TigerHawk

Dear Governor Awesome (by whom I mean New Jersey Governor Chris Christie): It is well-documented by now that I am one of your biggest fans. Indeed, I claim credit for the first online use of the "Governor Awesome" moniker, which has now spread far and wide. I would consider it a huge favor if you would free Brian Aitken. Not only does his conviction probably violate the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, it makes me sick.

Here is Brian's web page.

Right on schedule...

Lest there was any doubt that I'm a total geek, I consider it my bounden duty to link to Amazon's huge sale on the complete series of Battlestar Galactica. I bought it because my individual disks are hither and yon, and it is high time I watched it all the way through from beginning to end. It is really, really, good.

It will surprise nobody that the editors of the New York Times are all for the Wikileaks dump, and that they conclude that the Obama administration is far more creditable than its predecessor. Quel surpise. Their editorial on the subject is, however, a classic example of the just plain strange reasoning and intellectual dishonesty that characterize that paper's usual editorial voice. There are at least two examples.

First, the editorial concludes that the leaks are in and of themselves a good thing:

There are legitimate reasons for keeping many diplomatic conversations secret. The latest WikiLeaks revelations will cause awkward moments not least because they contain blunt assessments of world leaders. The claim by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the leaks threaten national security seems exaggerated. The documents are valuable because they illuminate American policy in a way that Americans and others deserve to see.

The administration may well be uncomfortable about disclosures of its wheeling and dealing to try to get governments to accept prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Slovenia was told that taking a prisoner was the price for a meeting with President Obama. We wish that the White House had been as energetic and inventive in its attempts to get Congress to shut down the prison.

A "miss me yet?" billboard that is downright nasty.

Libertarian economist and longtime blogger Tyler Cowen updates his various opinions about Obamacare, including its likelihood of success. Worth reading, along with at least a few of the comments.

Longstanding blog readers will remember the controversy that erupted during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah over alleged war crimes by the combatants (my post on the subject here), including charges, abetted by the media and Human Rights Watch, that Israel had targeted ambulances. While various analysts, including one brilliant blogger, convincingly showed that at least some of these accusations against Israel were fraudulent and founded on manufactured evidence, Human Rights Watch has continued to assert that Israel's attacks on ambulances were criminal (see pages 5, 37, 39, and 43, among others).

Today, courtesy Wikileaks and French wire service AFP, we learn that Iran and Hezbollah were indeed using ambulances to smuggle munitions during that very war.

Iran used Red Crescent ambulances to smuggle weapons and agents into Lebanon during Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel, a leaked US diplomatic cable showed on Monday.

The 2008 classified cable which originated in Dubai quotes an Iranian source as saying the Iranian Red Crescent was used as a cover by members of the elite Revolutionary Guard to enter Lebanon during the conflict.

On the small chance you have not read them elsewhere, here is the opening New York Times article -- apparently the first of nine -- on the latest dump of secret documents by Wikileaks, these from the State Department. Whatever else one thinks about this Mother Of All Leak, they have effectively destroyed the credibility of the State Department, the favorite foreign policy agency of the doves. What foreign diplomat would dare speak candidly with our foreign service now? That will make the State Department even less effective. To get anything done, the American president, whoever he or she may be, will be more likely to turn to our intelligence agencies and military, the relative influence of which on American policy is bound to increase.

Of the related blog posts I have read tonight, this one at Hot Air is the best and quite closely reflects my own thinking (and indeed it shaped much of it). I would add this, however: For well over 100 years idealists have denounced secret diplomacy, arguing that it does more harm than good over the long run. Wikileaks may have effectively put an end to secret diplomacy, at least for a while, because interlocutors will have no confidence that their candid observations and backroom deals will remain confidential. We will therefore soon see whether the idealists are right.

FURTHER THOUGHT: If I were Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, I'd be worried about some much nastier country than the United States taking revenge and, more importantly, issuing a warning to any aspiring successor or copycat. There is no security that can put him out of reach of the Russians, the Saudis, and the Turks, should any of those very embarrassed countries decide that the world would be a better place with secret diplomacy. Both the Russians and the Saudis, at least, have killed people for much less. And, of course, there is the added incentive (for the Russians and Turks, at least) that most of the world will blame the United States if Assange ends up dead, so taking him out by some graphic and public method would seem to have a lot of upside.

This seems like an outstanding idea.

