From the Washington Examiner:

U.S. ranks behind Rwanda, Belarus, Azerbaijan in ease of creating new business, World Bank says.

It's been a busy week in Oval Office Land.

Fareed Zakaria: Iran Deal Is A Train Wreck. 

MN ObamaCare exchange failing, panel recommends scrapping system.

Future US envoy displays total ignorance of Norway. (esp read THIS one ... it's precious)

He's the freakin' Casey Jones of Presidents

 Day?  Week?  Month.  Possibly.

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/American-Exceptionalism-and-Freedom

Earlier this week POTUS declaimed "If I had a son, I wouldn't let him play football."

Mark Levin responded "If I had a son I wouldn't let him  be an ambassador in this administration."

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
2. Social Security for All
3. Take Back The Land
4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
5. A Public Bank in Every State

The article should have been titled “Five Things That Have Been Imposed by Governments Repeatedly and Failed Miserably.”

On the other hand, Andrew Criscione has written a far more novel, interesting, and radical version.

1.  No more slavery.

2. End the college bubble.

3.  Cheaper weed.

4.  Legalize summer jobs.

5. Cut off welfare queen parents.

Go read it all.

My movie viewing PLUMMETED this fall and has NOT picked back up.  So here's the plan.  Each month I intend to watch and report on one of the following: one of my top 12 movies as designated on Flickchart.com, one of the users top 12 movies as designated by ALL memebers of Flickchart.com AND one of the "biigie" AA nominees (Best Picture, Director, Actress, Actor.)

I've already seen and written about "Gravity," so i'll be skipping that one.  There rest will be viewed in no particular order depending on when they become available.

The other two lists will give us Goodfellas and High Noon for January.

After the "pajama boy" debacle one would think the Donks would have two or three people look at what they're releasing on an unsuspecting public.  One would be wrong.  Witness. 

A photo posted on Sunday by the official HealthCare.gov Facebook account has prompted an avalanche of mockery.

The Obamacare Facebook photo reads: "The first thing I'm going to do after my coverage begins is ______." 

Facebook users wasted no time filling in the blank with quips and barbs aimed at mocking the unpopular Obamacare program.

"Get another job so I can afford to pay for it," responded one Facebook user.

"Check for identity theft," quipped another. 

"Lament the lack of coverage and the astronomical cost for the crappy coverage," wrote another.

"Try not to get sick all year," snarked one Facebook user.

"Wonder why it costs so much more than it used to because I am a young, healthy male with no preexisting conditions," wrote one Facebook poster. 

"EAT!!! I was starved waiting all these weeks to get signed up. I never had time to cook or even work," wrote another. 

"Watch the economy circle the drain," stated another Facebook  user.

City of God, book two:

"And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand."

Our president’s time in office has been one of wonder and astonishment.

He was surprised by the depth of the recession when he came into office.

He then became surprised at the duration of the bad economy.

He was surprised to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. 

He was surprised there were no shovel-ready jobs. 

He was surprised the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was running guns to Mexican drug cartels.

He was surprised S&P downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in history. 

He was surprised the IRS was targeting conservatives.

He was surprised the Arab Spring imploded. 

He was surprised his CIA director was under investigation by the Justice Department.

He was surprised reporters were under surveillance by the Justice Department.

He was surprised  Catholic bishops were upset about Obamacare’s contraception mandate.

He’s regularly surprised by bad unemployment numbers.

He was surprised the sequester actually went into effect. 

He was surprised Israel’s defense minister excoriated the Iran nuke deal.

He was surprised by the opposition to his plan to strike Syria.

He was surprised the Obamacare website was a debacle.

He was surprised how complicated it is to buy health insurance.

We’ve yet to hear if he was surprised Benghazi wasn’t caused by a YouTube video.

Is there any surprise about the condition we’re in?

By Peter Kirsanow over at The Corner

I use lots of legislative examples to illustrate the LoUC in my lectures.  And when I touch on banking, fees, and regulation I frequently use payday lenders as my example.  They provide a needed service to those who would not GET the serive elsewhere.  Dodd-Frank is driving them out of business, which the Left sees as a good thing, but it's being done to the detriment of those least able to pay for it.  LoUC.  Bastiat's unseen.

“Hefty Bank Fees Waylay Solders.” According to the article, many members of the military are frequent users of bank overdraft protection, which has caused some concern in some quarters. The article provides no hard evidence that usage of overdraft protection has risen in recent years, but implies that the general impression is that it has.

Assuming that the perception is correct that usage of overdraft protection by military members has risen in recent years, why would that be?  Well, how about the enactment of the Military Lending Act in 2007, which imposed a 36% APR cap on payday loans to military members, effectively outlawing payday loans (and some other products for military members):

 Congress cracked down with the Military Lending Act, which, starting in 2007, limited to 36% the APR interest on many payday-style loans to military members.

Since then, overdraft programs have replaced payday lending as the leading financial problem for many military personnel, says Adm. Abbot of the Navy-Marine relief society. Some financial institutions serving the military have reined in overdraft fees, he says, while others are engaged in “predatory or punitive overdraft practices.”

Eliminating access to a particular product (payday loans) doesn’t eliminate the need for credit. It is entirely predictable that eliminating payday loans to service members will result in increased use of bank overdraft protection–just as it does for civilians.

Moreover, as we note in the article, in many situations payday loans are less expensive than overdraft protection (it appears from the article that the break even point in favor of overdraft protection is lower than for payday loans because overdraft fees on military bases are lower than typical market rates) and consumers understand this and use the products rationally. So the net impact of the MLA in some cases will be to take away a less expensive product and lead to greater use of a more-expensive product.

In the end, the article doesn’t report the data as to whether usage of overdraft protection rose after the MLA was enacted. But it would violate the predictions of economics if it didn’t.

from the Volokh Conspiracy.