Here's a screenshot of g***le dot com's observance of Columbus Day

Red diaper doper baby arrested in Chicago for vandalizing Columbus statue

The poor benighted soul operates under the odd conviction that ole Christopher is still alive and inhabits his statue.

From the story here:

While he was defacing the statue, Miskell shouted obscenities, including "F--- Columbus," "F--- the USA," and "Die Columbus!"... Miskell was found with a can of red spray paint. He also was wearing rubber gloves, a ski mask, a bandana and black socks over his sneakers.

Here we go again: "City man" charged with sexual assault isn't from the city, but is rather an illegal alien charged in a previous case

"Man broke into home, sexually assaulted 6-year-old girl, cops say"

TRENTON -- A city man was charged with sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl after her father discovered a stranger in bed with her in the middle of the night, police said. ... Trenton police said they charged [Edgar] Mendoza last year for peeping into a home, but the status of that case was unclear Wednesday.

Laugh of the Day: Harvey Weinstein's so stupid he forgot HE'S supposed to watch the ACTRESS shower

Don't look now but full-time job growth has slowed by 29% since 2015

(all data not-seasonally-adjusted)

In September 2017, full-time jobs grew barely by 2% year over year. The only other month in 2017 at 2% or higher was in April, at 2.3%, the dreaded spring of the year when the BLS' Birth/Death model adds phantom jobs to the economic data out of thin air based on business formation assumptions. All other months in 2017 so far have seen full-time jobs grow year over year by less than 2%, yielding the average shown of 1.7%. By contrast, 2016 had only three months out of the first nine below 2% growth year over year, and 2015 had none. Welcome to the slowdown, and maybe a . . ..

Illegal Treasury Dept. financial spying on Americans began under Obama and Jack Lew

From the story here:

Sources said the spying had been going on under President Barack Obama . . .. In October of 2016, Rep. Sean Duffy, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew asking for OIA’s legal authority to collect and retain domestic information.

Nearly one year later, the Congressman has yet to receive an answer, according to a committee staffer.

Britain voted for Brexit but the Tories can't deliver it because too many of them are against it

From the story here:

But it was not at all clear that a change of leadership could help resolve the arguments over Brexit, as the withdrawal is known, that are tearing apart the Conservatives, or that it would leave the government any more prepared to negotiate with the European Union. ... The cabinet is divided between those who want a clean break with the European Union — so-called hard Brexit — and those who hope for a softer departure to cushion the economy. When a consensus started to emerge from the cabinet, ahead of a speech last month by Mrs. May in Florence, Mr. Johnson, the foreign secretary, undermined it by outlining his own, more hard-line and upbeat vision of Brexit in a 4,000-word article.

Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement targets statues nationwide for Columbus Day on Monday

Let's see how many monuments are protected on Monday, seeing that authorities have had over two weeks to prepare for this.

From the story here:

The NYC-based antifa group Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) made the announcement on Thursday, September 21, calling on antifa groups nationwide to “decorate” their neighborhoods.

According to Far Left Watch, RAM is "an extremely militant group that advocates for the violent redistribution of property" and for "the abolition of gender."

Camille Paglia has come a long way, but still transgresses with her own utopian good old days

From her remarks here:

We have to return to the authentic 1960s vision, which is about identity coming from consciousness, which transcends gender, which transcends all these divisions of race. Consciousness itself! Okay? In the 60s, we had this idea that there was a human sensibility that transcended individual and nation, and there was this cosmic consciousness. This sense of the universe as a whole. To see the human being in relationship to great eternal principles of life and death, mortality, and so on.

She doesn't get that the 1960s liberal vision was the unique and irreproducible product of late Christian civilization.

Asinine is right: Marketwatch story blames James Madison for bloated tax code

There wasn't an income tax until 1913, for crying out loud, and never was intended to be.

James Madison, of all people, believed in neither an income tax nor a feckless giving to the voters whatever it is they may want. In fact, Madison feared the tyranny of the legislative the most, because the constitution gives it direct access to the pocketbooks of the people.

