TOM MAGUIRE on lefties unhappy with Obama.
Plus, schadenfreude?
Archive for 2008
December 9, 2008
TURNING OUR COUNTRY AROUND!
December 8, 2008
CALIFORNIA UPDATE: Schwarzenegger warns of state worker layoffs.
SENATOR FRAN DRESCHER? Well, the children in the Senate could use a nanny. . . .
Grand Cayman, BWI. This is Lauren, a dive guide, who’s from New Zealand. When she posed, I asked her to “look intrepid.”
IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE? Not so much.
Grand Cayman, BWI. This is Georgetown Harbor, and as I mentioned earlier I did a couple of dives — Eden Rock and Cheeseburger Reef — within one or two hundred yards from this site and the reefs looked good.
CHIP SALTSMAN announces run for RNC chairmanship.
UPDATE: Related item from A.C. Kleinheider.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s Saltsman’s website, and here are his thoughts on an online campaign for the GOP.
HAYEK RESPONDS TO BILL KRISTOL.
SO DO YOU BELIEVE HIM? Obama: Don’t bother stocking up on guns. “As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month.”
UPDATE: Reader John Steele writes: “How about a poll? You asked a question but we don’t have a way to tell you how we see it …” Okay, time for another Insta-Poll!
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Merry Christmas! “The important thing is to not be afraid.”
Meanwhile, Amazon’s “12 Days of Holiday” link, mentioned earlier, now reads 12 Days of Christmas. Good for them. Don’t be afraid!
HALF-PRICE ON game-room supplies and equipment. The dart boards and poker chips I understand, but I’m not sure why the cat-bed wound up on the list.
THE INTERNET MIGHT HAVE STOPPED HITLER: “In his Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy, the 68-year-old Frenchman said an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II. ‘Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler’s criminal plot would not have succeeded – ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day,’ he said.” So, bloggers, be proud of your vital work!
THOUGHTS ON piracy and terrorism.
CLASSICS: Best DVDs of 2008.
OBAMA: Still smoking.
MEDICARE TO COVER PRESCRIPTION HANDGUNS? I think the government should buy everyone a handgun. To stimulate the economy!
KILLING PROSTATE CANCER with nanotechnology.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Why the emerging auto bailout sucks.
UPDATE: Fausta Wertz: Throwing good money after bad.
VIRGINIA POSTREL on the psychology of financial bubbles.
SOME CAYMAN OBSERVATIONS: So, by request, I featured a bunch of non-diving photos this time. But the diving was good. Weather was iffy the first couple of days, and the only place we could dive was South Side, which is usually too rough. That was nice: Laura’s Reef, Ned’s Tunnels, etc. provided excellent diving. Water temps were coolish for this time of year — 77-78 degrees — probably because of Paloma. I dove with a hood most of the time, and had a fleece-lined spray jacket for the boat as it was windy during the surface intervals. These made the difference between being uncomfortable and being happy. My philosophy for diving: Make sure you stay warm. Even in the tropics with an air temperature above 80 you can be miserably cold if you don’t take proper steps.
The reefs seem to be doing well. Doug Weinstein and I have argued for years on how the marine environment is doing. Both of us think that, overall, we’re seeing fewer fish than we saw back in, say, 2000. We dove a few places — La Mesa, for example — where the fish were in huge thick schools, but overall there don’t seem to be as many. The reefs, on the other hand, seem better, and there seems to be a lot of new soft coral.
What’s more, I dove a couple of sites very close to the busy Georgetown Harbor (which often has five or more cruise ships) and found that things looked not only good, but better than the last time. So that’s a good sign.
The Cayman economy still seems to be humming. There was no visible shortage of tourists, and various waitresses and bartenders that I interviewed reported that business hadn’t fallen off, and that bookings for the winter high season, just beginning, were still good. Not sure how the banking and finance sectors are doing (much of that’s kind of quiet) but as one local told me “0% tax still beats 35% tax” whatever the global economy is doing. I wonder how long that can last, but while we were there there was a big conference of captive insurance company folks, so apparently it’s still working. There’s still a lot of condo construction, and I wonder how much new building Grand Cayman can take.
One sign that things may not be quite as rosy as they seem: I noticed that service staff seemed far more eager to please, and far more grateful for tips, than a couple of years ago. I don’t know if that’s psychology, or reflective of an actual reality, though.
As always, I had a nice time. I’ve been going there since ’86 and, despite all the changes, it feels like a home away from home.
THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!
MORE BIG MEDIA FINANCIAL PROBLEMS: “The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.”
Plus, Hey, conservative billionaires, wanna buy a newspaper? And calls for a journalist bailout.
UPDATE: Tribune Company files for bankruptcy. Notice how little blame the declining quality of the news-media product is getting, as compared to discussions of the auto industry’s problems. And yet . . . .