturalized citizen from Venezuela, said going to a high school that is “like 98 percent Hispanic” meant she could find friends who enjoyed both Latin music and her favorite movie, “The Parent Trap.”

Wow, "like 98% Hispanic"! How is this "diverse" or "multicultural"?

What the president can do is bureaucratic impediments. For example, Jindal has been begging the Corps of Engineers to approve dredging to install sand erosion barriers for weeks. The barriers will help halt LA's notorious shoreline erosion (due to other COE projects up the Mississippi River), and it would provide a sand barrier to any oil inflow. It won't even cost the government money, because BP can be stuck with the tab. This is a project that's been on the books for years. But still, the whole project hasn't been approved. The President only now approved a small, small section.

Also, the President could spend a weekend in the area. The place is empty of tourists. Stay in an area hotel, eat a local seafood dinner, have his family spend a couple of hours on the beach, and spend more time making snap visits at the clean up. It would re-inspire confidence in the beaches and provide some short term revenue for caterers in the area. But I guess visiting his corrupt cronies in Chicago is more important.

More info on the spill is available at http://www.thehayride.com. It's a great LA blog.

In general it's best not to emulate Kubrick's male character…

Kirk Douglas' characters in Paths of Glory and Spartacus being the exceptions to this rule.

Marc B,

You're confusing McCarthy with the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy, AFAIK, didn't mess with Hollywood or the entertainment industry. He was more focused on government employees who posed security risks.

You have to love the way Obama morally equates muggers with an independence movement. It's no different than Maxine Waters calling the LA riots an "insurrection" or an "uprising." Really, using Obama's logic, you could say O.J. Simpson was just like Nat Turner.

TGGP,

Granted, Obama's style defies quotation, but the equivalence between criminal and revolutionary is there. You have the coke-crazed passage (which, I admit, doesn't give explicit moral sanction to the mugger), and you have this passage which does:

…an age of innocence before Kimathi and other angry young men in Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta started to lash out in street crime and revolution.

There you have it: the thugs who've destroyed Detroit are on a par with people opposing apartheid and colonialism, both of which in Obama's view are unalloyed goods.

To anonymous, I applaud your satire of Fannonian ethics.

Utter rot. Rome was not "already on its way out"; yes there was a CRISIS in the third century, but not a collapse.

Even the anti-Christian Gibbon, whom you recommend, admits that Rome after Diocletian was a shell of its former self. Other authorities, like Christopher Kelly, argue that Christian ethics and behavior gave Rome almost another two centuries in the West. The alternatives to Constantine were certainly not attractive. Again, see your own source, Gibbon.

Fake. As another poster pointed out, the annoying GOP locution of "Democrat Party" is an obvious tell. It's amazing that someone who managed to do a fairly convincing job of mimicking a Hilary supporter would make this sort of rookie mistake.

Otherwise, it's one of those "fake, but true" pieces. The stuff about Obama being detached politically but thin-skinned on a personal level rings true.

He also has a point about the GOP in 2012. They really don't have an alternative to Obama at this point. They'll romp in November, but what solid personality will they put up against Obama?

What exactly is so offensive about omitting the "ic"

While it's not on the same level as "teabagger", an obscene allusion, using the noun as an adjective is just sort of douchy and dysphonious. It says that the person using the term is a petty child.

I say this as someone who has no use for the Democratic Party in general.

Another reason Shakespeare didn't work on the KJV: it was a translation. Was Shakespeare so proficient in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic that he could act as a translator? Turning a pretty phrase is great, but it still has to somewhat capture the original meaning of the text. I suppose he could work with wooden translation, but that seems like a dicey thing to do with something as potentially controversial as a translation of the Bible was back then. People died over this sort of thing. Hell, England fought a civil war in part because of differing visions of what the Bible said.

I'd be all for trying this approach myself, but you really need to prepare yourself for the possiblity that you wouldn't do any better than Rove did: Maybe 35% to 40% of the "Hispanic" population would respond to such an appeal, but the other 60% to 65% would continue to vote for the goodies.

