MORE GUN TALK over at Inside Higher Ed. Plus, Arming Obama.
Plus, Morton Grove ends its gun ban. “The Heller dominoes are falling.”
Archive for 2008
June 28, 2008
WELL, THIS IS CHEERY: “Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall ‘below zero’. Alarmist? Maybe, but I”m worried about inflation too.
SOME LINKS on the anti-aging conference at UCLA this weekend.
TOM MAGUIRE: “The same folks who can read the Constitution and Bill of Rights and find an unassailable right to abortion and gay marriage can’t find a right to possession of a firearm.”
A BLOG REVIEW OF WALL-E.
IF YOU CRITICIZE MUGABE, you’re a racist.
THE AMERICAN NON-EMPIRE. If we were an empire, we’d be acting more like Putin’s Russia. And, as a consequence, getting better press. . . .
Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.
Oh, I’m sorry. He didn’t change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.
That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.
Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn’t it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn’t change your mind?
Regardless of what you think of the merits of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the capital’s handgun law, it seems to me we’re entitled to a clear position by the presumed Democratic nominee.
Good luck with that. Kurtz even notes that Big Media is covering for Obama:
But even though the earlier Obama quote and the “inartful” comment have been bouncing around the Net for 24 hours, I’m not seeing any reference to them in the morning papers. Most do what the New York Times did: “Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would ‘provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.’ ”
Supporting the individual-rights view? Not in November. . . .
Even the Tribune–the very paper that the Obama camp told he supported the gun ban–makes no reference to the November interview. Instead: “Democrat Barack Obama offered a guarded response Thursday to the Supreme Court ruling striking down the District of Columbia’s prohibition on handguns and sidestepped providing a view on the 32-year-old local gun ban. Republican rival John McCain’s campaign accused him of an ‘incredible flip-flop’ on gun control.”
So McCain accuses Obama of a flip-flop, and the Trib can’t check the clips to tell readers whether there’s some basis in fact for the charge?
USA Today takes the same tack
The November view is down the memory hole. Apparently you have to go to the blogs to find people who can use Google.
Over at EU Referendum under the heading “Caught red-handed” there is an instructive YouTube video. It shows a bunch of MEPs showing up at their place of work at quarter to seven in the morning. Exemplary devotion to duty? Well, no. What they are actually doing, suitcases in hand, is signing the attendance register on a Friday morning before heading home for the weekend. Then they will be paid, most lavishly, for working that day.
The cat really lands among the pigeons around 2 minutes 30 seconds in. Watch the MEPs dodge back behind doors as they register the camera’s unwelcome presence. Listen to the cries and squeals. “It is not your business!” “Such impertinence!” I did not catch the name of the genial chap who claimed to be about to start work in his constituency before running for the door, but Irish MEP Kathy Sinnott (of, I am sorry to say, the EU-sceptic Independence and Democracy Group) said she had already been at work for seven hours, and Hiltrud Breyer of the German Green Party really ought to look at people when she talks to them.
We bloggers often criticise the mainstream media but I take my hat off to Thomas Meier, the intrepid journalist here. He represents a tradition of – literally – foot-in-the-door reporting that the “colleagues” would like to put an end to if they could. In this case, as soon as they could, they did. The fun ends with Herr Meier being escorted out by seven heavies.
Here’s the video.
UPDATE: Okay, actually, despite the praise above this is amateur hour, even if it’s being done by professionals. What you do is, you start staking out this space every week. And you have a second (concealed) camera covering what’s done to the guy with the open camera. Then — since the security guards threw out an accredited journalist with a right to be there — you sue everybody in sight; doesn’t matter if you win (though you should) because it’s more publicity. And you start tailing the MEPs on Friday to see where they actually are on Fridays after having signed in.
If you’re really serious, that is. Note that Big Media folks don’t do this much, because they fear the blowback. And bloggers, well . . . we’re just getting started at this kind of thing. Give us time.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Louisiana . . . .
GALLUP: “When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today’s consumer, Americans overwhelmingly — by 84% to 13% — prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans. . . . A separate question finds Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses (50%) as opposed to saying government should do more to solve the country’s problems (43%).”
I note that some people think the country has drifted far to the left. This suggests that it hasn’t.
THE HELLER DECISION: A victory for gay rights.
CADILLAC TIGHT: How many voters will the Supreme Court’s decisions swing? I have to say that more pro-gun folks seem to have been energized by Heller and the follow-on litigation than I expected.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “Obama claims he believes the Second Amendment says you can own a gun but that local communities can still opt out of the Constitution. What will he say as his political hometown is sued by the NRA?” Plus, waffles.
