Half Sigma

20th anniversary of L.A. riots

Fox News reports that yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots. “Some 53 people were killed in what police have classified as riot-related homicides and accidents. Of those, some 22 homicides remain classified as open and unsolved.”

Will there be riots of this type again in the near future?

Williamsburg Flea Market

The photo above was taken at the flea market that’s in Williamsburg every Sunday.

In the back, you see a food stall called the Landhaus where I purchased a lamb burger. It was served on a crusty baguette (part of a baguette, not the whole baguette), and was dressed with grilled onions and melted feta cheese. The lamb was grass fed and came from a local farm, or so the sign said; I wouldn’t be able to taste the difference if the lamb was shipped in from thousands of miles away and fed normal commercial lamb feed. I think that the portion was kind of small for eight dollars, but I appreciate the effort that went into the idea. And it’s nice to buy food from a college-educated white person instead of a foreigner or a NAM.

I encourage you to click on the photo which will direct you to a larger version of the photo in which you can see what was going on in more detail. You can try to see if you spot anyone there who isn’t white. (I see an Asian male at the very left of the photo wearing a beige beret.) This is the neighborhood where the girls from the HBO show Girls live, and I think that show correctly captures the lack of diversity in this part of New York City, even though New York City as a whole is only 33% non-Hispanic white, and Williamsburg is close the very center of the city, being at the border of Brooklyn and Queens and right across the river from Manhattan. (Click here for detailed NYC demographics.)

However, the flea market was not 100% white. There were a few East Asians, mostly women. Asian men are typically there with an Asian female significant other (I can't tell if the Asian guy in the photo above is solo or not), while Asian women are often with another Asian woman or with a white male. There were a handful Oreo blacks. Black males actually outnumbered Asian males. Asian males don’t get this hipster scene at all. I didn’t see any Indians.

Watches have gotten really huge

I was looking at my grandfather's Swiss gold watch from 1952. The case is only 31mm in diameter. Today, the typical man's watch case is 42mm, and 31mm is considered a woman's size.

I'd be worried that my grandfather was gay, except he had three kids, wore wifebeater shirts, and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon non-ironically (along with other classic brands like Rheingold and Schlitz).

* * *

Too bad it's a less prestigious brand than Rolex or Jaeger LeCoultre. I wound it up last night, and the time is still correct; if it's off, it's by less than 30 seconds. Not bad for a 60-year-old watch.

New planet might support life

Scientists discovered a planet "only" 22 light years away that's theoretically capable of supporting life based on its distance from the star that it orbits.

Too bad there's no way to get there. Someone really needs to invent a Stargate.

Hispanics in TV shows?

Ricky Ricardo in I Love Lucy.

Mr. Roarke in Fantasy Island.

The goofy sidekick character in Chuck

Betty in Ugly Betty

The fat guy on Lost

Commander Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica

The guy in Heroes who painted pictures which predicted the future.

I think there are a lot of Hispanics in TV shows.

* * *

And I know that people are going to name a lot more characters played by Hispanic actors in the comments, but the most interesting are roles in which you never even knew the guy was Hispanic.

For example, I watched the entire re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and I never realized that Commander Adama was played by a Hispanic actor.

And when I was a kid watching Fantasy Island, I never thought of Mr. Roarke as being a different race than me.

Cameron Diaz was never on a TV series, but the first time I saw her in a movie, I had no idea I was watching a Hispanic actress.

There are a bunch of Hispanic characters in one of my favorite shows, Dexter, but they play people with Cuban accents and they realistically represent the actual diversity of Miami. They belong in the show, but it's not as interesting as discovering that Commander Adama is Hispanic.

The outrage over racist Girls

I think this topic is good for another post.

Girls is intended to be a more realistic Sex and the City, with younger characters and darker humor. Sex and the City was about four white women. Girls is about four white girls. So what’s the big deal?

Some suggested that the prominent gay character in Sex and the City, Stanford (played by Willie Garson), trumped the absence of blacks because the gay lobby is a lot more powerful than the black lobby. There’s probably some truth to this. How could anyone criticize Sex and the City for not being “diverse” enough when the show was making prominent strides towards the very important goal of making gay men really cool? Because of Sex and the City, every single woman wants to have a gay friend like Stanford.

And what about other shows about white people in New York City such as Friends, Seinfeld, or Gossip Girl?

As I wrote yesterday, if you randomly looked into apartments in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint areas of Brooklyn being shared by twenty-something women, in the vast majority of cases they’d be inhabited by all white people. All you have to do is walk around Williamsburg to see that it’s an extremely white place. The “hipster” movement just doesn’t have much attraction to non-white people. (The geography of Brooklyn, mainly the BQE and the Newtown Creek, keep this area walled off from outside NAMs. The Hispanics still living there are slowly being squeezed out by the forces of hipster gentrification, and the city had the foresight to never erect any housing projects in this area. Or perhaps the real reason for lack of housing projects is that it was originally considered an industrial area unfit for human habitation.)

