The Bunkum story

Bunkum

bun·kum

.
n
Empty or insincere talk; claptrap.

[After Buncombe, a county of western North Carolina, from a remark made around 1820 by its congressman, who felt obligated to give a dull speech "for Buncombe".]

Origin: 1819

A congressman from western North Carolina was so mindful of the voters in his home county that he inadvertently made its name a household word. It was the Honorable Felix Walker, Representative from the county that includes Asheville, North Carolina, who in 1819 (or perhaps 1820) justified his long winded remarks on the nearly deserted House floor by saying that his constituents had elected him "to make a speech for Buncombe."

That was all it took. Evidently the country was in need of a word more colorful than nonsense for the rantings and ramblings of politicians and boosters. With the disrespectfully simplified spelling bunkum, the word soon established itself in the jargon of politics. "Talking to Bunkum!" exclaimed an article in 1828. "This is an old and common saying at Washington, when a member of congress is making one of those humdrum and unlistened to 'long talks' which have lately become so fashionable."

Scandals? What scandals?

Bill Gross: AP, IRS? Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do TO you.

mark knoller on Obama IRS "Preapproved" Press Conference

Mark Knoller of cbs :Questioners pre-chosen and I'm not one of them. Again.

"Is being delusional a good thing?"

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-being-delusional-a-good-thing-2013-5

“Mother Teresa has a pretty good chance of getting into heaven. In fact, there is only one person I can think of who has a better chance than she does, and that’s me.”

more red light camera tickets for you.:)

Florida quietly shortened yellow light standards & lengths, resulting in more red light camera tickets for you

TAMPA BAY, Fla. -- A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/316418/8/10-News-Investigators-discover-short-yellow-lights

--

Harold 

97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

Popular Technology.net: 

 Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists who's papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.

Retiring Wall Street Strategist Gives Investment Advice

Business Insider:

What is this investment advice?
Don't try to pick stocks.
Don't try to time the market.
Just invest in a portfolio of low-cost, tax-efficient index funds.

Just Imagine What I Can Do To Your Car!

Why Liberals Should be Outraged that the IRS Targeted Conservatives

The inspector general's investigation also found the head of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division knew as early as June 2011 conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted -- several months before Douglas Shulman, IRS commissioner at the time, denied to a congressional committee the agency was targeting conservative groups, the newspapers said

Liberals should not assume that this is the "other guy's" fight.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-13/why-liberals-should-be-outraged-irs-targeted-conservatives

IRS apologizes

IRS apologizes for inappropriately targeting conservative political groups in ...

Washington Post 

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

'via Blog this'

Health Care Inflation ?

RealClearMarkets ""if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free.""

Forecasts Are Not Analysis; They are opinion

 "Making a claim that some policy is wrong because of some vague danger at an unspecified date in the distant future is, well, bullshit."

Barry Ritholz

 http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/05/forecasts-are-not-analysis-they-are-opinion/

Americans Convinced Gun Homicides Soar Despite Plunge

Zero Hedge: While gun-related homicides are down 39% from the 1993 peak, only 12% of people believe that gun crimes have fallen. Non-fatal firearm crimes declined by 69% to 467,300 in the same period but 56% of Americans believe that gun crime is higher now than it was 20 years ago, the Pew Research Center said its poll showed.

10 Reasons why Astrology is Stupid

"When you were born your obstetrician had more gravitational effect on you than any planet or star in the universe. "

For the other nine ,click:    10 Reasons why Astrology is Stupid:

Shoe Fits, Don't Buy It?

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:

Worried shopkeepers are increasingly frustrated by people they dub “fit-lifters” who use stores to find the best-fitting shoes before buying them online at a lower price

'via Blog this'

“Al Gore is like the preacher touting his moral purity and superiority..."

Al Gore's Net Worth | Zero Hedge:


Whatever you think of Gore, one thing is indisputable: leveraging his aura as a technology seer and his political and climate work connections, Gore has remade himself into a wealthy businessman, ....

That’s close to the $250 million net worth of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whom President Barack Obama and Democrats targeted in ads and speeches as being out of touch with most Americans."

Such a designation is missing when it comes to Al Gore, about whom people indeed think many things:

Albert Arnold Gore Jr., 65, is a lot of things to a lot of people. Among friends and fans, he’s the progressive Democrat who should have been president, visionary author and Internet prophet, the man who more than anyone drove climate change to the center of public consciousness.

Detractors see Gore as a limousine liberal, tiresome pedant and climate alarmist who lives a jet-setting, carbon-profligate lifestyle while preaching asceticism for everyone else.

His work and writing on global warming have earned him a share of a Nobel Prize as well as a South Park cartoon parody in which he tries to scare school kids to his beliefs with a fictitious global-warming surrogate monster known as ManBearPig.

So just how did Al manage to accumulate such a sizable net worth in just over a decade? Bloomberg summarizes how for Gore the "land of opportunity" certainly lived up to its name.

How Gore achieved this is as much about timing and luck as it is about business skills. His Apple board tenure has coincided with a 5,900 percent increase in its stock price. Current TV was a moribund “fixer-upper” when Al Jazeera stepped in to buy it at “a huge valuation,” said Derek Baine, an SNL Kagan cable analyst in Monterey, California.

Gore also had his share of flubs, most of them in his efforts at green-tech investing. An investment firm he helped to start took stakes in two carbon-trading firms that fizzled and also racked up tens of millions in losses in a solar-module maker.

'via Blog this'

"The world is no longer under a rule of law - but rather a rule of lawyers."

Niall Ferguson 

The Decline of Civil Society

Lastly, the decline of civil society is most disturbing. One way to look at this is by looking at the active membership is voluntary associations which has plummeted in recent years. Americans are no longer actively involved in civil society and now depend on the government to “solve problems.”
The problem with this, of course, is that the decline of the civil society also leads to a decline in economic output. Dependency on government to solve social issues has very little economic benefit. While the rest of the world is getting better in term of building better institutions – the U.S. is getting progressively worse.

Sarcastic Jefferson

10 Great Performances From 10 Legendary Jazz Artists: Django, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More | Open Culture

Click link below to get the the other 9:

10 Great Performances

Daniel Kessler: The Coming ObamaCare Shock

ObamaCare

In recent weeks, there have been increasing expressions of concern from surprising quarters about the implementation of ObamaCare. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, called it a "train wreck." A Democratic colleague, West Virginia's Sen. Jay Rockefeller, described the massive Affordable Care Act as "beyond comprehension." Henry Chao, the government's chief technical officer in charge of putting in place the insurance exchanges mandated by the law, was quoted in the Congressional Quarterly as saying "I'm pretty nervous . . . Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience."


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