These great unwashed hillbillies, they’re pretty slick with teh sarcasm…

President Obama explained us to us as follows:

And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared, and they [sic] have good reason to be.

(Just my unwashed observation: We have a president who knows what our brains are hardwired to do and can describe the emotional state of an entire country, but he can’t get subject and verb to agree and pronoun and antecedent to agree in just two sentences not read from a teleprompter. Good thing he didn’t say “refudiate.”)

I’ve meant for a while, to talk about how poorly Obama speaks, but something always distracts me; this writer, Randall Hoven, gets a few more linguistic licks in further down the line, but you’ll want to read the whole thing, for other reasons.

But you might be a little depressed when you’re done.

Sorry.

Reason: who’s stupid?.

Obama just doesn’t understand what we’re doing!

Post-election press conference with Jim Mora, head coach of the Democrats.

alot of you won't get this .... if you don't't, ask

my fave vid from John Stewart's little g/t in DC pre-election telss me everything I need to know about ....well ... alot of things

(h/t Mankiw)

Alabam goes down!  LSU's coach gets to keep his job and the SEC MIGHT not get the automatic bid into the BCS title game.  Don't tell Auburn.  And TCU proves they're for real.

1.  Oregon.  Still.  Convinced yet?

2.  TCU.  See above.

3.  tie:  Boise State who's been less than impressive, Stanford, who's looked pretty good against a killer sched in is probably the best of the 1 loss teams, 

4.  Alabama.  <sniff>

5.  Best of the rest: the top of the Big 8/12/10, the middle of the Pac 10/11 and the winner of the OSU/Iowa game (and right now I'm taking Iowa in a squeaker.)  Auburn doesn't make the list after playing a mid-season game against UT-Chattanooga.  Can you imagine the screams across the country if OSU playedthe Lima branch?

 next weeks games:

Oregon by 10 at Cal

 OSU by 26 over PSU

not many good games next week imh

more from Mises:

Slums in India have cell phone service but neither toliets nor running water. Isn’t that development in reverse? Of course, what do you expect given that the market provides cell phones and government toilets and water?

from the Mises Institute

“What’s with all the teenagers without costumes coming to my front door and expecting candy?!” This was the gist of several Facebook status updates I saw last night. I don’t discriminate against the uncostumed because it isn’t worth ruining someone’s evening to save a dollar or so worth of candy, but at least one friend has a “no costume, no candy” policy that’s not always popular. Halloween is an interesting object lesson in the law of unintended consequences: when we say “hey, come get free candy,” we can expect (predictably) that a lot of people are going to invest in getting that “free” candy. People will be disappointed to see adults and teenagers without costumes “taking advantage” of their neighbors’ generosity and then either attach strings or complain about Them, the people coming from outside Our Neighborhood to get the candy that we bought for Our Neighbors. It’s probably good for at least a couple of days’ worth of neighborhood gossip and/or venting on social networking sites. Social capital erodes (and prejudices might be reinforced) as we come to see people from outside Our Neighborhood as cynical opportunists. And so on.

So the policy question is this: if giving away candy bars at Halloween is going to be so divisive and problematic, why do we expect large-scale tax-and-transfer programs involving billions of dollars to succeed harmoniously and without cynical opportunism?

It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them. Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed, for one evil example will lead to other measures still more mischievous; and if the principle of constructive powers or supposed advantages or temporary circumstances shall ever be permitted to justify the assumption of a power not given by the Constitution, the General Government will before long absorb all the powers of legislation, and you will have in effect but one consolidated government. From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits, and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single consolidated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.

this is why I don't come to your parties anymore - here's the way the "enemies of the state" are treated - defiately NSFW