Archive for 2009

OBAMA’S competence gap. “We’ve heard the cliché: there is a difference between campaigning and governing. But in the last few weeks the contrast between the two could not have been more stark. And the gap between President Obama’s effectiveness at the former and shakiness at the latter is coming into focus.”

WHAT OBAMA ACTUALLY SAID to graduates at Notre Dame.

wedding

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW.

JULES CRITTENDEN: Getting Cheney.

TOM SMITH:

It’s also very ironic that just as we are on the verge of really stunning advances in biotechnology, we are fixing to destroy innovation in our health care industry. And just as I (and a bunch of other boomers) are about to need it too. Here’s a proposal. Let’s wait until those with the mean age of Obama voters reach an age where they really need health care, to “reform” it.

Perhaps the Chinese will take over on the pharmaceutical innovation front. After all, they’re taking over on everything else.

POLITICO: Some on left souring on Obama. “A few, like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, have even hurled the left’s ultimate epithet – suggesting that Obama’s turning into George W. Bush. . . . Maddow accused Obama of doing a ‘blatant 180’ on military commissions. On issues like the wiretapping suits, some critics have suggested Obama is even worse than Bush.”

A RIFLE IN ONE HAND, A LAPTOP IN THE OTHER: The Christian Science Monitor interviews some gunbloggers. Money quote:

But here’s the real news: In the press box, bloggers outnumbered national reporters by a good margin. And officially, nearly 50 bloggers — compared to 100 mainstream print journalists — were accredited by the NRA press office to attend the 138th annual convention.

And here’s another:

“If you compare the pro-gun activity in the blogosphere versus the pro-gun-control activity, the scales have just tipped tremendously in their favor,” says Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, which advocates for more gun control in the US. “There’s much more engagement, more involvement, and they clearly have more free time than people on our side of the issue do.”

In the process, gun bloggers are taking on issues like gun control preemption laws in Philadelphia and putting pressure on firearms firms for their choice of spokesmen. And while their reach can be argued, their rise appears to mirror polling data showing that Americans, sometimes by double-digit gains, increasingly favor more gun freedoms, not gun control.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, here’s my report from last year’s NRA convention.

A MONTHLY CONTRACEPTIVE FOR MEN? Downside — be not the first on whom the new is tried. Upside: Testosterone peed into the water supply may offset the female hormones already peed into the water supply by female birth-control pill users!

GOOD QUESTION: Craigslist CEO asks why SC AG targets his site.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out Saturday there are plenty of places in South Carolina other than his Web site to find prostitution ads and obscene photos, saying in a blog that he wants to know why the state’s top prosecutor is targeting his company.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster has threatened to prosecute Craigslist executives for aiding and abetting prostitution if an ad on the Web site leads to a prostitution case in South Carolina.

In the post on his company’s blog, Buckmaster linked to a publication in Greenville he said has a larger number of adult ads and more explicit content than his Web site. He later updated the post to point out a publication in Charleston that listed 19 adult ads on Friday.

In contrast, Buckmaster said the Greenville “adult services” portion of his site has had one ad for the past three days with a photograph of a completely clothed person, while the recently closed “erotic services” section had eight ads, none of which had obscene texts or nude pictures.

Read the whole thing, especially if you live in South Carolina.