SOON TO BE A PRIORITY FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Ban “assault knives”!
On a more serious note, a look at Obama and gun control.
Archive for 2008
June 8, 2008
NORM GERAS ON MUGABE AND SOUTH AFRICA: “You couldn’t ask for a clearer symbol of the double-edged character of nationalism. At one time a powerful force in the fight for liberation from colonial rule and in the long struggle against apartheid, African nationalism has, in the hands of Mbeki and other African leaders rallying round Mugabe, been transmuted into an apologia and defence of the most blatant criminality and oppression. The US ambassador, representing a country widely derided in liberal circles for its role in international affairs, bears witness to the crimes of the Mugabe regime; the man standing at the head of a nation that won the world’s admiration for getting rid of an odious racist system disgraces that legacy.”
UPDATE: More thoughts from John Weidner.
IT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN ACCURATE, but it was smart! Allison Glock’s New York Times piece on Knoxville contained this introduction: “KNOXVILLE is often called ‘the couch’ by the people who live there. It’s a place too unassuming to shout about but too comfortable to leave.” That’s a nice intro, but nobody in Knoxville can remember ever hearing it called “the couch.” But thanks to that bit, Glock’s story is the most-blogged item in the Times at the moment. My advice to travel writers — always open your point with a minor error that’s sure to get under local bloggers’ skins, and watch your traffic and rankings soar!
A HALF-MILLION POUNDS OF THRUST. Private commercial thrust, at that.
THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN ON HILLARY’S WITHDRAWAL: “And so it was interesting that she barely touched on foreign policy in her concession speech today. She mentioned Iraq only twice, she mentioned terrorism only once, and she didn’t mention Iran at all. After all, her serious approach to each of these issues proved liability in the Democratic primary. She spent years building a strong record on national security, and in the end her party opted for a candidate with no national security experience at all.”
“BRISTOL OFFICIALS SAY OBAMA SNUBBED THE CITY.”
FRAGILITY OF INFRASTRUCTURE: Reader Kim Sommer sends this via Blackberry:
I’m on my way trying to get back to Bloomington, IN from Indianapolis. Flooding has made a mess. I just got onto hwy 50 from I65. I’m listening to a radio station from Columbus, in. They have no internet feed or cable. Sounds like phones are not 100% . They are finding without the big I network info is not at their fingertips. Its a fragility in the system.
A bit of system-hardening is in order.
June 7, 2008
HE CAN SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, if he can get his followers to saw off a couple of heads. Or even look as if they might. . . .
DOES THIS SUGGEST AN OBAMA/WEBB TICKET? Obama points to Virginia as battleground.
FEMINISTS forgive Al Franken.
PHOTOGRAPHY STUFF: Monica Showalter emails:
Just wanted to tell you how much I love your beautiful photos of Knoxville and the environs. That one of the café looked so fascinating, no fashion photographer could have done such an interesting job. It’s a historical record, too, I would love to see you put them all in a book, I’d buy the first copy.
I love the diners, the streets, the storefronts – you are chronicling something really fresh and marvelous to my west coast eyes and I love looking at those photos. I didn’t even think such a world existed – the stuff is 1950s-ish, and yet it is modern and kind of hip. Hope you keep the photos coming!
Well, thanks. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a book — it wouldn’t make much money, and it wouldn’t do anything for my academic career, but it would be fun. We’ll see. The photos I post here are to such a book as blogging is to writing a book: Ideas, and maybe usable bits here and there, but not anything like the finished product. I’d probably need a couple of hundred photos as good as my ten or twenty best right now. And, interestingly, a lot more people see the pics on the blog than would ever see them in a book. But I enjoy it. And yes, Knoxville is like that — like “Austin without the hype,” in one memorable turn of phrase.
I’ve gotten various other questions about photography. I’ll do a post on that later.
LARRY JOHNSON isn’t giving up: “I support Hillary Clinton for President. I believe she will be a stronger candidate. And if I had the tape I would put it out in a heartbeat. Getting the tape out now does one of two things–either it persuades Super Delegates that Barack is not electable or it gives the Obama campaign time to repair the damage.”
EUGENE VOLOKH: “”I often hear people arguing that some speech is unprotected under current First Amendment law because it’s ‘hate speech,’ or asking ‘Is [X] free speech or is it hate speech?’ That, it seems to me, is a mistake. ‘Hate speech’ is not a legal term of art under U.S. law, nor an exception from First Amendment protection. “
BRING IT ON: NASA Scientists Pioneer Method for Making Giant Lunar Telescopes:
Scientists working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have concocted an innovative recipe for giant telescope mirrors on the Moon. To make a mirror that dwarfs anything on Earth, just take a little bit of carbon, throw in some epoxy, and add lots of lunar dust.. . . . The capabilities of a 50-meter telescope on the Moon boggle the imagination, according to NASA. With a stable platform, and no atmosphere to absorb or blur starlight, the monster scope could record the spectra of extra solar terrestrial planets and detect atmospheric biomarkers such as ozone and methane. Two or more such telescopes spanning the surface of the Moon can work together to take direct images of Earth-like planets around nearby stars and look for brightness variations that come from oceans and continents. Among many other projects, it could make detailed observations of galaxies at various distances, to see how the universe evolved.
This sounds remote, but it’s less so than when the idea for the Hubble telescope was first floated at the RAND corporation back in 1946. That’s right, 1946. I’m reading Robert Zimmerman’s history of the Hubble (which I’ll be reviewing later) and learned that tidbit. Kinda cool.
EFFORTS TO PREPARE THE MEDIA BATTLESPACE:
The Left is very invested in both preemptively delegitimizing criticism of Obama and framing opponents as de facto bigots.
I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism.
HANDLING FALSE CHARGES OF RAPE.
THE MARC RICH PARDON SCANDAL rears its head again. I was hoping for more change than this.
THE NEW WEEZER VIDEO.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
For any voter trying to choose between the two candidates for commander in chief, there is no better test than this: When American strategy in a critical theater was up for grabs, John McCain proposed a highly unpopular and risky path, which he accurately predicted could lead to success. Barack Obama proposed a popular and politically safe route that would have led to an unnecessary and debilitating American defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.
The two men brought different backgrounds to the test, of course. In January 2007, McCain had been a senator for 10 years and had served in the military for 23 years. Obama had been a senator for 2 years and before that was a state legislator, lawyer, and community organizer. But neither presidential candidates nor the commander in chief gets to choose the tests that history brings. Once in office, the one elected must perform.
Indeed.
UPDATE: It’s either a typo or a decade-dropping math error on Kagan’s part, but McCain had been in the Senate for 20 years, not ten at the time. Of course, that simply reinforces Kagan’s point about relative experience.
BRAD FRIEDMAN: “My Own Votes, Four of Them, Were Flipped Yesterday Before My Very Eyes.”
JOHN MCCAIN: Obama’s Positions Are So Changey.
Changey?
HAVE YOU NO SHAME, SIR? “WTF is this, a Martin Cruz Smith novel?” Interesting discussion in the comments.
IN THE MAIL: Eric Flint’s Grantville Gazette IV.