THE POVERTY that budget-cutters can’t ignore. Hmm. It doesn’t seem to occur to the letter writers that perhaps if government spent a little less money on monitoring salt and transfats in our diets, among other such regulatory stupidity, there would be a little more money to address the real needs of the impoverished.

FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE - the Holder tapes. When things go south, find someone (else) to blame.

I LIKE IT: Boston sends nonprofits requests for tax-like payments. Any organization dedicated to “improving the community” and taking government money to do so should be taxed at twice the going rate. There would be a lot less "fraud, waste, and abuse" if the non-profit sector were taxed like the rest of us.

“EVERYONE KNOWS that the Left is hypocritical, but we should never lose sight of the fact that it is also vicious.”

TEN MORE DAYS, 10,000 more leaves.



Quite a change from April 21st and April 8th.

DO WE WANT TO BE FOOLED? Well, yes - if we’re a liberal. Reality, after all, is what we want it to be.

FINDING THE SOUR SPOT: the Daily Caller’s Mickey Kaus has coined the perfect descriptor for the Obama administration’s entire governing philosophy.

TELEPROMPTER ONE is in the rough again.

FROM AROUND THE WEB: an interesting note on Social Security numbers.

The nine-digit SSN, which has been issued in more than 400 million different sequences, is divided into three parts:

Area numbers – The first three numbers originally represented the state in which a person first applied for a social security card. Numbers started in the northeast and moved westward. This meant that people on the east coast had the lowest numbers and those on the west coast had the highest. Since 1972, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has assigned numbers and issued cards based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the original application form. Since the applicant’s mailing address doesn’t have to be the same as his residence, his area number doesn’t necessarily represent the state in which he resides.

Group numbers – These two middle digits, which range from 01 through 99, are simply used to break all the SSNs with the same area number into smaller blocks to make administration easier. (The SSA says that, for administrative reasons, group numbers issued first consist of the odd numbers from 01 through 09, and then even numbers from 10 through 98, within each area number assigned to a state. After all the numbers in group 98 of a specific area have been issued, the even groups 02 through 08 are used, followed by odd groups 11 through 99.)

Serial numbers – Within each group designation, serial numbers — the last four digits in an SSN — run consecutively from 0001 through 9999.

The numbers are not recycled. Recycling numbers might become an issue someday, but not any time soon — there are only about a billion possible combinations.

No link, unfortunately.

"SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER to wait for people to ask for advice or to be judicious in doling out advice. Socrates learned this the hard way. The Greek philosopher went around giving people good advice. And they poisoned him."

From a Harvey MacKay column.

JUST LEAVE OUT THE WORD ‘GAY’ and you have my thoughts exactly: ”I am gradually becoming weary of the tactics of the radical gay leftists, and I find myself wondering if and how their relentless, unceasing, and unquenchable campaign will end. I am beginning to look back fondly on the days when most of them stayed in the closet. Will they push too far and end up losing much of what they have gained?

The post from which this comment was extracted is here.

AS EVERY GOOD ENGINEER KNOWS, correlation does not necessarily prove causation - but it tells you where to look.


Will Collier looks. "Limited supply plus growing demand equals higher prices. That’s a formula so simple, even a community organizer should be able to understand it."

I HAVE A DEGREE FROM HARVARD, and you expect me to work?

IT’S NOT “AND YET” ... it’s because. More: “Inside every Leftist is a little authoritarian dying to get out.” Emphasis on “little.”

THERE'S SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR MATURITY: "Only in 1976 and 2008 did young people vote in large enough numbers to elect a president. They screwed up both times."

P. T. BARNUM is reputed to have said “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And many of them get MBA’s.

OBAMA: No ‘silver bullet’ to bring down the price of gas.

His ’six-gun’ only shoots green bullets.

GREAT NEWS: Superman to renounce his U.S. citizenship. But “[i]sn’t he … an illegal alien? Since when did we start admitting people from Krypton, anyway? Ah well. More work available now for American patriots like Batman and Spider-Man.”

THERE. NOW IT'S FIXED: "In a major strategic shift, the Service Employees International Union plans to use its giant political operation to try to build a[n] grass-roots astroturf movement of public protest and organization similar to the massive show of pro-labor support that overran Madison, Wis. last month."

NOW WE KNOW: "Shared sacrifice" means you share the sacrifice.