Summer is for polo

Briton Alev Scott is smitten with the Argentine polo scene, which reminds us: summer is for polo. If you can't play, go and watch.

Dental care: is it available and affordable?

Our Senate is going to find out.

Remember when people knew their own interests?

"The Democratic business-donor community is demoralized."

I cannot even conceive of a Democratic business-donor community. Not one that knows its interests, anyway.

The Irish Game and the pundit game

The Los Angeles Times wonders if recently collared Boston crime kingpin Whitey Bulger can shed light on the art theft of the century (20th) - the Gardner swipe.

Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city's powerful Irish American mob at the time, may have played a role -- or must have known who did. Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a "get out of jail free card" if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip.

Don't tell the Times about the Irish Game - the circulation of stolen masterpieces as collateral in large-scale drug transactions. Don't tell them about Whitey's Irish or drug activities. Let instinctive journalism roll on.

Poll: Press campaigns actively for favorites

This is a healthy political awareness:

Likely U.S. Voters believe that most reporters, when covering a politician campaign, try to help the candidate they want to win. Only 21% think most reporters put the emphasis instead on trying to offer unbiased coverage. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure.

Forty-eight percent (48%) also believe that most reporters would hide any damaging information they learned to help the candidate they wanted to win. Twenty-nine percent (29%) disagree and 23% are not sure.

New York City has it

Bradley Manning street art.

Left and Right converge on Greek crisis

Daniel Hannan notices When it comes to the bailouts, the hard Left is dead right:

The eurozone bailouts are, in essence, another transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. As this blog never tires of pointing out, the bailout money isn’t going to the people of Greece, Ireland or Portugal; it is going to bankers and bondholders who made bad investments.
[...]
Lefties are wrong about a lot of things. Their refusal to understand that excessive spending and borrowing were the cause of this crisis, and won’t be its solution, is almost heroic in its mulishness. But they are absolutely right about one thing: the policies being pursued by EU leaders are indeed a form of class war against working people, in effect if not intention.

Car of the day

The 1965 Bentley S3

What would Jose Ortega y Gasset say?

Law is born from despair of human nature.

Why the hammock?

I'll tell you why: Rocking synchronizes brain waves during a short nap.

Hammocks: the science is settled.

Fake science = big money

Ask an environmentalist! Ask organized crime in Europe: Regulators scramble to recover millions of euros awarded to fake research projects.

The Army's bent COIN

With the projected handoff of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations to Afghanistan and the same having happened in Iraq, is it possible that the Army is done with COIN?

The very definition of a striver

A striver is someone who tells strangers the SAT scores of her sperm donor. See here.

Authority seekers are relentless, are they not?

Petraeus to be judged by his employees?

FP makes the point that after he takes CIA, Petraeus will be reading analysis judging his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can he stay neutral or will the analysis tilt?

Romney - "free the banksters"

Why Romney would be a disaster in a nutshell: "Mitt Romney chose to unveil the economic plank of his campaign for the Republican nomination with a speech in Aurora, Colorado decrying banking regulation." Read the whole thing.

It's not that he learned nothing: he has chosen sides.

At the onset of the crisis, Romney was calling for end to mark-to-market valuation of assets, a clear sign that he was of the banksters, by the banksters (banksters wish to value their assets at prices that they are free to contrive - it makes the balance sheet so much prettier).

"A soft drachma will solve nothing"

Nice points from Detlev Schlichter including "The problem is not that the euro was too much of a straitjacket for Greece but that it was too little of a straitjacket."

The president lacks focus...

But we knew that already. And given what he believes, we welcome lack of focus.

Let's crack down on artists

If the artist throws live cats at McDonalds workers, copulates in public, and welds shut the doors of a restaurant currently in use, let us all join in on a police crackdown on this artist.

What would Albert Jay Nock say?

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

Central planning cranks are living it up

America's ever-popular middle class parlor game of you-can-be-a-central-planner is hard to take in the best of times. The play seems more intense in the economic crisis (sorry, recovery), as culturally and intellectually impoverished people generate endless suggestion on how to "grow jobs" and "get the economy moving" again. I love the breadth and scope of this:

Bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located.

Future candidates for same treatment: Recycling creates more jobs; watching PBS creates more jobs; driving Mini-Coopers creates more jobs; patronizing coffee shops multiple times per day creates more jobs; attending diversity training creates more jobs; etc.