If instead of four white girls there were two white girls, a black girl, and an Asian girl, would more people watch the show? The answer is no. Fewer people would watch because fewer people would see themselves in the show. No matter how many Asians and blacks you stick into a show about SWPLs, Asians and blacks aren’t going to be interested in watching, because it’s not a show about themselves.

So the real reason some hardcore liberal types are upset about Girls is because they think that HBO is sending the wrong message to proles and others who don’t think correct thoughts about race. Or maybe the real reason is because the show reminds them of their own racist lives which don’t have the correct mix of diversity, and this makes them feel guilty.

* * *

There was an Asian girl who made a brief appearance in the first episode. When the main character asks her boss at her internship if she can actually get paid for her job, one of her arguments was “but she gets paid,” she being the Asian girl sitting at a desk in the office. The boss replies “she knows Photoshop.” This rather humorously demonstrates how the white elite really feel about Asians. They are ruining things for everyone else by learning useful job skills. The show can get away with this because racism against Asians is tolerated.

* * *

I haven't said anything about the untapped market of Hispanic viewers. The problem is that there are SWPL Hispanics who will be perfectly happy watching Girls, and prole Hispanics who enjoy stuff like Paul Blart, Mall Cop. And then there's Univision. The Hispanic market is pretty well served.

Girls on HBO

Everyone has been talking about this. I watched both of the first two episodes, but I have nothing really deep or insightful to say about it.

It’s sort of humorous, but never comes remotely close to being hysterically funny.

The dialog is extremely stilted. I think that’s a combination of bad writing and trying to be humorous in a Woody Allenesque type of way.

The writer may have been reading the blog formerly known as Roissy in DC, because one of the lead female characters has a beta male boyfriend of four years who is wonderful to her, and she hates him for being too beta, and she can’t even look at him while they are having sex.

The main character (Lena Dunham’s character) has a boyfriend (really a guy she sees twice a month to have sex with) who’s not especially good-looking, and he makes her indulge in pathetically beta sexual fantasies, but she puts up with it because--well it’s not clear why she puts up with it. She doesn’t appear to enjoy the sex very much. If there’s any message to the show, it’s that young women have lots of sex but don’t really enjoy having sex. They force themselves to be slutty because it’s expected of them.

One thing I like about the show is that the girls look and talk (accent-wise) like real SWPL girls you would see in Brooklyn. They don’t look like Maxim models or like Snooki. The actresses are all untalented daughters of rich parents, so they are just playing themselves; that's why it's so realistic.

There was an uproar at the NY Times this week about how the show is racist because the four lead characters are white, but the show is about SWPLs living in Greenpoint, so they wouldn’t be SWPLs if they weren’t white. Anyway, it’s pretty realistic that an apartment in Greenpoint shared by twenty-somethings would be all-white. Greenpoint is very strictly divided into three categories of residents: working-class Polish people who are white, poor Hispanic people living in rent-controlled units in multi-family houses that the Polish owners can’t kick out because of the rent control laws (the Polish owners would prefer to rent to SWPLs), and SWPLs who fall into two distinct sub-categories: white hipsters, and white professionals. Greenpoint doesn’t attract Asian professionals who prefer Long Island City. There is probably one black Oreo type living somewhere in Greepoint.

Zimmerman is black!

There’s a new Reuters article:

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

I urge you the read the article. It has extremely detailed reporting about the large number of crimes which had taken place in Zimmerman’s community during the previous year, and the suspects in most of the crimes were young black males.

The only downside of this article is the line near the end which says that Zimmerman “disregarded police advice against pursuing Martin” which is stating as fact an assumption of Ben Crumps that’s not based on any actual evidence.

DEFINITION OF PURSUE

It generally means one of the following two dictionary definitions when people talk about someone “pursuing” a criminal suspect:

: to follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, or defeat

: chase {pursued by dozens of fans}

Zimmerman may have been looking around for Martin, but there’s no evidence he was chasing him. If he was chasing him, the altercation wouldn’t have taken place so close to his car.

Romney is asking the wrong questions

From last night:

“Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one?” he said, as the crowd cheered “NO!”

“Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more AT your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Are you paying less at the pump?”

I was unemployed when Obama took office, but my earning situation is better today than it has ever been in the past. It is more affordable to buy a home today than it was four years ago. My savings have increased approximately $200,000 since Obama took office, thanks to my frugal lifestyle combined with good stock market returns. I am quite happy that the price of gasoline is higher, because I rarely drive a car but I have a considerable amount of money invested in oil stocks.

None of this has anything to do with Obama, but Romney is certainly asking the wrong questions.

Arizona immigration law before the Supreme Court

Oral arguments give the impression that the justices support the Arizona immigration law, and that even includes Justice Sotomayor.

In fact, the Justices make the exact same points I made two years ago. And no, I don’t think they have been reading my blog, I just think that they are very obvious points.