True, but you don't alienate the majority of the GOP base using this path, so it's still a winner. Combine this with Sailer's citizenism, and you have a broadly appealing American message.

Mike,

The KJV was not translated from the Vulgate (except for 2 Esdras). Here's the Wiki summation:

"James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy.[9] The translation was by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.[10] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus (Received Text) series of the Greek texts. The Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text, while the deuterocanonical books were translated from the Greek Septuagint (LXX), except for 2 Esdras, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version

I lazily tossed in Aramaic, because I believe Daniel was originally written in that tongue.

At any rate, you had long tradition of studying Greek and Hebrew in England by that point. While the previous Wycliffe Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate, Tyndale's work and the popular Geneva Bible (which Shakespeare used) were based on the original languages.

Obama will be restrained until at least 2013. Neither the House or the Senate GOP have a lightning rod like Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay. Boehner's just not a very good villain for the media. He's too bland to be the anti-Christ. So the GOP can still be the Party of No to the most radical propositions and can even filibuster a radical judge or two. This will set them up for the 2012 elections.

As far as Obama's agenda being "irreversible," I don't buy it. The health care law is really a regulatory act. It's becoming an apparently bad piece of regulation at that. Well, it's not like the country hasn't deregulated before, and there are some steps that can be taken, like removing interstate barriers and encouraging individually held high-deductible policies.

As for immigration, the GOP is becoming more and more aware of the need to protect it's bases demography. I'd expect more work in the e-Verify direction and possibly a limitation on family re-unification to work its way through. These are pretty easy political fights for the GOP. But this is going to be a long fight with small yardage gains and some losses. So patience is in order.

This topic reminds of the Simpson's episode you discussed a few years back:

Marge: Women are as smart as men. Why, a woman invented Liquid Paper.
Homer: Well, you know what a man invented? Actual paper!
Marge: Well a woman also invented the windshield wiper.
Homer: Which goes great with another male invention: the car! [high-fives Bart]
Marge: Ummm, I think a woman came up with nylon stockings. I mean, probably. We certainly use them.
Homer: Let's see, men also have: rocket ships, suspension bridges, constitutional government, snowshoes, brass knuckles…
Marge: [groan]
Homer: …pinball machines, the Renaissance…
[cut to Homer, lying on couch alone at night]
Homer: Oh, why did women invent sleeping on the couch?

You might as well ask him to commit seppuku on national television.

Short hair cuts:

Yeah, it's about the convenience for me. I started balding in my 20s, and when I was single that was very aggravating. It was pretty hard to resist the urge to put on the ball cap when I went out for the night.

Once I hit 30 or so, I cared less, and when I got married, it ceased to mean anything. But keeping up with a circular fringe is pretty silly when you can just set the beard trimmer on 1 every few weeks and go on with your life. Nothing, and I mean nothing, looks worse than a bald dude who lets his hair grow long, unless he completes the effect by putting it into a ponytail. GAY.

I don't do the full shave because the itching and stubble are aggravating. Also, if you're not in full bouncer, bulging and buff mode, you come off looking like Duvall and Pleasance in THX 1138. Or even Brando from Apocalypse Now. Yeesh.

Is the buzz trim lazy? Yeah, it is. After going without the top for over decade, I think I've earned the right to be lazy with my haircare.

There are too many Democrats in red and red-leaning states up for re-election in 2012 for DREAM to get through. Senators like Webb, McCaskill, and Manchin might as well start sending their resumes out to K Street if they let this thing go through. Even Pelosi's having trouble herself getting a majority in the House, as the outgoing blue dogs are pissed about screwed over by her agenda.

I could very well be proven wrong, but this looks like so much empty posturing.

Just when I thought I could not detest the Bush family any more, they reach a new high in lows.

And how many votes does the Bush family have in the Senate? Answer: Zero. Who cares what they think?

Meanwhile Lindsey Grahamnesty has announced he'll vote no on all the versions of the DREAM act now being proposed.

This is all Kabuki theater for the La Raza crowd. Reid wants to be able to tell them that he at least tried.

The DREAM ACT isn't that bad.

The concept wouldn't be that bad if we'd taken care of enforcement. The devil, though, is in the details. The bill is so loose in its wording it would be an effective amnesty for a large chunk of the illegal population, it would encourage all manner of fraud, and it would incentivize further illegal entry.

Hoo,

I'm going to assume you're new to this debate, because you can only make this sort of assertion honestly if you're a beginner:

"I get this idea from the immigration restrictionist crowd that it is either all or nothing."

Go to the first "DREAMageddon" link put up by Kaus:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/kausfiles/2010/12/17/dreamageddon-is-here.html

He lays out the three positions, including the moderate position. The problem with the so-called DREAM act is that it's so full of loopholes and unenforceable provisions that it's tantamount to a full amnesty; i.e., the "ALL" position.

Going after Kaplan also allows Obama to do a solid for his buddies in the older more traditional diploma mills, who crank out equally worthless humanities degrees.

Really, you can't expect Obama to take some dramatic "Nixon goes to China" move right now on civil rights. The only guarantee he has against a primary challenger is his black base. That is, someone like Hillary Clinton won't challenge Obama because they know that if they unseat him in the primaries, the black vote won't come out for them in November. If Obama did what you're suggesting here, then he'd lose that backstop.

Where Obama could play to the right is with immigration. Blacks are nativist in inclination. He'd lose a bit of Hispanic enthusiasm, but as you've pointed out, Steve, that would be made up in white votes.

Can Sullivan be so clueless that he's unaware of what a joke he's become? Is it metaphysically possible. Seriously, does anyone with a triple-digit I.Q. go to his site for anything other than his constant supply of unintentional jokes? His self-parody may be the first example we have of post-post-postmodern analysis.

It just occurred to me that Sullivan has become the M. Night Shyalaman of the blogging world. The guy who keeps getting work no matter how many bombs he produces. I mean, who didn't laugh when they read Steve's post title. Steve could have stopped right there. No further need to explain the joke. It was just like watching a preview of "Devil" in the theater, and the audience simultaneously started sniggering when the announcer said, "From the mind of M. Night Shyalaman.."

They're probably right: this stuff is aimed front and center at "Nice White Ladies"…

Nope, not this time, Whiskey. There's too much push back from the new media. Even the hens on The View won't push this meme, it stinks so bad.

I fail to see anything objectionable in Palin's comments.

That's because you're not schooled in the Dowdian School of Realist Intentionalism or Yglesian Dog-Whistle Divination or Sullivan's Rules of Uterine Production Authentication. Leave the interpretation to the pros, please.

I don't understand what the hoohaa is about Palin's statement.

It all relates to her still being able to draw breath. Don't overbother yourself about this. Your betters are busy at work trying to remedy the situation.

Yglesias seems peeved that Palin co-opted a term from Jewish history.

Even the Derschbag found this bit of hysteria too much. THAT alone should say something.

At any rate, the term isn't exclusively Jewish. It's been applied to Christians, who were accused of murder and cannibalism under the Romans and to Christian heretics and freemasons.

Really, she's been falsely accused of having a hand in the murder of child, along with several others. This is pretty much the textbook use of the phrase.

Where in the hell is Krugman getting this stuff?

From the place where his legs meet.

The Japanese car plants on US soil are actually far less productive than the native car plants of Japan, there fore they are a liability to the Japanese.

I think a study showed a 10% gap, and this was accounted for by the inexperience of the workers. The transplants are still more productive generally than domestic automakers.

Transplants also offer a number of other benefits beyond base productivity due to their proximity to the largest market in the world. It costs a lot of money to ship assembled cars across the ocean, for example. They're not as space efficient as parts.

One of the other ways of maximizing their overall efficiency is to have the U.S. plants build bigger autos (of which they sell far more here) and ship a few back to Japan, while the Japanese plants focus on the smaller vehicles that sell better there, along with the high end luxury brands.

