Thanksgiving Is Almost Here - It's Chestnut Soup Time

I posted the recipe for Chestnut Soup a couple of years back. It is my favorite soup. I always make this for Thanksgiving and often for Christmas dinner too. Well, it's that time of year again, so it's time to roast some chestnuts!

Evidence That "Gun-Free" Zones Actually Attract Killers

Cincinnati station WCPO reporter Brendan Keefe ran this story about gun free zones and their attractiveness to "active killers," e.g., the kind of killers that go into a place like a school or a post office and kill a number of people before ultimately turning their weapons on themselves. It seems they actually seek out these designated gun-free zones for their crimes because they are pretty much assured their victims will be defenseless.

The other statistic that emerged from a study of active killers is that they almost exclusively seek out "gun free" zones for their attacks.

In most states, concealed handguns are prohibited at schools and on college campuses even for those with permits.

Many malls and workplaces also place signs at their entrances prohibiting firearms on the premises.

Now tacticians believe the signs themselves may be an invitation to the active killers. The psychological profile of a mass murderer indicates he is looking to inflict the most casualties as quickly as possible.

Also, the data show most active killers have no intention of surviving the event.

They may select schools and shopping malls because of the large number of defenseless victims and the virtual guarantee no on the scene one is armed.

As soon as they're confronted by any [my emphasis] armed resistance, the shooters typically turn the gun on themselves.

Trying to protect people by designating a place as gun-free makes sure that the only people who don't have guns are the people who are law-abiding/rules following in the first place and is no deterrent at all to someone bent on mayhem.

A couple of the commenters chided the reporter for referring to his sources in generalities. In the comments he responds by naming his experts and providing links to his data sources.

(via Instapundit and Arms & the Law)

No Bailout for the Big 3

Powerline has a post this morning arguing against the bailout of the Big 3 auto makers that puts the issue in perspective. Giving them $25 billion would be throwing good money after bad. It's time for Chapter 11. Only if the auto makers can get rid of their crushing legacy costs will they have a chance to recover. A bailout will just delay the inevitable.

The Case for Global Warming Looks Shakier All the Time

Via Tim Blair we have this latest screw-up by NASA's James Hansen.

"This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year."

Mark Steyn Is Back

Mark Steyn had been on hiatus for a while but now appears to be back with his regular weekly column in the Orange County Register. This one is about the election, of course.

"While few electorates consciously choose to leap left, a couple more steps every election, and eventually societies reach a tipping point. In much of the West, it's government health care. It changes the relationship between state and citizen into something closer to pusher and junkie."

Need I say it? Read the whole thing.

Obama is the Wrong Choice

How much more evidence does anyone need?

This guy does not have America's interests at heart.

Why Incentives Matter

The Instapundit posted a link yesterday to an article in the Wall Street Journal about younger Japanese workers refusing promotions. It's a good article but the second update to Glenn's original post is what I find most interesting. A reader wrote:

"It's not just Japan. I work for one of the big 3 aerospace/defense companies at a Los Angeles area location, and though I wouldn't say it's nearly as evident as in Japan, young workers in our industry are asking the same questions. We have no hope of achieving the same standard of living as the droves of retiring Boomers and Silents, and the 2% raise differential afforded by a promotion simply isn't enough of an incentive to work 20-30% more hours a week.

If the industry paid overtime, or offered significant bonuses to rank and file employees (bonuses are only available to upper management), a lot of young engineers would respond enthusiastically. In fact, we've asked the company to do these things in recent employee forums. We'd all like to buy homes in the area and raise families here, but the older workers own all the real estate, and most of us assume that we'll give things a few years, but get out of the area once we need to settle down. It's simply too expensive to live in a metro area like L.A. Since the incentive structure doesn't offer us hope of achieving the same lifestyle as the older employees, we don't see much reason to devote our lives to these companies. As I said, the 2% differential doesn't make a whole lot of difference, so why bother with the extra stress?"

Having once lived in LA and later the San Francisco Bay area, I know exactly what he means. I could never have hoped to buy property in either of those areas for pretty much the same reason and when the time came to leave the area, I did so with mixed feelings. I was sad about leaving behind the friends my wife and I had made but also enormously relieved by the significant decrease in the cost of living, tax burden and all the other ways California has of nickel-and-diming one to death (and don't get me started on the rampant nanny-statist tendencies).

The other point the reader/commenter made was about the reasons for lack of loyalty to the company. I have only made significant improvements to my income by being willing to change employers (and to move where the jobs are). It's not that I disliked working for some of them but a matter of pragmatism. They were looking out primarily for their own self interest. I had to be responsible for looking out for mine. That's the way it should be. Waiting for the company, or the government to notice your income isn't keeping up with the cost of living, and then actually be willing to do something about it, is a recipe for a stagnant standard of living. You make your own "luck."