From the Politico article:

several of the court’s conservatives picked up on Arizona’s argument that the state’s policy isn’t really at odds with the laws Congress has passed, but with the way the Obama administration is choosing to enforce them.

Scalia twice asked Verrilli to cite a case in which the court struck down a state law for interfering with executive priorities, rather than a congressional statute. He could not do so, but said Congress specifically ceded broad powers on immigration to executive officials.

And that’s similar to what I previously wrote:

The Arizona law directing police to enforce the federal immigration laws is a procedural law and does not represent a substantive change to existing federal laws, so I don’t see that there is any preemption of federal law going on.

The real reason why liberals hate the Arizona law is that they disagree with the federal law that makes it illegal for people from other countries to move here and work here without proper permission from the federal government. There’s no support in Congress to open up the borders to all who wish to move here, but liberals are sneaky and they have effectively been able to get something closer to free open borders by not enforcing the immigration laws.

It doesn’t necessarily violate the Constitution if the executive branch assigns a very low priority to enforcing a law, but neither does it violate the Constitution if a state decides to assign a higher priority to enforcing the same law, assuming that nothing in the statutes passed by Congress explicitly prohibits states from doing that.

How rich people die

As reported by Reuters:

Money manager B. Robert Williamson Jr., the nephew of Wall Street investment guru Julian Robertson, was found dead on Sunday in North Carolina, in water surrounding an island.

Williamson, who was 55, was managing director and portfolio manager of hedged U.S. equities strategy at Chilton Investment Co in Stamford, Connecticut. He joined the firm in January 2011.

He was staying with family members at a house on Figure Eight Island, a gated development on a barrier island near Wilmington.

Williamson was reported missing Sunday morning after he did not return from a party Saturday night that took place at another location on the island, less than a mile from the house, according to New Hanover County Sheriff Deputy Jason Augst.

After a search that included a helicopter and a dive team, Williamson's car was discovered underwater off a boat ramp. Authorities do not suspect foul play, Augst said.

Figure Eight Island is a private island with a gated causeway, which means that only people who belong there can even get onto the Island. Most of the 441 houses are oceanfront with their own private beach.

Mr. Williamson must have been pretty drunk if he drove his car into the ocean.

This article also demonstrates that the best way to become a rich money manager is to have an older relative who’s a rich money manager.

Some web research shows that Williamson has been actively involved in giving his family fortune away to poor black people. As I’ve written before, philanthropy is entertainment for rich people.

* * *

A first-time commenter writes:

You horrible person for writing about Rob Williamson this way. He was a wonderful man, loving husband, leaves behind three teenaged children, and he gave much back to the community. The amount of money in his bank account, or in his family's bank accounts is irrelevant.

You should be ashamed for be so flippant and snarky, and for speaking ill of the dead.

Just curious: How much money do you give to charity?

Charity is a hobby and a competition for rich people and not something they do for purely altruistic purposes. And it’s really easy to give a $100 million to charity when you have $200 million. I don’t see why anyone who can’t afford to send their children to a quality private school should be giving money to charity at all. However, I do plan to give some money to the George Zimmerman defense fund once Mark O'Mara provides an official means of doing so.

I provide the community with this blog, which requires a considerable amount of my resources, and does a lot more good for this country than giving a few dollars to some kids in the ghetto.

Did a witness hear Martin say you’re going to die?

After searching around, my source for this information is MacRanger:

According to a source with knowledge of the investigation in to the Trayvor Martin shooting, three witnesses have now been identified that all confirm that Martin was on top on Zimmerman before he was shot. Details are sketchy, but some of the witnesses confirm hearing Zimmerman yelling for help and one witness states that Martin could be heard yelling at Zimmerman, calling him a “honkey” and saying “You’re going to die” or some words to that effect.

The problem is that MacRanger has proven to be an unreliable source of inside information. He said that he had information that Zimmerman wasn’t going to be charged, but he was completely wrong about that. (But if you want to give MacRanger the benefit of the doubt, perhaps someone at Angela Corey’s office saw all of the evidence, including the exculpatory evidence, and couldn’t possibly believe that Zimmerman could be charged based on that, and relayed that impression to MacRanger.)

* * *

“Turambar” pointed out in a comment that MacRanger also gave us false information about Trayvon Martin not have ice tea and Skittles on him. In fact, he did.

I have to conclude there’s a good chance that MacRanger is just making stuff up.

Zimmerman's "Stand Your Ground" pre-trial evidentiary hearing

After the upcoming arraignment, the next step in the Zimmerman trial will be a special evidentiary hearing that a Florida defendant who claims self defense is entitled to. Zimmerman has the burden of proving, with a preponderance of the evidence, that he has a valid claim of self defense. If the judge agrees, then the trial is over and he has immunity, in the Florida courts, from prosecution for the shooting.

This is why I am so glad the Ken Lester is the judge and not the cute young woman. Lester looks like the kind of guy who might base his decision on the evidence and not public opinion. I say “might.” Who knows for certain? Lester might think the Zimmerman deserves to be freed, but he may decide to rule with the mob because he fears the death threats.

