1.  Carolina.  I REALLY don't think they go with Newton.  So just for giggles I'll give them Gabbert, even though Alabama DT M Dareus would be a better pick.

2.  Denver.  Many have them taking Dareus, but I'm going with LSU CB Peterson.

3.  Buffalo.  Von Miller (OLB Texas A&M)

4.  Cincinnati.  AJ Green (WR Georgia)

5.  Arizona. They NEED a young QB but they'll take Tyron Smith OT USC

6.  Cleveland.   Julio Jones, WR, Alabama

7. San Francisco 49ers - Robert Quinn, DE, North Carolina

8. Tennessee Titans - Nick Fairley, DT, Auburn

9.  Dallas.  Anthony Castonzo, OT, Boston College

10.  Washington.  Aldon Smith, DE, Missouri

The Boy was home this w/e to enjoy his 22^nd birthday. We watched about 17 episodes of Archer. Dined at the houses of BOTH sets of grandparents. Generally had a good time. But one of the high points was going to see Atlas Shrugged Part I.

If you've been around much you know I fancy myself a Libertarian. My lovely spouse is a Donk. Why? She was raised that way. No other reason. So the poor boy never had a chance. And he's at “that age.” Election night 2008 he partied in Lincoln Park with the Obama supporters. For him it was joyous. The following summer he backpacked across Europe reading Atlas Shrugged. It was transformative in a LOT of ways. That fact that it helped him befriend attractive European females was not the least.

And so it was that we settled in to view the film. We loved all the casting except for Jsu Garcia as Francisco D'Anconia. Setting the movie in 2016 was an interesting choice necessitated by the budget limitations and so we missed the art deco feel that NYC should have presented. The offices and architecture of the rest of the sets were great. Like its big book to movie predecessor LOTR it takes some liberties with the order of events but there's no disruption done to the storytelling.

Many reviewers have hammered the film for being stiff and robotic. I would disagree. Many scenes are blocked right out of the text. Several seasons ago my performance as Baron Von Trapp was panned by a local critic as being “too stiff and strict.” She wanted Bill Clinton or Alan Alda to do the role. IMHO the critics of AS also want this to be soft and gentle. Dagny Taggart is NOT soft. Henry Reardon is NO T gentle. That being said a few fewer longing looks between Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler woulda been nice. Too much foreshadowing or “a little something for the ladies” perhaps.

Not perfect. Not epic. Not LOTR. But a damned sight better than most of the pap coming outta Hollywood these days. True to the text. And VERY timely. *****

And so the year rolls around yet again to Krauthammer Day, the day on which we all celebrate Charles Krauthammer’s confident assertion eight years ago that:

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Or nearly all of us celebrate it anyway. Charles Krauthammer himself seems to prefer to mark the occasion with an entirely unrelated Run, Paul Ryan Run! column ... It would be nice to see him (and others) mark the occasion more formally ...

The post continues, in deliberately vague fashion, and notice how Professor Farrell would like it that Charles Krauthammer and "others" be blown to bits in a "Krauthammer Day" celebration featuring Easter egg bombs, and even that might not in fact be "dangerous enough to really mark the occasion properly." A little screencap to remember this occasion.

and does the NYT have ANY proofreaders left?  Who let this go?

Paul Krugman says “So, let’s try another shot to the head.”

Hey, remember when gas was $2.20 a gallon and the unemployment rate was 4.4%? What happened with that? …Oh, right, the Democrats won the 2006 Congressional elections.”

I think the GOP has found its 2012 message . . . .

FOND REMEMBRANCE OF THE RECENT PAST:

Obama has appointed some kinda commission to “look into” rising gas prices, alleging the “speculators” are the cause.

First, isn't that what the FTC is supposed to do? Seems that wasteful duplication and redundant and repetitive government commissions are a “bad idea” when we're broke AND when a growing number of voters are trending over into the “small gub-mint” camp

Second Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren explain why evil oil “speculators” are not behind the recent rise in oil prices.

There is no need to repair to conspiracy to answer the question about why gasoline prices are going up. The loss of Libyan crude–about 2% of global supply–has reduced the amount of oil available in the market and gasoline prices track global crude oil prices.

Prices must necessarily rise to reduce global oil consumption because we can’t consume what isn’t there. How much do prices need to rise to reduce oil consumption by 2%? It takes a big increase in gasoline prices to get us to drive even a little less. Economists estimate that prices must rise anywhere from 10 to 20 times the percentage reduction in quantity to reduce demand enough to equal the lower supply. Thus for a 2% supply reduction, prices must rise between 20% and 40%. Average gasoline prices have risen 20% since early February, on the low end of what economists predict.

by Sarah Hoyt

...

Remember how in Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton had dinosaurs recreated from dinosaur DNA frozen in amber and coupled with frog DNA? Remember how it all went awry because these time displaced creatures couldn’t safely exist in the modern world?

