NEWBERY AND CALDECOTT AWARDS ANNOUNCED: Roundup here.
Archive for 2008
January 14, 2008
AN HD-DVD FIRE SALE: “Now, Toshiba’s third generation 1080i-capable HD-A3 is selling for a mere $139.98 on Amazon.com. The 1080p-capable HD-A30 is not much more expensive at $179.98. For the price of an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, consumers can now purchase a fully-fledged set top box with 1080p support.”
RASMUSSEN: “Over the past several days, the only real movement in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary has been a four-point gain for Fred Thompson and a five-point decline for Mike Huckabee.”
HERE’S MORE on General Motors’ cellulosic ethanol effort mentioned below.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN a still camera and a video camera? Less than it used to be.
DAVE KOPEL: “To understand the Second Amendment, it helps to consult Justice Stephen Breyer’s book, Active Liberty.“
SOME VERY UPSETTING NEWS FROM TIM BLAIR:
Feeling poorly for some time. Saw a doctor a few weeks ago, who sent me to a specialist, who booked me into hospital for tests.
It’s cancer.
Please drop by and offer him your best wishes for a speedy recovery.
FERRARI’S biofuel 430 spider.
UNVEILING THE NEW Corvette ZR1. With video.
CITIZEN, arm thyself.
A RECIPE FOR stuffed leg of lamb. Sounds yummy.
ANDREW CUOMO on the Second Amendment.
THE AUDI R8 — now with a V12 diesel. “This unit generates a huge 500 hp and 1,000 Newton-meters (737.56 lb-ft) of torque.” Don’t worry — if you black out from the acceleration, your foot will probably slip off the accelerator and you’ll wake up . . . .
IN THE MAIL: Richard Thompson Ford’s The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. As fresh as today’s headlines . . . .
IT’S A BIPARTISAN ELECTION DOUBLE-HEADER. We caught up with Rudy Giuliani as he barnstormed across Florida this weekend, and asked him about the Second Amendment (he says it protects “an individual personal right to bear and carry arms, not just one that’s related to the militia”), about health care, energy policy (including the Zubrin plan), and much more.
Gene Sperling is the author of The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity. He also chaired the National Economic Council in the Bill Clinton Administration, and serves as senior economic advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. He talks about Hillary’s stimulus package, health care, and whether we’re in danger of 1970s style “stagflation” again.
Plus, Helen managed to crack me up over “podcast tax credits.” You can listen directly — no downloads needed — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file and listen at your leisure at by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version suitable for cellphones, Treos, and dialup connections by going here and clicking “lo fi.” And, of course, you can always get a free subscription via iTunes. Free! Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.
Music is “Black UFOs,” by Mobius Dick. And, as always, my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments.
WHAT’S HAPPENED SO FAR, at the Detroit Auto Show.
MICKEY KAUS: “It’s hard to believe that Obama’s Afrocentric church–with its troubling attack on ‘the pursuit of middeclassness’–isn’t going to be an issue in the campaign, soon.”
MITT ROMNEY goes for the gold.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: New York Times: The Pork King keeps his crown:
The new earmark disclosure rules put into effect by Congress confirm the pre-eminence of Representative John Murtha at procuring eye-popping chunks of pork for contractors he helped put in business in Johnstown, Pa. The Pennsylvania Democrat, a power player on defense appropriations, exudes pride, not embarrassment, for delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in largesse to district beneficiaries. They, in turn, requite with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. . . . “This is about jobs,†the congressman insists. But the Murtha operation — which has become a model for other entrepreneurial lawmakers — is a gross example of quid pro quo Washington. Every one of the 26 beneficiaries of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks in last year’s defense budget made contributions to his campaign kitty, a total of $413,250, according to the newspaper Roll Call. The Pentagon, seeking its own goodies before Mr. Murtha’s committee, is noticeably hesitant to challenge his projects. And we’re not hearing a lot of objections from his colleagues — not after members have ladled out a fresh $15 billion for their own special interests, just in time for the coming elections.
It’s as if the whole system is corrupt.
MORE THOUGHTS on the FTC’s carbon-offsets investigation.
THOUGHTS ON Michael Kinsley and Libertarianism.
FIRST THE BROOKS BROTHERS THING, NOW THIS. Dear God, what does it all mean?
A BOLD MOVE: “I am writing this short piece just so it is on record that I predicted that Fred Thompson would win the 2008 election.”
BOB ZUBRIN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “Using patented microorganisms and transformative bioreactor designs, Coskata ethanol is produced via a unique three-step conversion process that turns virtually any carbon-based feedstock—including biomass, municipal solid waste, and a variety of agricultural waste—into ethanol, making production a possibility in almost any geography. The technology is ethanol-specific and enzyme independent, requiring no additional chemicals or pre-treatments. Simply put, the Coskata process can produce ethanol almost anywhere in the world, using practically any renewable source, including feedstock, garbage, old tires and plant waste. And it can do so for less than a dollar per gallon.”
More on why this matters, here.
If not for the massive volunteer work of persons concerned about the Second Amendment, George W. Bush would not have won the very close elections of 2000 and 2004. To state the obvious, the citizen activists would never have spent all those hours volunteering for a candidate whose position on the constitutionality of a handgun ban was “Maybe.”
The SG brief was one that might have been expected from the administration of President John Kerry. As a Senator, Kerry voted for a resolution affirming the individual Second Amendment right, and also voted for more repressive gun control at every opportunity.
The 2004 Bush victory over Kerry made a great difference in the US posture at the 2006 UN gun control conference, and in the signature of the Protection of Lawful Commerces in Arms Act. The election does not appear to have made a difference in the management of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, or of the Office of the Solicitor General.
The Solicitor General’s brief is being poorly received, which is bad for the GOP.