Mexican Businessman Carlos Slim has surpassed Bill Gates as the World's richest man. He began building his fortune at the age of 10, selling drinks and snacks to his family. He has amassed a fortune of over $53 Billion. He made much of his fortune when Mexico privatized its inefficient and poorly run (ahem) government telephone company and turned it into an efficient, effective, money-making operation. (He's the anti-Chavez). Thus, creating jobs and wealth for thousands of people directly and millions more indirectly through improvements to Mexico's Telecom infrastructure.

He has also bailed out the New York Times, a newspaper known for attacking greedy capitalist pigs like Carlos Slim.

Slim has some words of wisdom the economically-illiterate Marxists currently in power in Washington would take to heart if they care about anything other than their own power.

"Wealth is like an orchard," he told Reuters in 2007. "With the orchard, what you have to do is make it grow, reinvest to make it bigger, or diversify into other areas."

In other words, to build wealth, you have to engage in all the activities the Democrats want to regulate, penalize, or outlaw.

To the New York Waste of Times, however, this is all a fiendish right-wing Repubican to make youth more patriotic.

Rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

"They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."

Silly patriots! Only Howard Zinn is allowed to rewrite history along ideological lines!

On tips from JC and Dave S. Hat tip: Theo Spark.

Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others.
A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel's Ballerina Barbie and Ballerina Teresa dolls hanging side by side at an unidentified store. The Teresa dolls, which feature brown skin and dark hair, are marked as being on sale at $3.00. The Barbies to the right of the Teresa dolls, meanwhile, retain their original price of $5.93. The dolls look identical aside from their color.

Wal-Mart please "capitalism," noting that the darker dolls weren't selling, so prices were reduced to make way for new inventory. Of course, the Perpetually Indignant reject this explanation.

Critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice...

No, they should have been smarter in their PR, and claimed the lower price was designed to address income disparities and make the toys more available to disadvantaged girls.

What are Democratic leaders saying? "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That's one of the arguments I've been hearing," Stupak says. "Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue -- come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we're talking about."

A little disingenuous coming from people seeking add a multi-trillion dollar entitlement program in the midst of unsustainable national debt. From people who have a "More is never enough" attitude when it comes to social spending.

Image hat tip: The Daily Caller.

Murray Hill Inc., a small, five-year-old Silver Spring public relations company that is seeking office to prove a point (and perhaps get a little attention).

William Klein, a "hired gun" who has been enlisted as Murray Hill's campaign manager, said the firm appears to be the first "corporate person" to run for office and is promising a spirited campaign that "puts people second, or even third."

Ha ha. Everybody laugh at the cutting edge social commentary from the progressive left.

Progressives claim that what outrages them about corporations being able to make political contributions is that it will somehow allow foreign corporations to influence elections. This is illegal under Federal law and was unaffected by the ruling in Citizens United. But it's also absurd that progressives want foreign terrorists to have Constitutional rights but not American businessmen.

Democrats have an excellent scam going wherein taxpayer dollars are laundered through public employee unions and become Democrat campaign contributions. The last thing they want is for the producers of wealth to have a level playing field with the destroyers of wealth. This is why the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United outrages them so much.

And, of course, they just plain hate "corporations."

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."

Yes, Democrats honestly believe that it's good for the economy to raise taxes on plumbers, electricians, doctors, and other people who do real work so that artists and writers can be subsidized. Don't get me wrong, art and literature are great... but they are luxuries, and can only be afforded by an economy that is robust enough to allow people to make a living writing stories and drawing pictures.

And why is it so terrible that someone should have to work a day job and pursue his art by night (without Government subsidies)? Like this one guy I know who works as a market analyst, but also finds time to blog on the side.

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.

As pollsters to the past two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, we feel compelled to challenge the myths that seem to be prevailing in the political discourse and to once again urge a change in course before it is too late. At stake is the kind of mainstream, common-sense Democratic Party that we believe is crucial to the success of the American enterprise.

The authors detail with excruciating clarity the key impediments to passing ObamaCare. For one thing, the battle for public opinion has clearly been lost, and we've all seen the polls. But even more critically: public sentiment is fleeing from big government solutions in general and toward growing distrust of government meddling in our lives.