The Japanese aren't the only ones building transplants, too. The Koreans and the Germans are doing so as well. It can't just be good will as no one was hating on the Koreans or the Germans like they were on the Japanese during the 80s. I suspect Tata will probably set up a plant of their own if they ever get serious about entering the U.S. market.

A generation ago, when Egypt produced a hundred or more feature films a year, Cairo's thirteen first-run movie theaters were as grand as any in London.

My mother-in-law is an Arabic speaker, and she gets sattelite TV from the Middle East. I was surprised by the quality of the older Egyptian movies (from the forties to the fifties). They were generally about as good as most of the offerings coming out of the studio system in Hollywood. A serious drop in quality, though, happened–amazingly!–at the same time Nasser took control.

Speaking of the forties and fifties, I took a tour of Alexandria in 2000. The guide made a point of blaming pretty much all of Egypt's problems on King Farouk's gambling debts (Seriously!). I guess Farouk's shade can rest easy now, knowing Mubarak's will be taking over.

Such a place[Galt's Gulch] does not exist.

Sure they do. They're called "gated communities."

Favorite alternative title for Atlas Shrugged: Left Behind for Libertarians.

Another homousia controversy thus begins.

Can you blame Republican politicians for taking advantage of liberal logic?

Especially not when they also buy into that liberal logic. Viz: NCLB.

He's got something like an F from immigration reform groups. One Dubya was enough.

His fiscal conservatism will invariably make him an immigration restrictionist (at least a restrictionist of unskilled immigration).

I'd rather not risk him coming to that conclusion after he's signed an amnesty bill.

THIS is the single issue that matters now.

I know just as well as you do that noone who regularly comments on these threads has any solutions, or is actually interested in taking action to change things.

The solution has been to move beyond the "Yale or Jail" format now in use. IOW, we don't need to see to it that every kid passes Algebra II to graduate high school so he can go to college. We'd recognize that some kids will not get into higher math, but that doesn't mean they can't be productive at some blue-collar trade, so we'd use IQ and other methods to track these kids, as is done in countries like Germany.

Unfortunately, this is not feasible for two reasons. First, such a program would lead to racially disparate results. Blacks would attend college at lower rate than whites. Neither the GOP nor the Democrats want to face that reality.

The second reason this program wouldn't work is because we keep importing millions of unskilled workers who drive down the wages of those on the left side of the Bell Curve.

All of this stuff has been discussed by Steve time and again. It's quite easy to research. Just use a search engine.

He pussed out on the Right-To-Work issue in Indiana. Granted, he didn't want the fight in the first place, but that doesn't sell well once the fight has arrived. The base won't trust him, and I don't blame them.

He picked the name Daniels upon immigrating, presumably as being simultaneously Syrian-sounding and English-sounding: a rather elegant choice.

Think Danny Thomas.

The Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah would definitely take on some meaning there.

Medicare was already heading over the cliff. The Obama Administration's answer to this was to cut the money from Medicare, but then hand it over to younger, poorer people (many of whom didn't even belong in the country). And, of course, that program would go broke as well.

Yes, the GOP is cutting funding, but it's doing it for the sake of keeping some sort of funding available. T-I-N-A: There Is No Alternative.

(And, no, raising rich people's taxes won't cover these costs.)

As far as outwitting smart people with spreadsheets, I'm dealing with a mother-in-law with dementia, and our family spends a lot of time dealing with all sorts of complicated regulation designed to limit costs. Those, of course, are going to get even worse as the Obamacare regime kicks in and tries limit costs. If you're doing it under a plan that makes patients pay some of the cost upfront, it will cut down on overusage. TINA.

That isn't true. I've never heard of some community college guy snubbing a female at State U. because she is too educated/too rich.

Snubbing? What do you mean. I'm sure if the opportunity presented itself, they'd be more than happy to jump into the bag with her, and even have a long-term relationship. But marry her and have kids, while they earn less? That's a different matter. They'd be the lesser partner in every department at that point, and that's not an appetizing position for any man.

