Month: January 2015

Power Line has a useful suggestion for funding Obama’s community colleges proposal.

Read the whole thing (H/T: Instapundit), but basically: if Barack Obama wants this community college thing so badly, then he can call for a surtax on college endowments above a certain level per student ($1 million was Power Line’s suggestion). Or maybe just lower the deduction on donations to college endowments, again above a certain level. Power Line also suggests – just in case it wasn’t obvious yet that the goal here is to watch the President start chain-smoking again in an affronted fury – that maybe the GOP should just pass the community college proposal… while mandating “that all community college credits be fully transferrable to any four-year college that accepts any federal funding.”

Yes, yes, of course there’s not any chance of the President signing off on any of that. That’s not the point.  The point is to make it clear to whom President Obama feels the most loyalty: which is to say, not students or parents of students. Besides, even the mere threat of any of this would produce all sorts of useful footage of Academics Behaving Badly…

Let me FIFY, National Journal: “Why Don’t White DEMOCRATS Elect Minority Reps to Congress?”

Titles like that annoy me. Essentially since when this is the first paragraph:

It’s an enduring contrast in Congress: Minority legislators are much less likely to represent districts where whites constitute a majority of the population than whites are to hold districts where racial minorities comprise the majority.

…and this is the ninth paragraph:

The evidence suggests[*] it may[**] be easier for minority Republicans to attract support from white voters than it is for minority Democrats. Only 14 of the 88 minority members in the House are Republicans. But they are eight of the 15 minority House members holding majority white seats. They especially have an edge in districts that are at least 70 percent white. Of those eight seats held by minority Republicans, six are in districts that are 70 percent or more white.

Continue reading Let me FIFY, National Journal: “Why Don’t White DEMOCRATS Elect Minority Reps to Congress?”

Oh. Look at that. All those New York court records, now up in smoke.

Amazing.

Firefighters were battling a stubborn seven-alarm inferno that ripped through a Brooklyn waterfront warehouse Saturday afternoon, fueled by mountains of records from city agencies..

[The facility] also stores records for the Administration for Children’s Services and for New York State courts.

…Oh, I know. It probably really is a coincidence that this is happening right after a key arrest is made that might end up getting half of New York’s state government arrested. In real life people either aren’t this dumb, or are too smart to get caught doing it. But if a) Law & Order was still on and b) didn’t suck so bad as it was sucking by the ending then we’d have our script right there, huh?

Via

https://twitter.com/alykatzz/status/561649518870294528

The Democrats have apparently decided to spot us NY-11.

Jolly good of them:

Last cycle, GOP Rep. Michael G. Grimm won re-election by more than dozen points in the face of a 20-count indictment and millions of dollars of Democratic attack ads. After the election, Grimm pleaded guilty to one count of tax fraud and earlier this month resigned from Congress, setting up what looked like yet another competitive special election in the Empire State.

Democrats were preparing to nominate former Rep. Michael E. McMahon or Assemblyman Michael Cusick in order to put the seat into play and, at a minimum, lay the foundation for a full takeover push in the 2016 general election. But Cusick told the Staten Island Advance Sunday he is not running, and McMahon has dialed back his initial interest to nearly zero.

Continue reading The Democrats have apparently decided to spot us NY-11.

Federal government to encourage America’s stair construction industry. Well, 2030’s.

Note for future researchers: ever wonder why your comedians all make jokes about all those damned government stairs people have to climb? Yeah, this would be why.  Sorry about that:

The new standard gives agencies three options for establishing the flood elevation and hazard area they use in siting, design and construction of federal projects. They can use data and methods “informed by best-available, actionable climate science”; build two feet above the 100-year flood elevation for standard projects and three feet above for critical buildings such as hospitals and evacuation centers; or build to the 500-year flood elevation.

Sorry, future dudes: we’re having a bit of an outbreak of religious hysteria among a certain part of the population right now, and it’s being complicated by the fact that said religious hysterics are actually convinced that they’re hyper-logical secularist Enlightened Ones. Also unfortunately, the current administration has to pander to them, because they’re about the only ones who are still returning the administration’s calls. Look on the bright side: it’s good exercise, isn’t it?

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane

Tweet of the Day, Queen Elizabeth II Will Cut You edition.

I know that sounds crazy, but look at the eyes, man.

https://twitter.com/HistoryInPix/status/561347905923981313

Those of the eyes of somebody who can go Most of my ancestors were vicious bastards, and we kept all their notes and journals. I dunno. She just gives me a vibe that tells me that I shouldn’t throw a chair at her in a bar fight… what? Look, just because I’ve never been in a bar fight doesn’t mean I didn’t inherit the genes for it, thank you very much…

Quote of the Day, Romney’s Jab At Jeb edition.

Nice to see that I wasn’t the only one* who noticed it:

In an apparent jab at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is 61, Romney emphasized the need for a fresh face for the GOP.

“I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee,” he told supporters on the call. “In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.”

There are a bunch of candidates who could fit that description: Bush and Christie aren’t two of them. Interesting… Continue reading Quote of the Day, Romney’s Jab At Jeb edition.