CHRIS CILIZZA: Burris Backs Reid Into A Corner.
Archive for 2009
January 6, 2009
SO DON’T GIVE ‘EM ONE: Hamas Desperate for Lull.
JEB BUSH WON’T RUN FOR SENATE. Good. By all accounts he’s a decent guy, but we could use a bit less dynastic politics these days . . . .
NATALIE SOLENT: Let us will to do the enemy harm.
NETBOOK UPDATE: I stopped at Circuit City to pick up some stuff today and tried out some netbooks. The Acer Inspire was nice, and so was the little Lenovo, but the best keyboard by far — better than my Asus, too — was on the HP Mini 1035. Meanwhile, they’re discussing netbooks over at the Volokh place.
UPDATE: Will Collier writes:
I don’t think I’ve seen you mention the MSI Wind netbook… my dad gave me one for Christmas this year, and thanks to the helpful folks at the msiwind.net forums, I was able to load it up with Mac OS X almost immediately. I’m extremely happy with this $300 little wonder. The screen is brilliant and very easy to read, and the Atom processor is plenty snappy for standard tasks. Only complaints I have are the 3-cell battery, which runs out way too quickly (I have a larger one ordered), and the comma, period and slash keys, which are just a bit too small and too close together.
Oh, and the fact that you have to manually turn on the Wifi card the first time you use it (with a keystroke combination). I’m one of those people who thinks instructions are for quitters, and I was convinced for a week my Wind was defective when the wireless connection just wouldn’t work. My wife is still snickering at me…
I haven’t seen a Wind, but they’re supposed to be nice.
OH, GOODY: Obama says trillion-dollar deficits may last years.
UPDATE: Missing those evil fatcats: “I suspect that states and even towns like Greenwich are about to discover how much they relied on real estate to round out their tax rolls. They’ll miss them, almost as much as New York will miss those taxable Wall Street salaries.”
THE PANETTA PICK: A brave choice. “The choice is a brave one because it can open Mr. Obama to charges of appointing a loyalist to a crucial post. But that is exactly what is needed at this time.”
UPDATE: More on the Panetta pick: “He’s 70. A 70-year-old man with no background will lead the hunt for al Qaeda. . . . Whatever happened to deep knowledge and real-world experience? Now, you’re willing to go on assertions of good character and a cocky belief in the soundness of what your instincts tell you is obvious and right? That attitude is positively… Bushian.” Meet the new boss, yada yada!
BLAZING SADDLES goes to Washington.
SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR FAILURE BY making excuses in advance:
“This is real self-sabotage, like drinking heavily before a test, skipping practice or using really poor equipment,” said Edward R. Hirt, a psychologist at Indiana University. “Some people do this a lot, and often it’s not clear whether they’re entirely conscious of doing it — or of its costs.”
You certainly see this in students, sometimes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG ON The World’s Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure. Is it pornographic? Or is it just cowardly, since the Jews don’t cut off your head when you complain?
REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.
THE ALBANY TIMES-UNION ON MONEY IN POLITICS:
There’s Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who, despite heading the Ways and Means Committee that writes tax law, can’t seem to pay his own taxes. Nor does he see an ethical problem with using his congressional stationery to solicit contributions for a school that City College of New York was building in his honor, a matter that last year became grist for the House ethics committee.
Among those Mr. Rangel hit up for money were officials of insurance giant American International Group. Shortly after their April 2008 meeting, a senior AIG executive who had attended it asked Mr. Rangel to support legislation that would save the company millions. That doesn’t square with Mr. Rangel’s public assertion last summer that he couldn’t recall any issues concerning AIG that came before his committee, or that AIG raised any legislation with him.
Then there’s the matter of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary. Mr. Richardson withdrew his name from consideration amid a grand jury investigation into $100,000 in donations to his political action companies from a company, CDR Financial Products. In 2004, around the time of the donations, the company won a state contract worth almost $1.5 million.
And finally there’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s choice for secretary of state. As part of his wife’s vetting process, former President Bill Clinton agreed to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the donors to his foundation. Among them was Syracuse (and Crossgates)mall developer Robert Congel, who gave $100,000 in 2004, around the same time that Mrs. Clinton was helping to secure millions of dollars in federal support for Mr. Congel’s Destiny USA project. The help for the project, supported by many New York politicians, included tax-exempt bonds for the complex, and $5 million in a highway bill for road construction.
Yeah, it could almost make you kind of cynical. And they don’t even mention Chris Dodd!
TURNING AGAINST compact fluorescent bulbs at the PC L.A. Times? Next they’ll be dissing Al Gore!
I have to say, I replaced a couple of dozen bulbs with CFLs and if it’s made a difference in my electric bill it’s not immediately apparent. I’m currently testing an LED flood in the downstairs hallway — I’ll post a report on that another time.
THE “HOLDER MEMORANDUM” AND Eric Holder’s Sixth Amendment Problem.
WILL NETBOOKS BE the death of x86 computing? Hmm. I think it’s also — as mentioned earlier — that computing power has grown, while most computer tasks — surfing, word processing, email — haven’t gotten much more demanding. Though software writers are always trying to bloat things up to take care of that!
Meanwhile, Bill Quick blogs his netbook experience.
IS HARRY REID in trouble in Nevada?
MICKEY KAUS: “I submit that the distance between Daniel Patrick Moynihan and AEI is something less than vast. It would be more accurate to say that Moynihan is revered at AEI, especially Moynihan’s neoconservative tendencies.”
INTERFACING WITH NEURONS using nanotechnology.
STANDING IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE SENATE DOOR: Burris blocked!
Some of Burris’ supporters have bemoaned the fact that Democrats would stand in the way of the Senate gaining its only black member. Burris himself downplayed the issue of race, telling reporters: ”I cannot control my supporters. I have never in my life, in all my years of being elected to office, thought anything about race.”
Proving that he lies well enough to be a member of the Senate, anyway! But I guess that’s a necessary but not sufficient condition: “Burris has found little support among fellow Democrats.” I agree with fellow constitutional law professor Ann Althouse that the case for excluding him is weak.
MAKING THE UNDERFUNDED-PENSION TIMEBOMB IN NEW JERSEY even worse.
A CALL FOR OBAMA TO RENOMINATE PETER KEISLER: “Keisler is a superbly qualified nominee (more on that later) who has been praised by legal experts and editorial boards across the political spectrum but has been treated extremely shabbily by Senate Democrats. There is excellent precedent for a president of one party re-nominating an out-going chief executive’s judicial choice. In 2000, a Republican-majority Senate never acted on former President Clinton’s nomination of Virginia’s Roger Gregory to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but President George W. Bush included Gregory among his very first group of nominees in 2001.”
A QUESTION for JPL.
UPDATE: Stephen Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics emails:
The article you linked to about JPL’s missions used the Spirit and Opportunity rovers as the prime example of mission life understatement. But many observers forget that the 90 day lifetime for the Spirit and Opportunity surface ops was based mainly on a prediction that the solar panels on the rovers would take on enough wind blown dust such that the rovers would no longer be able to recharge their batteries. We did not know the Martian winds and dirt devils would regularly clean the panels enabling years of battery life. I know this to be so not only because I am a member of the MER science team but also because my engineering company had a contract to devise a mechanism that would clean off the solar panels for future missions. No one knew such a device would not be necessary!
Very interesting.