Newmark's Door

You can make podcasts of your favorite blogs! As of now, completely free.

Here's the page for the podcast of the Door. Here's its rss feed. 

While readers should well understand that one data point does not establish a trend, this article is quite discouraging, discouraging about both the public schools and the TFA. 

Mark Steyn, doing what he does so very well. 

Obama’s pointless, traceless super-spending is now (as they used to say after 9/11) “the new normal.” Nancy Pelosi assured the nation last weekend that everything that can be cut has been cut and there are no more cuts to be made. And the disturbing thing is that, as a matter of practical politics, she may well be right. Many people still take my correspondent’s view: If you have old money well managed, you can afford to be stupid — or afford the government’s stupidity on your behalf. If you’re a social-activist celebrity getting $20 million per movie, you can afford the government’s stupidity. If you’re a tenured professor or a unionized bureaucrat whose benefits were chiseled in stone two generations ago, you can afford it. If you’ve got a wind farm and you’re living large on government “green energy” investments, you can afford it. If you’ve got the contract for signing up Obamaphone recipients, you can afford it.

But out there beyond the islands of privilege most Americans don’t have the same comfortably padded margin for error, and they’re hunkering down. Obamacare is something new in American life: the creation of a massive bureaucracy charged with downsizing you — to a world of fewer doctors, higher premiums, lousier care, more debt, fewer jobs, smaller houses, smaller cars, smaller, fewer, less; a world where worse is the new normal. 

I just hope enough Americans take heed. And soon.

Some good ones here. I think I like #23 and #25 best. 

It couldn't happen here. Could it?

Amidst the mostly sad story of a former corporate executive is this:

Yet 59 percent of households headed by people 65 and older currently have no retirement account assets, according to Federal Reserve data analyzed by the National Institute on Retirement Security.

Yikes. Is this an artifact of a too-narrow definition of "retirement account assets"? If not, could it be that many of these people thought Social Security would be enough?

"Jon Gruden Still Talking Inside ESPN Broadcast Booth 45 Minutes After End Of 'Monday Night Football'". (From The Onion.)

"Gruden leads pack of TV sports insanity".

This looks very interesting. I look forward to seeing it. (Link courtesy of Michael Greenspan.)

. . . but OU's is the first I've seen going to . . . chimps.

Link via the always entertaining EJMR. 

"[E]xtraterrestrial"? How about "awful"!

Note to Lexus: don't build this car.