Three TOUGH lectures followed by too much traveling.

It started like a normal trip. My contact called and said “St. Louis?”

“Same as last time.”

“Sure”

The plates and an envelope of paperwork was delivered to my house the next day. I'd already made the travel arrangements. On Thursday I lectured until 9:30, home by 10 and in bed by 11.

Up at 2am to check in. Up again at 4am. Left the house at 4:30. Went through security at 5am. Boarded flight for Chicago at 6am and touched down an hour later. Layover. Then flight to STL. Slight delay. Arrived 10:20am Central time. My driver was waiting at the appointed spot. I'd used him before in STL. He asked who my contact was. I opened the envelope containing my paperwork.

And that's when the trouble started. I was SUPPOSED to be in Kansas City. Sadly I couldn't GET from STL to KC in time to make the deal. So I flew BACK to Chicago and BACK to CMH and tried it all again the next day. NOT a fun weekend.

A few observations.  Y'know those "people movers" at airports?  Ever wonder what would happen if you stepped off and just ... I don't know ... stopped?  I found out.  STL.  Ma and Pa Kettle had never been to the big city.  Almost a dozen folks behid them.  I was third.  Lots of falling and wailing and trying not to hurt Ma and Pa.  Folks in the back walking the wrong way.  Folks jumping over the sides.  

Best bumper sticker?  "Haven't lost your job yet?  Keep buying foreign"  It was on a Ford Fiesta

Getting caught up on my reading.  Look for a BOATload of posting tomrrow.  Ok.  Maybe ten of em.  And maybe a few more tonight.

New Yorker Mag called the special ops team today hailed by Obama, VP Cheney’s “personal assassination team.”

also: Flashback: Stephen Colbert blasts Cheney’s Secret Assassination Squad.

NANCY PELOSI, 2006: KILLING OSAMA DOESN’T MATTER.

Nancy Pelosi 2011: Killing Osama is Huge!

Let’s Hear It For “Cheney’s Assassination Squad.”

Next the lefties will be cheering “enhanced interrogation.”

and THIS blast from the past makes an appearance as a "Deather":

Cindy Sheehan Thinks 'Empire' Faked Osama Takedown: Will Chris Matthews Recant Urging Her to Run for Congress?

of OBL's blood can you put in your tank?  Eat?  Use to get a job?

El Rushbo

but I hope the term "Racers" catches on.

Matt Michell sends this remarkable chart courtesy of Catherine Rampell of Economix. It is from a new book, The Haves and the Have Nots, by the World Bank’s Branko Milanovic. It takes a moment to wrap your head around it, but it’s worth the time.

Along the horizontal axis are 20 within-country income groups (“ventiles”): the first ventile is made up of the bottom 5 percent of a country’s earners, the 20th ventile is the country’s top 5 percent. Along the vertical axis are world income distribution percentiles. So, for instance, in the chart above you can see that Brazil has both spectacularly rich and spectacularly poor people.

As Rampell explains, the chart makes some adjustments for variables like cost of living:

The household income numbers are all converted into international dollars adjusted for equal purchasing power, since the cost of goods varies from country to country. In other words, the chart adjusts for the cost of living in different countries, so we are looking at consistent living standards worldwide.

Debate over the data aside, the most striking point on this chart is that even the poorest 5 percent of Americans are among the richest people in the world — richer than nearly 70 percent of the world’s population.

How can there be so many people in the world who make less than America’s poorest, many of whom make nothing each year? Remember that were looking at the entire bottom chunk of Americans, some of whom make as much as $6,700; that may be extremely poor by American standards, but that amounts to a relatively good standard of living in India, where about a quarter of the population lives on $1 a day.

I doubt this is comforting to the poorest Americans, but it does show that America is doing something right.

to the Obama Admin, the Bush Admin, the CIA, the Navy SEALS and all of the other support folks in the field and otherwise.

I usually try to hold off a day or two on "big" stories to digest what "really" happened, since the first draft is often/usually not quite on the money.  