The evidentiary hearing will be like a mini-trial, but Zimmerman has the burden of proving his position, so O’Mara will have to present evidence first, unlike the normal criminal proceeding.

I think that O’Mara will have to play the 911 call and have Zimmerman describe what happened based on the call and after he hung up. Zimmerman will explain that he was not running after Martin, and that after he responded “OK” to the 911 dispatcher’s advice that he doesn’t have to pursue Martin, that he was just walking at a slow pace back towards his car. Zimmerman will say that Martin approached him first, punched him first and broke his nose (with medical records proving that), and was on top of him, and he said “you’re gonna die.” O’Mara will call any witnesses who corroborate the story, and from what I know of the case based on news articles, there’s at least one witness who had a good view of the fight and saw Zimmerman on the bottom calling for help and heard Martin say “you’re gonna die.”

O’Mara might want to play the 911 tape in which Zimmerman was heard screaming for help in the background, and Zimmerman’s wife, mother, and father could all testify that it’s Zimmerman’s voice. And then he could call Tracy Martin to the stand, and introduce evidence that Martin initially told police that the voice screaming for help was not his son’s.

If O’Mara is able to uncover any previous evidence of Martin’s propensity for violence, such as the bus driver he allegedly punched, that would massively bolster his case. I don’t know if the evidence about Martin possessing a bag which used to hold marijuana, or the stolen jewelry, would be considered admissible as evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman first. I think the “fight club” video demonstrates Martin’s propensity for violence, if O’Mara can establish a foundation for admitting it. O’Mara seriously needs his own investigators here, and I don’t know if there’s money available for that. Unfortunately for Zimmerman, the state of Florida has a team of people working full-time on this case while, as far as I know, Zimmerman just has O’Mara and no money.

After all this evidence is presented, the prosecution would have no case without “DeeDee,” and who knows if she’s even going to cooperate with the prosecution? Based on what I know, she never talked to anyone from the State of Florida; she gave her statement to an FBI investigator. Watching O’Mara cross examine her might be the most entertaining bit of courtroom drama since the Kato Kaelin testimony in the OJ preliminary hearing.

Zimmerman only has to prove his case by a preponderance of the evidence. Even if you think it’s within the realm of possibility that Zimmerman attacked Martin first, if it’s more likely that it happened the way Zimmerman described it, then the judge has an ethical obligation to find for Zimmerman. The argument here is that Zimmerman is the one who called 911 and not Martin, so it’s more likely that he’s the law abiding person. If you intend to kill someone in cold blood, you don’t call 911 first.

I voted for Mitt Romney today

They never mailed me the usual voting notices. Good thing I knew there was an election and knew where my polling place was.

There were lots of bored-looking poll workers there. A few seconds after I entered the “privacy booth,” I walked out. The poll worker asked “you're done so quick?” in disbelief. There was only bubble to fill out; it doesn’t take that long.

On the way out, I asked one of the poll workers if anyone else had voted. He said one other guy voted earlier that morning. It was 8:15 and the polls opened at 6:00.

This super-low turnout creates the risk that dedicated Ron Paulites could storm the polling places and win an upset victory. So I urge all right-thinking Republicans in New York to get out there and vote for Romney.

Kudos to Steve Sailer for his post about Jews

Kudos to Steve Sailer for pointing out that the majority of Jews support Arizona’s “tough” immigration law, and that the views of self-proclaimed Jewish leaders don’t represent the views of the average Jew.

Jews would probably be even more conservative were it not for Reform Rabbis preaching leftism from the pulpit. Also, Jews from the Midwest are probably more conservative than Jews from New York City who absorb the leftism of New York.

Hot girl dies running London Marathon

My thanks to a reader for pointing out this story.

Marathons should be declared unsafe.

Zimmerman purposely losing weight to look weak?

A poster at an online forum thinks that Zimmerman is purposely losing weight in order to look weak.

I don’t think so. Up until a few days ago, Zimmerman thought the police had let him go. Zimmerman has just lost a lot of weight since the mug shot which was taken seven years ago.

I suspect that the suit Zimmerman was wearing was hastily purchased by his wife after he was arrested, at the instruction of O’Mara. And she may have been told to buy a larger size to accommodate the bullet-proof vest, and she apparently went overboard.

I think that the bullet-proof vest, by adding bulk around his chest, would make Zimmerman look bigger. O’Mara should take some of the free advice on the web and take off the bullet-proof vest so that Zimmerman looks smaller. O’Mara should also make sure that Zimmerman’s shoes have a thin sole so he appears shorter. Every half-inch helps. Putting Zimmerman on a diet can't hurt either.

O'Mara apologizes for the apology

As reported by CBS.

