Surf's Up

So what's going on here?

From Maine to Florida, the Atlantic seaboard has experienced higher tides than expected this summer. At their peak in mid-June, the tides at some locations outstripped predictions by two feet.


The change has come too fast to be attributed to melting ice sheets or anything quite that dramatic, and it’s a puzzle for scientists who’ve never seen anything quite like it.

“The ocean is dynamic. It’s not uncommon to have anomalies like this but the breadth and the intensity and duration were unique,” said Mike Szabados, director of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s tide and current program.

The unexpected tidal surge is subsiding, has reduced its reach from the entire coast, and is now concentrated just in the mid-Atlantic states.

NOAA is rushing to study the data in an effort to understand what happened. Szabados’ office is already putting the finishing touches on a report that will be released next month on the wind and current patterns that appear to be correlated with the tidal surge.

Maybe it's the aliens?

Carbon Kids

Is having less kids the way towards saving the planet? These folks seem to think so:

Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit – have one less child.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

But people are already having less kids, population rates are already in freefall in many countries and those nasty carbon emissions are still as high as ever. Maybe Reagan was right and it really is the trees, after all. So does that mean Gaia will just be polluting herself even more after we're gone?

What Would Big Dog Do?

Peter Suderman weighs in on Obama's health-care woes, and why it may make him less successful than Clinton with the rest of his agenda:

One of the things Clinton did was give Congress a lengthy, exceedingly detailed overhaul plan. As the body ostensibly in charge of writing legislation, however, Congress didn't take well to being told exactly what legislation to write and pass. Obama's approach has been to give Congress almost no direction whatsoever, letting them draw up a plan aimed toward universality of coverage. The president's only requirement was that it be paid for.

As a strategy for dealing with feisty personalities in Congress, this may have been savvy (although recent Democratic infighting suggests a little more leadership from the party's most popular figure might have been useful). But as strategy for selling the plan to the public, it's had serious problems. Stories covering health-care reform have necessarily focused on process, which tends to drag down public support. And without backing a specific plan of his own, Obama has been unable to stand as firm as he might have on specific policies.
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The result of the president's don't-do-what-Clinton-did strategy has been infighting amongst Democrats, widespread confusion about the various plans for reform, and declining public support—not only for reform, but for Obama. Rather than move Washington beyond politics, as he promised during last year's campaign, Obama, has, despite studied efforts to avoid the mistakes of predecessors, allowed the bickering and factionalism of political dealing to hijack his top legislative priority.

It may be somewhat unfair to blame Obama for this outcome. He was naive, certainly, but that's simply the way Washington works: It's magnetized toward pettiness and politics. But the takeaway, as far as I'm concerned, isn't, as Obama has continually suggested, that we need better politics or better government; instead, it's that we need less.

Clinton at least understood that you can talk like a liberal but you have to govern as a centrist. If Obama doesn't learn that, he will find himself in the same league as a certain other President whose last name began with C.

The Recovery We've Been Waiting For

Is the economy finally beginning to turn around? Maybe:

Despite the overall contraction, the fingerprints of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could be seen in some aspect of today’s report. Federal government spending grew at an 11% rate in the quarter, adding roughly 0.8% to overall GDP. State and local government spending grew at a 2.4% annual rate, the fastest growth since the middle of 2007. It is clear that the large amount of state aid contained in the ARRA made this growth possible.

Furthermore, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable personal income rose by 3.2% in the quarter, after rising by only 1% in the previous quarter. A large contribution to this increase was made by the Making Work Pay tax credit passed in conjunction with the ARRA, as this was the first full quarter that the credit was in effect. Inflation-adjusted transfer payments (including a one-time payment to Social Security recipients) rose at an annual rate of over 6% in the quarter as well...

The consensus of macroeconomic forecasters is that ARRA contributed roughly 3% to annualized growth rates in the second quarter. This means that absent its effects, economic performance would have resembled that of the previous three quarters, when the economy contracted at an average annual rate of 4.9%. In short, the recovery act turned this quarter’s economic performance from disastrous to merely bad. This is no small achievement, but with even more public relief and investments, the U.S. economy could do much better.

So there's an argument that the stimulus really is working, albeit in a much smaller way than advertised. The Economist is also cautiously optimistic. Of course, this isn't an excuse for a never-ending stimulus of the kind Obama envisioned. But hopefully, this and other good economic news will discourage the need for more. Or, knowing Obama, maybe not...

Off On The Wrong Foot

Personally, I think they've always been on the wrong foot with this, but Josh Marshall outlines why "Reform" will be more difficult to pass than a kidney stone:

The problem is that the White House and the reformers are coming into this month long period pretty wrong-footed. On a big plan like this, it's usually easier to tear down than to build up. Easy to raise concerns and spook people with scare stories than to make a global case for a critical reform. And all the discussion right now seems to be on the negative side of the equation. That wasn't the case six weeks ago; but it does seem like that now.

From one perspective, a president goes into a down month like this with a lot of advantages. He's still president. He can get on TV pretty much whenever he wants. But the Congress is spread out around the country, fragmented and unable -- as they are in DC -- to coordinate and sustain a counter-conversation.

But I don't feel like I'm hearing from the White House any clear narrative, any clear and digestible argument for why this is necessary. I hear the phrase 'public plan'. But it's such a blah-blah gobbledegook phrase that even though I'm fairly deep into the policy details of this debate, half the time even I find myself forgetting exactly what that even means.

If the administration that's supposed to be smarter than the last one can't explain it, how do they expect people to take it-or much else they do-seriously?

Got It In The...

I know most of us would like to give our local politicians swift kicks in the fundament, but this does sound a bit extreme:

A report issued Wednesday by Boise Community Ombudsman Pierce Murphy found that a Boise police officer who used a Taser on a suspect's buttocks violated the police department's use-of-force policy.
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The use-of-force violation occurred during an arrest at a Boise home; the address and the names of the occupants have not been released. Police were called to the house after a report of a fight. While on their way, they learned that a man inside the woman's residence had just been released from jail. They were also told a 3-year-old boy in the home, according to details provided in Murphy's report.

Upon arrival, the officers heard the sounds of a struggle and voices coming from inside. The officers yelled for someone to open the door, and were greeted with a profane comment by a man in the residence. The officers had to kick and push the door open; the man inside was pushing against the door for more than 80 seconds. Once they gained entry, the officers said the suspect did not comply with their demands to get on the ground and stop resisting.

The suspect said that he was hit three times with a Taser after he was already handcuffed and face-down on the floor. Murphy's investigation found evidence that the suspect was hit twice with the Taser — once in the back before he was handcuffed and once in the buttocks after he was cuffed.

Murphy said the officer who used the Taser -— described as Officer #3 in the report — also coarsely threatened to use the Taser in the man's anus and genitals. Murphy's report says that use of Taser on a man's buttock's does not violate policy in and of itself; the question is whether it was "reasonable and necessary."

More on taser abuse here. Meanwhile, there's a new one on the market. No word on whether it can be used on multiple rear ends or not.

The Fall And Rise Of The Banking Industry

Forbes takes a look at the intriguing practices of post-traditional banking:

They range from new ways to insure mortgages to new models of lending to reliable consumers by bypassing the current banking system. Many others, such as Lending Club and Prosper, are popping up on the Internet, letting investors, rather than credit officers, decide who is creditworthy. It's too early to tell if these attempts will succeed, but it's vital that they occur. Through trial and error, a new world of banking will rise from the ashes of the old one.

Should the government subsidize these efforts? In a New York Times column this spring, Tom Friedman said yes, suggesting that it should dedicate a fraction of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money to promote innovation. Fortunately, several venture capitalists have rejected the idea online, and with good reason: The government's record as a venture capitalist is rather poor.

The new startups may actually show the way towards true free-market financing, away from the subsidized version so favored by Wall Street. I wish them luck.

Failings Of The One

Lexington warns that Obama may have set himself up for an especially hard fall:

Mr Obama has inspired more passionate devotion than any modern American politician. People scream and faint at his rallies. Some wear T-shirts proclaiming him “The One” and noting that “Jesus was a community organiser”. An editor at Newsweek described him as “above the country, above the world; he’s sort of God.” He sets foreign hearts fluttering, too. A Pew poll published this week finds that 93% of Germans expect him to do the right thing in world affairs. Only 14% thought that about Mr Bush.

Perhaps Mr Obama inwardly cringes at the personality cult that surrounds him. But he has hardly discouraged it. As a campaigner, he promised to “change the world”, to “transform this country” and even (in front of a church full of evangelicals) to “create a Kingdom right here on earth”.
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Mr Obama is clearly not the socialist of Republican demonology, but he is trying to extend federal control over two huge chunks of the economy—energy and health care—so fast that lawmakers do not have time to read the bills before voting on them. Perhaps he is hurrying to get the job done before his polls weaken any further. In six months, his approval rating has fallen from 63% to 56% while his disapproval rating has nearly doubled, from 20% to 39%. Independent voters are having second thoughts. And his policies are less popular than he is. Support for his health-care reforms has slipped from 57% to 49% since April.

All presidential candidates promise more than they can possibly deliver. This sets them up for failure. But because the Obama cult has stoked expectations among its devotees to such unprecedented heights, he is especially likely to disappoint. Mr Healy predicts that he will end up as a failed president, and “possibly the least popular of the modern era”. It is up to Mr Obama to prove him wrong.

Unfortunately, at this still-early stage, it so far looks like he won't. Any leader who either claims to walk on water or who promises the Sun and Moon is setting themselves up for failure in a democracy, where people can see through demagoguery and overblown promises.

The Smart Ones

The American people aren't so dumb, after all:

A solid majority of Americans don’t want to see Sarah Palin ever become president, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Two-thirds, 67%, said they don’t ever want the former Alaska governor to be president, compared with the 21% who said they would. While it should come as no surprise that 87% of Democrats said they don’t ever want Palin as commander-in-chief, some 43% of Republicans said the same thing—as well as 65% of independents. Even 46% of self-identified conservatives said they do not want Palin as president, as well as 44% of those who voted for Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain in 2008. At 44%, white evangelicals are the largest subgroup supporting Palin as president one day.

Every so often, we as a country do get it right-thank the Lord.

A Republican Renaissance?

In spite of all their problems (and they still have many) it looks like there may be some life in the old Elephant yet.

Despite the ongoing hand-wringing among many Republican insiders and pundits about the fate of the party in the Obama age, a mini-resurgence of the moderate GOP brand is quietly taking place in the Northeast.

In almost every state north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Democratic officeholders are struggling and a GOP candidate is polling well. In places like New Jersey, Connecticut and New York, there are signs that moderate Republicans, once considered extinct, are reappearing. Like any endangered creature, they went underground until a better climate appeared.
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Elections are about alternatives. If voters don't like the status quo, they're willing to look for other options. But when those options look either as unpalatable or worse, they can fall back to support the devil they know. At this point, Republicans in the Northeast are showing that they understand the need to run candidates with the ability to appeal to the independents who left them in droves over the last two elections.

No dark age lasts forever. The idea that the GOP could make a comeback in the wasteland of the Northeast could signal a real turnaround as skepticism of Obama grows.

Organic Junk Food

Well whaddya know:

Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday.Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said consumers were paying higher prices for organic food because of its perceived health benefits, creating a global organic market worth an estimated $48 billion in 2007.

A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.

'A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance,' said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.

'Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.'

But it's more politically correct than those evil supermarket finds, which is what matters more than, you know, actual food science.

Rather Obvious

Dan Rather joins the call to save the MSM:

As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren’t cozy enough already, former “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to “make recommendations” for the media on how to survive the economic downturn.
Rather spoke at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. on July 28 and addressed challenges to the news industry, which he described as challenges to the “very survival of American democracy,” and insisted the president should step in.

“I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media,” Rather said, according to the July 29 Aspen Daily News.

According to the story, Rather said “corporate and political influence” on newsrooms had damaged the industry and was cause for concern.

“A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom,” Rather said in an interview. “This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”

Which raises the question of why he thinks government intervention in the name of saving his cherished institution is such a good thing...

Death By Shopping

Can you say "Irony?"

The body of an elderly shopaholic was found underneath a pile of clothing and other items after she died of natural causes, an inquest heard.

Joan Cunnane's bungalow was so crammed with purchases it took five visits to the house before she was found.

She had refused to let her friends into the house in Heaton Mersey, Stockport Magistrates' Court was told.

Her friend Roy Moran said the 77-year-old started shopping to escape youths who once plagued her home.

Mr Moran told the court: 'She said it gave her pleasure to buy things, she only bought things she really liked.'

So I guess this means she died happy?

Temping For The Stimulus

So how reliable are those stimulus jobs? Not very:

In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.

But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.

"Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney.

With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working—even if that means stretching the facts.

At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified.
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The White House requires states to report numbers in terms of full-time, yearlong jobs. That means a part-time mechanic counts as half a job. A full-time construction worker who has a three-month paving contract counts as one-fourth of a job.

Using that method, the AP's analysis of figures in Oregon shows the program so far has created the equivalent of 215 full-time jobs that will last three months. Oregon's House speaker, Dave Hunt, called that measurement unfair, though nearly every other state that has passed a stimulus package already uses or plans to use it.

"This stimulus plan was intentionally designed for short-term projects to pump needed jobs and income into families, businesses and communities struggling to get by," Hunt said in a statement. "No one ever said these would be full-time jobs for months at a time."

Still, critics say counting jobs, without any consideration of their duration, isn't good enough.

"You can't let them say, 'Well, we never said it was going to be full-time,'" said Steve Buckstein, a policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free-market think tank. For the price of Oregon's $176 million, lawmakers could have provided all 3 million state residents with a one-hour job paying about $60, he said.

"By their definition, that's 3 million jobs," Buckstein said. "Is anybody gonna buy that?"

Well, when it's liberal math, apparently they will.

Captain Caveman

Meet a latter-day caveman:

DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. 'When I lived with money, I was always lacking,' he writes. 'Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.'

Well, except for things like food, furniture, clothing...all that stuff the rest of us like to have around.

Team Euro, Continental Police

You cannot make this stuff up. The European Union, in its drive to legitimize itself, has created its own superhero. Meet: Captain Euro!

He was invented by a firm of 'corporate vision strategists' on the orders of the European Commission. He stars in animated films paid for by taxpayers' money and which are broadcast through the internet and television. The official line is, 'Captain Euro is the symbol of European unity and values.'
The villain opposing him is, naturally, the evil Dr D. Vider -- get it, Divider? Dr Vider is described as 'a ruthless speculator' which in Brussels code means anybody who supports the kind of free market economics the British do best and the French hate.

Captain Euro is tripe. But the propaganda drive he represents is no joke. A report just out today from the Swedish thinktank Timbro gives 25 pages of details on how the European institutions spend hundreds of millions of euros each year on what they call 'communication,' but anyone else would recognise as pro-EU, anti-national propaganda. None of it is information, all of it is taxpayer-funded marketing and advocacy for 'an ever closer union.'

I think the closest we ever had to a propaganda superhero was the ecologically correct Captain Planet (remember him?), and the original Captain America, but even they were created by real capitalists, not government-sponsored propagandists. And we didn't have to pay for him with our tax dollars, either.

The Final Touch

Will the Birthers finally shut up now?

FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as 'supporting documents' to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.
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FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates).

Well, it's good enough for me, but quite frankly I don't think the Birthers would be satisfied even if somebody went back in time and confirmed that Obama was indeed born in the U.S.A. He'll always be so alien to them that he might as well be one of the aliens in the cult classic They Live, posing as human.

The Government Weight Loss Plan

To get people thin, the government is naturally putting out the cash:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government plans to increase funding to battle obesity and views healthcare reform as an opportunity to encourage better eating habits, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Tuesday.

The Obama administration, as part of its economic stimulus package, will give states and local governments more money to control obesity, including investing in public transportation, Sebelius told an obesity conference in Washington.

She added that legislation in Congress to overhaul the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry could boost programs to get more fruits and vegetables into school lunches and encourage grocery stores to sell more fresh produce in poor communities.

"We finally have a plan," Sebelius told the conference, which was sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Washington.

And the War on Fat People continues. Next up: Taxes, and more taxes. Look, I know fat people are a drain on our health care costs. And we are a nation of fatties. But as any New Yorker can tell you, this isn't so much about health as it is about politically incorrect foods. Man does not live on greens and tofu alone, and shouldn't be forced to.

Poetry In Motion

William Shatner reads Palin's farewell speech as only he can. Dig it, baby.

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Meet the New Iraq, Same As The Old One

Like Afghanistan, it's Obama's mess now, and he may be faced with as little choice as Bush was in how to proceed.

The problems are large and many. First, the major Iraqi political parties are based upon ethnosectarian politics, and could lose power if they give that up. Second, there is still fighting in Iraq, and a World Bank study on conflicts found that almost 50% of countries coming out of civil wars fall back into them within five years. Third, there is little consensus in Baghdad on major issues such as oil, and politics are fragmented, which makes it hard to conduct negotiations or find partners. Fourth, there is a lack of accountability as many militants are involved in politics and security with no regret for their past deeds. Fifth, many conflicts and fighting took place within communities, not just between them, which has never been resolved. Sixth, many groups still talk about revenge, and see things in zero-sum terms. Seventh Iraq has been in the throes of elections since 2008, which makes compromising more difficult. Last, Iraq’s neighbors have all interfered in its internal affairs, and continue to do so to this day such as Iran. These problems may never be overcome, which is why the authors are so pessimistic about the country’s future.

Which is why Obama's plan for leaving Iraq is still probably the best option. Whether we have to go back in five or ten years from now will be up to the Iraqis.

Their Wingnuttery Goes Marching On

It seems a number of politicians who apparently have nothing better to do are following Rick Perry and Sarah Palin's lead:

LINCOLN — At least three Nebraska lawmakers want to send a message to the federal government:
Butt out of state business.