Plenty more to follow.

Donald Berwick, the person appointed by Obama to be in charge of Medicare, has a column in the Wall Street Journal that makes a very good observation about how relative prices are falling for products bought and sold in the free market. But he then draws exactly the wrong conclusion by asserting that further crippling market forces for healthcare will yield similar cost savings for programs such as Medicare.

Here’s the relevant passage from his Wall Street Journal column.

The right way is to help bring costs down by making care better and improving our health-care system. Improving quality while reducing costs is a strategy that’s had major success in other fields. Computers, cars, TVs and telephones today do more than they ever have, and the cost of these products has consistently dropped. The companies that make computers and microwaves didn’t get there by cutting what they offer: They achieved success by making their products better and more efficient. …Under President Obama’s framework, we will hold down Medicare cost growth, improve the quality of care for seniors, and save an additional $340 billion for taxpayers in the next decade.

I have no idea whether Berwick realizes that he has inverted reality, so I can’t decide whether he is cynically dishonest or hopelessly clueless. All I can say with certainty is that what he wrote is sort of like asserting “gravity causes things to fall, so therefore this rock will rise when I let go of it.”

from biggovernment.com

Sportspickl.com recently posted the "draft philosophy" for eight NFL franchises.  I realized they fit my current (and former) FFL owners as well.

Black Knights: The best players are available at the top of the draft so pick players who will allow you to be at the top of te draft every year (Bengals)

Parsons: You'll probably blow the pick anyway so don't over think it (Broncos)

Wiseman: Use your first four picks to take the four members of the world's current top ranked 4x100m relay team.  After that pick a few guys who might have played football before (Raiders)

Grote: Load up with as many white guys .... with....uh ....heart as possible (Colts)

Ewing: Don't draft for positional need.  Always take the cheapest player available (Cardinals)

Flash: Draft a Hall of Famer in the 6th round one time then live off that forthe next dozen years (Patriots)

Bechtol: Step 1.  Fire Matt Millen.  Step 2.  TBD (Lions)

Binion: There's a draft???  Crap.  Can I bum off your list?  (Redskins)

I know the Left has a vested interest in Obama being “The One” and everything being about him, but I just heard The Donald's conference yesterday after The Birth Certificate was released. The questioner seemed to believe that this was the first and only time a candidate's bona fides have been questioned. In point of fact the Donks started it (and I don't just mean Mrs. Clinton.)

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada.

Christopher Schürmann (born 1848 in New York) entered the Labor primaries during the 1896 Presidential election. His eligibility was questioned in a New York Tribune article, because he was born to alien parents of German nationality

Republican Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) was questioned in an article written by Breckinridge Long, and published in the Chicago Legal News during the U.S. presidential election of 1916, in which Hughes was narrowly defeated by Woodrow Wilson.

Republican Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the incorporated Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state

George Romney (1907–1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents. Romney's grandfather had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Utah outlawed polygamy. Romney's monogamous parents retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him in 1912. Romney never received Mexican citizenship, because the country's nationality laws had been restricted to jus-sanguinis statutes due to prevailing politics aimed against American settlers.

Lowell Weicker (born 1931), the former Connecticut Senator, Representative, and Governor, entered the race for the Republican party nomination of 1980 but dropped out before voting in the primaries began. He was born in Paris, France to parents who were U.S. citizens. His father was an executive for E. R. Squibb & Sons and his mother was the Indian-born daughter of a British general

John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone.

So eligibility issues have been raised SEVEN times before … six of them against Republican candidates.

And from The New York Times no less.

The Elph who unseated Allen Grayson is taking some heat.  NYT give him kudos.

Notice that Webster did not compare the crowd to Timothy McVeigh. No talk of abandoning the town hall meeting format. No claim that the folks who showed up with opposing views are not actual constituents. No demand that everyone turn in their cameras first, lest something embarrassing end up on YouTube. No bizarre claim that constituent meetings not be considered ‘political events.’