Gangsters, punks, and smugglers are thoroughly respected

China's 'White Lines' may have been purposed for satellite calibration.

Hypocrisy of the day: Michael Moore's $2 million lake house

Source here.

He's also owns a $2 million Manhattan apartment. He sends his kid to private school in the city, which consists of about $40k per year in tuition, and typical 5- and 6-figure annual donations on top of that.

According to Bob Dutko:

His investment portfolio has included owning significant shares of stock in medical, health, pharmaceutical, defense and big oil companies such as Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Pharmacia Corporation, Tenet Healthcare, Sunoco, General Electric, and yes, even Halliburton.

Chart of the day: Gas prices in Europe and US

Source here.

David Brooks provides a helpful American inequality map

here. My favorites:

Status inequality is acceptable for college teachers. Universities exist within a finely gradated status structure, with certain schools like Brown clearly more elite than other schools. University departments are carefully ranked and compete for superiority.

Status inequality is unacceptable for high school teachers. Teachers at this level strongly resist being ranked. It would be loathsome to have one’s department competing with other departments in nearby schools.

Vocation inequality is acceptable so long as you don’t talk about it. Surgeons have more prestige than valet parkers, but we do not acknowledge this. On the other hand, ethnic inequality — believing one group is better than another — is unacceptable (this is one of our culture’s highest achievements).

Quotes of the day

Might the rising share of the top 1 percent be related to the increasing use of English as a global language?--Greg Mankiw

International marriages are often attacked as exploitative, because they typically take place between an older richer man and a younger, less well-educated woman from a poor country. Terrible examples of abuse do exist. Yet the evidence suggests that international marriages often last longer than average and that migrant wives come to play important roles in their husband’s host country. Marriage remains, for the most part, an institution that promotes economic improvement and personal happiness. It also tends to boost social assimilation—the main exception being when a second-generation immigrant weds a girl from a village his parents had left long before.--Economist

So it's one thing to say [skill players who can dictate terms to the defense] they are the future and another to actually find enough people to make that future a reality. Just like at the quarterback position, there are simply more job openings than there are qualified candidates. Wanted: 6-foot-6 freak athlete who can run a 4.5 40, has incredible hands, is willing and able to block 300-pound defensive ends, and can immediately memorize a 1,000-page playbook. No appointment necessary.--Chris Brown

THE Occupy Wall Street movement has raised important questions about the respect paid to wealth in our society. There is a good deal of unfairness in the American economy, and by deliberately targeting the “top 1 percent,” the demonstrators have opened up a dialogue that is quite useful. Nonetheless, as someone from a conservative and libertarian background, I find that I am hearing too much talk about riches and not enough about values. It’s worth recalling why so many Americans have respected the wealthy in the first place.
...
The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.--Tyler Cowen

The Clinch River Breeder Reactor. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation. The hydrogen car. Clean coal. These are but a few examples spanning several decades — a graveyard of costly and failed projects. Not a single one of these much-ballyhooed initiatives is producing or saving a drop or a watt or a whiff of energy, but they have managed to burn through far more more taxpayer money than the ill-fated Solyndra. An Energy Department report in 2008 estimated that the federal government had spent $172 billion since 1961 on basic research and the development of advanced energy technologies. What does Washington have to show for these investments? And should the government even be in the business of promoting particular energy technologies?--Steven Mufson

... Hoover's Peter Schweizer's new book claims that 80% of the loans in the DOE program that Solyndra tapped went to companies owned or run by Obama backers.  Of course, one would expect that most "green energy" types would be enthusiastic Democrats.  Still, the thing has a certain whiff about it.  Then today we learn that Solyndra, which was originally going to announce layoffs in late October 2010, held off on the announcement until November 3rd (aka election day).  And they seem to have done so at the behest of the White House.  I think the very least you can say is that the political side became inappropriately entangled with the technocratic side of this loan.  It undermines one's faith in both the program, and the administration.  Obviously, this is not the worst thing that any president has ever done, or even in the top 100.  But it's not a good thing.  And the people who support these sorts of technocratic subsidies should be the first people, not the last, to decry the actions which have tainted the program.--Megan McArdle