I am not sure why this happened? Is an apology normal at bail hearings? I suspect that Zimmerman himself wanted to apologize because he feels genuinely bad about what happened, but it seems like a really dumb idea to me because (1) judges hopefully respect the defendant’s right to remain silent and won’t hold it against them at a bail hearing; (2) to everyone hearing the apology, it sounded to them like Hitler saying “I’m sorry that I lost the war”; and (3) everything that Zimmerman says on the record is an opportunity for the prosecution to find inconsistencies to use against him at trial. Obviously, the prosecution strategy in this case is to go through all of Zimmerman’s recorded statements with a fine tooth comb, and make a big deal about any minor inconsistencies that they find.

This also brings up the larger issue about whether Zimmerman was stupid for talking to the cops in the first place. He should have lawyered up immediately. His self-representation strategy seemed to pay off in the short run because the cops let him go. And poor Zimmerman naively thought the police are his friend because he thinks of himself as a good person who voted for Obama and it wasn’t his fault that a thug attacked him and was beating him up (but if Zimmerman had followed John Debyshire’s advice about staying away from black people and not being Good Samaritans then this wouldn’t have happened, so Zimmerman was asking for it in the way that a woman who dresses in a slutty manner is asking to be raped).

Dress for Success

The previous post about buying suits was, to my surprise, extremely popular, so I’m following up with another post about clothes.

Dress for Success is the name of an iconic book by John T. Molloy which was quite popular at business and law schools in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Unfortunately, a lot of the specific advice in the book is hopelessly out of date. Molloy spent a great deal of pages on documenting the importance of wearing a beige raincoat over a black raincoat because the beige raincoat is more upper class. Does anyone even still wear raincoats? And if you go to buy one, you probably won’t find a black one for sale, because Molloy’s book had the effect of killing them off.

It should be noted, however, that one of the differences between proles and the better classes is that when the better classes have to wear a suit in the winter, they have an appropriate overcoat or raincoat to wear over it.

There are a few other pieces of timeless specific advice, such as the only black leather items you should wear are shoes, belts, and gloves. I would add a watch strap to that list, so that all of your leather matches. But I personally prefer brown leather over black leather, and seldom wear black leather accessories.

Back in the 1980s, wingtips were all the rage in shoes, but some commenters indicated that to no longer be the case. I think that Johnston and Murphy is the minimum quality in dress shoes if you want them to not look cheap.

The general advice from the book is pretty timeless, and that is you will help you career by looking upper middle class rather than prole (Molloy didn’t use the word “prole”), and that you should observe what other people at your company wear, and you should aim to be in the top-third with respect to both clothing quality and conservativeness. Molloy would probably favor suits with pleated pants over flat front pants because the pleated pants are more conservative and will more likely be worn by the older men, the ones who have the power to promote you.

The huge change in society since the book was written is how the traditional business suit has mostly disappeared from use. If you work at a company where no one wears suits, then it would be a bad idea to wear a suit to work. You would be spending a lot of unnecessary money on clothes, and people would just think you are weird and not a team player.

Now the general problem I have with the “need” to wear super-expensive clothes is that it’s a wasteful arms race that doesn’t improve your quality of life. Some commenters to my previous post gave advice for buying $1500 suits, which is probably good advice if you have that much money to spend, but unless your parents are filthy rich, then that’s a lot of money. It saddens me that someone who still hasn’t paid off his student loans is urged to buy a wardrobe of $1500 suits.

As a practical matter, very few people will notice the difference between a $1500 suit and one from Macy’s or the Men’s Wearhouse (I’ve never actually shopped at the Men’s Wearhouse) so long as you know to buy a suit that has conservative styling (navy or dark gray, solid or subtle pinstripes, not shiny) and does not have major fit issues (watch Ron Paul videos for examples of how your suit should NOT fit).

Working in a technical field, I’ve seen technical people wear suits to job interviews, and they almost always manage to look very bad and prole doing so. The typical mistakes are to wear black suits, double breasted suits, shiny suits, sleeves way too long, dark shirts (white shirts are safest on a job interview, but a pale blue is also acceptable), and not having a proper coat to wear over the suit if it’s cold out. Their horrible clothing usually doesn’t prevent them from getting hired because no one cares how IT people dress anyway.

I’ve rediscovered Land’s End, which is a great source of Nordstrom-quality clothing for half the price of Nordstrom and the convenience of not actually having to go to a store to shop. I think that Land’s End dress shirts are good enough for a job interview, especially considering that you are going to wear your jacket during the interview and no one is even going to see your shirt. And their shirts are good enough for any normal job, unless you are a partner at BIGLAW or a Managing Director at an investment bank. (Let's see if anyone disagrees with that last sentence; I'm willing to be corrected on that.) You should never wear wrinkle-free dress shirts, because they somehow look different and you can spot them from across a room.

The great thing about Land’s End pants is that you can order them in 1/4 inch lengths. At most stores, pants are only sold in 2 inch increments, and if you happen to be in between, then your pants will always be too long or too short. People will notice your pants being too long or too short a lot more easily then they will notice anything else about the quality of the pants. Nordstrom and Brooks Brothers both sell pants in 1 inch increments.

