Will Sean Penn finally settle the War of the Pacific?

Word is out that, among other things, Evo Morales has asked Sean Penn to reverse the outcome of the War of the Pacific and get Chile to give Bolivia back its coastline!

Is Evo is just enjoying the chance to humiliate Penn?

Is Evo so naive as to think Penn can get national boundaries changed?

Is Penn so arrogant that he led Evo to believe that Penn can get national boundaries changed?

By the way, did you know that the War of the Pacific was fought over poop? It's true!

Zombie Apocalypse

As Angry Alex points out, "Best. Military. Exercise. Ever."

Zombie Apocalypse.

A VIP and his personal detail are trapped in a village, surrounded by zombies when a bomb explodes. The VIP is wounded and his team must move through the town while dodging bullets and shooting back at the invading zombies. At one point, some members of the team are bit by zombies and must be taken to a field medical facility for decontamination and treatment.

"No one knows what the zombies will do in our scenario, but quite frankly no one knows what a terrorist will do," Barker said. "If a law enforcement officer sees a zombie and says, `Freeze, get your hands in the air!' What's the zombie going to do? He's going to moan at you. If someone on PCP or some other psychotic drug is told that, the truth is he's not going to react to you."

The keynote speaker beforehand will be a retired top spook-- former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

"No doubt when a zombie apocalypse occurs, it's going to be a federal incident, so we're making it happen," Barker said. Since word got out about the exercise, they've had calls from "every whack job in the world" about whether the U.S. government is really preparing for a zombie event.

Called "Zombie Apocalypse," the exercise follows the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's campaign launched last year that urged Americans to get ready for a zombie apocalypse, as part of a catchy, public health message about the importance of emergency preparedness.

If you want to stock up on your own...

Happy All Hallows Eve!

Grand Game: Broken Window / Hurricane Edition

I actually put off blogging this.  'Cause I could not believe the author--an "economist," and a "widely published" one at that, was serious.  Had to be hoax.  But then I thought about two words, and realized that it may be absurd, but it is not a hoax.  The words, of course, were "Paul. Krugman."
(And, speaking of cheap copies, check this out.  Amazing.)

So, Grand Game it up, folks.  This is a target rich environment.  If the author were correct, of course, then North Korea and Cuba would be the wealthiest nations on earth.

The article  An excerpt (it was hard to pick just one):

When government authorities facilitate rebuilding quickly and effectively, the process of economic renewal, in many tangible ways, can leave communities better off than before.

Factoring in the multiplier effect of $15-$20 billion spent rebuilding yields an economic benefit from reconstruction of about $27-$36 billion.

Ugly Baby? Perhaps Wife Had Plastic Surgery!

A man from northern China who divorced and sued his wife earlier this year for being ugly has recently won the lawsuit, according to a report from PlanetIvy.com.

Jian Feng said his issues with his wife’s looks only began after the couple’s daughter was born.  Feng was appalled by the child’s appearance, calling her “incredibly ugly” and saying she resembled neither one of her parents.

With that being the case, Feng initially accused his wife of cheating.  It was at that point that his wife, who has not been named, came forward saying she had spent $100,000 on intense plastic surgeries to drastically change her appearance before she met Feng.  She never told Feng about those surgeries.

When Feng found out about the procedures, he filed the lawsuit. He said the woman convinced him to marry her under false pretenses.

A judge agreed, awarding Feng $120,000.

With thanks to the LMM.  And of course all our babies were beautiful.

Monday's Child is full of LINKS!

1.  Is flopping an example of rent-seeking?

2.  The 10 most expensive books by HG Wells

3.  The CATO Governor report.  Mary Fallin got a "B" and Bev Perdue got a "C."

4.  Hitler Finds Out Gangnam Style

5.  Institutionalized cronyism

Caption Contest!

A KPC caption contest.  Saw this at UNC-Charlotte, where I was visiting DoL Co-blogger Craig Depken.

The box has dirt in it.  And a bunch of text about how great plants are, and how this "Green Screen" will help save the environment.  I had to take a picture.  It captures pretty much everything I know about the "green" movement... Solyndra in a flower box!

click for an even more unwatered and pointless image

Her First Obama Ad... A "Girl" Never Forgets

With a nod to Angry Alex

I'll have what he's having

People, did you know that pandas LOVE cinnamon?

Me neither.

But it's true and I've got the proof:




Context here.

Education: News From the Front

"As consumers wise up about education spending, for-profit colleges are getting schooled. Institutions such as Apollo Group Inc.'s University of Phoenix, DeVry Inc. and Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan — who only a few years ago reported double-digit student gains on a regular basis and posted hundreds of millions in profits — now are hemorrhaging students." [WSJ]

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"'Our classes are basically completely filled, they're 100% full. And it's maddening for us because we pride ourselves on access,' says [Santa Monica College] president Chui Tsang. Desperate to widen access, last spring he came up with a programme he called Advance Your Dreams. Tsang's plan would enable students to pay up to 400% more for a guaranteed seat in a class, and the money generated would have allowed extra classes to be arranged." [BBC]

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"What is more surprising — because no one else has looked at this question lately anywhere in the country — is that the laid-off people around Janesville who went to Blackhawk [Technical College] are faring worse than their laid-off neighbors who did not. We discovered this striking fact by comparing the dislocated workers who retrained with a larger group of about 28,000 residents, from the two counties where most Blackhawk students live, who had collected unemployment benefits recently and not gone to the college. For one thing, the people who didn’t retrain are working more. About half of them had wages every season of the year, compared with about one in three who went to Blackhawk. An even bigger gap exists in how much those who have jobs are earning. Before the recession, we found, the two groups – the dislocated workers who went to school and the ones who didn’t – were, on average, getting paid about the same. Afterwards, the ones who didn’t retrain are earning more. Their pay has fallen by just 8 percent – about one-fourth the size of the pay drop among the people who went to school." [Amy Goldstein, ProPublica]

How to interpret?  Sounds like the market is working its magic, and fraudulent for-profit schools are getting what they deserve.  It just makes sense to charge more for new access, and people who doubt that care more about fairness than they care about people.  And the only thing that Obama and Romney agree on, is wrong.  Happy Monday!

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Robert knows best

Robert Frank's latest NY Times piece is amazing in its incredibly low ratio of facts to opinion.

When do low tax rates hurt the rich? When Bob Frank says so, buddy.

Let's break down some of the questionable and unsubstantiated claims.

First is the axiom that money buys national political outcomes. That rich donors have bought low tax rates and deregulation. Frank cannot conceive of the idea that low tax rates and deregulation might actually be popular policies with a wide swath of the population! Nor does he present any evidence that money buys outcomes. Perhaps that's because there is little to no evidence that it does.

Next is the bizarre idea that budget deficits reduce the "quantity and quality of public services". Actually, given a level of revenue, budget deficits INCREASE the quantity of public services above what could be purchased without the deficit.  Budget deficits are the buffer that keep government purchases from falling one to one with declines in revenue.

Now consider Frank's notion that taxes on the wealthy are currently so low that we cannot have paved roads and safe bridges. In FY 2012, we spent $287 billion on transportation (Federal State and Local combined). Total government spending is running over $5.6 trillion dollars in 2012.  There is plenty of money for basic public services and infrastructure. At current tax levels, the rich can have their Bentleys and paved roads to drive them on. It's hard to believe that the rich are both so powerful they can dictate their tax rates but so un-powerful that they can't influence where the money is spent.

There's much more, but I'll leave that for you people.