Heh

“The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine.”

~Abraham Lincoln

41% of all NYC pregnancies end in abortions

Comments and links at Hot Air.

Bringing the Bureaucrats to Heel

At American Spectator, a very good article on bureaucratic and regulatory overreach.

Thursday stuff

82-year-old nabs thieves.

Video: The one-man Village People.

Virginia DMV Revokes World's Greatest License Plate.

Time-lapse video of the Northern Lights.  Here's some Wikipedia information.

Unclear whether this falls into the "tax dollars at work" category: Scientists test enormous whoopee cushions. 

Huge Lego Europe relief map with monuments.

Romanian witches use spells to protest new taxes.

Karpen's Pile: A Battery That Has Been Producing Energy Continuously Since 1950.

$6,400 Kindle book, marked down from $8K.  Check the reviews.

What is the evolutionary purpose of tickling?

Ben Franklin’s 200+ Synonyms for “Drunk”

Gallery of ice sculptures from this year's Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.  And here's a gallery of the Most Beautiful Jellyfish on Earth.  Also, Macro Photographs of Snowflakes.

Video: Chinese synchronized divers.

Girl gangs in London go back to the 18th century.

In Boston, the Charles river turns yellow.

Why Asparagus Makes Pee Smell.

Massive Inflation, Right under Our Noses

Kevin Williamson, at NRO: "The price of food and petroleum isn’t so much rising as the price of dollars, euros, yen, and renminbi is dropping."

Romanian witches use spells to protest new taxes.

Romanian witches use spells to protest new taxes.

Labor's Coming Class War: Public vs. Private Unions

At WSJ:

"These days the two types of worker inhabit two very different worlds. In the private sector, union workers increasingly pay for more of their own health care, and they have defined contribution pension plans such as 401(k)s. In this they have something fundamental in common even with the fat cats on Wall Street: Both need their companies to succeed. 

By contrast, government unions use their political clout to elect those who set their pay: the politicians. In exchange, these unions are rewarded with contracts whose pension and health-care provisions now threaten many municipalities and states with bankruptcy. In response to the crisis, government unions demand more and higher taxes. Which of course makes people who have money less inclined to look to those states to make the investments that create jobs for, say, iron workers, electricians and construction workers. 

Some of these folks are beginning to notice."

Interesting that they don't mention non-union workers - the vast majority of us.

American Decline: This time it's for real.

At Foreign Policy:  "In the end, of course, the Soviet and Japanese threats to American supremacy proved chimerical. So Americans can be forgiven if they greet talk of a new challenge from China as just another case of the boy who cried wolf. But a frequently overlooked fact about that fable is that the boy was eventually proved right. The wolf did arrive -- and China is the wolf."