The story at Marketwatch here is beneath the dignity of any thinking person. It is a laughable farce of a story.

Caroline Baum should be ashamed of it.

How to prevent mass shootings

Don't mass in the first place.

Las Vegas shooter's girlfriend feared wired money to Philippines was his way of breaking up with her

From the story here:

“I was grateful, but honestly I was worried that first, the unexpected trip home and then the money, was a way of breaking up with me".

Las Vegas shooter shot at jet fuel tanks, explaining why he broke two windows at Mandalay Bay Hotel

So reports The Las Vegas Review-Journal here.

If more debt doesn't really matter, then why bother collecting any more taxes?

From "Debt Keeps Rising and Nothing Bad Happens":

Like so many things in macroeconomics, there is no reliable, well-confirmed theory that tells us the effect of government deficits or debt.

A rare contribution to National Review suggests that the Congress is an idea whose time has passed

From the story by Jay Cost here:

To put it bluntly, Congress is not well suited for national economic planning, which is basically what pro-growth tax policies boil down to. As a matter of fact, Congress outsources a lot of economic planning — like environmental regulation — to the bureaucracy, because it knows it is not capable of handling such matters for itself. It keeps tax policy within the legislature primarily because that doubles as a way to distribute political benefits to key constituencies.

The problem is an institutional one. It is really not accurate to say that Congress is a “national legislature,” for there is no member in either chamber who is elected by the nation at large. Instead, it is the meeting place of representatives of discrete geographical constituencies. This inclines the legislature to parochial concerns rather than national ones — a tendency that is exacerbated by the fact that senators are apportioned equally among the states, regardless of population. Moreover, our campaign-finance system, whereby those who contribute most to political campaigns are those with pressing business before the Congress, gives each member of Congress yet another incentive to view policy problems from the perspective of a very small slice of the nation. ...

In the Report on Manufactures, submitted in 1791, Alexander Hamilton argued that Congress’s power to “lay and collect taxes . . . to provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States” validated his ambitious plan of national development. However, his political opponents thought he was grossly misreading what was originally intended to be an anodyne statement.

But the statement quoted from the Constitution is not anodyne.

It simply points out that the founders thought the national government's main job was to provide for the common defense. The founders never imagined the managerial and welfare state, which represents today over 80% of the budget. Direct taxes were sufficient to fund the small state they did imagine, along with tariffs and excises. The contemporary megastate is only imaginable with direct access to the citizens' pocketbooks, which the income tax has provided only since 1913.

The way forward is the way back. Ideally we should aim to abolish all the federal departments except for the original five (State, Treasury, Attorney General, Defense, Post Office Communications), and tax accordingly (imagine a tax cut of 80%), along with the income tax.

And perhaps we should think about abolishing the Congress too, since we now have well developed state governments which can be tasked with the things the US House and the US Senate cannot seem to cope with effectively any longer.

The greatest fear of the founders was a tyranny of the legislative, but what we've got is more akin to a farce of the legislative. We should think about ending it and let free-market capitalism do its work.  

The nut didn't fall far from the tree: Vegas shooter's dad was a serial felon and psychopath

From The New York Post here:

The father of Las Vegas madman Stephen Paddock was a “psychopath” himself — a bank robber who escaped federal prison in the late 1960s and landed on the FBI’s most-wanted list, according to reports.

Another mass murder malapropism: Save your best wishes for Christmas and New Year please

Trump orders the flag at half staff to honor Vegas victims, you know the flag, THE ONE DISHONORED BY THE NFL

Trump keeps giving Norm Crosby, the Master of Malaprop, a run for his money

Representation as performance art: 49% of political campaign expenditures in 2016 went to media

12.1% went to fundraising, 11.2% to salaries, 9.4% to administrative costs, 6.7% to campaign expenses and 5.2% to strategy and research. $375 million of spending was uncategorizable.

A total of $5.9147 billion was spent.

Data here.