Archive for 2008
December 26, 2008
MORE BIG SALES EVERYWHERE. That’s happening all over. It’s like Black Friday II.
UPDATE: Or are the sales phony?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Weighing in on the phony side. Another advantage of shopping online — you don’t haul yourself to the mall only to find out that there’s nothing good there.
ABC NEWS: A LUKEWARM MILITARY RECEPTION FOR OBAMA? “As Obama entered the room it was absent of the regular fanfare of cheering and clapping. The diners were polite; staying seated at their respective tables and waited for the President-elect to come to them to stand up. . . . Obama Transition aides say that Obama did not eat with the uniformed men and women – he ate at his beach home with his family and friends Christmas night.”
But Obama’s visit draws praise from Hugh Hewitt.
MERRY CHRISTMAS: We’re Spending $1 Billion Less a Day on Gas!
SO FAR, NOT SO GOOD: “The real issue: creepy anti-democratic politics is breaking out all over.”
HEH: He’s not the first to make the Bay City Rollers comparison.
MATTHEW HOY defends the New York Times’ editorial judgment. No, really.
EBENEZER SCROOGE: Malthusian. What about John Holdren?
POWERLINE NAMES ITS Dishonest Journalist of the Year. That’s quite a prize, in a year where there was so much first-rate competition for the honor.
HMM: Pakistan deploys troops from tribal areas to the Indian border. I suspect this is what the Mumbai attacks were intended to produce.
JACOB SULLUM: Why “creating jobs” shouldn’t be an end in itself.
CHRIS BARRETT looks at living green in Knoxville.
RAY LAHOOD: Obama’s Secretary of Earmarks? What, Trent Lott wasn’t available? Plus, making Ted Stevens jealous.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW: “As 2008 comes to a close, almost nothing has turned out as was expected at the beginning of the year – whether we consider oil prices, the war in Iraq, political corruption or the collapse of the U.S. financial system.”
THE U.A.W. RENEGES? “The government gave the Big Three a $17.3 billion bailout based on the idea that both management and the unions would make concessions. Now the UAW says no thanks. Can we have our money back?”
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR: Fighting Terrorism With Viagra.
EUGENE VOLOKH on Ann Althouse, Kate Winslet, and Statutory Rape.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, something of a double standard on the subject? “Murray made a similar point in closing arguments in the sentencing phase, telling jurors that if a man impregnated his 13-year-old foster daughter, probation would not be discussed.” (Via Robert Franklin, who notes that statutory rape doesn’t get much serious thought.)
MORE ON THOSE OVERGENEROUS / UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC PENSIONS: Houston Pension Plans Lose $1.9 billion in value.
Massachusetts Pension Fund off $16.1 bn in value.
N.J. Government Fails At All Levels. The thing to remember is that this isn’t just a market swing — public pensions were dangerously underfunded before the meltdown. It’s just gotten much, much worse — and more obvious — since.
THE BERNIE MADOFF I KNEW: “There were many warning signs. But his clients refused to see them.” That’s usually how it is. But remember, no matter how smart you are there’s somebody out there somewhere who could fool you, too.
HMM: Will Obama Pursue Space-Based Solar Power? I very much hope so, but I’d be kinda surprised.
MEGAN MCARDLE ON financial workers vs. auto workers.
Financial executives have been fired in large numbers and taking pay cuts that reduced their income to a fraction of what was expected six months ago. Auto workers have not. Financial firms are in the process of laying off hundreds of thousands of their best paid workers (50,000 at Citibank alone); auto firms are not.
The shrinkage of the financial industry, and the vastly reduced pay prospects of its workers, seem entirely reasonable to me, though of course extremely sad for people who put themselves through expensive rounds of schooling in order to secure luxe jobs on Wall Street which have now disappeared leaving them broke and trying to sell the houses and cars they can no longer afford into a panicked local market. But I am fairly sure that the auto workers do not want the deal, as a class, that those rapacious financial executives have been given, which includes horrifying job insecurity, massive paycuts at the discretion of their managers, and for many or most of them, the knowledge that they will almost certainly never again earn a tenth of what they had set their lives up to expect. . . . In short, if the Detroit were given the deal that the financial industry has actually gotten, rather than the deal that they got in the pervasive blogger fantasy world where everyone in the industry is using government funds to continue exactly as they were before, Ron Gettlefinger would hardly be a happy man.