The takeaway from this post should be that you should avoid looking prole, and you don't necessarily have to spend huge amounts of money to do so. There are preppy upper-middle-class-looking clothes at JC Penny.

How to buy a suit

A reader asked how to buy a suit for law firm interviews.

If you go to the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue, and tell them that’s what you want, you are guaranteed to get suits that will look appropriate for BIGLAW or Wall Street. In fact, I wonder why Ron Paul couldn’t just do that on one of his trips to New York City. Surely he could have afforded the suits there, and then people wouldn’t have made fun of his ill-fitting suits.

The problem with the above advice is that you will wind up paying three times as much for the suits as you could get at Macy’s when they are running a sale. So if you want to get suits for one third the price, you should go to Brooks Brothers to see what suits are supposed to look like, and then try to get something similar at Macy’s when there’s a sale.

The upper middle class suits generally are dark colors, navy or dark gray, never black. They are either solid, or have a subtle pinstripe. The fabric is dull and not shiny. They don’t get wrinkly easily.

At Macy’s they are lazy about tailoring. You want to make sure that you have the sleeves taken in so that they are not too long; (a slight bit of shirt cuff should show, so wear a shirt that fits you properly when you buy the suit). And you should get the bottoms cuffed, and not have plain bottoms [assuming you have pleated pants--see below for further discussion about pleats]. [Also, a commenter who seemed to know what he's talking about said you should ask for a single break.]

* * *

The advice about Brooks Brothers only applies to the flagship store on Madison Avenue, where they like to say that Abraham Lincoln used to buy his suits there. The chain of Brooks Brothers that has spread to malls around the country doesn’t necessarily have the same quality of service and tailoring.

* * *

Also, remember that I don't work at a place where people wear suits to work, so there's probably someone out there more qualified to give advice on this topic.

* * *

“nebbish” writes in a comment:

This is solid advice, but shouldn't flat-front trousers have straight rather than cuffed hems?

Yes, I that is said to be the rule. But the standard Brooks Brothers suit has a pleat. Although I think that flat fronts might be coming back into fashion. It's really hard for me to know what kind of suits are in fashion this year. If I worked at an investment bank, I'd have a better idea.

When I went to the flagship Brooks Brothers store a few years ago, they gave me suits with pleats.

The most evil man to ever live since Hitler?

Some readers have complained about me repeatedly calling Zimmerman the most evil man to ever live since Hitler. However, “Dr.” Boyce Watkins, without any hint of irony, calls Zimmerman “the most-hated and notorious killer on earth.”

George Zimmeran's suit is too big?

Chuck Rudd, aka Guccci Little Piggy, has a blog post about George Zimmerman’s suit being too big.

Some liberal journalist thinks that it’s an intentional tactic by O’Mara to make Zimmerman look small by putting him into a suit that’s too big.

Chuck Rudd thinks that Zimmerman was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath the suit, which I think is a little weird. I’ve never heard of a criminal defendant going to court wearing a bulletproof vest.

I think the most likely explanation is that proles like Zimmerman don’t own suits that fit them. Zimmerman’s suit has the look of something hastily picked up at Walmart.

* * *

In other news, two black teenagers beat up a white man in Chicago. They say they did it out of anger about Trayvon Martin.

* * *

DOES THIS PHOTO SHOW A BULLET-PROOF VEST?

A commenter linked to this photo which does suggest something under his suit jacket. I assume that, the case being in Florida, it’s not extra-warm thermal underwear.

Also, Matt Gutman wrote yesterday that he "appeared to be wearing a bullet-proof vest beneath his loose-fitting suit."

It seems kind of paranoid that he would get shot merely being escorted from his jail cell to the courtroom, which is often in the same building (although I don't know how that is in Seminole County, Florida).

More about DeeDee

The Last Refuge blog claims to have discovered the true identity of “DeeDee” and that Ben Crumps has lied about her relationship to Trayvon and he lied about her going to the hospital after she found out he was shot.

The person who wrote the blog post also says (presumably based on the public record of news articles and releases from legal authorities) that the police did try to contact “DeeDee” before Ben Crumps got to her and that she refused to talk.

$150,000 bail for Zimmerman

The judge, Ken Lester, set $150,000 bail for Zimmerman.

I am completely unfamiliar with what’s the normal bail amount for second degree murder in Florida. But most commentators on the web seem to feel this is a good outcome for Zimmerman. I suppose that if the judge believed that Zimmerman was the most evil man to ever live since Hitler, he would have agreed to the prosecutors’ $1 million bail request (an amount that Zimmerman’s family would not have been able to raise).

Here’s a link to the transcript of the hearing, which includes O’Mara’s cross-examination of Gilbreath, the investigator who signed the affidavit. I urge you to read the transcript carefully.

What did Trayvon and DeeDee REALLY talk about?