If members of the skilled trades developed better taste in music and books, the chasm between Ms. Michigan State and Mr. Master Electrician would sharply narrow.

Sorry, but I had laugh at that one. Look, Ms. Michigan State does not spend her freetime going to operas and perusing Tolstoy. She sets her DVR for Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Two and a Half Men. These aren't quite as low as Jackass, but most tradesmen don't watch that either. You're talking college kids here, really. They'll be watching sports or Bill Dance, neither of which are any "lower class" IMO than what most women watch.

Brendan's comments on Glanville bring to mind a warning I once heard: No matter how good looking she is, someone somewhere is sick of her sh!t. If that woman has to move by her self, she must have really burned a whole lot of bridges.

They believed their own bullshit, but figured that if nothing showed up, they could still bluff it out and everyone would forget. Remember all the completely fictional atrocity stories used to get us into the Kosovo conflict? Dubya may have figured that if Clinton could get away with it, so could he.

Unfortunately for him and us, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites weren't as easily cowed as the Serbs, and what was expected to be an easy "W"* turned into a long slog with its attendant recriminations.

*and by "expected" I mean "expected by everyone who had zero knowledge of the area."

Iraq had a nuclear WMD program. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn't done their homework.

Greg Cochran did his homework and correctly predicted that there wouldn't be a serious active nuclear program in Iraq. The Iraq of 2003 was simply not economically or technically capable of mounting such a program.

When rotating at extremely high speed, the centrifugal force at the outer edge of a thick-walled tube is too much higher than that at the inner edge: the tube fails.

AHAAAA!!! A lie. There is no such thing as centrifugal force. My physics textbook says so. Confess, Greg, you are a paid Baathist agent trolling Steve's Blog comments!!!

Seriously, I feel like Zeus in Clash of the Titans: "Release the Cochran!"

Can we really blame the guy for distancing himself from his dingbat mother? His grandmother is a harder case, though. Of course, she went under the bus in due time.

Usually, I agree with the well-wishing sentiments for crime victims, but given the way Yglesias is determined to make every neighborhood in America look like the set of Blade Runner, I'll reserve my sympathy for a more worthy recipient.

The moral philosopher Cornel West…

I simply cannot read this without laughing.

Actually, Steve's suggestion about parties to organize Mexicans isn't far off the mark. In the Rio Grande Valley in Texas there's even a term for it: "pachanga politics." If you want to win office (which almost always means winning the Democratic primary), you throw lots of parties with beer and fajitas and annoying ranchero music.

jody,

Mexico does extradite criminals to the U.S., but there are hassles and conditions. Mexico will not extradite anyone if they may face the death penalty. That's why the first any Mexican murderer does is run to Mexico. He'll get caught, but he won't get the gurney. There are some other strings attached. I believe they even cavil at the thought of life without parole.

This runs into the problem of dual citizenship. Those with it are legally privileged in a way natives are not. A criminal with another citizenship can run off to his home country and enjoy their legal protections as well as ours.

I don't know about the critics, but I hate the series just because it involves spending so much money and technical talent (there's not much artistic talent involved, apparently) to no lasting purpose. Moreover, it's all based on a cheesy 80s cartoon that no kid ever took all that seriously. That the series is a financial success is no kind comment on the society we've built these days.

Part of the job of a juror is to evaluate credibility, and you do that by watching the person and hearing inflections in the voice. Video has greatly improved its capabilities over the past few decades, but a 2d version of a 3d person just isn't the same thing.

A presidential candidate has to appear on television constantly. Audiences will turn off the ugly guy, like it or not. Nixon learned that in 1960, and he was lucky enough to run against uglier candidates in his subsequent national contests.

It's not fair, but that's life in our modern times. Here, Ray Bradbury showed himself to be rather prophetic when he forecasted how television would affect modern society in Fahrenheit 451.

The surge didn't even exist, silly. The British removed their troops (there weren't very many) and America added the same number of troops. The total troop level stayed the same.

The British troops had largely become a Potemkin force by that time. They avoided conflict at all cost, which is why the Sadrist faction took over Basra. American forces would later dislodge them. So you did have a net surge.

Still, I agree with the larger point that it was a marketing campaign. The big winner on the ground was the use of Shiite militias to cleanse Sunni neighborhoods. They drained the sea that the hostile Sunnis militias swam in. THAT's how you win guerrilla wars. Of course, that doesn't make very good copy when your foreign policy is based on the belief in the magical power of Democracy, so the Bush Administration kept quiet about it.

Where did Sunnis go from those Sunni neighborhoods? Just curious.

A lot moved to other sections of Iraq that are more remote and easily contained. Many took off for Syria and Jordan.

…co-founder of Rebel Diaz Arts Collective a center for political activism and hip-hop run out of a warehouse in Mott Haven.

More like a center for bilking excess cash out of the hands of gullible middle-aged yentas who want to appear hip.

Honda had a motorcycle factory in the U.S. in 1978, and its Marysville plant opened up in 1982. True, this was after the quotas were imposed, but the plant had been in the works. The other Japanese companies were looking at their own plans to expand here as well. There a number of cost savings when you make your product in the market where you sell it.

One of the benefits the quotas had for the Japanese was to allow them to make more money off of the cars they sold here per unit. It also gave GM some breathing space, so they could continue shitting out crappy GM-10's from places like Framingham for a few more years. I'd say the results of Reagan's quotas are little more mixed than Steve is arguing here.

Harley-Davidson might be a better example of successful quotas and tariffs.

The first Japanese car factory in the USA was the Nissan factory at Smyrna, Tennessee. Work on the factory there started in 1983.

No, Honda, Marysville, 1982. These plants are huge operations that require years of planning and negotiation. These facilities were already in the works before Reagan imposed the quotas.

The cost advantage to producing here was already apparent. First, as I noted above, you enjoy better marketing flexibility when you make your cars in the same country. Second, you save on shipping costs, as cars don't stack up like Pringles in a container ship. Third, you can take advantage of different countries' marketing characteristics. Again with Honda, they make all their bigger cars here, because they sell most of them here, and then they'll export a few to satisfy the smaller demand in foreign markets.

Also, the Japanese are not across the board great at quality. Compare a Mitsubishi product to just about any car, and it will come off the worse.

As far as building in the South goes, the Koreans, Germans and Japanese are doing that to avoid the UAW, which is quality killer. Its rigid work rules make any kind of change to improve quality prohibitively expensive. Toyota could only get decent quality out of the NUMMI plant in Fremont after putting the fear of God in the UAW workforce there, but even that was a losing battle, and they've moved their Tacomo production down to San Antonio.

The quotas did not "allow" the Japanese to make more money per unit off of cars built here.

No, you misunderstand. It allowed them to make more money off of the cars they made THERE per unit. It artificially restricted supply, so they could raise their prices, as demand for Japanese quality had already taken hold in the market. It was a U.S. government imposed cartelization of the auto market.

Did it give American automakers some room to breathe? Yes, but given the way they and their UAW workforce pissed away that opportunity, it was not an unalloyed good.

Libertarianism is truly a form of political autism.

I know the American makers are UAW shops while the foreign makers are non-union. Is that the issue?

Yes.

If so, then why don't the American makers simply fire the UAW and operate like the foreign manufacturers?

Well, you can't do something that drastic overnight, and it would incur all sorts of political blowback. The Democrats are owned by the UAW, so if any of the Big Three tried to do that (once the contract had expired) they'd face enormous government interference of the sort that would make the Boeing-South Carolina NRLB contretemps look like a church social.

That's what the income data for the last forty years indicates. Don't let your emotions towards those fat union guys blind you to reality.

Transplant worker wages are competitive with UAW wages. Once you factor in union dues and cost of living, transplant workers do far better, really.

Overall, in the larger economy, yes, you have a good point, but when it comes to the auto industry, sorry, it's the union to blame. It's the one factor that's persisted through decades of shifting management and cycling economies.