Fred Thompson Summarizes the Stakes in this Election

Fred was my first choice for the Republican nomination. Alas, it was not to be but he still has something to say about it:


I hope the rumors that he will be tapped to chair the RNC are true.

(Via Little Green Footballs)

Questions the Market Has Asked - And Answered

In today's Wall Street Journal, economist and retired business executive George Newman lays out the reasons the stock market is so weak.

"To state the obvious: The valuation of an individual stock reflects the collective expectation of investors about a company's future profits, dividends and appreciation, and the same is true of the market as a whole. These profits, in turn, are greatly influenced by government policy on taxes, spending, subsidies, environmental and other regulations, labor laws, and the corporate legal climate. Investors have heard enough from both candidates in the last month or two to conclude that prospects for a flourishing, competitive, growing and reasonably free economy in a McCain administration are bad, and in an Obama administration far worse. (In fact, the market's bearish behavior over the last couple of months pretty closely tracks Barack Obama's gains.)"

He concludes with this: "The silver lining in all this is that the market has already "discounted" an Obama win, so if that happens you won't wake up on Nov. 5 to find your remaining savings down the drain. If the unexpected happens, you may be in for a pleasant surprise."

Read the whole thing.

More Delicious Irony

Apparently solar panels cause global warming. The weather gods have found yet another way to mock Al Gore.

".......a greenhouse gas emitted during the production of solar panels and HDTVs, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) that is used for cleaning some parts of the gadgets, is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide."

Obama Talking Openly About Redistribution of Wealth

(via Boortz) This is a more than 4 minute segment from an interview Obama gave to a local Chicago public radio station when he was still an Illinois legislator. In it he talks openly and with some detail on why he thinks the courts should be used to force redistribution of wealth in the name of "political and economic justice."


Don't tell me this guy isn't a Marxist. If you're thinking of pulling the lever for 0bama, think carefully about what that means if you do.

Update: Bill Whittle analyzes the clip.

Another MSM Journalist Criticizes the Profession

Michael S. Malone, a fourth generation journalist with 30 plus years in the industry himself, comes down hard on his fellow journalists.

"But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather - not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake - but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the Big Leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play. The few instances where I think the press has gone too far - such as the Times reporter talking to Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends - can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha Bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so."

While I wish he hadn't waited so long to speak up, better now than never. Thank goodness some of them still have a conscience. If the MSM is to be saved, the profession of journalism must confront the bias that has become so obvious to so many of us and return to its ideal of reporting all the facts in as unbiased a manner as it is possible for humans to do. If they had been doing their jobs instead of cheer-leading for one side, we would not be on the verge of electing as President, a man we know very little about and what little we do know is very worrying indeed.

Confusing Glibness with Intelligence

(via Instapundit) Todd Zywicki has a post up at The Volokh Conspiracy in which he discusses the tendency among people to confuse glibness with intelligence or, put more concisely, "to confuse the ability to "bullshit" with actual intelligence" in the context of the presidential race. Some people may falter or say they don't know when asked a question they haven't been prepared for while some may spout off a ready answer. The latter person may actually have no idea what they are talking about but they can certainly make it sound good. Read the whole post but here is an excerpt:

"My sense is that Hoven is on the right track. Some thoughtful people simply have a tendency to confuse intelligence with the ability to be glib, or more precisely, to bs. And I think that is much of what it comes down to--if Palin doesn't know the answer to a question, she just isn't that good at making something up. Biden, by contrast, is a master bs'er, as his debate performance exhibited. As a general rule, the less informed he was about the answer to a question, the more assertive he was in answering it, such as his extraordinary answer about the legislative role of the Vice-President. It is clear that he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, yet he just plowed ahead throwing out assertions with rhetorical flair. Classic bs. Even on issues that were supposedly in his area of expertise, such as the Constitution, he wasn't even in the ballpark of being correct. Hoven picks up on Biden's whopper of answer about kicking Hezbollah out of Lebanon, but it is pretty much the same thing--aggressive bs covering a complete lack of any clue what he is talking about."

A Scathing Indictment of the MSM...

.....by one of their own, Orson Scott Card.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

Read it all. And don't miss the editor's note at the top.
(via Instapundit)

More on Obama's "Tax Cuts"

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, William McGurn walks us through the Obama tax plan and shows that not only is it essentially an income redistribution scheme but also a further disincentive to work, at both ends of the income scale.

And that leads us to the heart of this problem. If the government is going to give tax cuts to 44% of American based on their Social Security taxes -- without actually refunding to them the money they are paying into Social Security -- Mr. Obama will have to get the funds elsewhere. And this is where "general revenues" turns out to be a more agreeable way of saying "Other People's Money."

This is essentially the same point I was making in my earlier post. Cut through the Doublespeak and what you have left is a straight up confiscation and redistribution of money from people who worked for it to people who didn't. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Sound familiar?