When Scotch whisky is distilled, it leaves behind two main waste products — a liquid called pot ale and draff, the remains of the grains used in the distilling method. These two waste products are being used by researchers at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland to create a new biofuel.

According to the Guardian, the Scottish have a £4 billion ($6.2 billion) a year whisky habit, and that habit leaves “copious quantities” of both pot ale and draff that in the past has gone unused. This biofuel can be used in regular cars — meaning there’s no need to adapt the engine as there is with some other biofuels. Researchers also say it's possible the biofuel could be used to fuel planes.

Because I love you, my readers, I am supplying a link to Amazon's awesome list of "Cyber Monday" deals. There really are some good deals there.

It's been ages since I linked to the O'Quiz, and not because I've been covering up my bad scores. Just didn't think of it. But BillOReilly.com linked my post on the GM "thank you" ad and that reminded me how fun the O'Quiz can be. Take it now, and post your score in the comments (especially if you do worse than my rocking 8 out of 10). Yeah, yeah, the current average is 6.22 out of 10 correct, which makes this one of the easier O'Quizzes in my memory, at least, but hey, it's Sunday, and many of you are probably already drinking beer.

...that Jimmy Carter is not only a clown, but a dangerous clown.

Including work administrivia, I have more chores today than the day is long. Unfortunately, I also have a lot of tabs! The choice is not as difficult as it appears...

Palin obsession watch: The New York Times has an article this morning about Sarah Palin that reports that she attended a book-signing and, er, signed books: Palin Sidesteps Politics at Iowa Book Signing. Utter and complete non-news and hardly fit to print. Perhaps it was published because of its byline: A.G. Sulzberger. If A.G. is the next generation of the Grey Lady's controlling family, I hope he has a second career planned, because this one is unlikely to last for his lifetime. Oh, look, a segue....

How do you define the "American dream"? Early to bed, early to rise, study hard, work hard, save your money, and you and your children can be better off than you were as a child? This is how the New York Times defines it (in a story about a worthless heir who squandered the proceeds from the sale of the family business):

But as so often happens to those lucky enough to realize the American dream of sudden riches, the money slipped through the Martins’ fingers faster than they ever imagined.

Alan Simpson is a national treasure, without being the least bit precious. Of course we have to raise the age at which we subsidize retirement. Indeed, I believe that our government should get out of the business of subsidizing retirement entirely, and should only subsidize disability (whether or not that disability is directly a function of old age).

I am a poor target for advertising, because I stare at ads and take them apart as I watch them. Watch the new General Motors "thank you" ad, and then join me in discussing it below.

Commentary

What a crock! Oops. Did I just say that? Let's take a more learned look at the General Motors "thank you" ad running -- not surprisingly, given the market -- during the Michigan vs. Ohio State game this afternoon.

Image by image:

1. A boxer going down. Was General Motors actually taken down by its competition? It was only in 2008 that Toyota passed General Motors as the world's largest automobile manufacturer. One would have thought that that the #2 player in the market could turn a profit, and certainly avoid bankruptcy. Competitive issues notwithstanding, the boxer going down is a false analogy. General Motors was not taken down by competition.

2. A rocket failing to achieve liftoff on the launch pad. General Motors did not fail to achieve liftoff. It is not DeLorean Motors, a start-up that never got off the ground. As the ad points out, GM has been in business since 1908.

3. Person with his or her head down at a desk. Is that a famous scene with which I am unfamiliar, or is it connected to the failed launch in the previous image? It might apply to General Motors if it implies "see no evil, hear no evil," but otherwise I cannot detect a connection.

4. Popeye drowning. Really? General Motors is the underdog Popeye the Sailor Man fighting to redress wrongs and protect his woman from indignity or peril? The analogy fails miserably, to the point of disrespecting The Popeye.

5. Delta House having learned of its expulsion for rank irresponsibility. Finally, something close to an image that reflects the reality of General Motors, a profoundly irresponsible company.

6. A motorcyclist in competition, wiping out while attempting a daring stunt. Sorry, General Motors has not attempted anything daring in at least a generation. The analogy is intellectually dishonest.

7. Various people, probably employed at the track or teammates of the downed rider, helping the aforementioned motorcyclist to get up. It cost them nothing to do so, and under the circumstances failing to have done would have reflected poorly on them.

8. Delta House's Bluto, refusing to accept the consequences of his own irresponsibility. Again, another honest image.

9. Popeye, rescuing himself without the help of anybody else. If this image is meant to be anything other than a contrast to the experience of General Motors, it is the most fraudulent analogy in the entire commercial.