Jurassic President starts with the soft-lighted comparisons between Obama and FDR leading up to the 2009 swearing-in. People who weren’t on board with the ethos of Obama’s campaign rolled their eyes and mumbled things like depression chic and there they go again, but I submit to you that Obama believed it. He not only thought he was the new FDR, he thought the world wanted and needed a new FDR. He knew FDR was the change we’d all been waiting for.

go read it all: Jurassic President: “Obama’s preserved in the amber of an echo chamber where the romanticized version of the 1930s, seen through the new-age gauze of the 1970s, is paradise. . . . I don’t share his view, but I can understand it because we do move in intellectually similar circles.”

first:

Shrewd Satire or Political Propaganda?

1. Fewer people will die on the road
2. Demand for high-mileage cars may grow
3. Shorter security lines at the airport
4. Less pollution
5. Less congestion
6. High prices will lead to lower prices
7. More exercise
8. End of wars
9. Local businesses may profit
10. Starve oil-rich despots out of existence

Upon my first read-through of MSN author Lynn Mucken's exposition of the silver linings to skyrocketing fuel costs, I found the blatant propagandizing repugnant.  I then reread the list and decided that, no, this wasn't propaganda.  In fact, this list proved to be the most brilliant satire I've read all week .....

Via iHateTheMedia, here are a few of the predictions made on the first Earth Day. Don’t these sound like the predictions today that fail, like the 50 million climate refugees by 2010 followed by the moving of the goalposts to 2020?

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

go read em all .... and weep

I come from a Midwestern farm background. Raised beef cattle. We had some horses for utilitarian purposes and a few hogs for variety. Spinster aunts kept chickens. Neighboring farms had dairy cattle and more hogs. We each had small gardens as well. Had push come to shove we coulda gotten along quite some time on our own. Just four or five clustered family farms. One thing we DIDN'T have was sheep. My 4-H experience gave me plenty of encounters with the sheep farmers however. And there's one thing I learned from them that all the geniuses from Ivy's covered colleges now inhabiting the marbled halls of Washington DC never figured out.

You can shear a sheep 2-3 times per year but you can only slaughter it once.

There's lots of talk these days from the infantile Left about “taxing the rich.” I (and others) have already explained that there's a difference between “the rich” (people who have lot's of assets) and “the top wage earners” (people who earn lots of money.) Income distribution, confiscation, whatever you call it, can NOT solve our current problem. As has been illustrated numerous times if you took ALL of the assets from “the rich” you could run the gub-mint for about 10 months. Tops. Once. Figure the rest of the population could pony up the funds to finish out the year.

But what do we do the NEXT year? The lambs have been led to the slaughter. They have nothing left to take. In fact they're now recipients. Unemployed. Homeless. Unable to afford food. Some of them might be able to find jobs in their former businesses but of course that makes them gub-mint employees who don't pay income taxes. And what about the REST of us? After watching the successful, the contributors, lose everything, I think it can safely be said that there'd be a bit of a dis-incentive effect. And the game would be up.

So destroying the rich isn't REALLY an option and while the children continue to howl a few grownups on the Left are beginning to come around. At least the illustrious Paul Krugman has TRIED to come up with an alternative. He calls it the “23% Solution.” Just set a tax rate that generates tax revenue equal to 23% of GDP. Flip the switch. Adjust the dial. Because in the gub-mint that's all it takes.

“What's WRONG with this enlightened suggestion?” you ask. Only this. Since 1950 tax revenue relative to GDP has been 18% +/-1%. It cracked 20% most recently in 2000 (20.6%) and previous to that it was just shy of 22% in 1944 and 1945. I think Europe and the Pacific were involved. Both still a long way from 23%. We've tried all kinds of things to make it higher. We've tried top marginal rates of 95% and tarrifs and levees and license fees and every thing we've tried has led to a decline of GDP to the point that the % stays around 18%. It's an iron law. Unless you figure a way around it (and no one in the gub-mint is suggesting they have) we'll NEVER get to Paul Krugman's magical mythical 23%.

But 19% is attainable. It's BEEN done. It's not like trying to run the economy on unicorn tears. It can work. But it CAN'T sustain the utopia of candy and ponies that the Left continues to tell us we can have if we just eat the rich.

So I'll be glad to wear that woolen sweater, but I'll pass on the mutton.

Resources and other reading:

My niece is taking an economics class in HS. Earlier this month the teacher was showing a film on counterfeiting. Class was interrupted when the teacher was summoned to the office. Seems her children who attend a neighboring HS had been caught passing counterfeit money they'd made. THAT's what's wrong with education AND the economy.

But today's quote is “A society that functions under the faulty premise that wealth is a zero-sum game, that a market economy leads to static socioeconomic classes and that think wealth is created magically will naturally demand policies that preclude the producers in society from producing.  The end result is that with less production comes less wealth, and increased poverty for all.  The poor especially suffer when the wealth-generators lack the incentive to produce.”

from Getting Poor on the Backs of the Rich

with JUST the kinda twist you've come to expect around here: