I was having a bad day today...

...until I saw this:



Carry on soldier!

Via Smallest Minority

Word Verification

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I've been getting so much comment spam lately that I've had to turn on word verification for comments.

Bizarre Law

A woman was given a ticket for sitting on a park bench because she doesn’t have children. The Rivington Playground on Manhattan’s East Side has a small sign at the entrance that says adults are prohibited unless they are accompanied by a child. Forty-seven-year-old Sandra Catena says she didn’t see the sign when she sat down to wait for an arts festival to start. Two New York City police officers asked her if she was with a child. When she said no, they gave her a ticket that could bring a one thousand dollar fine and 90 days in jail.

The city parks department says the rule is designed to keep pedophiles out of city parks, but a parks spokesman told the Daily News that the department hoped police would use some common sense when enforcing the rule.

So basically single people who sit on park benches are assumed to be pedophiles unless they prove otherwise? What ever happend to innocent until proven guilty?

From this article via Finland for Thought

Bartlett On Austrians

I agree with Bruce Bartlett's comment to this post on Austrian Economics:

"...how can you rationally discuss tax policy with people who believe that all taxation is per se theft? They simply don't accept the ideas of better and worse. If you are not for abolishing taxation, then you might as well be for 100% tax rates, the way the Austrians see it."

Indeed, pragmatism is important when you want to convince people who don't fully agree with you. Now that I think about this, his statement can easily apply to Objectivists.

Question of the Day

"Republicans have abandoned small government. Why shouldn't voters abandon them?"

Link via Division of Labour

Fight for the Cause!

Okay, I'm in on this too:



Instapundit, Coyote Blog, and KipEsquire are also fighting for pork reduction as a way to pay for Katrina relief.

Of course you can't discuss pork without mentioning the Citizen's Against Government
Waste's invaluable contribution to the cause. Here's some suggestions they have for elimination this year:

Prime Cuts features some long-standing proposals, such as terminating Community Development Block Grants (saving $24.7 billion over five years), eliminating the White House’s National Youth Anti-drug Media Campaign (saving $1 billion over five years), and eliminating the Advanced Technology Program (saving $750 million over five years).
New recommendations include eliminating two narcissistic education scholarship programs that would save $205 million over five years: the B.J. Stupak Olympic Scholarship Program and the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program.

The Cato Institute also has some suggestions.

Technorati tag: porkbusters

R.J. Rummel's blog

I didn't know R.J. Rummel had a blog until now. Here it is.

California Elections

I found a site that lists the ballot propositions as well as other topics in the November California Elections here.

LOL

This is quite funny:

Inventor fuels car with dead cats

Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony, told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel -- a homemade blend of garbage, run-over cats and other ingredients -- is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel.

Not Surprised

I'm sure that I am not the only one that saw this coming:

The source told me that the two women who had made purchases with the [debit] card [distributed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina] each bought a signature monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbag in the $800 range.

"They didn't look destitute by any stretch. You would never have said, 'They must be one of the evacuees.' … The one that I dealt with yesterday was 20. She'll be 21 next month." The source described the reaction of other store-keepers in the mall - which includes luxury brands Ferragamo, Burberry, Judith Leiber and Neiman Marcus - as "outrage."

Foreign Aid hurts growth

From Johann Norberg:



More info here.

Update: Dingel criticizes the simplicity of the graph.

Bizarre Anti-Trust Law

Did you know that the NFL is not allowed to show any games on Friday or Saturday during the college and high school football season? Here's the law.

Who's to blame?

Here's an impressive list.

Link via Johan Norberg

Unusual Fact of the Day

Did you know that Boxing is officially banned in Sweden, Norway, Cuba, and North Korea?

Rehnquist and Ballot Access

Ballot Access News has harsh words to say for the former Chief Justice regarding ballot access laws.

New Orleans levees

I don't want to over-politicize this tragedy, but Lawrence White has a good post about who should have been taking care of the levees and why:

But why was it a federal job? The beneficiaries of the levees were entirely in one city, in one state. Why didn’t the city or the state pay for levee improvements?

Update:John Tierney has an excellent article as well:

Starting in the 1960's, the federal government took over the business of insuring against floods. It offered subsidized insurance to people in flood-prone areas, encouraging seaside homes that never would have been built otherwise. Even at bargain rates, most people went without flood insurance - only about a third of the homes in New Orleans carried it.

He also talks about how disastrous FEMA is:

People don't bother to protect themselves because they figure - correctly - that if disaster strikes they'll be reimbursed anyway by FEMA. It gives out money so freely that it has grown into one of the great vote-buying tools of the modern presidency.