As we know from the timeline (at least what those of us who actually follow the real facts of the case know), Trayon Martin and Zimmerman looked at each other, Martin ran away, and Zimmerman got out of his car. A few minutes later, Martin and Zimmerman were in a fight. In between those two events, Martin spoke on the phone to a girl identified only as “DeeDee” who happened to call him.

If what really happened is that Martin went back to confront Zimmerman after he evaded him (which is likely), then there’s a good possibility that the phone conversation with DeeDee is what caused Martin to change his mind.

I think there’s a possibility that DeeDee is lying about the whole incident, and that what really happened is that she told Martin to go kick Zimmerman’s ass after Martin told her that some guy who looks like he lived there was looking at him like he didn’t belong there.

This version of events would explain why DeeDee never told anyone about the phone call until the Martin family or Ben Crump found the call on Trayvon’s cell phone statement. It’s because she was complicit in getting Martin killed. She told him to beat up someone who turned out to be packing heat. You can see why she'd be motivated to make up a story that casts herself, as well as Martin, in a much more positive light.

There’s a long history of black women who lie about some incident in order to incriminate white people. I am thinking about Nafissatou Diallo who lied about the circumstance of her encounter with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Crystal Mangum who lied about being raped by Duke lacrosse players, and Tawana Brawley who at the age of 15 lied about being raped by a bunch of white men.

George Zimmerman's bloody head

Just released, a photo of Zimmerman’s bloody head taken only minutes after the shooting.

This proves once and for all that there was an altercation in which Zimmerman suffered at least some injury.

The funeral director said there was no signs of a fight on Trayvon's body, so evidence shows it was George being beaten up by Travyon Martin and not the other away around.

Response to comments about the Buffett Rule

Nothing gets the alt-right blogosphere more riled up than agreeing with an Obama tax proposal. Yes, I agree with the “Buffett Rule” and here are my responses to comments.

“Secret of NAM” writes:

this is about your feewings of jealous butt-hurt

There were several comments like this. They imply that I’m a loser who is complaining that I can’t make enough money to enjoy the lower tax rates enjoyed by the rich, and even worse than being a loser I’m a sore loser.

This is an ad hominem attack which has nothing to do with the argument about fairness in taxation. I’ve bought into the idea that a fair tax system doesn’t give the rich a lower tax rate on a percentage basis than the middle-class value-creating workers.

If you want to argue that it’s fair, go ahead and make such arguments without the ad hominem attacks.

“Jimmy” writes:

This argument could maybe be valid if the extra money were actually going toward reducing our debt. Or maybe for some useful purpose. But no, it goes to things like $800,000 GSA Las Vegas vacations.

We need to give them LESS money. More tax dollars only encourages the bastards.

As I’ve previously written, “the ‘starve the beast’ theory sounded plausible when I first heard it, but government spending has increased massively since Reagan first made tax-cutting popular. So I conclude that it doesn't actually work. Republicans need to use the opposite strategy. If they cut spending enough, eventually the government will have a surplus, so taxes could then be cut.”

Alternatively, if taxes are raised enough, people might complain about the high taxes and demand reductions in federal spending so their taxes could be lowered. To that end, I also endorse putting the employer-portion of FICA taxes onto people’s paystubs, and raising their salaries by a corresponding amount, so workers can actually see how much tax they are paying. And FICA taxes should also be part of the 1040 form, so once again people can see how much money they are really paying in taxes. I’m surprised that Republicans have never figured this out.

GMR writes:

What about municipal bonds? Should those have a deduction? Would the Buffett rule kill the muni market, or is there a carve out for munis?

This is a good question to ask. It appears that municipal bonds are exempt from the Buffett Rule. On the one hand, this is consistent with the principle that interest from such bonds should not be considered taxable income.

However, I disagree with the exemption. Like the itemized deduction for state and local taxes, this gives an unnecessary federal subsidy to high-spending local governments.

I don’t think this is enough of a big deal to oppose the Buffett Rule because the tax-rate difference between regular bonds and municipal bonds will be the same before and after the Buffett Rule. As I said in my original post about the Buffett Rule, it’s a step in the right direction and not the ultimate solution to all problems with the tax code and the budget deficit.

bluto writes:

The reason it's called the Buffett rule, is because Buffett owns a lot of insurance firms which sell anuities and life insurance…

This argument has come up before, that Buffett’s involvements in policy issues are a secret plot to make Buffett even richer, at the expense of everyone else.

But this sounds like too much of a stretch. Buffett is an old man who doesn’t need any more money, and he has chosen to give his money away to charity rather than give it to his children. I think that Buffett is motivated by what he thinks is altruism, or maybe it’s about leaving a legacy behind him that he made the world better for the little people.

Buffett and Gates are both Democrats. So was Steve Jobs. Learn to deal with it. Lots of self-made billionaires are Democrats and not Republicans. They support the party that supports higher taxes for billionaires.

“kawokmali” writes:

It is plain idiocy to tax INCOME of any kind, income corresponds to value creation (or at least that's what should be) whereas EXPENSES direct or indirect (thru the use of valuable possessions) is value destruction.