CNN found last month that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, as was also reported last month, we face an alarming crisis.

And what of "Reconciliation" or the "Slaughter Rule"? At least these two pollsters are being consistent, probably the two Democrats in the country that are.

Now, we vigorously opposed Republican efforts in the Bush administration to employ the "nuclear option" in judicial confirmations. We are similarly concerned by Democrats' efforts to manipulate passage of a health-care bill. Doing so in the face of constant majority opposition invites a backlash against the party at every level -- and at a time when it already faces the prospect of losing 30 or more House seats and eight or more Senate seats.

ObamaCare must be stopped at all costs. Call those 30 congressfolk and be heard, fellow patriots. And yet: isn't it profoundly tempting to hope beyond hope that the Democrat leadership and Chairman Zero decline Caddell's and Schoen's sage advice?

Image on a tip from the talented TED.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.

The union [NU'91] said in a statement Thursday that the campaign follows a complaint it had received in the last week from a 24-year-old woman who said a 42-year-old disabled man asked her to provide sexual services as part of his care at home.

The young woman witnessed some of the man's other nurses offering him sexual gratification, the union said. When she refused to do the same, he tried to dismiss her on the grounds that she was unfit to provide care.

"This type of action is not part of the job responsibilities of carers and nurses," NU'91 said.

Just so we're all clear on this.

President Barack Obama hosted a movie night at the White House for Hollywood heavyweights Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg on Thursday — at which they watched a preview of the star duo's new World War Two miniseries "The Pacific." … Hanks and Spielberg … were joined at the screening in the White House theater by military top brass…

Confirmed moonbat Steven Spielberg has used his movies to propagandize on behalf of Arab terrorists, and gushed this about his dinner with Fidel Castro, a communist dictator who urged the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear strike against the United States:

The eight most important hours of my life.

As for Hanks, here's what he has to say about America and its fighting forces:

Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?

That is, our troops only fought back against the wicked Japanese Empire and Muslim terrorists due to the anti-American moonbat's favorite "ism" — racism.

There was a time when war movies were made by people actually willing to fight for this country. Now most are made by slugs that leave a trail of slime behind them as they crawl.

A Yeas & Nays reporter [Tara Palmeri] was publicly berated and threatened to be escorted out by police on Thursday night when the reporter asked actor Sean Penn a controversial question about his humanitarian work in Haiti.

Penn, who recently has been criticized for his motivations in [posturing before cameras in] Haiti, recently told CBS News he hopes his critics "die screaming of rectal cancer."

Members of the media were invited to a gala hosted at the Washington Hebrew Congregation and were allowed to ask one question each of the actor in a closed-door news briefing.

When the Yeas & Nays reporter asked, "How have you seen your critics change since you mentioned that they should die of rectal cancer?" publicity coordinator C.J. Jordan interrupted to say the reporter was only allowed to talk about the Haitian benefit. …

Jordan ended the interview, and publicly scolded the reporter outside of the media room. Jordan told the reporter that to keep her job, she needed to write a letter of apology to the Haitian ambassador. The publicity coordinator then threatened to have the reporter escorted out of the building by the police. …

The congregation's Rabbi Bruce Lustig attempted to take the reporter's recording device and delete the material. The reporter was approached by police and threatened to be escorted out, even though she responded calmly and exited quickly.

It's very forward-looking of Penn to already have his Praetorian Guard in place to keep the peasants at bay, in case he gets impatient with the pace of Hopey Change and decides to stage a communist coup. If Tara tries any impudent questions then, she'll soon have her fingernails pried off, as would happen under the rule of Penn's heroes Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez. It would serve her right for discomfiting a Great Man of the People.

In the meantime, Penn will have to make do with his dolls.

On a tip from Nancz.

British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.

"We've been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces," said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire. …

The results reinforce the findings of a 2008 US study that showed similar scans can determine what images people are seeing based on brain activity.

It shouldn't be hard to win government funding for studies on how to determine which brains harbor "racist" or otherwise incorrect thoughts. After that, scientists will delve into techniques for erasing such thoughts. At least it's more constructive than cooking up phony climate data.

On a tip from Incitatus.