I used to say when I was growing up I didn't know whether I wanted to be a pirate or a clown, so I bacame an attorney.  Recent new from Mizzou gives that a whole new spin.  Some aggregation:

BYRON YORK COMPARES THE RODEO CLOWN OUTRAGE with the abuse and violent language aimed at George W. Bush by members of the establishment. Yeah, but he’s a rodeo clown. The common folk should know their place. I wonder if he’ll have to go into hiding, like George Zimmerman or Nakoula Nakoula, to escape the mob-frenzy whipped up by the President’s political apparat.

But here’s the truth: All this outrage is really an admission that Obama is weak, and can’t withstand the kind of criticism routinely directed at other presidents, from Nixon to Clinton to Bush. President Asterisk, indeed.

IOWAHAWK:

Key issues of the American left
2007: war, deficits, civil liberties
2013: impertinent rodeo clowns.

They must be crushed!

Shock: Satirist Depicts the President as a Monkey.

Save the President from the Clowns: Bring Back Lese-Majeste!

Flashback: Punk Rockers NOFX Showed Bush in Clown Makeup

JAMES TARANTO: Dog The Wag: A Professional Clown Is A Serious Clown.

My opinion of the US Dept of Education is well documented.  I'm agin' it.  And it pains me that I have to teach so much of what I call "rudementary civics" to my students when dealing with any number of topics.  Now there's this:  National Assessment of Educational Progress ‘Indefinitely Postpones’ Tests of U.S. History and Civics.

The less they know about U.S. history & government, the less appalled they’ll be by recent departures. Bug/feature?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said in his October 22, 2012, debate with GOP nominee Mitt Romney. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

“Congress didn’t compromise,” Obama whined on February 19. “They haven’t come together and done their jobs, and so as a consequence, we’ve got these automatic, brutal spending cuts that are poised to happen next Friday.” 

There is only one thing wrong with Obama’s words: They are total lies.

And we ALL know how terrible life has been under the sequester, right?  First dog Bo is airlifted to Obama holiday home. 

Ever notice Bo ALWAYS travels seperately?  Ever wonder about that?  Don't mean to point anything out but The Koran, Muslim ##5276:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger as saying: Angels do not accompany the travelers who have with them a dog

 

Just sayin'

quite a few saved up:

As a history lover and former Detroit resident, I had to share this amazing political cartoon.

realized I hadn't touched on this lately ... so let's take a look a teh Nook:

Still wandering through Bullfinch's mythology ... just finished up the Ring cycle.

Picked up my dog-eared copy of the Federalist Papers for another go-round.  #9 next.

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book of Poker

Frederic Bastiat's Economic Sophisms

a law review article by John Yoo regardingthe cirumvention of the treaty process.

a review of Michael Huemer's new book on the State's Political Authority

Lawrence Lessig on political corruption

Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil

Orwell's "Politics and the English Laguage" (1946)

Ayn Rand's "Man's Rights"

Boaz's History of Libertarianism

and I just finished Etienne De la Boetie's "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" (1576) .... setting it aside to revisit in a few month

Palin Calls Out Media on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: 'Now Do You Get It?' - tough to be ahead of your time

Hate fom the left: Stay Classy, Al: Sharpton Calls GOP Rep. ‘Congressman Snooki’

Regarding the RNC's threatened boycott of networks over Shrillary movies: They Build The Memory Hole Deep At CNN.

CNN continues to prove why FNN is #1: CNN Anchor Says Zoos 'Feel Like a Stone Age Thing': They Had Zoos Then?

Is Ohio issuing licenses yet?  Samuel L. Jackson: It's 'Open Season' on Young Black Men

I don't think that phrase means what you think it means: 'Peaceful Protester' Goes Ballistic on ALEC Attendees

But it looks like Putin has been punking POTUS prodigously.  Who could've forseen that?

In 2012, Rachel Maddow and other politico-media types mocked Romney for calling Russia our “number one geopolitical foe.” 

Reminder from VDH: 

Barack Obama’s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury — in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. But with Obama, as with everything with Obama, the about-face invokes irony, hypocrisy, and paradox, because it is just the sort of normal Neanderthal tit-for-tat that was not supposed to happen under an Obama pathbreaking foreign policy.

He entered office chastising the Bush administration for its failure to talk with the Iranians and Syrians. The subtext was that Bush lacked both his own charm and insight into human character that together would produce results that Texan right-wingers stuck in Cold War prisms could hardly appreciate.

Russian foreign minister tells US to behave ‘like grown-ups.’ Good thing we’ve got smart folks like Obama, Hillary, and John Kerry running things, instead of that dumb cowboy Bush.

Last week saw a roundup of a partial timeline of President Barack Obama claiming that infrastructure spending will magically create jobs, an act he's been taking on the road during Congress's summer break. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, history professors Larry Schweikart, Jr., and Burton W. Folsom, Jr., argue that, to the contrary,  

building infrastructure was never the engine of growth, but rather a lagging indicator of growth that had already occurred in the private sector. And when the infrastructure was built, it was often best done privately, at least until the market grew so large as to demand a wider public role, as with the need for an interstate-highway system in the mid 1950s.

Sample:

Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. One exception was in Michigan, where the state tried to build two railroads but lost money doing so, and thus happily sold both to private owners in 1846. When the federal government decided to do infrastructure in the 1860s, and build the transcontinental railroads (or "intercontinental railroad," as Mr. Obama called it in 2011), the laying of track followed the huge and successful private investments in railroads.

In fact, when the government built the transcontinentals, they were politically corrupt and often—especially in the case of the Union Pacific and the Northern Pacific—went broke. One cause of the failure: Track was laid ahead of settlements. Mr. Obama wants to do something similar with high-speed rail. The Great Northern Railroad, privately built by Canadian immigrant James J. Hill, was the only transcontinental to be consistently profitable. It was also the only transcontinental to receive no federal aid. In railroads, then, infrastructure not only followed the major capital investment, it was done better privately than by government.

Whole thing here.

The president is often at his rhetorical and economic worst when talking about infrastructure. How many times, after all, can the man claim federal-government responsibility for building the Golden Gate Bridge?