Here, it's not even really the pure wages. It's the mess of union work rules that eliminates any sort of production flexibility. Every change, every work order has to pass through a byzantine process of union and shop approval. You can get by in a good economy with that system, but when the economy goes bad, you're toast, and that's what a happened to the Big 3.

(Yes, I know Ford didn't go technically bankrupt, but they only avoided it by going deeply into debt right before the recession to give them a stock of cash to see them through. That option won't always be available.)

So now it's officially a coalition of taxpayers vs. tax-eaters, and our guys are looking for the first excuse to throw the game.

Deborah Cadbury's Space Race tells Korolev's story. There was a Nat Geo special based on the book, too. One of the things to remember is that the Russians were able to move faster because they didn't mind getting their people killed at a faster rate. They lost 200 people (!) during one disastrous explosion, and they nearly lost a cosmonaut in orbit when his pressurized suit wouldn't let him back in the capsule.

Wolfe's novel mockingly repeats the press' belief that "our rockets always blow up." As usual, the media failed to understand that complex engineering projects require a lot of testing, and those tests, while producing big bangs, are still useful in creating a workable and reliable design. The astronauts, all test pilots, understood this, and they were never really spooked–well, no more than they were with any other new design.

Here in the U.S., all the failures were on display, In the Soviet Union, not so much. But they made sure everyone knew when things went right. That also added to the mystique of the Integral and the Chief Designer.

To be fair, Yeager's F-104 was not a standard issue, and his accident didn't happen in standard conditions. It was a specially designed bird that was supposed to manuever in near-outer space, and his accident occurred at 104,000 feet because he had a bad angle.

Germany is also a notoriously difficult place to fly in. We had a number of F-16s go down there IIRC.

For the past couple of decades, the Castro regime has been picking up where the old order left off, bringing in Europeans and Canadians to gamble, drink and whore.

I know a land of Walmart offends many people's delicate sensibilities, but I don't know how a land where professionals have to find work waiting tables filled with eurotrash is any better.

Personally, I think Adelson wants Obama to win. Why else would you see to it that such a surefire loser as Gingrich will be is nominated?

Baseball works when you're streaming audio, too, like radio. I bought the MLB's app for about $15, and now I can listen to almost any game in the league. It's a great deal. So maybe there's an internet future.

Of course, you have a lot of statistics geeks who are now being pulled in by having all sorts of data at their fingertips.

Here in Houston, the Astros are a cellar team, but they're trying to work on making a ballpark visit something a fun get together for families. They've cut ticket prices slightly, they've cleaned up the stadium, and they're letting people bring their own food. They're also pushing to have kid-friendly tailgating parties.

I don't know if all this is a genius marketing move by the new owners, or just a desperate ploy to make up for moving the Astros to the American League West, where the team is sure to do even worse than it has in the NL Central. I guess we can at least give those '62 Mets a run for their money.

We've already had issues.

Jessica Tata's story is a prime example.

I think you find a closer parallel to LOTR in Plato's Republic where he discusses the Myth of Gyges:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges

"According to the legend, Gyges of Lydia[1] was a shepherd in the service of King Candaules of Lydia. After an earthquake, a cave was revealed in a mountainside where Gyges was feeding his flock. Entering the cave, Gyges discovered that it was in fact a tomb with a bronze horse containing a corpse, larger than that of a man, who wore a golden ring, which Gyges pocketed. He discovered that the ring gave him the power to become invisible by adjusting it. Gyges then arranged to be chosen as one of the messengers who reported to the king as to the status of the flocks. Arriving at the palace, Gyges used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself. King Croesus, famous for his wealth, was Gyges' descendant."

At least politicians in Mexico have more than one or two children like American politicians.

I guess we can put you down in the Mitt Romney camp.

Stone also wrote the original draft of Conan, which Hollywood arch-right Milius directed.

The Coup is also prophetic in that Ellelloû, his third wife and her six kids wind up living in the West.

Savor the victory.

Well, he did pull his Grandpa off his Grandma because she had the effrontery to be assailed by a black homeless guy.

So there's that.