Both [Paul] Krugman and [Larry] Summers spent a lot of time saying that they agreed with each other — with one big difference. They both quoted Keynes as diagnosing “magneto trouble” — the engine of the economy is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Summers has faith that, in Churchill’s phrase, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities” — the right thing, here, being to fix the magneto with expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. Krugman, by contrast, sees political gridlock as far as the eye can see, and says that it doesn’t matter how innovative or philanthropic or demographically attractive the U.S. is — if you don’t fix the magneto, the car won’t start, and America’s magneto ain’t gonna get fixed any time soon.
...
So, do I think that North America faces a Japan-style era of high unemployment and slow growth? I’ll agree with Summers and Krugman on this one: yes, it does. Will it manage to do what’s necessary to avoid that fate? That’s something no one can know with any certainty. But life’s certainly a lot easier if you believe that it will.--Felix Salmon

Banks pour huge amounts of money into one particular asset class. They are encouraged to do this by public policymakers, although there is some dispute about whether that was the main reason for their decisions. These assets have a long tradition of doing well, although a close look at the evidence would have raised red flags. The asset market in question suddenly takes a big dive as default risk increases sharply. This drags down many large banks, forcing policymakers to provide assistance. What have I just described? The sub-prime fiasco or the PIGS sovereign debt fiasco? I’d say both. I’d say these two crises are essentially identical.--Scott Sumner

There is one group that is not smiling about these new, low-cost teeth-whitening services: the Connecticut Dental Commission. In June, the Commission ruled it is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail or $25,000 in civil penalties for anyone but a licensed dentist to offer teeth-whitening services, even if the customers apply the product to their own teeth. Teeth-whitening products are regulated by the FDA as cosmetics, which mean anyone—even a child—can purchase them and apply them to his or her own teeth without a prescription and without supervision or instruction. The Dental Commission's ruling has nothing to do with public health or safety and everything to do with protecting licensed dentists from honest competition.--Institute for Justice

People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.--P.J. O'Rourke

The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.--P.J O'Rourke

Wired comes clean about their bad advice

to Apple.

We all should be like Wired.

Taxes kill jobs

Medical device maker Stryker Corp said it will cut 5 percent, or about 1000 jobs to largely offset costs related to the scheduled implementation of the new Medical Device Excise Tax in 2013.

Any questions?

Quotes of the day

... Mr. Buffett didn’t build his $10 billion-plus stake in I.B.M. overnight. He started buying eight months ago, beginning in March. You wouldn’t have known that if you had been studiously reading Berkshire Hathaway’s filings — known as 13Fs — in which companies must disclose stock holdings. There was no mention of I.B.M. in Berkshire’s quarterly filing in April, nor in August. Instead, if you were looking carefully, you might have found an odd footnote that said: “Confidential information has been omitted from the form 13F and filed separately with the commission.”
...
Translation: Mr. Buffett received special permission from the S.E.C. to keep secret his investment in I.B.M. — and possibly keep secret stakes in other companies that he is building positions in that we have yet to learn about. Mr. Buffett’s special treatment from the S.E.C. is not new — he has long taken advantage of an obscure rule to avoid disclosing his bets to the public before he is good and ready. Mr. Buffett — and other billionaire investors like Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman and Nelson Peltz — essentially argue that the simple disclosure of an investment would cause the price to rise so much as to scuttle their strategy.
...
The rule says that the S.E.C. “may prevent or delay public disclosure of form 13F information for public interest reasons or the protection of investors.” In this case, the rule is clearly meant to protect the investor — Mr. Buffett — not the public.--ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

As a general rule, you can usually assume that someone is trying to screw someone else whenever you find these two elements working together:

Complexity
Money

Complexity is how evil schemes are hidden from the public. Complexity is what caused so many people to get mortgages they couldn't afford. Complexity is how hedge funds hide their treachery. Complexity is how the derivatives debacle was possible. Complexity is how your financial manager can get away with charging you for doing nothing. Complexity is why you don't know if you can get a better deal with another phone carrier.--Scott Adams

I’ve always been curious about successful men, leaders, and what they know that the rest of us don’t. This book was entertaining because Eisenhower was a character, nearly getting himself kicked out of West Point, causing a lot of trouble. But always there was in him a sense of confidence, a sense he would become somebody important. And more than this, he believed the world needed him — that if he didn’t exist, things would fall apart. He believed he was called to be a great man. I wondered, as I read, where he got this confidence.  I found the reason for Eisenhower’s confidence early on in [ At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends.], in a chapter in which he discussed his childhood. Dwight Eisenhower said that from the beginning, his mother and father operated on an assumption that set the course for his life: that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. Eisenhower’s parents assumed, and taught their children, that if their children weren’t alive, their family couldn’t function.--Don Miller

Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.--Dwight Eisenhower

... because Oscar campaigns are always based in part on the terrified certainty that the performance in itself cannot possibly be enough, all three men also come equipped with prepackaged narratives. DiCaprio’s, unveiled in a New York Times "Arts & Leisure" cover story simply headlined “Risk Taker,” is just that: I’m a hard worker who challenges myself with transformative roles for serious directors, and you’re never going to see me sell myself out for Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Shitload of Doubloons. Clooney’s narrative goes something like: I use my star power to get small and worthy movies greenlit, the clear implication being that the difference between The Descendants with Clooney and The Descendants with someone else is the difference between a movie you get to see and a movie you don’t. And Pitt’s, tailored to the tortuous history of Moneyball, is: I stick with projects I believe in for years until they get made. All three of these premises have enough truth in them to be legitimately deployed. But there’s a problem: They all fall into an awards-narrative category that Movieline’s Oscar guy, Stu Van Airsdale, astutely identified a couple of weeks ago “It’s a nice story. It’s just not … charming.”  Academy voters like to be seduced by a narrative, not simply persuaded by it, and a Clooney vs. Pitt vs. DiCaprio contest has a slight whiff of “Which of the three richest, handsomest, most popular boys in the school are we going to choose as class president?” They are, in short, the 1 percent — and this is not an ideal year to be in that category.--Mark Harris

The [Stereotype Threat] study investigated the applicability of previous experimental research on stereotype threat to operational Graduate Record Examinations® (GRE®) General Test testing centers. The goal was to document any relationships between features of the testing environment that might cue stereotype threat as well as any impact on GRE test scores among African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and female test-takers. Among such features were the gender and ethnicity of test proctors and more general factors, such as the size, activity level, and social atmosphere of test centers. Our analyses revealed several relationships among environmental factors and several variations in test performance for all groups. However, we found no direct support for stereotype threat and, in fact, found some effects for proctor ethnicity that ran counter to a stereotype-threat explanation.--Walters, Lee, and Trapani

These angry women have even less of a leg to stand on, now. Ding dong, the Sterotype Witch is dead, at least when it comes to race and gender in GRE performance (unless someone has another study with the same scientific credibility they can point me to).--Cav

Photo link here.

John Carney says that enforcement against congressional insider trading could be problematic

He makes some good points.

Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves

Charles Pierce writes very, very well. A notable excerpt:

It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to "the company," and protection of "the brand" — that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns — trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect "the brand" than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.

Whither thou Euro

Goldman Says Buy, Morgan Stanley Says Sell.

DISCLOSURE: I am short EUR in my personal holdings, and not interested in covering until it is much closer to parity with USD.

Quotes of the day

We want social returns, as well as financial ones. When you look at the major financial institutions, you have to realize there is greed involved.--Sister Nora, the Sisters of St. Francis

I completely agree, Sister Nora, but greed also infects non-financial institutions, including governments and charities and church.--Cav (who may have more cross-institutional experience than Sister Nora)

Jay-Z is releasing a new line of T-shirts in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement Friday via his Rocawear clothing label, but he doesn't plan to share any of the profits with the protesters.--Kimberly Nordyke

There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy. So it's not illegal, but I think it's highly unethical, I think it's highly offensive, and wrong.
...
For example insider trading on the stock market. If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply.
...
They do. The fact is, if you sit on a healthcare committee and you know that Medicare, for example, is-- is considering not reimbursing for a certain drug that's market moving information. And if you can trade stock on-- off of that information and do so legally, that's a great profit making opportunity. And that sort of behavior goes on.
...
It's really the way the rules have been defined. And the people who make the rules are the political class in Washington. And they've conveniently written them in such a way that they don't apply to themselves.
...