10. Harry S Truman and the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline. Where's the recovery from "falling down" there? The only failure was by the editors of the Chicago Tribune.

11. A successful launch of an entirely different rocket. Perhaps a good image if the message is "try, try again," but that is not what happened with General Motors, is it?

12. The boxer, like Popeye, standing up on his own without anybody else's assistance.

This ad is so intellectually dishonest it can mean one of only two things: (1) That the management of General Motors understand this fraud and hope that we are fools, or (2) that the management of General Motors are themselves fools. Both have been true in the past, but -- speaking as a taxpayer -- I was hoping the company had moved beyond that.

An unusually nuanced take on the pick-up basketball game and the thrown elbow that cost our president a fat lip and 12 stitches (egads) to repair it.

I'm just glad it wasn't the annual "alumni" game. If Dubya had thrown that elbow, we'd all have had to watch Keith Olbermann that evening just so we could say we saw the explosion.

For my money, it remains the case that "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank" from Mary Poppins remains the most accessible presentation of the arguments for and against merchant banking. It is all right there, isn't it? Simply brilliant.

Yes, I've posted it before and probably will again -- I think of "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank" when I read stories like this (insufficient investing of tuppence) or like this (as long as the banks of Germany stand, Germany stands). But, when all is said and done I love the enthusiasm of the mocked and derided bankers for building things -- railroads in Africa, dams across the Nile, and plantations of ripening tea.

Y'ask me, we need more of that kind of enthusiasm. A lot more.

I was in Buckingham County, Virginia for Thanksgiving with my brother and sister and their families. Today we took a walk over hill and dale, and I snapped some pics.

The family cemetery...

November meadow...

Good morning. If you know what's good for you will avoid the malls and shop from home while cruising your favorite blogs. Or maybe get outdoors and do something fun. How about that?

Dat said, I have some tabs to dump on you, my apparently willing victims.

Fox in the hen house watch: In the federal government, annual compensation increases are recommended by a creature called the Federal Salary Council. Two weeks ago, Barack Obama made the annual appointments and reappointments. You will be no doubt shocked to learn that "by law" the Council consists of "three experts in labor relations and pay policy and six representatives of employee organizations representing large numbers of General Schedule employees." In other words, the government unions recommend their own pay increases under the watchful eye of three professors. If I were a Tea Party Republican, I would propose a change in the law to include private sector human resources executives with an exemplary record of controlling payroll and benefits costs.

Perhaps you were wondering why German voters may continue to be willing to bail out Europe's debtor countries. There is a lot of debt in the world yet to unwind.

If a corporate lawyer made the sort of drafting errors that are apparently totally acceptable in legislative practice, he or she would be fired on the spot. What staffer will be fired because of this? Nobody, because the Congressional staff lives in "soft America" (ref).

Why is Obama failing? Because his opponents are, at the same time, incompetent and evil geniuses.

How far we have fallen. Can you see the bottom?

Was the "medieval warm period" local, or global?

News you can use: Australian Firm To Sell World's First Armpit Testosterone Lotion In US.

TTYL.

Yes, it's Black Friday. While I am always reluctant to discourage a contribution to GDP, my advice is to avoid the malls and the big box stores today. The morning's deals at Amazon are actually quite remarkable.

Friendly reminder, you can put a few bucks in to the pocket of any blogger you want to reward at no extra cost to you when you are going to shop at Amazon anyway. Just click through any Amazon link on their blog and if you buy any Amazon product, not just the product advertised, the blogger gets a little tip. No doubt there are more deserving or needy bloggers than me. My point is that you should not waste the opportunity.

My ancestor, William Bradford, began life as a socialist and ended it as an individualist, at least in one way that mattered. The lesson of Thanksgiving:

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.

"So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented," wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."

In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.

"This had very good success," Bradford wrote, "for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many."

Because of the change, the first Thanksgiving could be held in November 1623.

Apparently 81 year-old Democratic Congressman John Conyers was spotted riffling through an issue of Playboy magazine on an airplane. Perhaps not the classiest move in the world, but you have to admire his, er, get up and go. Reminds me a bit of my edgiest great aunt, who occasionally pushed against the boundaries of propriety, at least as defined in her circles, and, when reproofed, would say "I'm an old woman and I'll do any goddamn thing I want."

I rode my bike through southside Virginia today, along Route 623 in Buckingham County and then down the Plank Road to Farmville, 13.85 miles each way, and (obviously) almost 28 miles round trip. I was out a little under two hours, and racked up around 1400 feet in total ascent, assuming the Garmin was bringing in the altitudes accurately. A really nice way to start a day of eating and drinking.

Grandma's Country Store, at the corner of 623 and the Plank Road, was closed for the holiday.

I saw perhaps a dozen cars in each direction, and almost as many hunters. All were quite friendly, even though I am probably the first dude they had seen in black cycling pants with the "Castelli" logo down the legs. The sight is not particularly attractive. Given that I probably would have shot me under such circumstances, I appreciate their equanimity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In the hurly-burly of our lives in the middle of the Great Recession, it is easy for we Americans to forget how fortunate we are. I am grateful every day, but do not really reflect as often as I should on my enormous good fortune. Simply being born in the United States puts one ahead of at least 85% of humans (which allows for the possibility that being born in other OECD countries is not half bad). Being born in, say, the last 50 years has been far better for most people than having been born earlier, however much we might romanticize the early days of the republic. Finally, then, if you were fortunate enough to have been born in good health and to a loving family you got a jump on virtually all humans now alive or who have ever lived.

That's not "born on first base"; that's born sliding in to home.

Discuss.

Among the various deadweight costs the ruling Democrats have imposed on our struggling economy is a new and massive requirement on businesses to issue Form 1099s to virtually everybody and every company with whom they do business. The costs and managerial attention required to comply are considerable, the benefit is dubious (the hoped-for elimination of some tax evasion in business-to-business transactions), and the threat is considerable (that it is a back door into a value-added tax). Therefore, if you want to make yourself useful call or email your Representative and Senator and, er, petition them to support 1099 repeal. Or, you know, demand loudly, if that's how you roll.

Unless you are a staunch defender of the TSA, these "TSA bumper stickers" are definitely worth a minute of your precious time.

Our favorite retailer, Amazon.com, is "leaking" its "Black Friday" deals early. Lots o' great deals, fer sure.

And remember, if you buy your Amazon stuff (not just now, but at any time and whether or not the things advertised) by clicking through a link or a banner ad (such as in this post or on our right side bar) on a blog, the blogger gets a little tip at no cost to you. We're not worthy, you say? Too libertarian for your tastes? Well, then, find a blogger who is.

SNL still makes it happen.

Awesome! Chris Christie, New Jersey's own Governor Awesome (our nickname is catching on!), has more than a little fun at the expense of the New Jersey Education Association. I reckon its some of the best stand-up you'll see this month.

...and you still don't know why it is a bad thing if "your erection lasts more than four hours," do you? Uh, answer here.

You can't say that we don't tackle the important questions here at TigerHawk.

Egads, I have accumulated a small but elite gathering of tabs for your enjoyment, and my public-spiritedness requires that I dump them unto you before my computer crashes or I otherwise have to shut 'er down.

The sad and tragic end of a heroic dog. This story bummed me out so much I thought twice about passing it along, but in the end decided to share the gloom.

Francisco D'Anconia's speech on the meaning of money. I had forgotten how eloquent it is, including particularly as an expression of the meaning and purpose of work.

What if the shoe had been on the other foot?

A student body president and otherwise very impressive fellow turns out to be an illegal alien. There is in the story something to consider regardless of your position on the illegal immigration problem.

Governor Awesome brings down the house! As usual.

TTYL.

You know, it's Friday night, and if you've had your cocktail hour and are sneaking a peak at your blogs, perhaps while your beloved is getting ready for your evening out, you might get a chuckle out of the 25 "best" Ann Coulter quotes about liberals.

From my Facebook scroll:

Government says 1 in 5 Americans is mentally ill. 1 in 5 Americans work for the Government. Do the math.

Allegedly, this ad was banned in the United Kingdom. I wonder why.

Regular blogging will resume when I get around to it.

Cook much? As previously reported, I'm sans kitchen at the moment, but you might find delight in this Amazon compendium of "gifts for gourmets.".

Our government is making it harder all the time. Please make it stop:

As a Democrat whose politics are undeniably liberal on social issues, I lamented the outcome of the midterm elections. But as an entrepreneur with two software start-ups under my belt, I couldn't help but celebrate - and more than a little. As the fall campaigns wore on, I had found myself listening closely to the Tea Party, nursing the hope that its message would push both major parties to change the way they do business.

To understand my motivation, pick up the November issue of Washingtonian magazine. The annual Salary Survey notes on Page 81 that top trade association leaders (industry lobbyists) make multimillion-dollar salaries to "keep tabs on what the federal government was doing or might do."

These outsize earnings are symptomatic of a disease that is slowly killing the American economy. We are creating so much regulation - over tax policy, health care, financial activity - that smart people have figured out that they can get rich faster and more easily by manipulating rules on behalf of existing corporations than by creating net new activity and wealth. Gamesmanship pays better than entrepreneurship.

The NYSE, which seems to have up-regulated its propaganda arm in recent months, sent around an email to we corporate tools with photos from yesterday's "initial" public offering of the common stock of General Motors. I rather liked the one below. And, yes, the scare quotes around "initial" are totally appropriate.

Once again, the United States dollar has defied naysayers who say it is doomed as the world's reserve currency. The reason, it seems, is that greenback sucks less than the alternatives. Barely.

Given all that stress that the Federal Reserve's currency debasement program is laying on the global economy, last week's G-20 summit in South Korea should have been the monetary equivalent of a military degradation for the U.S. dollar. The greenback should have been slapped across the face, stripped of its medals, and cashiered from the ranks of respected currencies. Instead the dollar escaped unscathed, retaining its privileged status as the world's reserve.

However, the meeting did have its dark moments for America. The troubles starting even before the summit began with the failure of president Obama to conclude a long-planned trade deal with South Korea. Once the G-20 meetings began in earnest, the United States made scant headway with its main initiative to pressure the Chinese on Yuan revaluation. Just when it looked like the dollar would benefit from strife in Europe, a joint statement by key European leaders signaled that potential problems within the euro-zone may have been averted. In other words, nothing from this meeting should give any confidence that the dollar has a bright future.

Over the past three years, while the Chinese Yuan has appreciated ever so slightly against the U.S. dollar, it has depreciated against almost all other major currencies. As a result, one may have expected wider support for America's calls for appreciation of the Chinese Yuan. But in Seoul this issue was buried amidst rancor and fractious all-night meetings between splintered partners. Most participants were so focused on America's second campaign of quantitative easing, that the question of Yuan appreciation was moved to the back burner.

In an effort to avert competitive devaluations, the U.S. proposed that nations should restrict their current account surpluses and deficits within agreed percentages of economic output. Ironically, this idea had been proposed by the British at Breton Woods in July 1944. But this was at a time when war-ravaged Europe was in huge current account deficit. America was in massive surplus and vetoed the idea. Now that America is in chronic deficit, it is surplus countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Germany that oppose the idea.

Yes, the only post more lame than a tab dump is a phone camera dump, but that's all I got while I sit at a bar in an Italian restaurant in the heart of Beverly Hills. So, the most recent pictures stored on my Blackberry in something approximating chronological order...

Your Blogger, enjoying the sights in Texas last weekend.

The TH living room, fearfully cluttered because it doubles as the kitchen while the actual kitchen -- behind that plywood panel -- is being, er, reconstructed.

The fairly disturbing sign inside the kitchen door of the restaurant in which I ate lunch on Monday. Noticed, obviously, only after I had eaten that lunch.

A skin disease? No!. A big old bread bubble in the Indian restaurant in which I ate Monday evening. I did not look at the inside of the kitchen door.

Dawn over Las Vegas, yesterday morning.

The giant aquarium in the lobby at Mandalay Bay (the name of which irritates me, by the way, because Mandalay is manifestly land-locked).

At McCarran International Airport, yesterday afternoon, I put a $5 bill in the dollar slots and won $160 on my second pull. I cashed out immediately.

A "blueberry martini" at the Thompson Beverly Hills last night. Yes, the name is offensive to martini-lovers the world over and, yes, it calls my own masculinity very much in to question -- when I hesitated, the waiter announced unbidden "lots of men order the blueberry martini," which pretty much nails the point -- but it actually tasted very good.

City of Angels, downtown, around lunch time.

TTYL.

This strikes me as a pretty good explanation for the recent strengthening of the United States dollar vs. the Euro notwithstanding QE2...

No, really.

Is there any more graphic measure of the incompetence of our federal government than that it is the second half of November and nobody has the first clue what their tax rates will be for 2011? If one steps back and reflects on that single fact, the forehead-slapping failure of our political class stands out in high relief.

Sorry to belabor the obvious, but occasionally the obvious bears belaboring.

Every now and then I am reminded how different my attitudes are from the average dude. The controversy over the airport security scanners is a case in point. Of all the stupid sham security rules imposed in the cause of air security in the last thirty years, the fear that somebody might see and even retain a shimmery Silver Surfer silhouette of my 48 year old bod just isn't one of them. I would happily walk through one of those things if I could keep my shoes on, carry on fluids in normal sizes, leave my belt on and my coins in my pocket, and natter on in great good humor about the C4 strapped to my love handles. That would be an awesome trade. But all this sudden sturm und drang, after years of indignities, over these silhouettes? I really don't get it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me.

For your contemplation and erudite commentary while I fly to points west...

Rum.

If you find any mistakes, be sure to edit the entry.

Last week, the Justice Department released the report of an internal investigation that showed that (while serving as a Justice Department lawyer) Chris Christie had spent an aggregate of about $2100 spread over 23 separate trips in excess of government guidelines. The report found similar violations by other former U.S. attorneys. The Justice Department did not, apparently, release a report that found travel violations among existing employees, a decision that caused more than a few conservatives to wonder whether the Inspector General was playing politics.

Turns out our fears may have been well-founded.

The Daily Caller has learned that the author behind the recent report from the Department of Justice that targeted five former U.S. attorneys for excessive travel expenses has had, according to our sources, a troubled history in the DOJ and attempted in the past to use her position to smear conservatives....

The report’s author, Maura Lee, began her DOJ career in the civil rights division, but now works in the DOJ Office of Inspector General. Hans von Spakovsky, former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, supervised Lee and told TheDC that he was “astonished” when he found out she was the author of the report.

According to von Spakovsky, Lee was “one of the most belligerent, unprofessional lawyers” he encountered during his time at the DOJ. “Because of her,” he said, “we had to completely change our security protocol.”

Another former senior DOJ official who asked not to be named confirmed Lee’s involvement in strategizing to leak information to the Washington Post, saying that she was not a trustworthy person and had major political motivations.

Charles Rangel, in the immortal words of Gary Trudeau, is guilty, guilty, guilty!

As if we didn't know.

Details here.

I don't care who you are, if you have the slightest shadow of a thread of a sense of humor and even if you work at "the Goldman Sachs," you will think this is funny.

Another reason why the flash movie is the greatest innovation in pedagogy since the blackboard.

At a long evening event with colleagues, and the question has come up: What is the funniest movie of all time? I'm sure your opinions are more interesting than theirs, so give it your most learned effort.

Invictus at The Big Picture takes a look at food price inflation and deflation as calculated by the government. Incidentally to the main point of the post, there is a very interesting chart showing "food at home" (meaning groceries) as a percentage of the American household budget. It has fallen from about 20% when I was born to maybe 7% now, which has effectively liberated a huge proportion of household income (which has itself risen considerably) to spend on fun and games. Or, of course, housing and health care.

Collateral point to irritate many of my crunchy friends: The next time you hear somebody denounce, or you yourself denounce, factory farming, consider your awesome kitchen and your ICD and your television bill and your iPhone and wonder whether you could still afford them if you were spending 20% of your income on groceries. The answer is "probably not."

Take a guess. Who wrote this?

Shellacked at home, shellacked abroad. President Obama's Asia trip is extending a losing streak with the latest setback - a refusal by other major financial powers to follow his lead to revive the global economy.

The president's nostrums, which began with a call for stimulus-style pump priming by other nations, had evolved into a plan to ease wild swings in currency values and overboard trade imbalances. But he got next to nothing in showdown meetings with other leaders of the G-20 nations, or major economic powers. U.S. leadership, once taken for granted, has all but vanished, and no one's in charge.

Rather than watch my Hawkeyes blow a shot at the Big Ten title at the hands of Northwestern for the second year running, I went on a beautiful walk in the hill country south of Austin. We went to the state park at Pedernales Falls, and I took some pictures.

OK, the falls qua falls are not so impressive, but the colors of the river, the rock, the flora, and the sky added up to a remarkable November moment.

The river has eroded the rock in some remarkable ways.

MORE: A commenter posted this link of "before and after" flash flood fotos at Pedernales Falls. Really cool, and really scary.

Yet another example of the perfidious influence of creeping sharia law on our culture.

OK, not really.

Right Wing News is out with its regular poll of conservative bloggers (which, unaccountably, does not include me, probably because I'm soft on certain issues), this time to measure their reaction to the results of the 2010 elections. It is worth looking at, in part for two interesting results.

First, they love Sarah Palin, or at least credit her with having a big impact (emphasis in the original).

1) Out of the following people and groups, which do you think was the most valuable player in the election cycle?

Jim DeMint: 10.6% (7 votes)
The NRCC: 16.7% (11 votes)
The NRSC: 0.0% (0 votes)
Sarah Palin: 62.1% (41 votes)
The RGA: 9.1% (6 votes)
The RNC: 1.5% (1 vote)

5) Which of the following would you say is a more apt description of the Democrats' historic election losses?

A) People voted against the Democrats: 92.6% (63 votes)
B) People voted for the Republicans: 2.9% (2 votes)
C) It was more about the economy, racism, a tantrum, people wanting change, or other factors than either party: 4.4% (3 votes)

In the new New Jersey, it is unwise for local officials to feather their own beds with taxpayer money in violation of state policy. Why? Because Governor Awesome will specifically identify you and the stunt that you are trying to pull. To wit:

Now, the last time I put one of these up teachers from around the country construed it as teacher-bashing on Christie's part and, by extension, mine. While that may be true out of context, Christie has in fact gone to great lengths to distinguish dedicated teachers from the teachers union and the school administrations, which sustain each other in a sort of back-scratching feather-bedding symbiosis. First, the top-heavy administration is a useful dumping ground for tenured teachers who are burned out on teaching or who never ought to have been hired in the first place, but who can't be fired because of union rules. Second, it is politically impossible for a school superintendent to crack down on the unions if he himself is working the loopholes to avoid state rules.

Keep it coming, guv'na.

This is a fascinating talk on the science of motivation, and it might well change how you manage your employees or think about the competence of your boss.

For those of you who work in public companies, public accounting firms, are corporate lawyers, or the Securities and Exchange Commission, consider the foregoing with reference to the internal controls requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley law. Discuss.

An obscure actress named Michelle Nicastro has just died after a ten year battle with breast cancer. She was just 50, and a class ahead of me. When you are "perhaps best known" as the girl who introduced Harry and Sally -- a manifestly bit part -- you are -- sorry -- not a big wheel.

But Michelle Nicastro's death makes me a little sad. In 1978, when I was just 16, my then all-boys prep school put on a rather good production of South Pacific in a joint venture with a local girls school. Michelle Nicastro, then a senior, played the female lead, Nellie Forbush, and blew us all away. She was to our hormone-addled brains absolutely gorgeous, with a voice that would cause lions to lie down with lambs and -- this was important then -- absolutely awesome breasts. Breasts that would one day take her life.

Suffice it to say that I was not the only boy at Lawrenceville then who had a crush-from-afar on Michelle. Those among my classmates who read this blog might want to say a little prayer tonight, for a little bit of our blessed teenaged years has died, and we have been reminded, again, of our mortality.

Michelle Nicastro, may you rest in peace.

Hey, I'm flying to Austin tonight, and as my schedule would have it I may have some time tomorrow (Friday) afternoon -- from, say, 4 to 5:30 -- to get together for a beer with loyal readers in the area. If you are interested send me an email by, say, 3 p.m. at the address on the right sidebar.

The Religion of Peace(tm) was out and about in England today. Apparently, but not surprisingly, Allah is not much for remembering the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who gave it all for Great Britain in Flanders Fields and other hallowed ground.

Islamic protesters sparked fury today after they burned a model of a poppy and deliberately broke the silence at Armistice Day commemorations in central London.

One of my favorite poems, for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Air Pelosi hangs up its wings: In the category of walking the walk on conservation, Presumptive Speaker Boehner is going to save the planet a heap big pile of carbon in the coming years:

Presumptive Speaker Boehner just told reporters he’s flown commercial for 20 years and will continue to do so as Speaker.

At a time when private sector compensation is compressing (in part because of the slack labor market), the federal government is shoveling money at the bureaucrats. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama are guilty, but the latter has tremendously accelerated the trend of the former.

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds....

Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June...

The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate....

Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

From "Bomber Girl," a gadget play for the ages:

Trick Play Touchdown - Watch more Funny Videos

Here's a bit of abrupt news that will rock Princetonians, town and gown alike, of all generations:

The 91-year-old Lahiere’s restaurant, Princeton’s first world-class eatery and host to dignitaries from King Hussein of Jordan to Bob Hope, will close its doors forever on Saturday, November 13.

Who says the mainstream media is always on the side of Barack Obama? If the Associated Press had called up Rush Limbaugh and asked him to write the headline for this story, it wouldn't have come out any uglier from the White House's point of view...

"At home in Indonesia...." Seriously? Bwahahaha! Even if you're not a "birther" -- and I most decided am not -- it just doesn't get funnier than that.

It will be interesting to see how long that headline survives in the write-through.

MORE: The linked story also contains a helpful clarification that you do not often seen in news about American presidents (emphasis added):

The president, who is Christian, is eager to hold up Indonesia as a model: an overwhelmingly Muslim nation where other religions are respected freely and an evolving democracy is gaining strength despite a legacy of corruption.

Sad to say, I popped awake last night around 1:30 and did not easily fall back asleep, probably because I had set my alarm to go off at 5 am so I could make an early spinning class at my gym. Yeah, mock away, but my resting pulse is probably lower than yours. (A low resting pulse is something to be competitive over when you're almost 50.)

Anyway, I passed the time with Michael Crichton's last book, Pirate Latitudes, which came out in paperback about six weeks ago. I don't read more than a few novels a year, but I have always liked Crichton and his last book does not disappoint. Unless you don't like pirate stories (in which case you are a weenie), it is quite the rollicking good read.

But don't tell me how it ends -- I probably won't finish it before Thursday.

I tuned in a few minutes late to Matt Lauer's interview of George W. Bush, and recommend that you do the same if you read this post in time (or see it online, where it will no doubt be available, later). It is interesting, and gives a glimpse in to Bush that many of us might not have seen before. All will agree, left and right, that the differences with the current president are striking.

I note that President Bush's book Decision Points is #1 on Amazon. I ordered a copy after seeing some of Lauer's interview.

UPDATE: GWB, on approval ratings of presidents: "If you chase popularity, you are chasing a moment, a poof of air." True in a sense, but popularity is not a mere decorative festoon on one's presidency. It is also a proxy for a certain sort of political leverage, or lack thereof. I respect Bush for doing what he believed was right whether or not it was popular -- to the extent that is true, and it was not always so -- but he put his agenda at risk by squandering his popularity. He may not have had a choice in this given his own limitations and the hostility of the chattering class, but so it was.

If I heard him right, yesterday (and perhaps before) Chris Christie endorsed my favorite solution for federal spending, an across-the-board cut of some percentage in every single program, including entitlements. Leave no department or agency or federal program unscathed. That is "shared sacrifice," as the governor says, and it is necessary to establish the credibility that will allow for more nuanced cutting down the road.

The next time your flight is delayed because of "equipment maintenance," demand to know when the airline is going to sacrifice a goat. Because if they have not done that yet, they obviously are not doing everything possible to fix the goddamn plane.

New Jersey's governor Chris Christie -- Governor Awesome to you and me -- explains to David Gregory why he didn't take all the supposedly free money from the feds to build a new tunnel under the Hudson, for which decision he took grief from all the usual suspects.

I love a politician who cares about me in my capacity as a productive citizen and can explain himself clearly. If we had ten more dudes like Governor Christie it would be morning in America all over again.

We had to spend most of 2001-2008 hearing from Democrats about how dreadful it was that George W. Bush was pissing off our "traditional allies" by dint of his "unilateral" foreign policy. This was never actually true for any real country other than France or Germany, and query whether Germany even counts as a "traditional ally," but the facts mattered little to the narrative. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said it, and the press, by and large, bobbed its head up and down.

Now the Obama administration is doing the same thing, this time by acting unilaterally in fiscal policy and pushing the Fed to do the same in monetary policy:

Last Wednesday was a hinge point in history. The United States decided to drop all pretence of being interested in leading – or even being part of – a coordinated global policy response to the most serious economic crisis in more than 70 years.

America is now isolated and the rest of the world is furious. The widespread use of capital controls and even a lurch into 1930s-style protectionism are both far more likely than just a few days ago.

The Federal Reserve's words may have been anodyne. "We will adjust the programme as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability," said the US central bank's Open Market Committee. But by announcing another round of "quantitative easing", America is rightfully incurring the wrath not only of the emerging giants of the East, but the eurozone too.