M’UTAH FOR NOTHING and chicks for free?
IN THE MAIL: Jerry White’s I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. It’s impressively blurbed.
Knoxville, Tennessee. The University’s Engineering and Science research building. I post this in response to reader Herschel Smith, who suggested that the beautiful Law School rotunda indicated that the University undervalued engineers relative to lawyers. His specific beef was with the (different) building housing the Nuclear Engineering department — which I’ll admit isn’t much of a building — but I’ll note that they have access to some pretty fancy facilities out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the University is the prime contractor.
MORE THOUGHTS ON HELLER FROM DAVE KOPEL, with an amusing beer-related title.
ANN ALTHOUSE on Obama’s flipflops: “Every single one of those flipflops has been an improvement, in my opinion, so am I supposed to reject Obama for flipflopping? I voted for Obama in the Wisconsin primary in part because I predicted he’d turn out to be flexible and pragmatic. I do agree with Krauthammer that it’s funny the way the people who fell for the Obama of the primaries — who, unlike me, actually liked those positions he was taking — are letting him get away with the flipflop. I suppose, just as I convinced myself that the real Obama was not the one I was seeing back then, they are convincing themselves that the real Obama is not the one they are seeing now.”
As always with Obama, it’s a question of who the rubes really are. It’s the power of glamour.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse responds. I wasn’t calling her a rube, particularly — the “who are the rubes?” line has been a running thing with Obama, going back to this post: “When it comes to things like NAFTA, there seem to be only two possibilities. Either Obama’s anti-NAFTA talk is a ruse to fool the rubes, or his coterie of distinguished economic experts is a ruse to fool a different batch of rubes.”
To expand a bit: Either the people who believed the early-primary left-talk are the rubes, or the people who believe Obama now are the rubes . . . or anyone who thinks Obama has fixed principles at all is a rube. Your call.
ANOTHER UPDATE: From one of Ann’s commenters:
I think the meaning of “rube” is similar to a hustler’s mark — someone who believes things they shouldn’t because of some externally generated desire to believe. There’s an element of conscious deception, too — a rube is lied to, not misled.
I think the rube factor with Obama comes into play on two issues in particular: NAFTA and the war. On both issues, you get the impression that he’s making promises that he not only won’t keep, but that he can’t keep and shouldn’t keep.
Indeed.
Also, I originally read Althouse as calling my statement “gnomic,” and was going to protest that I am not, and never have been, an Aorist. But she actually said “gnomish.” That works, and demonstrates her deep learning, as Gnomish is a fairly loose language. Hence the need for me to post a clarification.
A COLLECTION OF summer grilling recipes. But grilled Angel Food cake?
Question: Did the murder rate really triple under the Washington, DC, gun ban?
Answer: Yes. The murder rate was 26.8 homicides per 100,000 people in 1976, when the ban became law. That would be its lowest rate for the next 30 years. It peaked at 80.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 1991.
Question: What’s the highest the murder rate has been in gun happy West Virginia in that time?
Answer: 6.9 homicides per 100,000 people.
Question: So why did Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post write: “The practical benefits of effective gun control are obvious: If there are fewer guns, there are fewer shootings and fewer funerals. As everyone knows, in the District of Columbia — and in just about every city in the nation, big or small — there are far too many funerals. The handgun is the weapon of choice in keeping the U.S. homicide rate at a level that the rest of the civilized world finds incomprehensible and appalling.â€
Answer: Ignorance.
Ouch. The rest of Robinson’s piece isn’t really so bad, though.
UPDATE: Scott Ott comments on the gun photo accompanying Eugene Robinson’s piece: “Whoever’s holding that gun needs to get his finger away from the trigger. Perhaps we need to offer handgun safety courses for reporters and photographers. I don’t want anyone to get hurt while covering this story. It’s funny that the price tag is still on it. I think they wanted their readers to know that the pic was snapped in the store…they didn’t actually purchase the weapon. It’s a nice looking 1911. WaPo has inspired me to head back to The Golden Trigger (my local shop) to have a look at one of those.”
GETTING TOUGH ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, in Europe.
BLUES, BREWS AND BARBECUE: A photo shoot from Rick Lee, plus some D300 advice.
BOSTON GLOBE: Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy. “The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.” And Rezko appears:
Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.
Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.
One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.
Butler and Davis did not respond to messages. Rezko is in prison; his lawyer did not respond to inquiries.
Chicago politics = hope and change?