Next year they will see if a majority of their colleagues agrees.

The senators are working on resolutions asserting Nebraska's sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

Nebraska wouldn't try to secede from the union under their proposals but would go on record objecting to federal laws that they say go beyond constitutional authority.

“My goal here is to shine light on the fact that the federal government is overstepping its bounds,” said State Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln. “We would be making a statement on behalf of Nebraska.”

I'm no fan of the Fed, but seriously, what are they and their brethren in other states, really hoping to accomplish with these stunts? Did we see any of this from even the most liberal states in the Union during the Bush Years? If these states don't like the Federal government, then the answer is simple: don't take their money when tornadoes or floods hit. We'll see how long "Sovereignty" lasts then.

Know Your Enemy, And Invite Him Over For Lunch

Well, I'm not sure what to make of this:

A concerted effort to start unprecedented talks between Taliban and British and American envoys was outlined today in a significant change in tactics designed to bring about a breakthrough in the attritional, eight-year conflict in Afghanistan.

Senior ministers and commanders on the ground believe they have created the right conditions to open up a dialogue with 'second-tier' local leaders now the Taliban have been forced back in a swath of Helmand province.

They are hoping that Britain's continuing military presence in Helmand, strengthened by the arrival of thousands of US troops, will encourage Taliban commanders to end the insurgency.
There is even talk in London and Washington of a military 'exit strategy'.

Speaking at the end of the five-week Operation Panther's Claw in which hundreds of British troops were reported to have cleared insurgents from a vital region of Helmand province, Lieutenant-General Simon Mayall, deputy chief of defence staff, said: 'It gives the Taliban 'second tier' room to reconnect with the government and this is absolutely at the heart of this operation.'

If true, this could signal the beginning of the end of our engagement in Afghanistan, which would be a good thing in the long run. But how would talking with the Taliban work? It's not the same as dealing with Iran and North Korea, which, after all, are official regimes with diplomatic envoys. It's also not quite the same as getting insurgents to flip on each other to bring peace. The problem here is, how much do we allow the Taliban to "Reconnect" with the country they once ruled with an iron hand?

"You Won't Have Sarah Palin To Kick Around Anyomore"

Well, there she goes:

Plainly feeling liberated, Palin said that the freedom of the press was an important American right and one that members of the military died to protect.

“So, how about, in honor of the American soldier, quit making things up,” she said with an insistent voice, prompting loud applause and cheers from a mostly sympathetic audience gathered at a park here.

Palin didn’t specify what she was accusing reporters of making up, but suggested that she was weary of the attention on her family since being tapped as the Republican vice presidential nominee last summer.

“Our new governor has a very nice family, too, so leave his kids alone,” she demanded.
Immediately after Palin’s speech that man, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican and Palin ally, was sworn in as the state’s governor.

As she stepped down from the stage, Palin’s future remained a mystery.

Concluding her remarks, she only said: “Let’s all enjoy the ride.”

And thus began her journey into historical obscurity.

Today Is Kill Your Boss Day

How they handle pay disputes in a worker's paradise:

About 30 000 Chinese steelworkers clashed with police in a protest over plans to merge their mill with another company and beat the company’s general manager to death, a human rights monitor said on Saturday. Several hundred people were injured in the clash . . . Workers were angry that Chen was paid about $438 000 last year while some retirees received as little as $29 a month, the centre said. Beijing is trying to streamline China’s sprawling steel industry, the world’s largest, by orchestrating a series of mergers aimed at creating globally competitive producers. The mergers often are accompanied by layoffs that sometimes spark complaints that workers receive too little severance pay.

I hate to think of what will happen when the Chinese discover outsourcing. Meanwhile, China's vaunted prosperity engine may only be illusory. Maybe this means our grandkids won't be in hock to them after all?

Jersey Boys

It was a big bust, even by Jersey standards:

Even in the state of "The Sopranos" and "On the Waterfront," where corruption seems institutionalized, the arrest of a neophyte mayor in office a mere three weeks stands out.

Voters might wonder how Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, no grizzled politician but a 32-year-old lawyer with a promising political career, could be accused of taking $25,000 in bribes after watching so many politicians follow the same road to jail.

Authorities said that what he told a government witness wearing a wire - a purported real-estate developer whom Cammarano assured he would treat "like a friend" - not only led to his arrest but also added a new chapter to New Jersey's culture of corruption.
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New Jersey, the setting for the HBO mob drama 'The Sopranos' and the 1954 Marlon Brando classic 'On the Waterfront,' filmed in Hoboken about crookedness on the docks, has long been known for government corruption. But over the last five years, hundreds of government officials from both major parties have been charged with crimes involving betrayal of public trust: taking bribes, getting no-show jobs to boost state pension benefits or lavishly spending public money on themselves.

Thursday's arrests snared 43, including three mayors, two state assemblymen, five rabbis and many other public officials. It also brought fresh attention to this 1-square-mile city known as Frank Sinatra's hometown, one of the nation's earliest settlements and more recently a nightlife mecca for the young and hip.

Cammarano insisted he was innocent Friday, calling the charges 'completely baseless,' and he said he will remain in office.

He became mayor only three weeks before his arrest after a bitterly contested mayoral election that forced a runoff, which he won by only 161 votes.

The FBI said Cammarano was so confident about his supporters pre-election that he was caught joking he could secure most of the vote of those born and raised in Hoboken even if he were 'uh, indicted.'

He is the second of the city's last three mayors to face criminal charges. Former Mayor Anthony Russo was sentenced in 2005 to 30 months in prison for accepting bribes in exchange for city contracts between 1994 and 2001, nearly his entire time as mayor.

Maybe they just ought to hold a mayoral lottery next time. The candidate with the least amount of indictments gets the job.

From Hard Sell To Harder Sell

What went wrong? Obama must be scratching his head furiously these days as he tries to figure out why people aren't buying the Fierce Urgency these days:

An Associated Press-GfK Poll shows public confidence has reversed on whether the president's $787 billion stimulus package, passed by Congress in February, will ultimately work to improve the economy.

In January, 58 percent were confident it would. Now, it's the opposite, with 58 percent saying they doubt the stimulus will bring any significant improvement.

Forty-seven percent still think it's too early to pass final judgment on whether the plan is working. But of those who say they are decided, three times as many say the stimulus has harmed the economy than those who say it has helped.

Other polls have shown similar slippage on Obama's economic stewardship, although his overall approval rating remains solid — 55 percent in the AP-Gfk poll conducted July 16-20. Still, that's down nine points from April.
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It's been a hard sell.

Fiscally conservative Democrats are skeptical. And Republicans have seized on the change in public sentiment to pound Obama for failing to create or save the jobs he promised while greatly overburdening the federal budget.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has predicted the health care legislation could be Obama's "Waterloo moment" and could break his presidency — a remark Obama now cites as the kind of partisan politics-as-usual in Washington he is seeking to end.

"I think the Republican attack on the deficit is succeeding because it's real," said Rob Shapiro, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, and chairman of Sonecon, an economic-consulting firm.

Obama is factual in saying he inherited a trillion-dollar-plus deficit from predecessor George W. Bush, "but he made it worse," Shapiro said. The deficit in the current budget year is now estimated to come in at more than $1.8 trillion, pushed higher by the stimulus spending, bailouts and increasing war costs.

Shapiro said he believes White House officials are taking the GOP attacks very seriously. "They're also concerned about long-term deficits and the impact they could have on the economy and on the ability to act two, three years down the road — which of course is moving up to the re-election season," he said.

Obama clearly has been putting more emphasis on the importance of getting spending under control even as he tries to prod a recovery.

"We have to do what businesses and families do. We've got to cut out the things we don't need to pay for the things we do," Obama said at a town-hall style meeting Thursday in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The meeting followed a prime-time news conference the night before in which Obama sought to rally public support for his health plan.

Well, he says that, but there's still the little problem of what's actually in the bill. And trying to start a war with the CBO for telling the truth won't help. In the end, it may simply be coming down to the silver-tongued orator not being able to deliver as promised. And that doesn't bode well for the rest of his term if he still wants to be taken seriously, including by those in his own party.

K Street, Come On In

Hmmm. The phrase "Give them an inch" comes to mind when it comes to this:

In a significant change, the Obama administration will now allow lobbyists to meet and have telephonic discussions with government officials regarding economic recovery projects.

The lifting of the ban comes after K Street has cried foul for months and has challenged the White House on its restrictions.
...

Lobbyists can make their cases -- and agency officials can listen to them -- at 'widely attended gatherings.' Government officials have to ask whether the person they are talking to at such events is a federally registered lobbyist speaking on behalf of a client.

Agency officials are required to promptly disclose on the Internet all oral and written communications with lobbyists concerning policy or projects funded under the recovery act. They also have to disclose any written communications with lobbyists regarding pending applications for competitive funding.

The one caveat, however, is that lobbyists can talk to agency representatives only about logistical issues or general questions regarding stimulus grants. Agency officials have to document any discussion with a lobbyist that veers toward advocacy of stimulus policy or a particular project.

Government officials are still banned from talking to lobbyists representing companies that have already applied for grants and are awaiting a competitive decision. In those cases, agency officials are allowed to accept 'oral communication' only if the matter is purely logistical.

But how long can that last? Obama deserved credit for holding out as long as he did. This just hints at more concessions to come.

"Don't Worry; We're Still With You"

I'm not so sure this is the kind of "Support" Obama had in mind for Obamacare:

The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are all saying Congress must make major changes this year. Television ads paid for by drug companies and insurers continued to emphasize the benefits of a health care overhaul — not the groups' objections to some of the proposals.

"My gut is telling me that something major can pass because all the people who could kill it are still at the table," said Ken Thorpe, chairman of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta. "Everybody has issues with bits and pieces of it, but all these groups want to get something done this year." As a senior official at the Health and Human Services department in the 1990s, Thorpe was deeply involved in the Clinton administration's failed effort.

President Barack Obama on Saturday continued his full-court press to pass health care reform legislation. In his weekly Internet and radio address, Obama cited a new White House study indicating that small businesses pay far more per employee for health insurance than big companies — a disparity he says is "unsustainable — it's unacceptable."

"And it's going to change when I sign health insurance reform into law," Obama said, adding that he has "a sense of urgency about moving this process forward."

This time, the health care industry groups see a strategic opportunity. As lawmakers squabble, the groups are focused on how to come out ahead in the end game.

"We're still optimistic that we can get health care reform accomplished," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the main insurance industry trade group. "There is strong support from policymakers and from across the health care sector."

Just not from the people who would be paying for "Free" care...

Camels On Parade

The Saudis really need to get laid:

The judges in Abu Dhabi view camels with different eyes, scrutinizing them from nose to tail and back again, evaluating each according to strict criteria. Her ears must be firm. Her back high, her hump large and symmetrical. A rump that's not too big, with just enough room for a saddle. The hair, of course, must shine. A good head is massive. Her nose should have a strong arch in the bridge, sloping toward a bottom lip that hangs down like a bauble. A long neck appeals. As do long legs. And the judges examine the two toes of the feet, looking for what their guidelines call 'toe-parting length.' Because so many beauty pageants, in the end, do come down to cleavage.

Hey, to each his own. But don't the other livestock get jealous?

Smaller Is Better

Daniel Griswold says fears of immigrants creating a larger underclass are unwarranted:

As plausible as the argument sounds, it is not supported by the social and economic trends of the past 15 years. Even though the number of legal and illegal immigrants in the United States has risen strongly since the early 1990s, the size of the economic underclass has not. In fact, by several measures the number of Americans living on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder has been in a long-term decline, even as the number of immigrants continues to climb. Other indicators associated with the underclass, such as the crime rate, have also shown improvement.

Part of the reason may be that immigrants from the lower ranks of society aren't shut out of the American dream by a stratified society the way earlier generations were. They know the opportunities are there, and most immigrants-legal and otherwise-take advantage of them. And isn't that really the essence of the American way?

The Long Arm Of Bad Law

It sounds like the sort of thing Orwell and Kafka tried to warn us about, but the Twilight Zone world of federal criminal charges really can happen to anyone.

Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who will testify at today's hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.

Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.

Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.

The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.

The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Federal law.

Birther BS

Well, I hope that settles that:

In the final months of the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign learned of a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania that asked the state to strip Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of the Democratic nomination on suspicion that he was not an American citizen. The complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief was filed by Phil Berg, a former deputy state attorney general who left government in 1990 for a series of gadfly political campaigns. His last round of notoriety had come when he filed RICO complaints against George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and multiple members of the Bush administration for “accountability” for the 9/11 attacks. Still, Berg’s complaint had gotten glancing local media attention, and the Democratic National Committee’s counsel had filed a motion to dismiss it. One lawyer who was doing some work for the campaign was tasked with reading Berg’s lawsuit and gauging its chances of success.

“The conversation was along the lines of ‘this is idiotic, but explain to me why,’” said the lawyer, who spoke under condition of anonymity to TWI. “I looked at whether the lawsuit was going to be dismissed. I said yes.”
....

While they ruled out any chance of the ‘birther’ lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”

Sorry, wingnuts. It looks like G. Gordon Liddy and his ilk will finally have to find something else to do.

Skynet Discovers The Stock Market

It appears some of the biggest wheelers and dealers have found yet another way to get around the Great Recession:

Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense.

These systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike. And after growing in the shadows for years, they are generating lots of talk.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.

In today's financial world, electronic transparancy is apparently for suckers.

No Blue Dogs Allowed?

The Blue Dogs seem to be fed up, and are taking their ball and going home:

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

“Mr. Waxman has decided to sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America,” Melancon said.

Although those Blue Dogs were supposed to be headed back into another meeting of the Energy and Commerce Democrats, their anger was visible.
....

"Waxman simply does not have votes in committee and process should not be bypassed to bring the bill straight to floor,” Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the lead Blue Dog negotiator, said on Friday. “We are trying to save this bill and trying to save this party.”

Melancon said there would be 40-45 “solid no” votes from the 52-strong Blue Dogs, among other problems throughout the caucus. And Melancon said there are more Democrats who will vote against the bill.

“If they try to bring it to the floor, I think they’ll find out they have more problems than the Blue Dogs.”

Waxman and Pelosi don't seem to understand that their are other voices in the Democratic Party besides their own. They ignore them at their peril.

"Let's Do National Healing"

Apparently realizing that he might have stepped in it, Obama now wants Officer Crowley to come over for a visit:

Obama said the remark he made Wednesday during a nationally televised news conference 'unfortunately... gave an impression that I was maligning' the officer. He said he hoped the public debate surrounding the events would be 'a teachable moment' for the nation.

Obama said he had spoken privately by phone with the officer, Sgt. James Crowley, and the White House said Obama later spoke with Gates. Obama invited Gates to join him and Crowley at the White House in the near future, officials said.

Obama did not say whether his conversation with Crowley constituted the apology for his remarks that some police officials and union leaders have demanded.

But who's to do the teaching? Granted, some of Crowley's actions were questionable. But Obama seemed to want to seize on this as an example of getting arrested while being black, in spite of the fact that Crowley teaches other offices how not to do that. As what I hope will be the final note in all this, why does everything have to be "Teachable" or settled with some sort of group hug moment? Sometimes people just need to say what needs to be said and get on with their lives.

Gimme Shelter

Maybe it's just another example of chic survivalism, but bomb shelters are apparently all the rage these days:

The bomb shelter business is booming. At least that's the consensus of the men and women who design, construct and install underground sanctuaries. They attribute the growth in business to Kim Jong Il's erratic missile lobbing, the intransigent Iranian clerics hell-bent on getting nuclear weaponry, the impending total collapse of the global financial system, and the end of the world in 2012, as predicted by the Mayan Calendar.

'For whatever reason—and we're not totally sure ourselves—but business is incredible,' Brian V. Camden, an engineer at high-end shelter builder Hardened Stuctures, says. 'Twenty-twelve, the financial collapse: I just had to hire a new architect Tuesday. Right now we're doing a lot in Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania. All through Appalachia, it's people who share a similar mind-set.'

Well, if you can afford it, why not face doomsday in style? When the end comes, you can always rent out to the post-atomic hordes...

History Lessons

Brian Doherty points to some items of interest to students of libertarian history:

The Mises Institute continues its relentless digitization of previously hard-to-find aspects of the modern American libertarian movement's past.

Faith and Freedom is more general, more homiletic, and in some ways more daring given its focus on first principles in a social and political environment when radical libertarianism was greatly mistrusted and even feared.

Libertarian Review is undoubtedly more sophisticated, more engaged with a wider world of social sciences and history and current events in a manner that could appeal to a reader merely curious, not interested in being preached at. Both make great reading for those interested in how libertarian ideas have been framed and sold in the past 60 years.

The history of modern conservatism really wouldn't be complete without a study of libertarianism and its contributions to 20th century conservative philosophy. Now said students can do just that.

Let's Text About Sex

Some common sense maybe coming to the world of teen texting:

Recognizing that teenagers who e-mail nude or sexually suggestive photos of themselves to friends aren't really child pornographers, New Jersey legislators are proposing alternatives to criminal prosecution that may be more effective in stanching the recent practice.

Pending bills in the state Assembly and the Senate would create a diversionary program, by which minors who are charged with the creation, distribution or exhibition of nude photos can avoid prosecution by completing a course focusing on the consequences of such acts.

The sponsors say teenagers often engage in the practice -- sometimes known by the play on words 'sexting' -- out of a psychological vulnerability, not a criminal mindset, and the law should reflect that.

Dealing with how anal we can be as a society when it comes to young love, or lust, would be a good start, too.

Selective Outrage, Or, Where's My Injustice?

Conor Friedersorf points out:

Isn't it notable that six months into his presidency, the most prominent advocacy President Obama has done on behalf of minorities mistreated by police is to stand up for his Ivy League buddy? Somehow I imagine that Professor Gates would've fared just fine absent help from Harvard's most prominent alumnus.

Whereas if President Obama spoke up at a press conference on behalf of people wrongly imprisoned due to 'testimony' by police dogs, or advocated for those sexually assaulted by an officer, or spoke against prosecutors who block access to DNA testing, or called out the officer who choked a paramedic, or objected to the practice of police killing family pets, or asked the Innocence Project for a clear cut case of injustice to publicize...

I understand, of course, that Pres. Obama was asked about Henry Louis Gates, which is also part of the problem. Wrongly arrest a black men who happens to be a Harvard professor, release him without filing charges, and the national press corps asks the president to comment. Wrongly imprison for years on end a black man who happens to be working class and without celebrity, and the national press corps continues to utterly ignore a criminal justice system that routinely convicts innocent people.

So who are the worse racists here? The system that allows the injustice to happen, or the "Liberal" media that only makes a big deal out of it if the victim in question is sufficiently of the right class or educational background...in other words, people more like them?

"That's Not A Knife..."

Considering the shape his state is in, showing a little levity can't hurt:

Schwarzenegger, under fire for a budget plan announced this week that will see 15 billion dollars in spending cuts from services such as education and health care, said the light-hearted video was intended as a bit of fun.

The movie-star-turned-politician brushed off suggestions from reporters in Sacramento that the video might be viewed by some as being insensitive.

'You know, you sent a governor to Sacramento -- not El Stiffo, like some of the past were, but you sent someone that is a little bit more entertaining and has a little bit more fun with the whole thing,' Schwarzenegger said.

'Not that I have fun with making the cuts; they sadden me. But fun with the job itself, because I think it is the most rewarding job that I've ever done, even though with a huge responsibility.

'So just relax and have a little bit of a sense of humor.'

Well, at least he wasn't pointing a gun at his head...

Life After The New Deal

Via Reason, another look at a New Deal "Project", this one right here in West Virginia, and how it fared afterwards.

Diane Ghirardo wrote of the homestead projects, 'in their day-to-day operation American cooperatives revealed a pronounced drive to implement drastic social changes through the cooperatives by means of paternalistic and ultimately authoritarian control.'

In a 1987 interview, Mrs. Anna Houghton (another original homesteader) talked about the control over their lives by outsiders, stating 'to say 'go ahead and run it your own way' and yet to have somebody else say 'well, this is the way it has to be done if you're gonna get any more money from me' is the problem of any administration,' and there we have the perfect description of the political control applied to Arthurdale from 1934 to 1947. Even Bushrod Grimes (the town's first federal project manager) complained about the 'use of army tactics with the homesteaders.'

On the other hand, the success of Arthurdale as a community has everything to do with the people who stayed on after the politicians packed up and left in 1947. It only began running under its own steam when the homesteaders themselves, the Luziers, McLaughlins, Bucklews and all the others, where able to act of their own free will, guided by their own wants and opinions instead of outsiders' wants and opinions. Only then did the town became the success it is today.

And yet, some people in high places can't seem to learn from history.

"We'll Get Back To You"

So was it all for naught?

President Barack Obama's drive for healthcare reform suffered a setback on Thursday when Senate leaders said they would not be able to pass the measure before leaving for a monthlong August recess.

The day after Obama's prime-time news conference to sell the healthcare proposal, congressional leaders struggled to ease doubts about the plan and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the full chamber would not take up the bill until after its monthlong recess that begins on August 7.

'We'll come back in the fall' to work on the bill in the full Senate, he told reporters.

So the fierce urgency of Obamacare now has been replaced by...we'll pick it up after we get back from vacation. If even Harry Reid doesn't see this as a national emergency, where does that leave Obama?

The Gates Of Stupidity

Zengerle defends Obama in the Gates kerfluffle:

I think it's important to remember what the president didn't say. He did not call the behavior of James Crowley, the arresting officer, racist. He did call Crowley's behavior stupid. And, really, I think it's hard to reach any other conclusion when you consider that Crowley arrested Gates after he realized Gates was 'breaking in' to his own home. That's stupid--and Obama's right to say so.

Fair enough. Getting in a cop's face still doesn't seem to be the smartest thing to do in any situation, though. Coates also believes that maybe Obama had a right to be especially upset over the case:

I would say that this is the sort of thing that angers upper middle-class black people even more than it angers anyone else, because they tend to be individuals who, by society's lights, are very accomplished. They deeply resent being lumped in with the mass. And more than anyone they resent the whole "when you're black, you talk to the police like this" routine. Obama has lived as a member of that class for a large portion of his adult life, or he's had some concentrated exposure to it--the black strivers roll deep on the South Side. It's not shocking that he was pissed.

I too can see why Obama, as the most successful African-American in history, would be angered by the image of another successful African American getting arrested outside of his own home. Even so, there are still two sides to this story, and we will see whether Gates' accusations of genuine malice on the part of Officer Crowley are warranted or not.

The Last-Ditch Pitch

I only caught part of it, but from what I could tell I really didn't hear a lot that Obama hasn't said before. Delivery-wise, I thought he was pretty forceful, althoughI thought it was telling that he felt he needed the kind of platform usually reserved for announcing wars and such to try and sell his health care plan one more time. I noticed that he used the word "Inherited" (again), and he got in a couple of good jabs at "Just Say No" and "Hoping for Epic Fail" Republicans. I only wish there'd been a bit more clarification as to how, exactly, his plan will be "Paid for" and why, exactly, he feels that every American needs or even deserves health coverage.

Blue State Blues

Joel Kotkin looks at how a blue State rebellion could hurt Obama big time:

Ultimately, waiting for Obama will not revive the blue states. Instead the best prospect lies in blue states healing themselves. Fortunately, there are some tentative signs of unrest. The same regime failure that stuck to Republicans in the wake of the Bush presidency soon may be felt by Democrats burdened with the failed legacy of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, or New York Governor David Paterson. Even Illinois, the president’s home state, could go Republican, suggests political scientist Simpson, if the Republicans put up a viable, middle-of-the-road candidate.

Powerful signs of mounting resistance have emerged in the most important state of all, California. The massive rejection of the budget agreement last spring was a blow to not only its architects, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats in the legislature, but the general conventional wisdom that holds increased taxes as the key to addressing the state’s budget problem.

Even in deep blue Los Angeles, the public sector machine built around onetime union organizer and current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has lost some recent battles, including an attempt to create a public sector union monopoly over the city’s solar industry. There is now greater appreciation of soaring public sector pension obligations as groups like the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility expose lists of public employees enjoying mega-pensions.

Even Illinois, the president’s home state, could go Republican, suggests political scientist Simpson, if the Republicans put up a viable, middle-of-the-road candidate. Similar efforts have started in other states, and with private-sector pensions being cut around the country, anger over the emerging privileged class of public workers may well gain traction. Ultimately, more people in blue states will begin to realize that their states need to learn again how to compete against both their red counterparts and the rest of the world.

In many ways, these states are still the home of the "Reagan Democrats" and their offpsring, the "Obamacons." Entrenched Democratic party machines may not be enough to stem the tide of Blue rebellion if they don't feel that they're getting what they paid for.

The Gun Stays Home

When it comes to guns, it seems "States' rights" is relative:

By the narrowest of margins, the Senate’s liberal bloc of Democrats defeated an amendment that would have allowed gun owners to carry their weapons across state lines without regard for stricter laws in many jurisdictions, giving preference to states with looser standards.

In a 58-39 vote, supporters of the looser gun law—including all but two Republicans and 20 moderate Democrats—fell two votes short of the 60 they needed under Senate rules to approve the measure. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), showed the bitter divisions among a Democratic caucus that now holds 60 seats, many of whom got to the Senate by winning in conservative states as they proudly supported gun rights. It also divided the party’s leadership, as Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), campaigning for re-election in 2010, sided with gun rights supporters. His top lieutenants, Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), led the push against the measure.

For all the gun rights types out there who will want to get hot under the collar over this, this actually supports states' rights, IMO, by saying that another state's laws should be respected when you go there. In other words, Federalism in action, not just words.

Mall Of Un-America?

Dissent is patriotic! Oh, wait:

At the end of July, Free Market Warrior will not be allowed at Concord Mills Mall. The kiosk chain's owner shared e-mail correspondence with NewsChannel 36 that explains that the mall management has decided that the items sold are not 'neutral' enough. The lease will be allowed to expire July 31, 2009 without an option to renew.

Spivack, who first leased the space this spring, says the decision came as a shock to him. He says mall management seemed pleased with the kiosk just a few weeks ago.

'Nobody in that mall is selling anything from a conservative perspective. Plenty of people are selling things with a liberal perspective, with a pro-Obama perspective,' he said. 'Given that we are in America and not North Korea, we probably should have some stuff on the other side.'

Spivack says he is careful not to sell things that personally attack a politician and wants a fair exchange of ideas. 'The material that I sell is about politics and ideas,' he told Newschannel 36. 'It's all legitimate criticism.'

Concord Mills, owned by Simon Property Group, would not comment for this story, cited a policy against talking about tenant and landlord situations.

If the mall's owner is a "Generous contributor" to Democratic causes, then how can they complain about a lack of "Neutrality" from one vendor? Politics aside, it goes back to the old issue of how one person's complaint can ruin somebody else's entire business.

The Ad Agency That Sold The Moon

Luna as ad space? It could happen:

Creating images on the Moon provides a commercial incentive for turbo charging space travel technology. Shadows are only the beginning. These advancements will eventually place robots on other worlds building space stations and planting crops.

The full Moon will always be the same. Shadow Shaping only works during partial phases of the Moon using shadows that blend with its natural beauty. If shadows form a logo during a quarter moon, it will be a small price to pay for saving mankind.

Salvation through Madison Avenue? Well, there could be worse things to put up there. Lord knows Cobra Commander tried.

The Incredible Shrinking Yard

Harvard is learning the hard way the price of largess and entitlement.

Over the 20-year period from 1980 to 2000, Harvard University added nearly 3.2 million square feet of new space to its campus. But that’s nothing compared with the extravagance that followed. So far this decade, from 2000 through 2008, Harvard has added another 6.2 million square feet of new space, roughly equal to the total number of square feet occupied by the Pentagon. All across campus, one after another, new academic buildings have shot up. The price of these optimistic new projects: a breathtaking $4.3 billion.

In Allston, a Boston neighborhood just across the Charles River from the school’s main campus, you can view Harvard’s billion-dollar hole in the ground, a vast construction pit. It’s the foundation of Harvard’s most ambitious project of all: the sprawling Allston Science Complex, once scheduled to be completed by 2011 at a cost of $1.2 billion—but now on hold.

It’s become a symbol, that vast hole in the ground, yet another indication that Harvard University is facing the worst, most dangerous financial crisis in its 373-year history. Adding to the instability: the university is on its fourth president in eight years. And every few weeks, or so it seems, Harvard announces the departure of yet another administrator—most recently the university’s executive vice president, Edward Forst, who just last year came to Harvard from Goldman Sachs and intends to step down on August 1.

“They have to do what businesspeople do—they have to make hard decisions,” one Harvard business professor told me, referring to the university’s administrators. But, of course, Harvard is not a business, nor is it being run like a business; it’s a distinguished, high-minded research university, arguably the greatest university in the nation. “Balancing their budget is going to be very traumatic for them,” the professor added, in case I’d missed his point.

Considering that this is where many of our "Financial leaders" and leading politicians came from, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised...

S.O.S.-Save Us, Senate

Nate Silver looks to the Senate for salvation of Obamacare:

The Blue Dogs really do have some leverage here. It's at least conceivable that the House would be unable to approve health care while the Senate would be.
....

The Senate Democrats operate within a much more narrow band ideologically -- there are proportionately fewer true Blue Dogs, and also proportionately fewer uberliberals. If the White House could get assurances that a few key senators like Nelson, Landireu and Snowe won't filibuster health care -- they don't actually have to vote for the bill -- the Senate landscape actually starts to look reasonably favorable to the bill, possibly more favorable than the House's.

This sounds a tad optimistic IMO. After all, if it stalls or even dies in the House, what chance does Silver think it has in the Senate? As he points out, the Senate is not the place for passionate idealogues-long-winded ones, maybe, but not passionate on the scale of their Congresscritter brethren, and support for the health care bill has been nothing if not ideological.

Obamacare Ultralite

Krauthammer says it's coming regardless of the current qualms from the Blue Dogs:

If he doesn't have it, if he doesn't have a bill, any bill, at the end of the year, his presidency is going to be seriously damaged, and all the mystique will disappear. Which is why...I'm absolutely sure that at the end of the year, he will have a bill. It will have the words 'health-care reform' on it. It will be extremely watered down: All of the ballast that the Blue Dogs were protesting against, including, I'm sure, the public plan, is going to be thrown overboard.

And it will be a very weak version of what we have now, probably even harmless—which will be a great American achievement. But he's going to have something. He won't have it in August, but he will have to have it at the end of the year.

Well, maybe. But a meaningless bill may actually do more damage to Obama with his liberal base than no bill at all. And it won't take effect until Obama's first term is over, anyway. And if he has no bill, then that first term could wind up being his only one.

President Baffle

Speaking of his own party, Obama's troops are increasingly wondering: just what is their Fearless Leader's actual game plan, anyway?

As the prospects for passing health reform by the time Congress leaves for its August recess look bleaker, Democratic grumbling about President Obama is growing louder. One Democratic senator tells CNN congressional Democrats are “baffled,” and another senior Democratic source tells CNN members of the president’s own party are still “frustrated” that they’re not getting more specific direction from him on health care. “We appreciate the rhetoric and his willingness to ratchet up the pressure but what most Democrats on the Hill are looking for is for the president to weigh in and make decisions on outstanding issues. Instead of sending out his people and saying the president isn’t ruling anything out, members would like a little bit of clarity on what he would support – especially on how to pay for his health reform bill,” a senior Democratic congressional source tells CNN.

The time for campaigning is over, Mr. President. If you're going to push something this big, you could at least, you know, do some actual leading on your own major domestic issue.

Waterloo Sunset

Is health care really Obama's Waterloo? And is his own party his Russian winter? Charles Grassley claims so:

A telling episode recounted by Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley reveals the Obama administration might be more worried than they are letting on that a Republican senator's comparison of the healthcare overhaul to Waterloo might be dangerously close to the truth.

Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama's bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

'Let's just lay everything on the table,' Grassley said. 'A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.' '

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Maybe they were too busy trying to figure out how to spin another failure into something they really wanted...

No More Freebies

Conor Friedersorf has an idea:

Rather than raise taxes on the richest Americans, why not pass a law that freezes them out of receiving federal largess?

Whether measured by income or net worth, those falling above a certain threshold could be means tested out of Social Security, Medicare, farm subsidies, the ability to deduct interest paid on their mortgage, federal higher education grants and subsidized loans for their children, NEA grants, vouchers to subsidize the cost of transitioning to digital televisions, etc.

As loathe as I am to punish the wealthy just for being wealthy, there is something to be said for cutting of their subsidized allowances. The response should be interesting.

That'll Leave A Mark

How to make a discovery, amateur style:

It took another 15 minutes to really believe that I was seeing something new - I’d imaged that exact region only 2 days earlier and checking back to that image showed no sign of any anomalous black spot.

Now I was caught between a rock and a hard place - I wanted to keep imaging but also I was aware of the importance of alerting others to this possible new event. Could it actually be an impact mark on Jupiter? I had no real idea, and the odds on that happening were so small as to be laughable, but I was really struggling to see any other possibility given the location of the mark. If it really was an impact mark then I had to start telling people, and quickly.

It is good to know that some things in this universe can still be found by people without several initials after their names.

The Nutty Professor

I know there are racist a-holes with badges out there, but this sounds closer to the truth:

Police and Professor Gates offered differing accounts of what happened when officers arrived. According to Professor Ogletree, Professor Gates said he showed the responding officer, Sgt. James Crowley, photo identification, but the sergeant did not believe Professor Gates lived at the home. Frustrated, Professor Gates asked for Sergeant Crowley’s name and badge number, which he refused to give. Professor Gates was arrested on his front porch, where several other officers were standing.

The police said Professor Gates refused to show identification. When told that Sergeant Crowley was investigating a robbery, the police said, Professor Gates yelled, “Why because I’m a black man in America?” and accused the sergeant of racism. The police report said Professor Gates followed the officer outside, yelled at him and was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Screaming "Racism!" after the fact always seems to be a convenient way for these types to deny that they are in fact full of themselves.

Breaking Benjamin

Of all the things to criticize Obama for, offending the Health Police with his pick for Surgeon General should be the least of them.

Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin's round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America's health initiatives.

But others support the 52-year-old founder and CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, citing new research that shows you cannot always judge a book by its cover when it comes to obesity.

Even the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance -- whose slogan is 'we come in all sizes' -- has jumped to her defense.

"The job of surgeon general is to make health care and policy decisions for the country -- not to look hot in a pair of skinny jeans," said one blogger on Frisky.com. "Perhaps her size could actually be an advantage -- she's in a better position to understand obesity and contemplate out-of-the-box ways to roll back ever-expanding American waistlines."

Now, you could say that this is another case of "Do as I say, not as I do," but it would be a good thing if it took a liberal Democratic president to take on the stigma of being overweight.

Turning Around The Argument On Health Care

Peter Suderman has some advice for the GOP on how to do that:

You'd think they'd have an easy enough time opposing a trillion-dollar overhaul of a health-care system in which the vast majority of people are actually fairly satisfied with their coverage. Health-care reform isn't exactly going smoothly for the Democrats, but internal strife is at least as much a factor as Republican opposition, which has been reduced to opportunistic recitals of consultant-scripted talking points and Alfred E. Newmanesque admissions by RNC Chair Michael Steele that he 'doesn't do policy.'

I think the GOP's message that we can't afford to get health care wrong has some merit, but in general, Republicans don't seem to have the foggiest idea about what they actually think about health care—except that they're happy to bash Obama if it might prove politically helpful. What might Republicans do to get a clue? It may be that they've already been marginalized to the point that their tactics won't matter all that much. But if they're looking to regain some relevance with a different message, they could do a lot worse than listen to Arnold Kling, a guy who, unlike Michael Steele, actually knows an awful lot about free-market health-care reform.

They could do worse, indeed.

Kid Stuff

Jesse Walker wonders if some classic childrens' books may have more cynical undertones:

One of the pleasures of reading is finding your own meanings in the text, and that applies to children's books as much as adult literature. Teachers may read The Poky Little Puppy to teach kids the virtue of following the rules, but I can't possibly be the only boy who noticed that the poky puppy came out ahead. (He missed out on one helping of strawberry shortcake, but he got five helpings of both rice pudding and chocolate custard. You do the math.) On that note, I'd like to make my own nomination for the overrated-kids'-books list: a schlocky little story by Marcus Pfister called The Rainbow Fish.

This one wasn't around when I was a boy, so I didn't learn about it til my daughter was born (four years ago today!) and we received a flood of books as gifts. It's about a beautiful fish covered with shiny scales who doesn't have any friends until he gives the scales away. 'Finally,' Pfister concludes, 'he had only one shining scale left. But now, as he swam off to play with his friends, he was the happiest fish in the sea.' The book has been condemned as socialistic for its sharing-is-good message, but that isn't my problem with it. I don't think the story's core moral is It's good to share, no matter what the author intended. The real lesson here is You can buy friends."

Well, I don't know about that. You could argue, though, that the Cat in the Hat was a well-intentioned anarchist, or debate the antiwar message of the Butter Battle Book (a product of its time if there ever was one), and in fact this reading of adult parables into childrens' lit goes back at least to Charles Dickens, the Brothers Grimm and even classic nursery rhymes that date back to the Middle Ages. The fact is, our modern ideas of childhood are actually fairly recent, and the psychology of child-rearing and giving them their own stories-in effect, creating their own culture-is even newer. Modern writers may just be carrying on an ancient tradition of training kids to leave the tribe when they get old enough to hunt for themselves with today's books and their hidden meanings, real or otherwise.

Birthers Of A Nation

They just won't go away, and Marc Ambinder is worried about the wingnut brigade's influence on the GOP:

At least nine members of Congress have cosponsored a birther bill that would require prospective presidents to affirm their U.S. citizenship. What we don’t know is how widespread the belief is among Republicans—and even if the belief is confined to a narrow minority, whether the belief will spread as Republicans begin to pay closer attention to electoral politics in 2010 and 2012. In the same way that Democrats in 2004 always got a stolen election question (which, to be fair, was at least closer to reality than the birther’s claims), Republican presidential candidates need to figure out how to diffuse angry birthers who are bound to show up and demand their attention. .... The buried lede to this post: Rush Limbaugh claimed today that Obama “has yet to prove that he’s a citizen.” Republicans have to be extra careful. If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.

I think at some point the Republican leadership, such as it is, is going to have to tell the Birthers to take a hike. I think there's time to do this, but it has to happen soon.

The Long Reach Of The Deal

I'm actually more on Berkowitz' side here:

Like it or not, the New Deal is here to stay. It has been incorporated into constitutional law and woven into the fabric of the American sensibility and American society. The utopian dream of cutting government down to 18th-century size can only derail conservatism's core and continuing mission of slowing and containing government's growth, keeping it within reasonable boundaries, and where possible reducing its reach.

I think this is probably the most realistic response that modern conservatives can have when dealing with the now nearly eighty year old New Deal Frankenstein. Obama will be no help, so at best thoughtful Republicans should find ways to minimize the damage without being purely obstructionists. In his response to Mark Levin, Conor Friedersorf asks:

Are we talking about abolishing the Federal Reserve? Ending Social Security? Returning to the gold standard? Reining in the commerce clause? Eliminating the Tennessee Valley Authority? Once we look at the disaggregated specifics of the New Deal, rather than arguing against it as an abstract whole, it is evident how easily the latter approach becomes nonsensical. Hence the bit about the New Deal as "unconstitutional statism" that "has as its aim to destroy the civil society." It is easy enough to see which New Deal programs garner the broadest support. How many Americans would attest that their purpose in favoring, say, the continued existence of Social Security is civil society's destruction?
....

Near the conclusion of his piece, Mr. Levin writes:

I also believe that conservatism is the only real alternative to statism, and that's especially so given today's soft tyranny. Berkowitz points to Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1960 as evidence that it cannot win at the ballot box. Here again, his methods are sloppy if not troubling. Of course, Ronald Reagan won two smashing landslides in 1980 and 1984 and there was no more articulate spokesman for first principles than he.

Of course, Ronald Reagan spent two terms in office as a popular president, yet there we were in 1988, the New Deal intact, and the federal government larger than ever. It's almost as though, for better or worse, those landslides didn't actually signify an electorate even remotely ready to return the federal government to its pre-New Deal size and scope.

This is, to me, an all too common mistake made by Reagan's most ardent admirers and historical revisionists. Yes, he was a great communicator of common-sense conservative values. No, he really didn't do a whole lot to overturn the New Deal, tax and spending cuts aside. Even he realized getting rid of certain portions of it would have been political suicide for him and his party, regardless of how popular he was. He understood the need for reigning in FDR-era programs, but also believed in trying to fix the ones that people wanted. This is the kind of overhaul the system needs-not a scorched-earth policy, or Obama's never-ending stimulus.

The Mother Of All Stimuluses

Just damn:

A series of bailouts, bank rescues and other economic lifelines could end up costing the federal government as much as $23 trillion, the U.S. government’s watchdog over the effort says – a staggering amount that is nearly double the nation’s entire economic output for a year.

If the feds end up spending that amount, it could be more than the federal government has spent on any single effort in American history.

For the government to be on the hook for the total amount, worst-case scenarios would have to come to pass in a variety of federal programs, which is unlikely, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government’s financial bailout programs, in testimony prepared for delivery to the House oversight committee Tuesday.

The Treasury Department says less than $2 trillion has been spent so far.

Still, the enormity of the IG’s projection underscores the size of the economic disaster that hit the nation over the past year and the unprecedented sums mobilized by the federal government under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to confront it.

In fact, $23 trillion is more than the total cost of all the wars the United States has ever fought, put together. World War II, for example, cost $4.1 trillion in 2008 dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.

You know, it's one thing to say "But Bush did it too!" (and in fact I and others did). But Obama simply cannot use that excuse for this, which makes Bush look like a skinflint by comaprison. Heck, I daresay that the idea of $23 TRILLION would even make FDR say, "WTF???" But this is the era we live in-when we run up a bill that it will take until the Universe winds down from entropy to pay it all back.

And That's The Way He Likes It

You will be shocked to learn that the stimulus was really about politics over recovery after all:

The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.

As a result, much of the stimulus's potential benefit has been squandered. Spending increases and tax cuts are sprinkled in too many places and, all too often, are too delayed to do much good now. Nor do they concentrate on reviving the economy's most depressed sectors: state and local governments; the housing and auto industries. None of this means the stimulus won't help or precludes a recovery, but the help will be weaker than necessary.
....

There are growing demands for another Obama "stimulus" on the grounds that the first was too small. Wrong. The problem with the first stimulus was more its composition than its size. With budget deficits for 2009 and 2010 estimated by the CBO at $1.8 trillion and $1.4 trillion (respectively, 13 and 9.9 percent of gross domestic product), it's hard to argue they're too tiny. Obama and congressional Democrats sacrificed real economic stimulus to promote parochial political interests. Any new "stimulus" should be financed by culling some of the old.

Here, as elsewhere, there's a gap between Obama's high-minded rhetoric and his performance. In February, Obama denounced "politics as usual" in constructing the stimulus. But that's what we got, and Obama likes the result. Interviewed recently by ABC's Jake Tapper, he was asked whether he would change anything. Obama seemed to invoke a doctrine of presidential infallibility. "There's nothing that we would have done differently," he said.

And, apparently, he hasn't.

The Real Valkyrie

At Reason, remembering Claus von Stauffenberg and his failed (and yet ultimately victorious) attempt to dethrone Hitler. More here on the German resistance, which often doesn't get as much credit as the more famous French resistance.

When A Gaffe Becomes Fact, Ignore The Gaffe

Hey, at least he's honest:

"The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system," Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. "And greater stability and security to America's families and businesses."

The White House quickly recognized the mistake and inserted a 'sic' in the remarks sent to reporters on Monday afternoon.

Josh Earnest, a White House deputy press secretary, said Obama 'misspoke' in his remarks.
"Everyone knew exactly what he was saying," Earnest said.

Well, just so long as he wasn't "Misunderstanded". Maybe they need a Gaffe Czar...

The Other White Meat

So here's the list of pork spending as displayed by Drudge that seems to have the White House in a snit:

RECOVERY.GOV // AWARDED: $2,531,600 FOR 'HAM, WATER ADDED, COOKED, FROZEN, SLICED, 2-LB'...
RECOVERY.GOV // AWARDED: $1,191,200 FOR '2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED'...
RECOVERY.GOV // AWARDED: $16,784,272 FOR 'CANNED PORK'...

Of course they're defending the literal porkulus. But can we trust a government with a food agency doesn't know how much it's actually spending? I guess the argument here is that at least they're spending it on actual pork...

Crowd Non-Control

In the wake of the Iranian protests, this seems interesting:

Research into how people behave at demonstrations, sports events, music festivals and other mass gatherings shows not only that crowds nearly always act in a highly rational way, but also that when facing an emergency, people in a crowd are more likely to cooperate than panic. Paradoxically, it is often actions such as kettling [a police tactic of corraling an entire crowd into a small area] that lead to violence breaking out. Often, the best thing authorities can do is leave a crowd to its own devices....

What are the lessons from all this? One of the most important is that the current approach to managing crowds, which is all about control and containment, can be counterproductive. Police tend to assume that people in crowds are prone to random acts of violence and disorder, and treat them accordingly. But aggressive policing is likely to trigger an aggressive response as the crowd reacts collectively against the external threat. This is why many researchers consider kettling to be a bad idea. 'You're treating the crowd indiscriminately, and that can change the psychology of the crowd, shifting it towards rather than away from violence,' says [Clifford] Stott. He has found that low-profile policing can significantly reduce the aggressiveness of football crowds, and that if left alone they will usually police themselves.

If a crowd is well-behaved when it starts out, there doesn't seem to be any real reason to encourage it to get mad at you. I actually think most cops understand this, which is why protest marches in this country, at least in this day and age, tend to be more like political rallies than actual uprisings. It also helps when you don't have a whole lot to uprise against, regardless of what the ranters on the far left and right might have people think.

Breaking Ranks

Is the Blue Dog revolt against Obamacare spreading?

Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) asserted that an 'interesting development' is taking place underway that, if true, could effectively remove Democratic leadership from the driver's seat on healthcare reform legislation in the House.

'There's an interesting development occurring behind the scenes, wherein moderate Democrats — so-called 'Blue Dog' Democrats — and business-friendly new Democrats are actually starting to have conversations with us to build a coalition from the center outward, to actually really come up with substantive and well-founded healthcare reform,' Boustany said during an appearance on Fox News. 'And that's the only way to do this.'

Barack Obama-he's a uniter, not a divider!

Obamacare A No Go?

As has been previously noted, it's getting increasingly difficult for Obama to get his version of National Health passed, as now governors are joining their Congresscritter colleagues in speaking out.

Despite President Barack Obama’s assurance that a revamping of the United States health-care system would not swell the federal deficit, his goal of quick congressional passage seemed to grow a bit more tenuous on Sunday as Republicans dug in their heels while governors in both parties raised concerns that they will be handed costly new Medicaid obligations without the money to pay for them.

The states pay, on average, more than 40 percent of the cost of Medicaid, so they bear a significant burden of any expansion of the program to help more low-income Americans. At their annual summer meeting, in Biloxi, Miss., the governors said that their concerns dominated discussion, with striking levels of bipartisan hostility voiced during a closed-door luncheon on the topic on Saturday.

And Congressional Republicans said on Sunday that Mr. Obama could probably meet his deficit goal only by increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and requiring small business owners, already battered by the enduring recession, to assure coverage of their employees.

And what is the response of those who still support Obama's scheme?

Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, was asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether a health-care revamping could be achieved without significantly raising taxes. “Well, no,” said Mr. Rangel, a Democrat of New York, even though he added that billions in savings would help reduce the tax impact.

Mr. Rangel said that the proposed surtax on the wealthy would affect “less than 1 percent of the wealthiest people in the United States” and would not have the impact on small businesses that critics say.

Except that many of those "millionaires" are in fact small businessmen who would have to cut back on hiring, services to their communities, and so on if they were made to pay their "Fair share". And in the end, the greater cost of Obamacare would still be passed on to the rest of us. Sorry, Charlie. It looks like it still ain't gonna fly.

Planners Live In Vain

So just why is Obama having so much trouble convincing even members of his own party to go along with him? Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch explain:

The key to understanding Obama's predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor's big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering. From the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists to gays in the military to bailing out industries large and small, Obama has been little more than the keeper of the Bush flame. Indeed, it took the two of them to create the disaster that is the 2009 budget, racking up a deficit that has already crossed the historic $1 trillion mark with almost three months left in the fiscal year.

[...]

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled 'A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility,' even as his own projections showed a decade's worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn't want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors.

[...]

What the new president has not quite grasped is that the American people understand both irony and cognitive dissonance. Instead, Obama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning.

Bush was a screw-up, but when the chips were down at least he said what he actually believed. Clinton was smart enough to move to the middle. So far, Obama seems to be stumbling somewhere in between. But is that any way to run a country?

The Change Stops Here?

The glow around Obama seems to be dimming somewhat these days, even among those in his own party.

Conservative House Democrats are balking at the cost and direction of Obama's top priority, an overhaul of the nation's health care system. A key Senate Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, complains that Obama's opposition to paying for it with a tax on health benefits 'is not helping us.'

Another Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, tells his local newspaper that Obama is too liberal and is 'very unpopular' in his district.

From his first days in office, Obama's popularity helped him pass the landmark $787 billion stimulus package and fueled his ambitious plans to overhaul the nation's health care system and tackle global warming.

Obama continues to be comparatively popular. But now recent national surveys have shown a measurable drop in his job approval rating, even among Democrats. A CBS news survey out this week had his national approval rating at 57 percent, and his standing among Democrats down 10 percentage points since last month, from 92 percent to 82 percent.

With the economy continuing to sputter and joblessness on the rise, many of Obama's staunchest Democratic supporters are anxious for his agenda to start bearing fruit.

'We are eager and impatient, so you're seeing a little bit of that,' said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. 'Elections have results, and those in the base are the most anxious to achieve what's promised in the election. That's why Democrats are showing some impatience in reaching our goal.'

It's true that we are a society of instant gratification, but perhaps some of Obama's colleagues are realizing how much the cost of the goal is worrying their constituents, and are having second thoughts about supporting so much, so quickly.

The Other Long War

Is Afghanistan winnable? Peter Bergen seems to think so:

Even the most generous estimates of the size of the Taliban force hold it to be no more than 20,000 men, while authoritative estimates of the numbers of Afghans on the battlefield at any given moment in the war against the Soviets range up to 250,000. The Taliban insurgency today is only around 10 percent the size of what the Soviets faced. And while today’s Afghan insurgents are well financed, in part by the drug trade, this backing is not on the scale of the financial and military support that the anti-Communist guerrillas enjoyed in the 1980s.

Of course, part of the problem isn't just the number of bad guys, it's the way the war is perceived in that part of the world, and the continuing will to support it at home. If Afghanistan becomes for Obama what Iraq was for Bush, then he's in serious trouble.

Supersize Nation

It seems we really are a nation of lardasses:

Men are now on average seventeen pounds heavier than they were in the late seventies, and for women that figure is even higher: nineteen pounds. The proportion of overweight children, age six to eleven, has more than doubled, while the proportion of overweight adolescents, age twelve to nineteen, has more than tripled. (According to the standards of the United States military, forty per cent of young women and twenty-five per cent of young men weigh too much to enlist.) As the average person became heavier, the very heavy became heavier still; more than twelve million Americans now have a body-mass index greater than forty, which, for someone who is five feet nine, entails weighing more than two hundred and seventy pounds.

But are government health care and food police really the answer? It seems we could do more simply by reinstating phyical fitness in our schools and exerting more control as parents over our kids' diets when they're younger.

Anger Mangement For Civilization

Are we becoming more peaceful as a species?

If we consider the evidence, we find that the decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon: We can see the decline over millennia, centuries, decades, and years. When the archeologist Lawrence Keeley examined casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers—which is the best picture we have of how people might have lived 10,000 years ago—he discovered that the likelihood that a man would die at the hands of another man ranged from a high of 60 percent in one tribe to 15 percent at the most peaceable end. In contrast, the chance that a European or American man would be killed by another man was less than one percent during the 20th century, a period of time that includes both world wars. If the death rate of tribal warfare had prevailed in the 20th century, there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million, horrible as that is.

I think there are actually several factors for this-in larger, more stable states like America and Europe, laws and general rules of behavior are what keep the tribal mentality in check. And today's military technology can make wars, if not less lethal, at least more manageable. The thin veneer of civilization is still there, and may always be something that we have to keep under control.

Blue Versus Blue

Harry Reid wants to end what appears to be an emerging civil war within his party:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted the Democratic National Committee Thursday for its decision to run ads against Democratic senators concerned about President Obama's health plan.

On Wednesday, the DNC's 'Organizing for America' committee — President Barack Obama’s campaign-in-waiting — announced that it would begin running ads in the home states of Democrats like Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who has expressed concern about the cost of the legislation.

Asked about the ads, Reid responded: 'It's a waste of money.'

When a reporter pressed Reid on the matter, he said: 'It's a waste of money to run ads from Democrats against Democrats.'

Color me surprised. I do believe that's the first time I've heard a leading Democrat admit that their side was actually wasting money on something.

The Great Non Debate

When it comes to debating real issues, the party that ran on transparency now seems intent on giving their colleagues censorship they can believe in.

At issue are 12 bills totaling more than $1.2 trillion in annual appropriations bills for funding most government programs—usually low-profile legislation that typically dominates the work of the House in June and July. For decades, those bills have come to the floor under an open process that allows any member to try to amend them. Often those amendments are an effort to change government policy by adding or subtracting money for carrying it out.

The tradition has often meant laborious debates. But it has allowed lawmakers with little seniority to have their say on doling out the one-third of the federal budget passed by Congress each year. It was a right the Democrats zealously defended when they were the minority party from 1995 through 2006.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., insists the clampdown is to prevent debates from dragging on and on. Republicans, however, have agreed to limit the amount of time debating the bills.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., acknowledged in a brief interview that one reason for restricting amendments is to save members of his party from having to cast politically painful votes.

So instead of debating an attempt backed by House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio to allow more children living in Washington to receive school vouchers, the House will vote on a Quixotic attempt to eliminate the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

'What they want to do is they want to avoid tough votes on appropriations bills,' said Rep. David Dreier of California, senior Republican on the Rules Committee.

In other words, saving their jobs is more important to them than allowing votes that could make them squirm. I guess this means that dissent is no longer quite so patriotic these days.

Sense Of Humor Required

Were they serious? Apparently so:

The chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee quashed an effort by the Treasury Department to hire a cartoonist after the link to the job ad was posted on the Drudge Report.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) contacted the Treasury Department to complain after Matt Drudge’s website linked to a want ad for contractors with the “ability to create cartoons on the spot about [Bureau of the Public Debt] jobs.”


The cartoonist was sought to provide presentations for the bureau's management meetings, according to the ad.

“The contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress,” the ad stated.

Several conservatives on Capitol Hill found it highly amusing that the Bureau of the Public Debt found it necessary to resort to humor in order to ease the stress of management meetings at a time when the federal deficit is ballooning.

But Dorgan didn’t find it so funny.

“Of all the agencies, the Bureau of Public Debt should know that there is very little that is funny about today’s economic conditions,” Dorgan said in a statement. “I understand the need for motivation in the workplace, but I think we have a greater motivation to save the taxpayers some money.”

The bureau canceled its plan to hire a cartoonist after Dorgan intervened.

Well, in all fairness, most people think the Federal Government is already a joke anyway...

And That's The Way It Was

The "Most trusted man in America" has left us.

Walter Cronkite, America's preeminent television journalist of the 1960s and 1970s who as anchor and managing editor of 'CBS Evening News' played a primary role in establishing television as the dominant national news medium of that era, died tonight at the age of 92, CBS reported. He died at his home in New York, the network said; Cronkite had been suffering for some years with cerebrovascular disease, his family said recently.
....

CBS was widely considered the best news-gathering operation among the three major networks, and Cronkite was a major reason why. With his avuncular pipe-and-slippers presence before the camera and an easy, yet authoritative, delivery, he had an extraordinary rapport with his viewers and a level of credibility that was unmatched in the industry. In a 1973 public opinion poll by the Oliver Quayle organization, Cronkite was named the most trusted public figure in the United States, ahead of the president and the vice president.

"He was the voice of truth, the voice of reliability," said Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University journalism professor and sociologist. "He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread." He was the personification of stability and permanence, even when, in Gitlin's words, his message was "that things are falling apart."

Regardless of what you might have thought of his politics, like Edward R. Murrow before him Cronkite helped set the gold standard for broadcast journalism. He was lucky to have been able to go out when he did, before today's tabloid, sound bite, short attention span era. R.I.P., Uncle Walter.

Nazi Gnome?

I can see the prosecution's point, but this seems to be taking things a bit too far.

A garden gnome giving the Nazi salute has landed a German artist in trouble with the authorities in Nuremberg.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the gnome, which went on show in one of the city's galleries, breaks the strict law banning Nazi symbols and gestures.

The Bavarian city is particularly sensitive about the Nazi era because Adolf Hitler used it for big rallies and leading Nazis went on trial there.

The artist, Ottmar Hoerl, says his gnomes poke fun at the Nazis.

'I'm astonished that a single garden gnome, in what is for me an obscure gallery in Nuremberg, has unleashed such a public discussion because of an anonymous denunciation by someone,' Mr Hoerl said.
....

Last year hundreds of Mr Hoerl's "Nazi" gnomes went on show in the Belgian city of Gent, in an exhibition called "Dance with the Devil".

He said that Belgians had well understood the political meaning "when one portrays the master race as a garden gnome".

"In 1942 I would have been murdered by the Nazis for this work," he said.

A spokesman for the Nuremberg public prosecutor's office, Wolfgang Traeg, said "we're checking to see if garden gnomes fall into the same clear category as posters that show the swastika crossed out".

He said the aim was to establish whether the artist and the gallery owner had intended the gnome as an endorsement of the Third Reich or as a rejection of Nazi ideology.

Mr Traeg referred to a previous case: a swastika which had been graffitied onto a wall. No prosecution was brought because the picture featured a fist smashing the Nazi symbol.

The gallery owner who put the gnome in the window maintains he has done nothing wrong.

"I think it's quite harmless," Erwin Weigl told the BBC.

At some point Germany has to learn to deal with its past. This would be as good a place to start as any.

Obamacare As Boondoggle

Reason's Peter Suderman offers his take on the impact of "Reform":

It will not save money. In fact, according to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, it will 'significantly expand the federal responsibility for health-care costs,' exacerbating rather curing the dire, health-care driven budget problems we already face. As Ron Bailey pointed out earlier today, this is the result when you use official government cost estimates. And as the Massachusetts experiment with universal coverage taught us, the true cost of any universal-coverage oriented health-care overhaul is likely to be far higher than projected.

It will likely shift people away from their current health-insurance plans. Depending on the final details surrounding the proposed public plan, some people will almost certainly end up moved away from their current plans. At a bare minimum, Obama's promise that individuals will be able to keep their current health-insurance is misleading.

It will raise taxes. On people who make too much money, perhaps. Or perhaps on people who make money off of rental units. Or maybe, if Senate Finance Chairman and health-care poobah Max Baucus has his way, it will tax the middle class by way of their employer-provided health benefits. No matter what, any bill will cost a lot of money, so someone's going to pay for it.

It will be tough on small and medium-sized businesses. According the Wall Street Journal, under the current House plan, 'all but the smallest businesses' would be slapped with 'a penalty equal to 8% of payroll if they fail to provide health insurance to workers.' Meanwhile, the drug industry, which Obama promised to 'take on' during the campaign, has extracted endless concessions, and supposed liberal villain Wal-Mart would make out rather well by using legislation as a weapon against its competitors.

It will pave the way for health-care shortages. There's widespread agreement that the current system of medical provider payments in Medicare and Medicaid is a mess. But depending on how the plan shakes out, reduced doctor payments might essentially result in a system of health-care price controls, potentially causing shortages in care. Even if the system were set up so as not to reduce payments now, one can easily imagine anxious government officials cutting payments in the future in response to unexpected cost overruns like we've witnessed in Massachusetts.

But hey, it's "Reform!" Whether we want it or not...

Do You See What I See?

Joe Biden says critics of the stimulus aren't looking in the right place:

"To those who say that our economic decisions haven't saved jobs, it simply hasn't worked, I say, 'Look around you,'" Biden said in his appearance at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Cantor's Richmond area district.

"I say, 'Don't let your opposition to the Recovery Act blind you to the results. Come see what I see.' Look, workers rehired, factories reopened, cops on the street, teachers in the classroom, progress toward getting our economy back on the move."

Fair enough, Mr. Vice President. Now, how about some actual, you know, evidence?

Who Killed Liberalism?

Mark Tapscott wants to know.

Today's 'liberals' have confiscated two-thirds of the Big Three, they are moving rapidly to take over one fifth of the U.S. economy by nationalizing health care, and they are on the verge of putting environmental bureaucrats in charge of the most minute details of daily American life, allegedly to save the rest of us from the apocalyptic horrors that are sure to come if a mythical global warming is not stopped.

And along the way, they've confiscated trillions of dollars of wealth generated by the sweat and creativity of millions of working Americans who pay taxes, and given it to millions of people who are dependent upon tax-funded paychecks and benefits, government contracts and federal spending programs. They call this 'spreading the wealth around,' but they always make sure generous helpings go to their favorite special interests like Big Labor, ACORN, the NEA, civil service bureaucrats, and the trial lawyers.

Worst of all, they have all-but-destroyed academic freedom by imposing speech codes in public and private schools across the country, restricted political expression via campaign finance 'reform,' suppressed full and open scientific inquiry on issues related to evolution and the origins of life, effectively repealed the due process and equal protection of the law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment via Affirmative Action and other race-based policies, and fostered collectivist, group-think multi-culturalism on citizen political participation in elections and policy making.

How did liberalism degenerate from the honorable activism of HHH to the special interest-led Nanny State of Nancy Pelosi, from a devotion to protecting individual rights to relentlessly expanding government as an end in itself?

They became the establishment, basically. The same thing happened to Republicans when they got power, and it can happen to any group when they become corrupted by hubris and arrogance, no matter how well-intentioned they were at the beginning.

Get Your Vision To Mars

On the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch, Buzz Aldrin wants NASA to look beyond the Moon:

I propose a new Unified Space Vision, a plan to ensure American space leadership for the 21st century. It wouldn't require building new rockets from scratch, as current plans do, and it would make maximum use of the capabilities we have without breaking the bank. It is a reasonable and affordable plan—if we again think in visionary terms....

Now, I am not suggesting that America abandon the moon entirely, only that it forgo a moon-focused race. As the moon should be for all mankind, we should return there as part of an internationally led coalition. Using the landers and heavy-lift boosters developed by our partners, we could test on the moon the tools and equipment that we will need for our ultimate destination: homesteading Mars by way of its moons.

A coalition of the willing for space? This sounds like an area where private enterprise could pick up where NASA left off, and the rewards of setting up shop on Mars could be enormous. More importantly, it could show that we are still capable of the right stuff.

The Real Maverick In The Family

Meghan McCain continues to deviate from the conservative "Base":

Shortly before McCain sat for this interview, Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he complained about “queers” and declared, “I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.” Unprompted, McCain rails against the man her father’s presidential campaign touted as an American everyman and made a showpiece in the weeks before the election. “Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing.”

Am I wrong in thinking that her dad should have left him there, too?

The Super Taxman Cometh

New Yorkers, prepare to bend over and grab your ankles:

Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.

New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.
The top rate in New York City, home to many of the state's wealthiest people, would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.

That means New York's top earners, small-business owners and most dynamic entrepreneurs will be facing new fees and penalties.

The $544 billion tax hike would violate one of President Obama's ironclad campaign promises: No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s.

Under the bill, three new tax brackets would be created for high earners, with a top rate of 45 percent for families making more than $1 million. That would be the highest income-tax rate since 1986, when the top rate was 50 percent.

The legislation is especially onerous for business owners, in part because it penalizes employers with a payroll bigger than $400,000 some 8 percent of wages if they don't offer health care.

But the cost of the buy-in to the program may be so prohibitive that it will dissuade owners from growing their businesses -- a scary prospect in the midst of a recession.

If this is a model for what Team Obama wants for the rest of the country, then our economy will be so royally screwed it will make California look like a model of prosperity by comparison. Seriously, what do they think will happen to NYC if this gets passed? Hell, what will happen to the rest of the country?

Fighting The Fund

Liberal organizations love their volunteers. Especially as wetbacks.

The nation’s largest fundraiser for progressive causes issued checks to thousands of former workers in the last several weeks after settling a $2.15 million class-action suit alleging it subjected workers to grueling hours without overtime pay.

The nonprofit Fund for Public Interest Inc. was set up in 1982 as the fundraising arm of the network of Public Interest Research Groups, which was founded by Ralph Nader. It deploys legions of door-to-door and street canvassers—and once counted a young Barack Obama as one of its New York City organizers—to solicit contributions for the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, Environment America, and other groups that together spend millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress.
....

The abrupt shuttering of its Los Angeles office after employees took steps to unionize also brought allegations of illegal union-busting from many, including Christian Miller, an L.A. employee from 2002 to 2006 who filed the suit on behalf of 12,000 canvassers and directors.

The Fund reported collecting $25 million in contributions in 2007—the most recent year for which data is publicly available. The fundraising done by the canvassers makes up the bulk of that money. Indeed, the Fund’s Web site touts the work done by its youthful employees: "If you ask anyone who’s canvassed for the Fund in the last 25 years, they’ll probably give you a thoughtful dissertation on the value of canvassing."

That's probably an understatement. Former canvassers, often college-educated progressives attracted to the Fund for the chance to do good, are all too sensitive to the irony of the situation.

"They're the Wal-Mart of nonprofits in every way imaginable," Miller said. "They basically look at the next generation of social change as the next source of cheap labor."

So are these groups where the next generation of union activists will come from? Now that's what I call irony.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1969

Did you watch it along with everyone else? They're on their way, fulfilling Kennedy's vision and one of humanity's oldest dreams. Godspeed, indeed.

Can You Pledge Me Now?

Leave it to technology to solve another problem:

The iPhone has applications for almost everything, from helping people to choose the best wine for a meal to locating supermarkets in Holland. Now there is one to help them to stay chaste until marriage.

For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.

[....]

The application may also allow school pupils to circumvent uniform rules banning jewellery. In 2007, Lydia Playfoot lost her high court battle to wear her purity ring at school when a judge ruled she had not been discriminated against.

It kind of takes "Service not available" to a new meaning, doesn't it?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1979

So President Carter gave his big speech. William F. Buckley has a review, and it's not kind. For the record, here's Jimmy himself:



In all fairness to President Carter, I think he's at least honest. But at some point you have to start dealing with the country's problems and stop talking about them. On top of that, Americans don't like leaders who look like they're whining. And they don't give them second terms, either.

Barack's Millions

By now you've probably heard about how the Democrats plan to pay for their Great Healthcare Leap Forward. And now there's this:

House Democrats plan to fund the broadest U.S. health-care expansion in four decades by increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, imposing a surtax of 5.4 percent on couples with more than $1 million in income.

The legislation unveiled yesterday would place additional taxes on households with more than $350,000 a year in income and calls for further increases if the measure doesn’t hit a target for cost savings. The provisions are intended to raise $544 billion over 10 years.

House leaders said the plan, which includes mandates to purchase coverage and a public health-insurance option, would cover 97 percent of Americans by 2019. President Barack Obama praised their work, saying it will “begin the process of fixing what’s broken” in the system.

But what if it ain't as broke as they claim? Their plans already threaten the elderly who would need it the most. But hey, maybe they'll be generous and not have to make you pay a second time:

The 1,018-page House Democratic plan builds on a June 19 draft and for the first time includes details on how to pay for the measure. In addition to the levy on millionaire households, the House would place surtaxes of 1.5 percent on couples with incomes of $500,000 to $1 million and 1 percent on those with incomes of more than $350,000.

In 2012, the White House budget office would review the estimated savings from the health-care overhaul. If the savings are $150 billion more than expected, then the government would scrap a planned second set of increases for those making between $350,000 and $1 million. If the extra savings top $175 billion, the surcharge for those incomes would be eliminated altogether.

Want to bet they'd find a way around that when the time comes? So what's the reaction to the Great Plan been? Not positive:

The plan drew fire from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s biggest business lobby.

“The intention of this plan is to tax high-income households, but the real victims would be America’s small business owners,” the Washington-based group’s president, Thomas Donohue, said in a statement. “Since when does our great free-market country punish success?”

Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, picked up on the theme, saying the plan would be paid for by “small business men and women we are counting on to start hiring workers again.”

The legislation would raise taxes on larger corporations as well. Among other things, it would make it easier for the Internal Revenue Service to prosecute tax shelters, and deny certain cross-border deductions that some companies are able to claim through tax treaties.
....

Eventually, the House and Senate must craft a compromise measure, and conservative lawmakers in both chambers have balked at taxes outside the health-care system.

Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, said he’s “not hearing a lot” of support for a surtax on wealthy Americans. People in his state don’t like the millionaire’s tax “because they are looking someday to get there themselves,” Nelson told reporters on July 13. “It’s the American way.”

But this isn't about the American way. It's about agendas, and how to accomplish them by hook or by crook:

The Senate has so far failed to reach a bipartisan compromise, and top advisers to Obama are discussing the possibility of relying only on Democrats to ram the legislation through Congress.

“Ultimately, this is not about a process,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, in an interview yesterday. “It’s about results.”

Even if those results do more harm than good? That's not "Reform", Mr. Axelrod. That's a sure ticket to economic disaster.

The Stuff

So what is it, anyway?

It's thick and dark and 'gooey' and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found 'globs' of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

Later, Brower said, the North Slope team in a borough helicopter spotted a long strand of the stuff and followed it for about 15 miles, shooting video from the air.

I wonder if Sarah Palin can see it from her house...

EATRS Of The Dead

Make way for...zombie bots?

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, 'EATR' — 'can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,' reads the company's Web site.

That 'biomass' and 'other organically-based energy sources' wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an 'external combustion chamber' burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.

In the past this sort of thing was done by vultures. Now it seems they have some competition.

Carbon Emissions Enforced, Poor Countries Hardest Hit

Leftists love to talk about helping the world's impoverished populations. Which is why it's puzzling that they object when they want to help themselves.

According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce calculations, even if the West reduced its emissions by 80% below 2000 levels, developing countries would still have to return their emissions to 2000 levels to meet the 50% target. However, Indians currently consume roughly 15 times less energy per capita than Americans--and Chinese consume seven times less. Asking them, along with the rest of the developing world, to go back to 2000 emission levels with a 2050 population would mean putting them on a very drastic energy diet.

The human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes--for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach--would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.

In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now.

Of course, if you believe some of the whackjobs out there, that would actually be a good thing, so maybe their overall plan to "Help" developing countries isn't so inconsistent, after all.

Thou Shall Not Question The Stimulus

Jon Kyl discovers what happens when you dare criticize The One:

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said of the $787 billion stimulus package, 'the reality is it hasn't helped yet. Only about 6.8 percent of the money has actually been spent. What I proposed is, after you complete the contracts that are already committed, the things that are in the pipeline, stop it.'

A day later, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer received letters from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar all pointing out the billions headed to Arizona.

Kyl 'publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren't presently underway,' LaHood wrote to Brewer, a Republican. 'I believe the stimulus has been very effective in creating job opportunities throughout the country. However, if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.

Oh, I hope he does. Thin-skinned much, guys?

Green Is Good

Conflict of interest? What conflict of interest?

Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for 'green' banks, such as the one he has invested in and his family and a political donor helped found in San Francisco.

The bill calls on bank regulators to promote green banking and says federal dollars should be used to support energy-efficient home improvements at government-funded housing projects.

Mr. Perlmutter, a two-term Democrat, has two investments in the 3-year-old New Resource Bank, which calls itself the nation's first green bank. Among other environmentally conscious banking products, the bank offers home equity loans for consumers to make their homes more energy efficient, in addition to construction loans for green builders.

A Perlmutter spokeswoman stressed that the bill provisions benefit any bank that offers qualifying products.

'Any bank can use this or take advantage of this, period. So it's equal opportunity,' Leslie Oliver said.

Well, one man's kickback is another man's opportunity...

Doctor Doom And Gloom

Via Reason, a look at the past record of Obama's chief science advisor:

Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—better known as the 'science czar'—has been a longtime prophet of environmental catastrophes. Never discouraged but never right.

And thanks to resourceful bloggers, you can read excerpts from a hard-to-find book co-authored by Holdren in the late 1970s, called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, online.

In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.

It's not surprising. Holdren spent the '70s boogying down to the vibes of an imaginary population catastrophe and global cooling. He also participated in the famous wager between scientist Paul Ehrlich, the now-discredited Population Bomb theorist (and co-author of Ecoscience), and economist Julian Simon, who believed human ingenuity would overcome demand.

Holdren was asked by Ehrlich to pick five natural resources that would experience shortages because of human consumption. He lost the bet on all counts, as the composite price index for the commodities he picked, including copper and chromium, fell by more than 40 percent."

But, as the good doctor claimed, it was all for our own good:

When, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Holdren was asked about his penchant for scientific overstatements, he responded that "the motivation for looking at the downside possibilities, the possibilities that can go wrong if things continue in a bad direction, is to motivate people to change direction. That was my intention at the time."

"Motivation" is when Holdren tells us that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020. Or when he claimed that sea levels could rise by 13 feet by the end of this century when your run-of-the-mill alarmist warns of only 13 inches.

"Motivating"—or, in other words, scaring the hell out of people—about "possibilities" is an ideological and political weapon unsheathed in the effort to pass policies that, in the end, coerce us to do the right thing.

Holdren's past flies in the face of Barack Obama's contention, made on the day of the science czar's appointment, that his administration was "ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."

Bush used and abused scientific data for his own pro-life, creationist ends, or, rather, those of his party's base. Obama is doing the same thing for the Left. It doesn't matter-officially endorsed hokum is stll hokum no matter how you slice it.

Take A Deep Breath

The California Supreme Court may have finally opened the door for DUI defendants:

The California Supreme Court last Thursday entered a ruling allowing motorists accused of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) to question the reliability of the breathalyzer machinery used to secure convictions. The decision, however, leaves room for the conviction of drivers even when the machine is proved unreliable.

The high court recognized that a breath testing machine does not directly measure the alcohol content in a person's bloodstream. Rather, the device estimates from a sample of breath how much alcohol might be present in the blood using a conversion factor called the 'partition ratio.' California's breathalyzer machines assume that the amount of alcohol in 2100 milliliters of breath is equal to the amount of alcohol in 1 milliliter of blood.

'Simply put, the machines all automatically convert the amount of alcohol tested in the tiny amount of breath taken from the suspect,' California DUI attorney Lawrence Taylor explained. 'The internal computer multiplies the amount by 2100 -- using the average ratio of alcohol in blood to alcohol in breath -- to estimate the amount of alcohol in the suspect's blood. Problem: We are not all average. And ratios vary from 1300:1 to 3500:1.'

To put it in a nutshell, the Court took one step forward and stayed two steps behind:

...the supreme court held that partition ratio evidence may now be raised as a defense to a general DUI charge. The court, however, in previous rulings made it clear that motorists could be convicted of per se DUI regardless of any scientific evidence regarding actual intoxication. The high court cited Lawrence Taylor as an authority on the subject three times in its decision, but Taylor blasted the decision as irrational.

"It takes a supreme court ruling to allow a citizen accused of DUI to defend himself with established scientific truth," Taylor wrote. "But in a typical retreat from logic, the court limited the admissibility of partition ratio evidence to defending against the charge of driving under the influence -- not to the accompanying charge of driving with .08 percent blood-alcohol concentration (BAC). So you can use scientific facts that the BAC reading is faulty to defend yourself against the BAC-based presumption of being under the influence -- but not against the charge that your BAC was .08 percent or higher."

In other words, it's a legal catch-22-they admit the machines are unreliable, but can still be used as evidence. I'm all for getting drunk drivers off the streets permanently. But not at the expense of legitimate scientific evidence that could at least guarantee them their day in court.

A Drink For Thy Memory's Sake

Once again, it seems, alcohol shows there is nothing it cannot do:

A glass of wine here, a nightcap there – new research out of Wake Forest University School of Medicine suggests that moderate alcohol intake offers long-term cognitive protection and reduces the risk of dementia in older adults.

The study is being presented at the Alzheimer's Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD), in Vienna on July 13.

While previous studies have shown that moderate alcohol intake, particularly wine, is linked with lower risk of heart attacks and dementia, most of the studies have been done in middle-aged people, and it has remained unclear if the benefits of alcohol also apply to older adults in general or to older adults who might already have some mild memory problems. This is the largest, longest U.S. study to look at the effects of regular alcohol intake on dementia in seniors, both with and without memory problems.

"As of yet, we still have no cure for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, so it is important to look for things that might help people prevent the disease," said Kaycee Sink, M.D., M.A.S (Masters of Advanced Studies in clinical research), a geriatrician and senior author of the paper. Moderate alcohol intake has been linked to lower risk of heart attacks, stroke, dementia, and death in middle-aged adults, but there is still controversy about alcohol intake in older adults."

For the study, researchers began by examining and interviewing 3,069 individuals, 75 years or older and most without any memory or thinking problems, about their drinking habits. Participants were asked about beer, wine, and liquor. The investigators then categorized the individuals as abstainers (non-drinkers), light drinkers (one to seven drinks per week), moderate drinkers (eight to 14 drinks per week), or heavy drinkers (more than 14 drinks per week). All types of alcohol were included.

The study subjects were then examined and interviewed every six months for six years to determine changes in their memory or thinking abilities and to monitor who developed dementia.

Researchers found that individuals who had no cognitive impairment at the start of the study and drank eight to 14 alcoholic beverages per week, or one to two per day, experienced an average 37 percent reduction in risk of developing dementia compared to individuals who did not drink at all and were classified as abstainers. The type of alcohol consumed did not matter.

So, prohibitionists beware-in the end, those who consume demon rum may be the ones who will keep their wits about them while you lose yours.

Profiles In Excess

Yet more proof that not everyone is hurting from the recession:

At a time when publishers are scrambling to keep customers willing to pay $26 for a hardcover book instead of $9.99 for an electronic version, the publisher of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s forthcoming memoir is going in the opposite direction - issuing a limited edition it plans to sell for $1,000 a copy.

Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, is planning to issue 1,000 copies of a leather-bound, electronically signed edition of “True Compass’’ and sell them through the website of Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Grand Central. Although publishers and licensed contractors do occasionally produce collectors’ editions on various titles, such a premium version is quite rare.

Kennedy, 77, reportedly received an $8 million advance for the memoir that he wrote in collaboration with Ron Powers, an author of “Flags of Our Fathers,’’ about the Marines who raised the US flag at Iwo Jima during World War II, and other biographies. Kennedy’s book was originally scheduled for a 2010 publication date. Twelve is now planning to release the regular hardcover edition on Oct. 6, with a retail list price of $35. It is planning an initial print run of 1.5 million copies.

I wonder if it includes swimming lessons...

A Wingnut Goes To War

Ah, the Birthers. Where would we be without them?

A soldier is objecting to his deployment to Iraq because he believes President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Conspiracy theories about where Mr. Obama was born abound in some quarters despite the fact that the Obama campaign posted the then-candidate's Hawaiian birth certificate online last year. Skeptics call the certificate a forgery, though their claims have been repeatedly debunked.

Among the doubters is conservative politician Alan Keyes, who has taken the question of the president's birth to court. Keyes believes Mr. Obama is not a 'natural born citizen' and is thus ineligible for the presidency under the Constitution.

Now comes word that U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, a reservist who lives in Florida, is challenging his deployment based on that argument. Reports the Ledger-Enquirer out of Columbus, Georgia: 'Cook’s lawyer, Orly Taitz, who has also challenged the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency in other courts, filed a request last week in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector for his client.'

Have fun with this one, guys. At least it'll give WorldNutDaily something to talk about.

Friends Don't Let Friends Run The Country Drunk

Well, this might explain a few things:

During the first two months of the administration, White House and Treasury officials tried to deal with the worsening economy almost without a break. The image of senior economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers nodding off during a presidential meeting with credit card executives became the emblem of that period.

Behind the scenes, it was even worse. The night before Obama announced the administration's housing plan on Feb. 18 in Arizona, Sperling e-mailed the final documents at 3 a.m. and asked for comments. Five people responded immediately.

Martin Moore-Ede, a former Harvard University professor, calls it the 'iron man' syndrome and says the American political workplace is one of the few that still resists a mechanism for ensuring people get rest.

One study conducted for the British Parliament found that 'mental fatigue affects cognitive performance, leading to errors of judgement, microsleeps (lasting for seconds or minutes), mood swings and poor motivation.' The effect, it found, is equal to a blood alcohol level of .10 percent -- above the legal limit to drive in the United States.

Insert your own "Drunk with power" cliche here...

Broadcaster Like Me

And the latest group asking for a bailout is:

A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries.

'Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species,' the letter said. 'Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets.'

The broadcasters told Mr. Geithner they can bounce back if they are given some temporary assistance while the credit markets are slow. 'Unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years,' their letter said.

The broadcasters appeal follows a proposal sent in May to Mr. Geithner by a group of influential House members asking for a minority broadcaster support program, bridge funding, or government-backed loans.

Conidering that the newspapers want the same thing, you'd think that broadcast journalists-no matter what color they were-would be concerned about government involvement in their business. But I guess it was to be expected these days.

We Are All Big Brother Now

Who needs cctv cameras? In our security-conscious era, new technology can give people a do-it-yourself approach.

Sousveillance—the inverse of surveillance—is the general activity of an individual capturing a first-person recording of an activity from his or her own perspective as a participant in the activity. Rather than watching 'from above,' the French “sous” means “under” or “from below.”
...

While camera phones and similar portable technologies make capturing incidents like [Robert] Dziekanski's death possible by the average citizen, new integrated technologies such as the SenseCam, electric seeing aids, visual memory aids for the elderly, and Personal Safety Devices (PSDs) that record our entire lives have the potential to alter radically our notions of personal protection—and also keep those 'higher up' honest and informed. These technologies include wearable, implantable, and body-borne computing devices. PSDs in particular can also provide cheap life insurance by functioning like the 'black box' flight recorder on an aircraft in case of a personal incident.

As they say, turnabout is fair play. And while there are some concerns about this turning us into a "Candid Camera" society, it may be preferable to the alternative of simply trusting the government to do it for us.

Run, John, Run

Oh, I hope so:

Republican Sen. John Ensign said Monday that not only does he have no intention of resigning in light of his affair and his parents’ payout to the woman’s family, he plans to seek reelection when his term is up in 2012.

Ensign told the Las Vegas Sun he has received calls and e-mails of encouragement from supporters both in Nevada and Washington.

When asked Monday whether he had any thoughts about stepping down, Ensign said his supporters are sending one message: “They say, ‘Don’t.’ ”

“I fully plan on running for reelection,” Ensign said late Monday evening. “I’m going to work to earn their respect back.”

And if that doesn't work, there's always hiking trails that lead to Argentina...

The Big Three

Conor Friedersorf lays out the three biggest concerns over Obamacare:

a) Its cost. I'd bet a hefty sum that expanding coverage and the role the federal government plays in health care is going to significantly increase rather than decrease costs. Since we're already paying for costly foreign wars, generations of accumulated debt, a massive bailout, and other entitlements with rapidly rising costs, it doesn't seem like we're in a fiscal position to pile on more government spending. b) Fear of excessive state power. It shouldn't be too difficult to imagine another Dick Cheney or Richard Nixon in the White House. Are we really comfortable assuming that the state will never use its role in health care to pressure political opponents, or collect frightening kinds of data, or politicize medical decisions more than is now the case? Isn't there any size and scope of government that progressives deem to be too big on prudential grounds? Why doesn't this put us there? Isn't it better for one among many health insurance companies to deny coverage, compared to one government run entity deeming something uncovered, as could happen if a public option drove some or most insurers out of the market? Health care is really important. Isn't it unwise to concentrate too much power over it in any one place, the federal government included? c) Fear of lost innovation. I keep seeing the argument that America is the leading health care innovator, and that if our system looks more like what Europe has, there won't be anyone left making strides in research and development.

The single biggest issue for me personally is one of government control. It was bad enough when Bush did it with national security; does anyone really think that a liberal Democratic administration will be any better with health care? We've had two major government expansions under Democratic administrations in the past century-FDR's and LBJ's (and yes I know Bush did the same thing, and he rightfully deserved to be pilloried for it, but this is about Obama now). Do we really need to add BHO's to the list?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1965

Mariner 4 has become the first spacecraft to take pictures of another planet. Science fiction writers are bound to be disappointed, but still I suppose it's better than facing angry Martians when we get there ourselves:

Bloggin' In The Years: 1881

He could be charming and ruthless, and now one of the West's most infamous outlaws has met his maker:

In appearance Billy was one of the mildest persons imaginable. His soft blue eyes were so attractive that those who saw him for the first time looked upon him as a victim of circumstances. In spite of his innocent appearance, however, Billy the Kid was really one of the most dangerous characters which this country has produced. He had just turned 21 years, and it was known that in his short life he had murdered 19 people. It was his boast that he had killed one man for every year of his life. He had not quite done that, but it is certain that he killed 19 men in the 21 yars of his worse than worthless life.

If the West is ever truly tamed, it may be said that the death of "The Kid" was one of the turning points that started the West on the road to civilization.

Robobum

The recession is affecting everybody:

Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.

At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.

They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.

So what happens when we create an underclass of unemployed machines? Is it time for robot welfare?

Death By Teleprompter

It's not exactly a dead crow, but it still sounds like a bad omen:

Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon, one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. It made quite a ruckus.

“Oh, goodness,” a startled President Obama said. “Sorry about that, guys.”

He then proceeded on with his remarks, “To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history…”
For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.

Now even the teleprompters are turning on him...

Stimulus Hunters

Well, this makes me feel better:

Despite assurances from the Obama administration that stimulus spending would be fully transparent, the system for tracking stimulus spending is fractured, redundant and disorganized.

The system is such a mess that the federal government announced that it's spending $18 million just to revamp its Recovery.gov Web site.

To which U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters: 'This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. They've spent stimulus money to create this Web site, it doesn't work very well, and now they want $18 million more to track how this wasted money is being wasted.'

And yet these same people seem to think that a second stimulus would do the job. And people wonder where our trillion-dollar debt came from.

The Trillion Dollar Mark

It's official: we're now the kings of debt.

Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time.

The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and already pressuring the value of the dollar. There's also concern about trying to reverse the deficit - by reducing government spending or raising taxes - in the midst of a harsh recession.

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.

The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. Paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.

I'm sure Team Obama would pop open the champagne to celebrate-if they could afford it.

Saving Our Kids To Death

Guess what? It turns out that saving your kids from fire may be the least of their worries:

For decades, California has been the only state in the nation to require the use of highly toxic fire-retardant chemicals on cribs, infant carriers, strollers, nursing pillows, changing tables, high chairs and other baby products....

Last year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued statements strongly discouraging the use of fire retardant in home furniture, including baby products. The federal agency's scientists cited numerous studies linking fire retardant exposure to cancer, birth defects, reproductive problems, thyroid disorders, hyperactivity, learning disabilities and a plethora of other health concerns.

It takes a nannystate to give your kid cancer...

Where Jim Crow Lives

Which country is the most racist, again? It's not us:

Many advertisements for foreign English teachers will include something like 'Whites only' or a 'Looking for Caucasian teachers' sentence somewhere in the text. Additionally, many a native speaker have flown from their country to China only to find upon arrival that regardless of the applicant's qualifications, the job could only be performed by a white person. At these times the Chinese are usually polite and a little embarrassed (most Chinese are very nice people and mean no harm), but they will remain very firm in their conviction that a person with darker skin than theirs could not possibly make a good teacher.

Actually, you can still see stereotypes of blacks in advertising in many countries, including "Enlightened" Europe. As in America's segregated past, it seems to be born more of ignorance than actual malice. Perhaps America, given the unique melting-pot nature of our society, was just lucky enough to be able to outgrow it.

Some Stimulus Recipients Are More Equal Than Others

The Obama method-take from the middle class and give to the rich?

The Obama administration is dispersing income lavishly to those who do not pay taxes and it will have to be paid for by those who do. For all the talk of that awful percentile who make over $200,000, this administration has not distinguished the hyper-rich 1% that make untold money (e.g., the Buffets, Soroses, Turners, Gateses, Kerrys, Gores, etc), from the much more demonized, larger 5% of the population whose income does not come from investments and insider influence and deal-making, but rather from providing more tangible goods and services–the family doctor, the plumbing contractor, the small lumber company owner, the car dealer, the local family-held insurance company, the airline pilot, the car-leasing firm, the patent attorney, etc.

Well, I guess when you're a Democrat, "Wealthy" is a relative term...

Immigrant Song

Despite Bill O'Reilly's constant emphasis on "Criminal illegal aliens," most are actually contributing to lower crime rates, according to Radley Balko:

While the overall crime rate in the U.S. dropped 10.9 percent, the crime rate in the 19 states that saw the largest influx of immigrants dropped 13.6 percent.

• In 1999, the 19 states that would settle the largest number of immigrants over the next seven years had a crime rate higher than the national average. By 2006, their crime rate was lower.

• Violent crime in the 19 high-immigration states dropped 15.0 percent over seven-year period. Violent crime in the other 32 states (the study included D.C.) dropped just 1.2 percent.

The authors are careful to explain that lots of variables contribute to a state's crime rate, and they warn that one should not conclude from their study alone that immigration reduces crime. But it does present a pretty strong refutation of the argument that immigrants are creating more crime in the states where they settle.

I still think the real issue here is one of assimilation, which we have tended to put aside in the name of diversity and political correctness. But this notion that all illegals are just psychopathic thugs waiting to happen doesn't seem to hold much weight when compared to the evidence.

Stereotyping Teh Gay For Fun And Profit

Dennis Lim says Bruno's gay critics are missing the point:

Is any viewer really going to think that this hyperbolically crass and ridiculous narcissist—who wears mesh tops and eye-searing lederhosen, refers to his adopted African baby as a 'dick magnet,' and drops faux-Teutonic vulgarities about his waxed arschenhaller—represents 'the mainstream of the gay community,' as one troubled Hollywood 'gay insider' put it? And are the gays who anxiously anticipate the mocking, hostile reactions of the unenlightened really that blind to Brüno's obvious counteroffensive strategy, which is to make that mocking, hostile idiocy the subject of his film? The beauty—and perhaps even the moral logic—of Baron Cohen's method is that those who're not in on his joke are invariably the butts of the joke.

As Voltaire and many others have noted, some people just don't get satire. Especially when it's directed at them.

Payday Deferred

H.W. Brands looks at the subject of reparations:

These demands crop up recurrently, but though they haven’t yet gone anywhere, they never quite go away. And while they linger, they threaten to thoroughly poison the atmosphere on race. Without question the millions of men, women and children forced into servitude were horribly wronged. But righting that wrong, a century and a half after emancipation, transcends the power of mortals.

Reparations would take money from people who never owned slaves and bestow it on people who never were slaves. It would require judgments of collective guilt and collective innocence, which are problematic at best; when the collectives are defined by race and the judgments extended across generations, the whole issue becomes noxious in the extreme.

As it does with symbolic resolutions and "Official apologies" over slavery and other white liberal guilt trips. Unfortunately, it still provides fertile ground for the professional race-baiters and hustlers out there.

The Long Recovery

If the economy is recovering, would we even know it? Daniel Gross notes:

Modern America is not equipped—financially, socially, or psychologically—to deal with long recessions. We don't have the safety net or the savings to cope with a protracted downturn. And fortunately, we haven't had to. The last two recessions, which ended in 2001 and 1992, respectively, lasted only eight months each. But recessions brought on by financial crises are always deeper and more long-lasting than other recessions, as economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt show in this paper. By February 2009, when the stimulus package was passed, the recession was already the longest in 28 years; now it's the longest contraction since the Great Depression.

Quite frankly, this feels more like 1980-which many younger workers also will not remember. And many people still won't see the recovery when it does come:

Bob Hall's [National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)] committee is likely to proclaim that recovery began sometime in the second quarter, but it won't feel like a recovery to workers (as opposed to asset owners) for quite some time to come.

Will this really be an attitude-altering economic change the way the Depression or the inflation and stagnation of the Seventies were? Or will it be remembered as just another unpleasant part of the boom-and-bust cycle?

President Horndog

Ann Althouse analyzes the now-infamous photo of President Gawker:

Sarkozy holds his arms against his chest in a closed — but not tightly closed — position. The head is turned but upright. He is smiling, but the index finger lying against his lip blocks the edge of the smile from the point of view of anyone standing in front of him, though if the woman were to turn around, she would see it easily. His hand is tipped upward at a jaunty — one is tempted to say phallic — angle. The foot closest to the woman is planted firmly on the ground in the don't-go-that-way position, yet the other foot angles toward the object of desire. Still, the angled foot remains flat on the floor, and, at a shoulder's distance from the other foot, it the whole figure of the man a solid immobility.

Now, swivel your eyes over to Obama's feet. The foot closest to the woman, like Sarkozy's, is planted and aimed forward, but the other steps off in the direction of the woman, bending the knee upward into a bit of a crotch-squeeze and forming the base of a dramatic tilt of the entire body into a flexible S-shape that leans toward the woman. Obama's arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That's what I want.

Bill Clinton must be green with envy.

The Palinistas' Laments

On the heels of Peggy Noonan's tearing them a new one (see below), Cathy Young takes on the Palinmaniacs:

Palin critics on the right—George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Frum—have been slammed by the Palinistas as 'haters,' elitists threatened by a political star without proper intellectual credentials. Yet these same conservatives have been devout admirers of Ronald Reagan, hardly a product of the Ivy League.

Some of Palin's followers see her as the second coming of Reagan. But Reagan, despised as a 'dunce' by his liberal detractors, had extensively read, written, and talked about the key issues of his day. While not an intellectual, he was a man of ideas. Palin is not known to harbor those. Her appeal is described in terms of 'speaking from the heart' and exemplifying the virtues of faith and family—which is ironic, given the usual conservative derision of emotion-based liberal politics.

But isn't being an emotional victim what the Left does? As Young points out:

While eschewing "victim feminism," Palin has enthusiastically embraced "victim conservatism": the grievances of cultural traditionalists who feel trampled and disdained by the more educated and influential (and often, more affluent) segments of American society. Like the "oppressed groups" of the left, these traditionalists have some valid complaints but channel them into a destructive ideology of polarization and resentment.

Of course, this isn't new in conservatism, either-the "Culture Warriors" have been complaining about how they're treated by the Left at least since the days of the Moral Majority's heyday onward. But the current our-way-or-the-highway crowd seems intent on channeling their own particular anger through her, and in doing so have only marginalized themselves even further. Let me put it this way-would conservatives of past generations have followed quitters and complainers?

From Their Cold, Dead Fingers They'll Take Their Ohms

It's the war on yoga!

Ten years ago, with yoga transforming itself into a ubiquitous pop culture phenomenon from a niche pursuit, yoga teachers banded together to create a voluntary online registry of schools meeting new minimum standards for training instructors in the discipline.

But that list-which now includes nearly 1,000 yoga schools nationwide, many of them tiny-is being put to a use for which it was never intended. It is the key document in a nationwide crackdown on yoga schools that pits free-spirited yogis against lumbering state governments, which, unlike those they are trying to regulate, are not always known for their flexibility.

Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers, chiropractors and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement-disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.

Seriously, I'd think local governments would have better things to do than to go after the Yogis. Maybe they're the ones most in need of their services.

The Bonbon Girl

Peggy Noonan is fed up with the Palinmaniacs:

“The elites hate her.” The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

“She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.” She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

“She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes.” She shows your cynicism.

“Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues.” Mrs. Palin’s supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this?

Because they don't want to? Because they want a female version of Geroge W. Bush? Or maybe because they're grasping at straws at this point?

Let's Just Be Friends

Um, okay:

You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

Hey, as long as he didn't make you pay for the dinner...

The Huffingenquirer

Well, this might explain a few things:

More than half Huffington Post’s traffic is driven by gossip and entertainment stories. The day the Froomkin news broke, for example, the site’s most popular story wasn’t about health care - it was “American Flag Bikini Moments: What’s YOUR Favorite?” Indeed, the Washington City Paper’s Amanda Hess called attention to the sometimes schizophrenic nature of the site in a recent piece: “Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment.” Similarly, columnist Simon Dumenco, last month in AdAge, wrote that the Huffington Post “likes to pretend that it's a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say, Maxim.”

This seems to be an overall symptom of trying to be the next Big Media-when in doubt, follow the tabloids.

"I Hate My Wealth"

For a guy who has more money than the Flying Spaghetti Monster, this is pretty, er, rich:

I do not like the idea of any kind of a plan involving the government where Wall Street makes a lot of money. My plan provided that they would make no money whatsoever, and the American public would make the money. I just think that Wall Street owes the American people one at this point.

So does that mean the rest of us can get some of Mr. Buffet's billions?

The Deification Stops Here

Apparently not even Nancy Pelosi wants to be part of the Michael Jackson worship circus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shut the door Thursday to a resolution honoring Michael Jackson because debate on the symbolic measure could raise 'contrary views' about the pop star's life.

Lawmakers are free to use House speeches 'to express their sympathy or their praise any time that they wish,' said Pelosi, D-Calif. 'I don't think it's necessary for us to have a resolution.'

A resolution sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, cites some of the singer's charitable acts and proclaims him an American legend, musical icon and world humanitarian.

Even before Pelosi's comments, some Democrats said privately they did not support the resolution and a divisive debate would hurt House efforts to muster the votes for priorities such as health care and climate change.

Of all the things they could be arguing about, Jacko doesn't seem very high on their list of priorities. Score one for common sense, such as it is.

Some Shovel Ready Projects Are More Equal Than Others

It must be nice to be so well thought of:

Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election.
...

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.

And what does Team Obama have to say about this?

"There's no politics at work when it comes to spending for the recovery," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says.

And if you believe that, I've got a stimulus package I'd like to try and sell you. Oh, wait...

The Nannystate Will Be Gardened

His state is facing a financial apocalypse, but that hasn't stopped Gavin Newsome from moving forward as San Francisco's top Food Cop.

Food vendors that contract with the city must offer healthy and sustainable food. All vending machines on city property must also offer healthy options, and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, although some already do....

And effective immediately, no more runs to the doughnut shop before meetings and conferences held by city workers. Instead, city employees must use guidelines created by the Health Department when ordering food for meetings.

Examples include cutting bagels into halves or quarters so people can take smaller portions and serving vegetables instead of potato chips....

Many of the details have yet to be worked out, including how much it will cost. Newsom bristled when asked how it would be funded because there's no money to implement the food policy in the budget agreed to by the mayor and the board's budget committee just last week.
'We have plenty of resources,' he said. 'This is not a budget buster.'

Well, it's pretty easy to say that when you have no actual budget...

A Little Hush Money Goes A Long Way

Well, what are parents for, if not to help keep your mistress quiet?

Sen. John Ensign’s attorney acknowledged Thursday that the Nevada Republican’s parents paid nearly $100,000 to the family of his mistress after she and her husband left his staff in April 2008.

In a statement from Paul Coggins, Ensign’s attorney, said that the senator gave Doug Hampton, Cindy Hampton and their two children gifts worth $96,000 and that “each gift was limited to $12,000.”

“The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts,” Coggins said.

It would be too rich if we found out she was using the money for trips to Argentina...

Palin's Golden Parachute

Is Sarah Palin the Ken Lay of politics?

Her admirers can excuse anything, but to the much larger audience of non-admirers, Palin will look a lot like those CEOs who wrecked their banks and the national economy while accepting huge bonuses for themselves. John McCain’s slogan in 2008 was "Country First." Palin’s in 2012? "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em."

In all fairness to Palin, it's not quite the same as raiding the corporate coffers and taking the money and running-what Sarah did was show that she was unwilling and unready for higher office. What annoys the bejeezus out of me is that some people on the right who should know better seem to think this means that she now will be.

The Decline And Fall Of Obamanomics

Nate Silver warns that the peoples' patience with Obama won't last forever:

Each day, a few more voters are going to blame Obama for the economic troubles that we're in. If the economy seems to be showing some 'green shoots', as it did in March and April, then Obama will be fine -- voters don't expect the economy to turn around overnight. But if the economy isn't showing any signs of life -- and most of the economic news for the past 45 days or so has been pretty grim -- he'll fail to keep pace with those modest, but ever-increasing, expectations, and his approval ratings will decline.

Obama needs to do more than simply push for one stimulus after another-and one could argue that he in fact needs to be doing much less. An insistence on worn-out liberalism and Bush-era expansionism will be the short route to a single term otherwise.

A "Nuanced" System

Greenwald compares Obama's policy with Bush's:

In its own twisted way, the Bush approach was actually more honest and transparent: they made no secret of their belief that the President could imprison anyone he wanted without any process at all. That's clearly the Obama view as well, but he's creating an elaborate, multi-layered, and purely discretionary 'justice system' that accomplishes exactly the same thing while creating the false appearance that there is due process being accorded.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and continuing a policy that was questionable to say the least is not way to uphold our values as Obama promised to do when he took office.

Everyone Has An Off Day

Maybe it was jet lag?

At several points in the Moscow speech, Obama seemed a bit off his game, repeatedly misspeaking words off the teleprompter. Last night, according to the pool report, Obama got back to his hotel at 12:15 p.m. local time, ending a long day with a long dinner at the home of Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and his wife. Earlier on Monday, Obama had taken an unexplained 40 minute break from his schedule to visit his hotel, delaying the start of the afternoon press conference.

Well, he's only human. But a little rest beforehand might be advisable next time.

Obamacare On Hold?

In lieu of a rational opposition party, a healthy dose of public skepticism may be the best medicine yet to cure the nannystating bug:

Senate negotiators are searching for new ways to pay for an overhaul of the U.S. health insurance system after recent polls showed many Americans oppose funding it through taxes on employer-provided health insurance, a key senator said Tuesday.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed only 20 percent of respondents support the tax and a Washington Post/ABC News poll found 70 percent opposed it. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 54 percent of respondents oppose the new tax.

The poll was a setback for many lawmakers who considered the tax the best way to raise hundreds of billions of dollars needed to pay for health care reform.

'When you get numbers like that, it certainly causes you to look for alternatives,' said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.

I'm sure they'll probably find something. And hopefully, by the time they do get this figured out, there will be a meaningful opposition party in charge to keep it away from Obama's desk.

The Big Freeze

We may laugh at Hugo Chavez and shake our heads over Honduras. But it turns out our own politics sometimes isn't much different than that of some banana republics.

The Senate stalemate will keep 250 new cops off the street, Mayor Bloomberg said Monday.

Bloomberg froze hiring to save the $60 million a month lost because Albany won't pass a half-point city sales tax hike.

'I don't want us to panic,' Bloomberg said. 'I don't think anybody expected this to go on. And yet it does.'

Also on hold because of the freeze are 90 emergency medical technicians, 150 firefighters, 175school safety agents and 150crossing guards.

The cops were set to be sworn in tomorrow.

'The state Senate's inability tofunction may literally result inblood on the streets,' said CityCouncilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee.

The Senate has been deadlocked, 31 to 31, since a June 8 Republican coup. There is no lieutenant governor to break the tie.

So what now? Does New Jersey send in troops?

Take My Mortgage, Please

So, how did trying to bail out the real-estate industry work out?

SAN FRANCISCO, July 7 (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage fraud reports jumped 36 percent last year as desperate homeowners and industry professionals tried to maintain their standard of living from the boom years, the FBI said on Tuesday.Suspicious activity reports rose to 63,713 in fiscal year 2008, which ended last September, from 46,717 the year before.

California and Florida, centers of the housing bust, had the highest numbers of suspicious reports as foreclosures jumped, the stock market dropped and credit dried up.

'These combined factors uncovered and fueled a rampant mortgage fraud climate fraught with opportunistic participants desperate to maintain or increase their current standard of living,' the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in its report.

'Industry employees sought to maintain the high standard of living they enjoyed during the boom years of the real estate market and overextended mortgage holders were often desperate to reduce or eliminate their bloated mortgage payments,' it said.

So the same cycle of denial and default starts all over again. And the culture of entitlement and dependency goes on.

Lessons Learned

Michael Jackson's real legacy may be a timeless moral:

The cautionary tale that was the life of Michael Jackson is one that we learn over and over. Never surround yourself with 'yes men' who will only feed your demons instead of telling you 'no' when they know they should. We have lost a talented performer who lived a tragic life. I hope his death will teach us to avoid drug addiction, false friends, and living for too long in Neverland.

Unfortunately, it seems to be one that too many talented people seem to forget.

Retraining For A Living

How well does job retraining really work? Not all that well, apparently.

A little-noticed study the Labor Department released several months ago found that the benefits of the biggest federal job training program were “small or nonexistent” for laid-off workers. It showed little difference in earnings and the chances of being rehired between laid-off people who had been retrained and those who had not.

In interviews, the authors of the study and other economists cited several reasons that retraining might not be effective. Many workers who have lost their jobs are older and had spent their lives working in one industry. In need of a job right away, many pick relatively short training programs, which often have marginal benefits. Job retraining is also ineffective without job creation, a point made by several economists who have long cautioned against placing too much stock in it. Finally, workers trying to pick a new field cannot predict the future of the labor market, especially in a time of economic upheaval.

A lot seems to depend on what kind of jobs people are being retrained for, if their skills are either making them overqualified or if they are simply becoming more obsolete. The job market is always changing and it does seem increasingly difficult for the trainers to keep up with it.

Exit Polls, Stage Right

We are still a right-of-center nation, it seems:

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven't changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

If current policies continue, expect this trend to grow in the future. Maybe Obama really is an agent of Change, after all...

Social Insecurity

Well, this makes me feel better about cybersecurity:

The nation’s Social Security numbering system has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual’s date and location of birth. The findings, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are further evidence that privacy safeguards created in the era before powerful computers and ubiquitous networks are increasingly failing, setting up an “architecture of vulnerability” around personal digital information, the researchers said.

As outdated as the IRS, and yet they want us to trust them with our medical needs and payments when we get too old to do it ourselves.

Brother, Can You Spare A Legacy?

So how is L.A. paying for that Michael Jackson memorial service? Apparently by asking his fans to help foot the bill:

Journalists wondering all morning how the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles was going to pay for all those cops outside the Staples Center and other city services surrounding today's memorial got their answer when Matt Szabo, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's senior press secretary, began panhandling at the site.

'Los Angeles is a world-class city that's used to putting on world class events' but is 'not immune to the recession' Szabo told CNN's Heidi Collins. 'We're asking Michael Jackson fans to help be a part of this event - to contribute online and literally support this great memorial.'

'Is that the first place you went - to fans?' Collins asked, sounding, understandably, confounded. 'Have you spoken with the Jackson family or [concert promoter and memorial producer] AEG?'

Szabo began to dance: 'It is our understanding AEG is putting on this entire event. What we're concerned about is paying for all of the other services,' he said. 'We're asking all those people who want to do something, to contribute in some way...to help provide for the safety of this event.' He seemed to be suggesting that if something goes wrong today, safety-wise, it could "tarnish" Jackson's memory.

As opposed to shaking down his fans for the cash, I suppose...

The Great Stimulus Debate

As expected, the idea of a second stimulus has created a new round of debate. First, the pro side:

While the politics of a second stimulus may be extremely unfavorable, the politics of 10 percent unemployment as you head into a midterm election--or, worse, a presidential re-election campaign--are far, far worse. Even if you can't pass another stimulus today, you want to begin laying the groundwork for passing one as soon as possible. Yes, you'll take a lot of heat from the GOP even at that point. But not nearly as much as you'll take if the unemployment rate doesn't improve by the summer/fall of 2010.

But how can you claim that a second stimulus will work if the first one didn't? And then there's the overall question of government expansion, as the con side points out:

We've just seen what special interest groups have done to legislation on health care reform and climate change and neither has even reached the Senate yet. Round one of the stimulus represented the high water mark of the influence of the technocrats in the Obama administration. What do you think round two of the stimulus would look like?

I think the American people were willing, for the most part, to support the first stimulus on the premise that it was actually necessary. As they now consider the cost, however, many are rightfully concerned about what they'll be paying in the long term. And that could spell big trouble for the Democrats.

Son Of Stimulus

Is it time for Stimulus, the sequel?

The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.

The current plan “will have a positive effect, but the real economy is a sicker patient,” Tyson said in a speech in Singapore today. The package will have a more pronounced impact in the third and fourth quarters, she added, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not the administration.

Tyson’s comments contrast with remarks made two days ago by Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee, who said it was premature to discuss crafting another stimulus because the current measures have yet to fully take effect. The government is facing criticism that the first package was rolled out too slowly and failed to stop unemployment from soaring to the highest in almost 26 years.

That's right-even though much of the money hasn't actually been spent, and even some Democrats were concerned about the cost of the last one, this person says we need to try another one. Because they only solution to fixing the economy is to spend until they think they've gotten it right, apparently.

What Would Winston Do?

The real Churchill must be rolling in his grave:

Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.” He added: “We have everything we need except political will but political will is a renewable resource.” Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat during World War 2.

“The level of awareness and concern among populations has not crossed the threshhold where political leaders feel that they must change.

“The only way politicians will act is if awareness raises to a level to make them feel that it’s a necessity.”

And it appears that the only way Al can keep getting attention is to compare his questionable crusade with the real thing. Yes, I believe that climate change is happening. No, I don't think the world's manufacturing and energy industries are Hitler. But since Bush is no longer around, I guess the Left needs something to compare with Hitler these days.

Mr. Smalley Goes To Washington

He has arrived:

Forget funny. Soon after he showed up in a Senate hallway with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Franken made clear his new schtick is serious senator from Minnesota.

'I am ready to get to work,' Franken said. 'I'm going to work day and night.'

Franken's seriousness didn't faze the dozens of onlookers who packed into a narrow Senate hallway hoping for at least one salty quip.

What they got was essentially a rather dour politician, in a blue-and-white striped tie and a dark blue pinstripe suit, standing behind a podium with the seal of the Senate on it, speaking slowly from prepared remarks. Franken barely cracked a smile as he talked at length about his duty to his constituents and emphasized repeatedly that he would work hard.

It looks like the first thing Washington does is kill one's sense of humor. In that case, he should fit right in.

The Yes Men Cometh?

Is the independence of Inspector Generals in danger?

Inspectors general at five financial regulatory agencies are objecting to legislation that would elevate their positions to the presidential-appointment level, arguing that the move would compromise their ability to conduct independent investigations.

The bill would elevate the five officials at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the National Credit Union Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The bill, passed last month by the House and awaiting Senate consideration, comes amid a period of increased tension for the government watchdog community, which has seen the departure or dismissal of three inspectors general in recent weeks.

Accountability we can't believe in? Why not just have an Inspector Czar instead? Obama's done it for everything else.

The President's Manager

Looking back at Robert S. McNamara's controversial legacy:

The war became his personal nightmare. Nothing he did, none of the tools at his command — the power of American weapons, the forces of technology and logic, or the strength of American soldiers — could stop the armies of North Vietnam. He concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life.

In 1995, he took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn.

“Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen,” The New York Times said in a widely discussed editorial, written by the page’s editor at the time, Howell Raines. “Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.”

By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

McNamara was just one of those who, at the time, publicly supported the war but had private misgivings about it. He was probably the first modern Secretary of Defense and, for better or for worse, defined the office and its limitations-as well as those of American military power. Hopefully he is now at peace.

Yet Another Way To Feel Old

Give a contemporary adolescent a Walkman:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette. Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

Now watch as he tries to put his DVDs into your old VCR...

The Libertine Way

It may be better for traditionalists to accept them rather than condemn them:

Why? Because they can and usually do avoid close social relations with libertines! A conservative Christian needn't worry that she will accidentally disgrace herself by marrying a libertine, because the libertine has the decency to make his intentions known.

In contrast, it's hard to avoid close social relations with hypocritical traditionalists. Since they pretend to share socially conservative values, they worm their way into your life and your family. Then like the hypocrites they are, they shirk, lie, and adulterer, bringing shame to their spouses, children, and extended families.....

Libertines are like the loyal soldiers of enemy nations; you may not like them, but at least you know what you're dealing with. Hypocrites, in contrast, are like traitors in your midst - and the wise social conservative will hold them in the highest contempt.

The day when a prominent "Traditional values" politician or pundit goes to a libertine and says, "I may not like your lifestyle, but I will defend to the death your right to live it", will be a Nixon-in-China moment for conservatism. The question is, who will be brave enough to do so?

What Are They, On Drugs?

Note to politicians: when you make a deal with the Devil, don't be surprised if you get burned.

A Senate-side deal last month with drug manufacturers is coming back to bite House Democrats looking for savings to pay for their own health care reform bill this summer.

Having struck a bargain with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the industry is aggressively targeting individual House Democrats, warning of repercussions in the 2010 elections if they go along with a tougher set of savings advocated by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

It sounds like the would-be regulators are now in thrall to those they would regulate. But really, what did they expect would happen? The drug companies didn't agree to lower costs purely out of the goodness of their hearts, after all, and now that they're power players they're going to want their share of the political pie.

A Burning Issue

In lieu of apparently not having anything else to talk about (the economy, for example) the old debate over flag burning is making a comeback:

The proposal, introduced this spring in the Senate by David Vitter (R., La.), and cosponsored by 20 other Republicans and Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, probably won't get enough votes. Yet even if it doesn't, one longstanding misunderstanding about the First Amendment is likely to live on.

I loathe anyone who would burn Old Glory, but does the law really have the right to prevent them from doing so? As Eugene Volokh says:

Protection of symbolic speech would have fit well with James Madison's initial draft of the First Amendment, which spoke of the people's "right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments." Courts and commentators (including early Supreme Court Justice James Wilson) routinely used "publish" to refer to publicly displaying pictures and symbols, as well as printing books. When Congress recast Madison's phrasing to the shorter "freedom of speech, or of the press" it was not seen as a substantive change.

Flag burners are idiots. But even idiots have the right to speak-as we've seen from several elected officials on both sides, and symbolic speech is a protected right.

Cap And Trade Tradeoff?

Will Cap and Trade survive? Maybe not:

There are somewhere between 62-66 votes that are perhaps potentially in play. But Joe Mauer-like precision will be required in targeting the undecided, and further compromises would almost certainly be needed, some of them designed to placate as few as one senator. The question is how many ornaments the Democrats could place on the Christmas Tree before it starts to collapse under its own weight.

One of the saving graces of American politics is that if something is perceived as enough of a boondoggle, politicians will be willing to make compromises in order to keep a watered-down (and therefore less expensive) version of said boondoggle alive and claim success in order to keep their jobs. There's something to be said for the cynical side of politics.

Stories About Investigations Make Governor Cry

For someone who says she's not being investigated, Sarah Palin is being awfully defensive:

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for
embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously Page 4 of 4 holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/constitution.php?section=1. These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.

I would agree that slander is actionable, but is a blogger reporting on a rumor really a reason to get bent out of shape? Any real investigation will soon make itself apparent, and this "Thou shalt not question the Queen!" attitude just won't help. And neither, quite frankly, will the old canard of blaming the messenger:

Palin, who has not had a public schedule for the July 4th holiday, posted a message on her Facebook page just before 5 O’clock Eastern describing news accounts of her announcement yesterday as “predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the ‘politics of personal destruction.’”

“How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country,” Palin wrote. “And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make.”

But asked exactly what stories the governor was criticizing, Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said Palin wasn’t referring to any specific news or TV account but rather the speculation and questions about what may have been her motivation for resigning.

Those who want to compare her to Nixon may want to think twice, especially as she seems to have a penchant for emulating the darker side of Nixon's persona.

The Write Stuff

Anne Trubek believes that the Internets have allowed us to rediscover the joy of writing:

I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago. Those who would never write letters (too slow and anachronistic) or postcards (too twee) now send missives with abandon, from long thoughtful memos to brief and clever quips about evening plans. And if we subscribe to the theory that the most effective way to improve one’s writing is by practicing—by writing more, and ideally for an audience—then our writing skills must be getting better.

With blogs and such that might be true, but is something like Twitter, for example, despite its demonstrated usefulness as a communications tool, really the path towards better expression? Or does it just make for a more accessable way of keeping in touch in an age in which we're supposedly becoming more isolated as individuals?

Scud Scum

It looks like Mini-Me had his own plans for the holiday weekend:

North Korea test fired seven short- range missiles, two days after launching four rockets, spurring condemnations from the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

The launches took place between 8 a.m. and 5:40 p.m. today, from Kitdaeryong in Kangwon province, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in statements.

“South Korea’s military is fully prepared to deal with any threats and provocations by the North, based on a strong joint defense alliance with the U.S.,” the statements added.

North Korea fired the missiles off its east cost, Yonhap news reported earlier, citing a government official. The missiles are estimated to have a range of as much as 500 kilometers (310 miles), enough for the North to strike most of South Korea, the Korean-language news agency said.

Mini-Me seems to have a fascination with things that are short. It's as if he's saying "Me have small package, but me not afraid to show it!"

A Full Plate

Obama has been having a bit of trouble selling his ideas lately, to the point that even Colin Powell is worried:

"I'm concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them," Mr. Powell said in an excerpt of an interview with CNN's John King, released by the network Friday morning.

Mr. Powell, a retired U.S. army general who rose to political prominence after a long and accomplished military career, said that health care reform and many of Mr. Obama's other initiatives are 'important' to Americans.

But, he said, "one of the cautions that has to be given to the president -- and I've talked to some of his people about this -- is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all."

The words "Too much at once" do tend to come to mind when it comes to this administration. Maybe it's time for Obama to step back a little bit so we can all take a deep breath before moving on.

America's Birthday

Thomas Paine:

The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party.

Samuel Adams:

We have no other alternative than independence, or the most ignominious and galling servitude. The legions of our enemies thicken on our plains; desolation and death mark their bloody career; whilst the mangled corpses of our countrymen seem to cry out to us as a voice from Heaven.

Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you, as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: "Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends."

Harold Ickes:

What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice property, ease and security in order that he and his children may retain the rights of free men. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July, and remember, for all its faults, America still rocks!

Happy Fourth

From 1976, a trippy tribute to the Bicentennial to help kick off the Fourth of July weekend. Happy Hot Dog Day!

You Won't Have Sarah Palin To Kick Around Anymore

While some are saying or, rather, desperately hoping-that Sarah Palin's bombshell means that she can now move on to bigger and better things, others aren't so sure. Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus has rounded up some other ideas as to the method behind her apparent madness.

Whatever her reasons, her chances for a Nixon-style comeback seem slim to none. I also have to wonder what she now thinks of John McCain. It can't be very pleasant.

Who Wants To Be A True Believer?

Frankly, I'm surprised American fundamentalists haven't come up with something like this:

What happens when you put a Muslim imam, a Christian priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk in a room with 10 atheists?

Turkish television station Kanal T hopes the answer is a ratings success as it prepares to launch a gameshow where spiritual guides from the four faiths will seek to convert a group of non-believers.

The prize for converts will be a pilgrimage to a holy site of their chosen religion -- Mecca for Muslims, the Vatican for Christians, Jerusalem for Jews and Tibet for Buddhists.

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing to provide an imam for the show.

'Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs,' High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan told state news agency Anatolian after news of the planned program emerged.

The makers of 'Penitents Compete' are unrepentant and reject claims that the show, scheduled to begin broadcasting in September, will cheapen religion.

'We are giving the biggest prize in the world, the gift of belief in God,' Kanal T chief executive Seyhan Soylu told Reuters.

'We don't approve of anyone being an atheist. God is great and it doesn't matter which religion you believe in. The important thing is to believe,' Soylu said.

Well, with all due respect, in a secular society people also have the right not to believe. At any rate, Bhuddists don't believe in the Christian/Muslim/Jewish concept of a God. How about just letting people make up their own minds?

Steppin' Down

So there it is. Does this mean the end of her presidential ambitions, or not?

Personally, I have to say I do feel a little sorry for her. But she was in way over her head, she wasn't ready to take over on day one if anything had happened to McCain, and outside of an increasingly shrinking GOP base no one really took her seriously. Maybe she has a future somewhere, but it won't be in the White House, you betcha.

Wither The Bloggers?

Is this blogging thing becoming passe?

It's a lot harder to make it big in the blogosphere, while the old A-listers are burning out. Blogging more than a thousand words a day, every day, is mentally exhausting, and if you aren't getting paid for it, eventually, your life intrudes.

Back in the day, new bloggers were emerging all the time. Now it's happening much more slowly, and the old bloggers have gravitated to various professional positions. Is the new media revolution over?

It seems that the old stalwarts who are hanging in there are adjusting to the fact that they aren't the revolutionaries they once thought they were, but rather complimenting Big Media instead of replacing it. So, I don't think it was a fad, but for some it does seem to be more of an accesory these days than a necessity.

Dude, Where's My Recovery?

It's a good question:

American wages are up just 2.7% a year, and it is a lot harder for workers to borrow money to maintain their spending. The boost from lower gasoline prices (seen in the winter) is disappearing and consumers seem to be saving, not spending, their tax breaks. David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff points out that same store sales are down 4.4% year-on-year, a bigger decline than that seen in May. If consumers are not spending, why would business invest? We have seen some kind of a rebound, after inventories were slashed in late 2008, but will it last?

Maybe the economy will be in a turnaround later this year...or early the next. If it takes that long, it won't be good news for the Democrats going into the 2010 elections. But the reporting of the "Recovery" is less than inspiring:

The actual news has gotten worse, but the coverage of it has changed in tone. Today, reporters are eagerly looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. A year ago, and for a long time before that, they couldn’t wait to get into the tunnel.

Well, the rest of us are in that tunnel with them, and so far all I see is the other guy's tailights in front of me.

Workers Not Wanted

Are government policies scaring employers away from hiring people?

They are paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have to pay their health care bills after they’ve been terminated? If so, for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a politically disfavored industry? . . . Jobs aren’t languishing despite the government’s best efforts. They’re languishing because of them.

And yet, there are still people out there who think this is the way things ought to be done.

The Einstein Interception

Well, here we go again. The more things change:

The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve 'monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic' and Department of Homeland Security officials say that the new program will only scrutinize data going to or from government systems.

But the program has provoked debate within DHS, the current and former officials said, because of uncertainty over whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency's involvement in warrantless wiretapping under the Bush administration would draw controversy.

'We absolutely intend to use the technical resources, the substantial ones, that NSA has. But . . . they will be guided, led, and in a sense directed by the people we have at the Department of Homeland Security,' the department's secretary, Janet Napolitano, told reporters in a discussion of cybersecurity efforts.

Is this really the kind of "Protection" we want? And can we really trust a government that says it won't do what the technology will allow it to do?

The Puppetmasters

How worrisome is the Obama administration's penchant for scripted press conferences? Even Helen Thomas is upset about it:

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well--for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

Whatever you might think of her politics, she deserves credit for trying to keep it real. Here's the video of her (and Chip Reid's) exchange with Robert Gibbs:

Ants Marching

I for one welcome our new overlords.

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

Planet of the Ants? If they ever develop sentience we're so screwed...

This White House For Sale

Whoops:

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive 'salon' at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to 'those powerful few' — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.'

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after PO