BOOSTING THE ECONOMY WITH High-Speed Fiber Internet? Well, I like the idea better than auto bailouts . . . .
Archive for 2009
June 14, 2009
STOPPING LIVER CANCER with MicroRNA. “This treatment is roughly analogous to a security patch to an operating system.” Faster, please.
IRANIANS PROTEST: Government Cracks Down.
LAST NIGHT at a family get-together, the Insta-Wife was reminiscing about LibbyLand TV dinners for kids, and how they seemed like such a big deal at the time, even though they were really crappy by today’s standards. Naturally, the subject has already been blogged.
A GOOD REVIEW FOR Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show start.
AN IRAN ROUNDUP at Gateway Pundit.
TYLER COWEN ON MEDICARE SPENDING: “MEDICARE expenditures threaten to crush the federal budget, yet the Obama administration is proposing that we start by spending more now so we can spend less later. This runs the risk of becoming the new voodoo economics. If we can’t realize significant savings in health care costs now, don’t expect savings in the future, either.”
I agree with Virginia Postrel: Fix Medicare First! “Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let’s see what ‘better management’ looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. ”
NOT SO RECOMMENDED: So the Insta-Daughter had pre-ordered The Sims 3 and eagerly awaited its arrival. Installing it was kind of iffy at first, but downloading an updated graphics driver and installing the DirectX version from the disk fixed the constant-crash problem. But the game itself isn’t that good. According to the Insta-Daughter, “If I’d had this first, I’d think The Sims 2 was a great upgrade.” The user reviews seem to be consistent with that, so be warned.
READER JUSTIN BINIK-THOMAS emails from a rally in New Richmond, Ohio organized by the Cincinnati Tea Party folks: “Over 1000 in attendance so far.” He sends this picture.
AS SEEN ON TV: Testing out the Titan peeler.
THE PEOPLE WHO’LL BE PAYING THE PRICE AREN’T GETTING A VOICE: Climate Change Treaty, to Go Beyond the Kyoto Protocol, Is Expected by the Year’s End.
IN THE MAIL: From the folks at Baen Books, Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires: A Saberhagen Retrospective. I’m a big Saberhagen fan — Empire of the East is terrific, and the Berserker stories are excellent, and his Dracula retelling (from Dracula’s point of view) in The Dracula Tape is brilliant.
WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Spending Plans May Pose Political Risks: Concern Mounts in White House as 2010 Elections Loom. A “whiff of desperation?”
Gee, what could they be worried about?
On the other hand, Obama’s got this going for him: “The question is whether the Republicans will be smart enough to take advantage of this.”
UPDATE: From Joe Biden: Stimulus apologies. “Everyone guessed wrong.”
CONOR CLARKE ON THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ON GAY MARRIAGE. I particularly like the accompanying images.
IN MICHIGAN, TEA PARTIERS LIKE THE FAIR TAX: “The Tea Party movement in Michigan moved from the streets to the conference room Saturday, with activists meeting to discuss the movement’s future. . . . The so-called Fair Tax beat out alternative proposals to require two-thirds majorities in the Legislature to raise taxes; the enactment of spending limits on state and local government, and a plan to hold the benefits of government employees to the average level in the private sector. Asked if that means the Tea Party movement is becoming a Fair Tax movement, convention organizer Wendy Day said: ‘No. It tells me that a lot of Fair Taxers came to the convention.’ Day said the primary purpose of the convention and the Tea Parties — a series of well-attended rallies held across the country April 15 — is to channel citizen outrage over the expansion of government and soaring spending into activism.”
NOT THAT THEY’LL STOP SELLING ‘EM STUFF OR ANYTHING: EU Nations Criticize Iran Election, Concerned Over Protests.
#CNNFAIL: Twitterverse slams network’s Iran absence. When CNN isn’t covering, I always suspect an Eason Jordan-style deal now. (Via Dan Riehl).
SONJA SCHMIDT: Laugh Clowns, Laugh.
ROGER SIMON: Netanyahu, Obama and the Iranian Coup d’Etat.
WELL, THEN: Ahmadinejad defends vote as ‘real and free’.
A PHOTO FROM IRAN.
CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Hartford Courant: Loans Probe, Value Of Cottage Bedevil Dodd.
A year ago, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd was enjoying more than $800,000 in favorable loans from subprime mortgage titan Countrywide Financial as a member of the “Friends of Angelo.” That was the exclusive club of borrowers given special treatment at the behest of Countrywide co-founder and president Angelo Mozilo.
In 2007, Countrywide, based in southern California, was the first major lender to collapse in the upheavals of the financial industry. Many expensive troubles followed and continue. Fingers continue to be pointed, blame apportioned and explanations floated.
Dodd trotted out myriad excuses for not honoring his early pledge to release his mortgage documents to the public last year. He held a snap press conference one Monday morning last winter and flashed a pile of papers purported to be his mortgage documents at some reporters. No copies were allowed and, curiously, no list was provided of what was in the stack to the few who were invited to Dodd’s office and the many who were not. . . .
With the political atmosphere heavy with suspicion, Dodd obtained a new appraisal on his 10-acre waterfront home in Ireland after the unusual circumstances around his ownership of it were raised in this column in February. . . . Last month, Dodd told Newsweek he paid Kessinger $207,000. While Dodd continues to revise the details of that 2002 deal, an immutable, nagging fact remains: Dodd appears to have received from Kessinger a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he never reported, in the year after Dodd obtained a presidential pardon for their friend Downe.
Read the whole thing.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS:
John Bailey thought it was great when his neighbor was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.
“Not everyone lives next door to a congresswoman,” he said.
But two years later, he doesn’t feel so lucky. The congresswoman’s house is abandoned and in disrepair, “a blight on the neighborhood,” Bailey said.
He said he thinks the way Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., has treated her home tells far more about her than her voting record.
“I wouldn’t want anyone that irresponsible to represent me,” said Bailey, like Richardson a liberal Democrat. “What I don’t get is how she has the time to visit with Fidel Castro but doesn’t have time for her own house. If you can’t manage your own household, you probably shouldn’t get involved in international affairs.”
He’s not alone. Neighbors have complained to the city, written letters and e-mails to Richardson and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but the three-bedroom house remains an eyesore. Neighbors just wish she would sell it or let it go into foreclosure, anything to get it into the hands of someone who would care.
Indeed.