In a great Los Angeles Times op-ed, William Voegeli (The Claremont Institute) points out that lots of people are moving out of California and to places like Texas.

In the piece, headlined: The Golden State isn’t worth it: Our high-benefit/high-tax model no longer works, especially compared with low-tax states like Texas, Voegeli points out:

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

Voegeli points out that Californians are getting a raw deal for their crushing tax burden:

Today’s public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

So, why don’t the tax-paying citizens of California get better benefits in exchange for all the money the state confiscates?:

In what respects, then, does California “excel”? California’s state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California’s public retirement funds. The “dues” paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

Of course, this is precisely the pattern that is now being forced upon the entire nation by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate. Union clout is rising and the only jobs being created are well-paid government jobs with cadillac pension packages.

As a result, the smarter folks in California move to low-tax havens of functionality like Texas. The question is, are they smart enough to know that if they bring their Blue State voting habits with them, they will eventually destroy the very thing that made the place appealing?

In Texas we say, “Welcome California economic refugees. Just remember to leave your Blue State voting habits at the California line.”

(Hat tip: Powerline Blog)

Update: Roger Simon comments on the same op-ed.

. . .  sweet smoking Samoyeds am I ever a sucker for dogs in costume. Is there anything better?

Seriously.

Life is good. God is in His heaven.  And you can dress a chihuahua up like Nacho Libre.

Here’s a whole collection.

In this column America’s smartest, wisest pundit/professor, Thomas Sowell, (who happens to be black) recoils in horror at what is being wrought by America’s first black president.

I’ve been calling Obama’s program for our country “decline by design.” Here, Sowell calls it “Dismantling America.” An excerpt:

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn’t know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government– people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America’s influence in the world.

By all means, read the whole thing.

Mrs. Blather and I headed down to Waco on Friday evening in order to get an early start Saturday with homecoming festivities at Baylor University with Female Offspring Unit #1.

The doin’s were big because this was Baylor’s 100th homecoming event. 100 years seems pretty impressive until you learn that Baylor was actually founded 164 years ago (it was the Republic of Texas’ first chartered university) I guess 64 years slipped by before someone thought to stage an annual homecoming event.

We were excited to attend our first Baylor football game–the opponent, 14th ranked Oklahoma State. I had purchased tickets online a few days earlier. We dressed out in full green and gold Baylor spirit gear. We arrived at the stadium a little late and found that our seats were in the middle of this section:

I had chosen the “best available” option on seats. We were three green shirts in the middle of a sea of orange.

After the game, we grabbed a quick meal at barbecue place that is very popular with the locals – – Viteks. There I had one of the most aptly named dishes I’ve ever encountered. Behold, the “Gut Pack”:

It’s a combination of frito’s, cheese, brisket, diced sausage, beans, pickles, onions and jalepenos.

It. Was. Awesome.

Later, as my gut attempted to process what I had packed into it, we watched FOU #1 perform with her sorority sisters their 1st place winning production number at the annual Pigskin Review.

There is an interesting little collection of Soviet propaganda posters and political cartoons at this site. The poster above is a fine, Depression-era example. The headline reads: “Same year, but different weather.” The thermometers are respectively labeled, “Soviet Industrial Rate” and “American Industrial Rate.”

On the dark, stormy American side we have a sickly, evil banker with sterotypically Jewish features. Oh, but how sunny and robust things are over on the Soviet side! (But did the artist slip in a little “truth in advertising” as a subtle protest? Take a closer look at the figures on the thermometers. The American rate is 22% compared to the Soviet rate of 20%.)

Irony alert: In 21st Century capitalist America, Michael Moore gets wildly rich producing propaganda arguments on film like the ones on these posters.

If Mark Steyn writes a simple grocery list, it’s likely to be a more enlightening and entertaining read than 98% of what you’ll find in mainstream papers. But his column yesterday, titled “Right Turn on Main Street,” is a masterwork of opinion journalism.

Here are a few tidbits.

On the “Tea Party” protests:

Why do the protestors get it? The Obama project is not difficult to understand. It’s been accomplished in many other parts of the western world: If you expand the dependent class and the government class, you can build a permanent governing coalition, and stick the beleaguered band in the middle with the tab.

On the demoralizing effect of big government:

At a certain point, why bother? As fast as you climb the ladder, you’ll be taxed and regulated down the chute back to the bottom rung. You’ll be frantically peddling the treadmill seven days a week so that the statist succubus squatting on your head can sluice the fruits of your labors to Barney Frank and the new “green jobs” czar and whichever less hooker-friendly “community organizer” racket picks up the slack from Acorn, as well as to untold millions of bureaucrats micro-regulating you till your pips squeak while they enjoy vacations and benefits you’ll never get. Who needs it? If you have to work, work for the government: You can’t be fired and you can retire in your early 50s. But running your own business is for chumps.

On the uniquely American appetite for “liberty:”

In the wake of the economic meltdown last fall, there were protests from Iceland to Bulgaria, with mobs all demanding the same thing of their rulers: Why didn’t you the government do more for me? This is the only country in the developed world where hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to tell the state: I can do just fine if you’d only get the hell out of my life – or at least confine yourself to constitutional responsibilities.

Please do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

This picture above is of our Graycie, blowing soothing air onto the face of an AIDS orphan at the King’s Kids Village orphanage in Nairobi where she’s been working the past few months.

Due the the challenges of chronic water shortages, power outages and limited internet access there, we haven’t been able to communicate much. Her mother is getting pretty desperate to hear her voice. But everything we do hear indicates that she is blissfully, exhaustedly, dustily happy.

She’ll be home in about a month. A wise friend encouraged us to help prepare her for some reverse culture shock when she gets back. Others who have spent time living amid desperate need have reacted with shock and disgust at the levels of comfort, abundance, waste and ingratitude they find back home.

It will be good to have her home for the holidays. Then comes the decision about what to do this spring. I’m putting my money on her going back to Kenya for another tour of duty before starting college in the fall.

Here’s pretty a much a verbatim transcript of a conversation I had this morning:

Friend: I guess you heard that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Me: Huh?

Friend: Obama. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Me: Wha…?

Friend: Obama. Peace Prize.

Me: Good one.

Friend: Seriously.

Me: You’re making that up.

Friend: Nope.

Me: Dude, you’re totally making that up.

Of course he wasn’t. And here John Podhoretz explians why it was the pefect choice:

He is an American president queasy about the projection of American power. He is an American president who rejects the notion of American exceptionalism. He is an American president eagerly in pursuit of legitimacy to be granted him not by those who voted for him but by those who do not cast a vote and who chafe at American leadership. It is his devout wish that America become one of many nations, influencing the world indirectly or not influencing it at all, rather than “the indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright characterized it. He is the encapsulation, the representative, the wish fulfillment, the very embodiment, of the multilateralist impulse. He is, almost literally, a dream come true for the sorts of people who treasure and value the Nobel Peace Prize.

. . . possibly.

Here’s a fascinating (to me) roundup at Biblical Archeology Review of the top ten most important archeological discoveries of the last few decades. Check it out.

. . . sort of.

A while back I promised a new feature here at BWR — a webcast. Well, the first installment is complete (if by “complete” one means it has a beginning; a big fat, mess of a middle; and something that feels like an end.) But first, a disclaimer storm . . .

The audio on this effort stinks with a true and mighty stench-osity. It suffers from multiple ailments, including, the fact that my home office is a high-ceilinged echo chamber; I don’t know how to use the microphone I bought; and allergies are making my voice sound like Harvey Firestein without the gay lisp.

It runs 16 minutes. Keep your expectations low. Either these will get better or I’ll stop doing them.