1. The Buffett Rule is a step in the right direction and not a complete overhaul of taxes.

2. Income tax is like the QWERTY keyboard in that we are stuck with it even though there might have theoretically been better tax systems. Anyway, there’s a very strong correlation between income and expenses, and a very strong correlation between income and the ability to pay. A tax system based entirely on purchases might not work as well as you think, and might be subject to just as many loopholes and tax cheating.

“Mercy Vetsel” writes:

It's not about fairness but about damage to the economy.

Capital gains taxes incur a very heavy dead weight loss (destroyed value) and the main effect of this is to double capital gains rates.

This is nonsense scare tactics not based on any empirical evidence. Capital gains rates were 28% in the 1990s when the economy was booming. Lowering the rates to 15% did not bring back the roaring nineties.

“John” writes:

The Buffett Rule is pure symbolism. It has nothing to do with raising sufficient funds to make a meaningful dent in the deficit. It has everything to do with the perceived fairness of the tax code.

As I keep saying, it’s a step in the right direction.

And the perceived fairness of the system is extremely important. If the people feel the system is unfair, they might vote in socialist demagogues, or there might be a revolution.

At the very least, perceived unfairness of the tax system encourages more cheating, which lowers tax revenue.

Affirmative action I enjoy

The Obama campaign is seeking black and minority campaign workers. I look forward to smarter SWPLs being replaced by less intelligent affirmative action hires.

New Judge is Ken Lester, good news for Zimmerman

Zimmerman was assigned a new judge, Ken Lester, who is a nerdy-looking older man. This is the perfect judge for Zimmerman. He looks like the kind of judge who might make the legally correct decision even if it's unpopular.

He also appears to be not someone like Judge Ito who lost control of his courtroom and allowed the OJ case to drag on for a ridiculously long time such that it mocked the concept of a speedy trial.

Half Sigma supports the Buffett Rule

According to Wikipedia, “the Buffett Rule is a tax plan proposed by President Barack Obama in 2011. The tax plan would apply a minimum tax of 30 percent to individuals making more than a million dollars a year. According to a White House official, the new tax rate would impact 0.3 percent of taxpayers.”

This sounds like a good idea to me. My marginal tax rate is higher than 30%, so I think it’s fair that people making more than a million dollars a year should pay a minimum rate of 30%.

To go into this in more detail, the most likely reason that rich people are paying less than 30% is because they have a lot of investment income. Dividends and capital gains are currently taxed at 15% (although that may increase in 2013).

I’ve changed my mind somewhat on the double taxation argument. It’s true that in a worst-case scenario, in which a corporation pays out 100% of its income in dividends and pays the full corporate tax rate, and then a rich recipient pays another 30%, this rate of taxation is unfairly high compared to the tax rate on ordinary income. However, no corporation pays out 100% of its income in dividends, and many corporations pay a much lower tax rate than the full corporate rate. General Electric, for example, is a dividend-paying corporation that is famous for legally evading taxes through complicated international transactions. GE paid only 2.3% U.S federal tax over the last decade. So for a rich guy who owns a lot of GE stock, even with the 30% “Buffet Rule” tax, he’s still paying a lower marginal rate than I am.

I also don’t have a problem with a 30% tax rate on capital gains, because of the propensity of people to use the lower capital gains rate to evade paying the higher rate on ordinary income.

I’ve previously proposed that dividends and capital gains should be paid at the full ordinary income rate, and that corporations should be allowed to deduct dividends as an expense just like interest payments, and that basis calculated for capital gains should be adjusted for inflation to prevent unfair high taxation on long-held assets that haven’t truly appreciated in price when inflation is accounted for, but the basis reduction shouldn’t apply to active investors.

I’m also in favor of eliminating the deduction for charitable contributions (as well as most other deductions) and in favor of eliminating the distinction between payroll/FICA taxes and income taxes.

My suggestions have zero chance of being implemented this year, so the Buffet Rule is a good enough placeholder.

People opposed to the Buffet Rule say that it will “only” raise a few billion each year in revenue. But nevertheless, it’s a step in the right direction. The U.S. is running massive budget deficits so we need to take steps in the right direction, not in the wrong direction.

Buffet Rule opponents say it’s “unfair” to rich people. That’s nonsense. The majority of rich people (as far as I can tell) actually voted for Obama, and he always ran on the platform of favoring higher taxes for the rich, so it’s hardly unfair that rich people are getting the taxes they voted for. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that the children of the rich overwhelmingly voted for Obama, so they overwhelmingly supported the reduction of their own inheritance.

Buffet Rule opponents say that higher taxes for the rich would kill the economy. Funny how out of one side of their mouth they say the tax won’t raise much revenue, but then on the other side they say this tiny increase in taxes will utterly kill the economy. It’s nonsense. A 30% tax rate isn’t that high, and as a tax on income, it doesn’t discourage rich people from starting businesses which generally don’t pay taxes in their startup phase because startups usually don’t have profits.