Liberty, security, diversity: pick two.

Because then the press, including the writers at the this magazine, would have carped on him for playing politics with an investigation.

Actually, you do see hard liquor ads on TV, but you're right about the cigarette ads.

Is this an updated version of Zardoz? Who could imagine that movie would still have currency forty years later?

With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about.

Yes, let's go off down some wierd rabbit hole no one is too overbothered by. We're not talking people with exotic postgrad degrees. We're talking basic computer and engineering positions, all of which could be supplied with American labor–as has been pointed out time and again by guys like Norm Matloff.

So, basically, a scant five years after the first amnesty, people like the Bushes were already hiring illegals again. Yeah, let's have another round! I'm sure it'll work out fine this time.

Yeah, I’m sure the same people who’ve been blowing off immigration work rules for decades now will scrupulously follow the minimum wage regs, especially since they can just draw from the NEXT set of illegal aliens this latest amnesty will pull in.

Man up, Ron. Oppose the amnesty or support it. Quit effin’ around with fig leaves. They just make you look silly.

Cowen’s a silly clever who prides himself on being a libertarian while working in one of the biggest government-subsidized cul-de-sacs around.

No matter what this guy does, he has several young children which depend on him. It's all very well to want to opt for the Clint Eastwood solution, but if he does so and lands in jail, who will feed and clothe his children?

True, but he should at least show some situational awareness. The story notes that the area has seen a number of robberies and attacks, so maybe riding alone through that dodgy overpass isn't a real hot idea.

The clownish attack at the Amsterdam airport is both funny and horrifying.

And yet, Conservative dummies watch stuff like ATLAS SHRUGGED and imagine the rich industrialists/capitalists being on their side.

Admit it. You haven't read Atlas Shrugged, have you?

I don't defend the novels claims, but it emphatically does not claim this. In fact, the principal baddie is an industrialist who works with government regulators.

I grew up near McAllen. What your commenter is describing has been the case since the 70s, really, in the Rio Grande Valley. If you draw a line from Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast West to Laredo, everything south of that is sort of like the intratidal zone on a beach, where it's walkable sand during one period, and inundated during another. Right now, the tide is in and it's much more Mexican, but most of the newcomers pass on through to where I now live in Houston and other big cities. That's where most of the low-skilled work is.

Is the Valley unliveable for Anglos? No, not really. It's actually quite nice. There are problem areas, and the population growth has done nothing good for the Valley's semi-tropical aesthetics, but you can still live quite nicely and inexpensively. If you have skills, you can make a decent living there. Knowing some Spanish is becoming more and more of a must, but you can get by in English.

One thing that needs to be noted in South Texas is that Anglos and Mexicans there intermarry quite frequently, both ways.

This is not to endorse the ongoing inundation. It's bad and it should stop, and I can foresee more radicalization happening in the future, but it is retarded by the intermixture. It's pretty hard to take some MeCha loudmouth going on about the evil gueros seriously when so many of your cousins and in-laws are gueros themselves.

Heliocentrism was one of those "discarded" ideas, actually, until Copernicus picked it back up.

If only Cromartie were gay. At worst, he'd get GRIDS and cost us some money in meds. As it is, he's created (at last count) 12 future problems for society.

This line of argument about "accidents of birth" shows why libertarians are really of the Left. Really, if it all comes down to the unfairness of some accident of birth, then why should you enjoy a middle class income. But for your accidental birth in this country to well-to-do white parents, you wouldn't be enjoying it. Therefore, why not take from each according to the accident of his ability and give back to each according to his need?

That her name is"D'Leisha" tells us everything. The rest is just commentary.

I bet the majority of the residents of La Salle County, Texas would boo the USA national soccer team if they were to play in a stadium in their backyard, especially if it was against the Mexico national soccer team.

In fairness, no, this would not be the case. Most of the Mexicans I grew up with in South Texas are very patriotic, and almost none of them had any real interest in soccer. They’re more into the Cowboys, the Longhorns and the Aggies.

Cry harder, Ted!