Apparently for the first time there are more people employed by the state than the manufacturing sector.

Durham weather is in breach of contract:

The deal is hotter, humid, and more longer summers for no snow during the winter. So whats all this white crap on the ground about.

Someone call Gore. His global warming is all over the trees of Durham.

It bears repeating in light of the inauguration of our new president Barack Obama. I look forward to arguing against most of his policy positions for the next four years.

Where Are My Keys ask if there is a double standard?

When you call out Obama during a rope line, the Media jumps into your history, and finds a tax lien you didn’t know you had.

If you are nominated for Treasury Secretary, and have four years of taxes you knew you owed, but didn’t pay, the Media yawns.

Gee, ya think?

From here.

Max Borders, over at TCS Daily has an excellent post describing the ridiculous rhetoric used to talk about managing the current state of the economy. He writes:

But the whole idea of fixing, running, regulating, designing, or modeling an economy rests on the notion that, if the right smart guys are at the rheostats, the economy can be ordered by intelligent design. But the economy is no mechanism. There is no mission control. Government cannot swoop down like a deus ex machina to explain the inexplicable and fix the unfixable. Why? Because the knowledge required to grasp each of the billions of actions, transactions and interconnections would fry the neural circuitry of a thousand Ben Bernankes. This is what F. A. Hayek called the knowledge problem. Knowledge, Hayek reminded us, is not concentrated among a few central authorities but is dispersed around society. That’s why bad unintended consequences follow government interventions like black swans.

Read the whole thing.

Don’t mind me. Just doing some excavating.

In a country with as many resources and wealth as ours, its seems reasonable to insist that businesses enable those with disabilities access without personal assistance. It seems unfair that disabled should have to enjoy less freedom then your average citizen simply because of some disability. To help ameliorate this unfairness, as a society, we should provide disabled people the tools needed to be functionally independent in performing their day to day tasks. That’s why I support federal laws that have established a simple set of provisions public and private entities should follow to give disabled people a chance to live independently. Seriously in a country with so much wealth, it’s the least we can do.

Furthermore, since federal law dictates a set of provisions to enable those with disabilities such independence, it seems fair that those people should be able to sue businesses that fail to meet those provisions. Otherwise, whats the point of having such provisions? Furthermore, when a business fails to follow these simple guidelines the disabled person feels embarrassment in needing to request assistance, and honestly, loses a little self dignity in the process. The least we can do is give him a legal option to redress some of the embarrassment he suffers.

Most regulation appears reasonable. Their outcomes are anything but.

Also, the reporter mentions that what this guy is doing is a manifestation of capitalism. In point of fact, it’s the opposite. Capitalism is having the right to dictate what may or may not be done with your property. A disabled guy using the government to force businesses to pay him money and make changes to their property is pretty much the exact opposite of capitalism. Its socialism with a little extortion mixed in for fun.

Between an MSNBC left leaning pundit and a conservative documentary filmmaker. The documentarian’s irreverence is refreshing and quite hilarious.