If you were a senator, Steve, and I gave you $10,000 cash, one or both of us is probably gonna go to jail. But if I'm a corporate executive and you're a senator, and I give you IPO shares in stock and over the course of one day that stock nets you $100,000, that's completely legal. And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs. --Peter Schweizer

All of a sudden [a congressman] from a background maybe in law, maybe in some other unrelated business area, all of a sudden is picking winners and losers in the market.--Jack Abramoff, disgraced Washington lobbyist

How then can we explain the high and persistent levels of long-term unemployment during this recession? One clearly important factor is the extension in July of 2010 of unemployment insurance to cover workers who have been out of work for 99 weeks instead of having their payments end after 6 months of unemployment. Studies have shown that many unemployed find jobs just about when their unemployment payments expire, after 6 months of collecting benefits under the old system. It does not require any complicated economic analysis to conclude that the extension of unemployment payments to 99 weeks will encourage many individuals to remain unemployed after 6 months of unemployment, although they would have found jobs under the old rules. They will turn down jobs that may not be as good as those they had before becoming unemployed in order to continue to collect unemployment benefits. For that reason I opposed the extension to 99 weeks in my post on 7/25/2010 Should Unemployment Compensation be Extended?.
...
Long-term unemployment may also partly be the result of uneven employment opportunities and uneven prospects for housing prices in different states and regions of the US. States like California, Nevada, and Florida that had major construction, jobs, and housing booms in the years before the onset of the recession suffered the largest hits to employment and to housing prices. Unemployed workers in such states may be reluctant to move to states where more jobs are available at good wages since they may be involved in foreclosure litigation and other issues related to the depressed housing market. They may also turn down jobs that pay much less then the unusually good wages they had during the boom times to continue to collect unemployment benefits for up to 2 years.
...
Other factors are also involved in the sharp rise in the number of workers unemployed for over 6 months. Yet overall they do not justify the conclusion that many unemployed individuals are unable to find jobs because the American economy has too little demand for their set of skills.--Gary Becker

We're running out of guys there [in the defensive secondary]. [College quarterback and NFL receiver Julian Edelman] stepped in and made a nice hit there and a made a nice tackle on [LaDainian] Tomlinson. You never know. It's a long season. We have a lot of games left. Who knows who will be playing where, but I know one thing: These guys are tough, mentally and physically. They'll stand up to the challenge and give their best. That counts for a lot. The game's not too big for them.--Bill Belichick

There’s so many things I’ve learned from him over the years about mental toughness. His ability to stay even-keeled through the wins and the losses. I remember the year that we went undefeated, you never would have thought we were undefeated. You would have thought we were 0-16 the way that he coached us. The last two weeks have been rough, but he never lost faith in us or confidence in what we were doing. He just said ‘Look we just gotta do better.’ He doesn’t ride those highs and lows and he comes in every week with a goal in mind. All the guys who play for him really appreciate that and appreciate his consistency and appreciate the way that he listens to the team as well.--Tom Brady

How Muhammad Wilkerson doesn't get that [dropped] ball is beyond me. For Brady to go in there and fight for that ball was a great sign of how tough that guy is. I know what goes on in those piles. It's a dark place. A lot of things are done I can not speak of. Kudos to Brady.--Tedy Bruschi

Victories since Oct. 23: Tebow 3, Tom Brady/Michael Vick/Philip Rivers (combined) 2.--Peter King

Historically, investors have assumed 25% to 30% of student loans bundled into their bonds will default. But today they are baking in between 30% and 40% default rates among the current crop of graduates, said Chris Haid, a director in asset backed trading at Barclays Capital. Even those assumptions are a best guess and defaults could ultimately go higher if unemployment rises, Mr. Haid said. This analysis translates into some surprising insights for students and policy makers. For example, in the current economy, it may make more sense to enter a technical college than to go to law school. Not all lessons from the bond market are so counterintuitive. The most important, in fact, is a slight twist on a maxim most students know from childhood: stay in school, just not too long.
...
In recessions, law school graduates have a harder time finding work than other graduates from professional programs and are more likely to default on their student loans.--Matt Wirz

When you see a guy in a loan made in 2005 that is still in school, you throw that away.--Rubin Bahar

I’m amazed that in a park full of revolutionaries, there are large contingents that can’t throw away their own trash.--Jordan McCarthy, a member of the protesters’ sanitation team

I am amazed that she is amazed.--Cav

Photo links here and here.

Amos, updated

Don Carson is exceptional:

WOE TO CHINA. IN THIS CENTURY she has butchered fifty million of her own people in the name of equality. Proud and haughty, she maintains an officially atheistic stance, persecuting the church while that church, nurtured by the blood of the martyrs, has in half a century multiplied fifty times.

Woe to Russia. In the second decade of this century she embarked on a massive social experiment that resulted in the deaths of more than forty million people. She subjugated nation after nation, so certain was she that the tide of history was on her side. She became excellent at producing the “revolutionary man,” but could not produce the promised “new man” of Marxist thought, and so hid behind illusions and lies until her economic incompetence brought her down.

Woe to Germany. Privileged to serve as home to some of the greatest Reformers, she became extraordinarily arrogant intellectually, and in this century started two world wars that wreaked death and havoc, including the horrors of the Nazis, on countless millions. Today she builds excellent BMWs but has a materialist soul, worshiping nothing greater than the deutsche mark.

Woe to Great Britain. At one time ruler of one-quarter of the world’s population; inheritor of some of the greatest Christian thought and literature ever produced, she became ever more proud and condescending to the nations she colonized and the people she enslaved. Having repeatedly squandered a heritage of the knowledge of God, she thrashes around directionless and degraded.

Woe to Canada. She likes to think of herself as morally superior to her nearest neighbor, while hiding under the U.S. military umbrella. Sliding toward a moral abyss, her Supreme Court issues decisions that are as morally corrosive as any in the Western world, while the English-French factionalism drives toward enmity and breakup for want of courtesy and respect from both sides.

Woe to the United States. She prides herself on being the only world power left, but never reflects on how God has brought low every world power in history. Her cherished freedoms, so great a heritage, have increasingly become a facade to hide and then defend the grossest immorality and selfishness. To the nation at large, no issue, absolutely none, is more important than the state of the economy.

This is the reasoning of Amos. In Amos 1, he circles around the pagan neighbors, articulating the judgment of God. Here in Amos 2, he moves to Moab, Judah (“Canada”), and finally brings it home to Israel. Israelite audiences would begin with smug contentment during the early parts: how would they end up? And understand: the sequence of my “Woes,” above, could have been rearranged to end with any country—with your country.

I, the skeptic of higher ed skeptics, am speechless

Which costs more, prison or Princeton?

Quotes of the day

Ben, those silver bullets that you and Mike are looking for are fine and good, but our web server is five times slower. There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.--Bill Turpin

JoePa said that with the benefit of hindsight, he wished he had done more, which begged the question: What words, what regrets, what sorrows and devastations are left to Victims 1-8, who must wonder how life might have been different if JoePa had acted in accordance with his lovingly bestowed nickname?--Jane Leavy

... I will say that I am sickened, absolutely sickened, that some of those people whose lives were fundamentally inspired and galvanized by Joe Paterno have not stepped forward to stand up for him this week, have stood back and allowed him to be painted as an inhuman monster who was only interested in his legacy, even at the cost of the most heinous crimes against children imaginable.
...
Shame on them. And why? I’ll tell you my opinion: Because they were afraid. And I understand that. A kind word for Joe Paterno in this storm is taken by many as a pro vote for a child molester. A quick, “Wait a minute, Joe Paterno is a good man. Let’s see what happened here” is translated as an attempt to minimize the horror of what Jerry Sandusky is charged with doing. It takes courage to stand behind someone you believe in when it’s this bad outside. It takes courage to stand up for a man in peril, even if he stood up for you. And that’s shameful. I have not wanted to speak because it’s not my place to speak. I’m Joe Paterno’s biographer. I’m here to write about the man. I’m not here to write a fairy tale, and I’m not here to write a hit job, and I hope to be nowhere near either extreme. I’m here to write a whole story. I’ve had people ask me: “Will you include all this in the book?” Well, OF COURSE I will — this is the tragic ending of a legendary career. I’m going to wait for evidence, and if it turns out that Joe Paterno knowingly covered this up, then I will write that with all the power and fury I have in me.--Joe Posnanski

As defenses get more complex, the answer isn't always to get more complex on offense; sometimes, it's the opposite. By making the game easier, Harbaugh has turned Smith into one of the league leaders in interceptions per pass attempt. Football is a game of intelligent compromises under constraints such as time, ability, and the raw physics of the game. And right now, at 7-1, Harbaugh's 49ers seem to have found the right mix.--Chris Brown

Can't we just call Andy Dalton "Shawshank"? It's right in front of us: Red and Andy.--Joe

Furious that I didn't think of that first.--Bill Simmons

America's monetary problem however is that they are in a liquidity trap. Six or seven years of 6 percent inflation, 2 percent interest rates and to stick the losses to the Chinese who (in their mercantilist fashion) own the debt would be a wonderful way out of America's malaise. And you would think you could induce 5 percent inflation by printing money. You would think the option is open. Indeed you would swear given how much money the Fed has printed that it would have happened. But it has not happened. Sure the Fed has printed money. And when it finished that it printed some more. Soon we will get to QE4 and yet another round of "quantitative easing" and we will still not manage to induce 5-7 percent inflation, 2 percent interest rates and to stick the losses to the Chinese.
...
If you had - without any understanding of monetary theory - been told that the Fed could increase money stock from say $800 billion to $3 trillion and not result in an inflationary torrent you would not have believed it. It would have sounded like nonsense. But you better believe it because it happened. And that requires an explanation.
...
The explanation is simple enough. The Federal Reserve has too much credibility. Each time it increases the money supply it buys some asset (say a government bond or even a foreign security) and issues cash. And people hold the cash because it is a reasonable store of value. And it is a reasonable store of value because they trust - at the end of this cycle - that the Federal Reserve will eventually take its vault full of assets, sell the assets for hard cash (which it will destroy) and will thus suck the excess liquidity out of the system.
...
If people really believed the cash was trash they would all try to get rid of it (ie buy something) but collectively they could not get rid of it (every time they buy something it would have a new owner) and the result would be inflation. Inflation would then reduce the real value of the money stock to a level where people were comfortable holding it.--John Hempton

The Greek debt crisis that has roiled world markets for weeks was resolved today when Greece agreed to marry TV reality star Kim Kardashian for 72 days. The marriage, believed to be the first ever between a sovereign nation and a television personality, is expected to net billions of dollars for Greece’s debt-strapped economy. The wedding between Ms. Kardashian and Greece will generate cash via a People magazine pictorial, an E! Entertainment reality series, and a bond offering backed by the International Monetary Fund.--Borowitz Report

Showing the resiliency that has frustrated foes throughout his storied career, Silvio Berlusconi today stepped down as Italian Prime Minister and assumed the helm of the National Restaurant Association. “This is a dream job for me,” Mr. Berlusconi told reporters as he settled into his new offices in Washington. “I love working with people and I intend to be very hands-on.”
...
Mr. Berlusconi won the coveted position after beating out several rivals, including former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. “I must admit I am envious of Silvio,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said. “There isn’t a red-blooded man alive who wouldn’t want to run the National Restaurant Association.”--Borowitz Report

The companies want to retain their favorite loopholes. For the heck of it I include the wish list below this piece. It’s endless. It’s a joke. It proves that American industry’s interests are not at all aligned with the American citizens. This list will insure that the likes of GE never pay their share of US taxes.  I don’t have a problem when US industry lobbies congress for what they want. That’s the system we signed up for. But I do have a problem when the company that has the most to gain from the tax code is also advising the Administration on economic policy.   Obama has made a bunch of dumb mistakes. His getting into bed with Jeff Immelt is high on the list.--Bruce Krasting

In a competitive, low-margin, high-hustle retail business, Ed wanted to project Bloomingdales with a Wal-Mart budget. The showroom had to be beautiful, spotless—just perfect to look the part. Customer service was paramount. In order to be successful, every employee had to have this mentality. Although we didn’t call it that then, I’ve come to believe that Ed was creating a company culture. We often get wrapped up in Silicon Valley with the “new-new” way that we can forget many times we’re simply rediscovering well worn lessons that date back to the beginnings of commerce.--Scott Weiss

Artwork Title Of The Day: Raising John Boehner Alert Level To Amber

Live illustration series of the NYC Marathon.  Simply awesome. 

Thanks

to my friends who are currently serving on active duty in our armed forces.

And also to those many more I know who have served.

Happy Veterans Day. Maximum respect.

Berlusconi quotes

here. I'm not sure this one was a "gaffe", "quip" or "prank", in disagreement with Reuters:

We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries.

Top 10 Debate Brain Freeze Excuses

I need to memorize these when I get home late, and need to give my wife a full report:

10. Actually, there were three reasons I messed up last night: 1) was the nerves and 2) was the headache and 3) um…uh…oops.

9. I don’t know what you’re taking about - I think things went well.

8. I was up late last night watching “Dancing with the Stars.”

7. I thought the debate was tonight.

6. You try concentrating with Mitt Romney smiling at you. That is one handsome dude!

5. Uh, El Nino?

4. I had a five-hour energy drink six hours before the debate.

3. I really hoped it would get me on my favorite talk show, but instead, I ended up here.

2. I wanted to help take the heat off my buddy Herman Cain.

1. I just learned Justin Bieber is my father.

Newt Gingrich's greatest days were probably keeping Bill Clinton in balance

But he's still got some mojo left: