PIETER DORSMANN TAKES A LOOK AT Dutch politics and says that claims of a rightward shift may be exaggerated.
Archive for 2006
August 31, 2006
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Despite Republican Sen. Ted Stevens being outed as a secret-hold source, there have been rumors swirling that there’s a Democratic secret hold, too. TPM Muckraker has more:
By this morning, the dogged persistence of hundreds of bloggers and blogreaders garnered denials from 98 senators saying they did not hold up the Coburn/Obama spending transparency database bill. Only one senator, Ted “King of Pork” Stevens (R-AK), has admitted placing a hold on the bill.
But do the math — you’ll find that makes 99 senators. And Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) ain’t one.
That’s right: Byrd, whose penchant for pork would probably win him the Pork Crown if he weren’t saddled with minority status, has for days declined to answer constituents and others who have asked if he put a hold on the spending database proposal, S. 2590.
We have called and emailed his office and press secretary at least a half-dozen times over two days. Yesterday, we were promised a statement by the end of the day; none came. This morning, spokesman Tom Gavin continued to blame Byrd’s travel schedule for the lack of response.
What’s more, staff in the personal and leadership offices of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have been almost uniformly mum on the issue. If Byrd placed a hold on the legislation, he would have had to notify Reid’s office to do so. After several calls and conversations with numerous staffers, Reid spokesman Jon Steinberg would say for the record only that “it’s the policy of our office not to talk about holds.”
Well, Byrd’s not exactly beyond suspicion here. In fact, he and Stevens shared top honors in the PorkBusters Hall of Shame. Maybe they just like the attention!
UPDATE: An idea on turning secret holds into a force for good.
SELF-DEFENSE IS NOT A RIGHT, according to a U.N. Report. David Hardy has some thoughts. “As might be expected from the source, the concept of ‘right’ is rather ineptly socialist: rights are what you may ask the government to do for you.”
IN THE MAIL: The DVD release of Paul Greengrass’s United 93.
CHANGING THE WORLD with new fluorescent lightbulbs:
For two decades, CFLs lacked precisely what we expect from lightbulbs: strong, unwavering light; quiet; not to mention shapes that actually fit in the places we use bulbs. Now every one of those problems has been conquered. The bulbs come on quickly; their light is bright, white, steady, and silent; and the old U-shaped tubes–they looked like bulbs from a World War II submarine–have mostly been replaced by the swirl. Since 1985, CFLs have changed as much as cell phones and portable music players.
One thing hasn’t changed: the energy savings. Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.
What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.
I replaced the bulbs in the overhead fixture in my study with compact fluorescents, and I’m not crazy with the quality of the light they’re producing. But I may not have chosen the best new bulbs. I have been replacing outdoor lights with fluorescents, though, as I don’t care as much about the light quality there.
But look who’s spreading the technology:
In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers–100 million in all–one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. It also aims to change its own reputation, to use swirls to make clear how seriously Wal-Mart takes its new positioning as an environmental activist.
It’s a bold goal, a remarkable declaration of Wal-Mart’s intention to modernize and green up a whole line of business using market oomph. Teaming up with General Electric, which owns about 60% of the residential lightbulb market in the United States, Wal-Mart wants to single-handedly double U.S. sales for CFLs in a year, and it wants demand to surge forward after that.
Diane Lindsley, the hardware buyer who decides what goes in the lightbulb aisles at Wal-Mart, thinks 100 million swirls is perfectly reasonable.
No doubt we’ll hear more complaints about evil monopsony power, though.
HOWARD KURTZ: “Cook up something, call it a ‘study’ and, like Pavlov’s dogs, panting journalists will put it in print and on the air.”
They respond faster, though, to studies that reinforce their political views.
JEFF SOYER’S ALPHECCA BLOG ISN’T DOWN — just moving servers. It should be back soon.
THE INSTAWIFE has Google Ads on her blog now, and the context-sensitive adserving has responded to her post on prison sexual abuse by linking up “ladies of the Pen,” a site dedicated to “lonely, sexy ladies looking for love” — from behind prison bars. It seems like it ought to be a parody, but as far as I can tell it’s not.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Ladies of the Pen may not be a parody, but it’s probably not what it claims to be. I recognized one of the women pictured as a fairly popular B-grade pornstar, so the other pics probably aren’t authentic jailbirds either. (Let’s not dwell on HOW I recognized her!)”
Maybe it’s a Reuters operation . . . .
But if it’s “Hoosegow Honey” action you’re looking for, IowaHawk is the place to go! Guaranteed 100% authentic — unlike, well, most of the stuff at IowaHawk.
OLBERMANN outdoes Chomsky.
JOHN WIXTED looks at how Americans hate their fabulous economy. The charts on attitude and economic performance are very interesting. (Via Power Line).
UPDATE: TigerHawk comments: “The problem with Engram’s post is that it does not respond to the primary lefty criticism of the “Bush” economy, which is that real wages for the average Joe — people who are not in, say, the top decile — have been flat to down. . . . While I do not doubt that the media is tougher on the economy today than it was during the Clinton years, real wage stagnation is a more likely explanation for the sour public mood than a vast mainstream media conspiracy.”
Hmm. Maybe. But two observations: One, the shift from satisfaction to dissatisfaction is awfully abrupt, and comes when Bush was elected. Wages can’t stagnate that fast, but media coverage can shift tone that fast. Two, I keep hearing about real-wage stagnation, but everyone I know who has a business complains that they can’t get enough decent help even when they raise pay, because people are always leaving for better jobs. That may be a local phenomenon or something, but I’d like to see something that accounts for worker mobility, too.
This post by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek isn’t quite on the point mentioned above, but it does explain why living at the median income today is a lot better than living at the median income was in 1967.
MORE: Wixted responds to TigerHawk.
THE WAR OF THE WALLETS: Austin Bay says that Hezbollah is not faring as well as many seem to think.
JIM LINDGREN WRITES on ABC News and the end of the world.
THE “INSTA-ANDIE MACDOWELL”? Actually, Helen hears this a lot.
August 30, 2006
FRED THOMPSON IN 2008: Brian Noggle makes the case.
DAVID LAT HAS A NEW LEGAL BLOG, called Above the Law. Okay, it’s more of a legal-gossip blog, really.
VINCE CARROLL REVIEWS the Popular Mechanics 9/11-myth debunking book in the Rocky Mountain News.
Our podcast interview with the book’s editors, David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, can be found here.
THE MANOLO has a great take on the Couric photo-fakery story.
UPDATE: Eww.
Plus, textbook faux-tography.
CNN HAD A PORKBUSTERS / TED STEVENS FOLLOWUP: The video is at Hot Air.
UPDATE: Now there’s a Democratic hold?
KATE O’BEIRNE: “For almost three years, at every minor twist or turn of Plamegate, there were media stakeouts at the offices and homes of of the suspected leakers that invariably made the evening news and played in constant loops on cable. So who’s on Armitage driveway duty? Richard Armitage isn’t being hounded to answer questions about his role in Plamegate because the media wishes he had no role.”
UPDATE: “The Armitage revelation and way he and Colin Powell handled it—in the most self-serving way possible, with maximum damage inflicted on the administration—demonstrates what the real cabal in the first Bush administration was.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.
SHADES OF JOHN BARNES’ MOTHER OF STORMS: A Pacific Category V “Super Typhoon” threatens to scrub Wake Island clean:
Classified as a Category 5 “super typhoon,” Ioke is expected to extensively damage the U.S. territory when it hits Wednesday with 155-mph winds, said Jeff Powell, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
“This is going to roll up a storm surge that will probably submerge the island and destroy everything that’s not made of concrete,” Powell said.
Ouch. Glad I’m missing it. (Via Brendan Loy).
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: “Secret Senator” smoked out:
After much speculation, a staffer to Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, admitted to Cox Newspapers today that the senator is the lawmaker who placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would open up the obscure world of government contracting to public scrutiny.
Until now, it was a political whodunnit as to who quietly blocked legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year.
Shockingly, Saunders takes a dig at the blogosphere.
As for Stevens’ claim that he just wants a cost-benefit analysis, Mark Tapscott comments: “If that obvious BS doesn’t get Stevens hooted out the U.S. Senate …. How about we do a cost-benefit analysis of Stevens’ tenure in the nation’s capitol?”
I think he’ll want to put a hold on that . . .
AN A.P. HATCHET JOB ON RUMSFELD? The QandO blog does a side by side comparison of the speech and the AP story. Shockingly, the two are a less-than-perfect match. “I’m not sure why I felt compelled to compare the speech with the story, but for some reason the story just didn’t sound right. And, as you can see, it wasn’t. . . . CNN repeats the story unedited and obviously, unchecked. Forbes as well. Ditto for ABC and Fox. And you wonder how myths and memes get started?”
Wonder? No.
GREEN HELMETS ALL AROUND! CBS confesses to Katie Couric photo-slimming.
UPDATE: Best take yet, from Scott Lemieux: “Christ. DO they alter pictures of Chris Matthews?”
I’m not sure which answer to that question is more frightening. Well, yes I am, actually.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “Patrick Fitzgerald’s three-year manhunt to track down who blew Valerie Plame’s CIA ‘cover’ has been exposed as a costly sham. He apparently knew all along that his man was not Scooter Libby. . . . From top to bottom, this has been one of the most disgraceful abuses of prosecutorial power in this country’s history. That it’s taking place at a time of war only magnifies its sordidness.”
UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “Oh, stop. I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for belittling the investigatory ineptitude that allowed Fitzgerald to overlook the leak to Bob Woodward by Richard Armitage. (And I want to copyright ‘What else did Fitzgerald not know, and when did he not know it?’) I suppose that is a ‘lie’ in the ‘Bush lied’ sense, but I don’t think anyone can argue that Fitzgerald knew the statement was false when he made it, or intended to deceive others, or made it with reckless disregard for the truth. Fitzgerald was wrong, but it was not a lie.”
ALEX BEAM WRITES that dissent is being crushed at MIT.
I blame John Ashcroft!
UPDATE: Okay, I should clarify — it’s not MIT that’s doing the crushing, it’s where the crushee works. Read the article.