SAVE THE PLANET: Eat more brie.
Archive for 2009
December 17, 2009
FOUND: The most Earth-like extrasolar planet. So far.
HOW SHELLFISH saved the human race.
IN THE MAIL: From Jeffrey Manber, Selling Peace: Inside the Soviet Conspiracy that Transformed the U.S. Space Program.
ACORN UPDATE: “The union-catspaw Working Families Party can strike fear into the hearts of New York politicians. But can it withstand some well-deserved legal scrutiny? Word broke on Tuesday that Manhattan-based US Attorney Preet Bharara has subpoenaed documents from the WFP — as well as from all the candidates who hired its campaign services this year. It’s about time: As The Post has reported for months, the party — an affiliate of the disgraced community organizers at ACORN — sports a shadowy, multi-layered structure that appears designed to conceal illegal activity.”
POLLSTER: 2010 could be the year of the “angry white male.” I dunno, the Tea Party movement is more popular than Democrats or Republicans, and there seem to be a lot of angry females at those Tea Party protests. And not all of them are white. . . .
POLLS: Americans still hate Obama’s plan to bring Gitmo prisoners to U.S. “In the new survey, 64 percent say they oppose bringing Guantanamo inmates here, while 30 percent support it. The president doesn’t even have a majority of his own party on his side. In the new poll, 50 percent of Democrats support bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S., while just 28 percent of independents and eight percent of Republicans do. Opposition to Obama’s policy is spread evenly across the country. . . . The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”
HOWARD KURTZ ON THE PRESS AND TIGER WOODS: “We were all had.” Sure. Just like with John Edwards. I don’t believe that nobody in the press knew any of this stuff. I think they just didn’t go there because it didn’t advance the preferred narrative.
How long before we hear “we were all had” about Barack Obama? When it becomes unmistakable that the narrative was a lie, I’d guess.
STIMULUS! New jobless claims rise unexpectedly. It’s always “unexpected” with these people.
UPDATE: Dan Riehl explains the spin. From the comments: “Hide the Incline!”
CAR LUST: Uncle Bob’s Thunderbird.
TODAY IS THE last day for free Super-Saver shipping at Amazon. If you’re Amazon Prime, like me, you’ve got a while longer.
UPDATE: Reader Dale Burnett writes:
Your post about it today reminded me to write. Thanks for turning me on to Amazon Prime. It has completely changed how I shop. Before I buy anything from a local store I check Amazon first. 75% of the time it is cheaper from Amazon and I get it in two days for free. The cost of the Prime membership is more than made up for by what I save in the difference from retail price.
Christmas was ordered on Saturday, arrived yesterday afternoon and was wrapped and under the tree (figuratively as I have no tree) by yesterday evening. Awesome.
Oh, yeah. As I’ve noted before, it’s changed things for me the same way. The money savings are nice, but it’s really the time-and-hassle savings that count.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Kranz writes with a good idea:
I completely agree on the liberating effects of Amazon Prime.
I signed up when my wife had a stroke, knowing I would be shopping even more online (I have MS, we’re a house o’ fun).
I’ve recommended it since as a gift for someone in a tragic/difficult situation. Everybody wants to do something — this really helps.
I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.
WEEP FOR OUR NATION.
UPDATE: No, really.
IS THE NEED FOR MULTIPLE PARTNERS a sexual orientation? So stop hating on Tiger, bigots.
JONATHAN ADLER: ClimateGate and the Cost of Blurring Science and Politics.
GET YOURSELF A DOPPELGANGER BOT.
Not just for Andrew Sullivan anymore! (Alternative take: An Army of Andrews!)
MICKEY KAUS: Why The Health Care Polls Are Tanking.
FROM PROFESSOR WILLIAM JACOBSON, The Inevitable “Two Black Role Models Fall From Grace” Post. “Not by me. By an über liberal feminist blogger at HuffPo . . . I’m content saying Tiger threw it all away because of personal demons he needs to address, and Obama is throwing it all away because he seems to believe his own BS. The only thing they have in common is …. nothing that has anything to do with their race.”
OBAMAGEDDON! NBC-WSJ POLL: TEA PARTY MORE POPULAR THAN DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS.
Just how angry is the public with the country’s two leading political parties? Angry enough that the conservative, libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican parties, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The Republican Party maintains its net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll, with 28 percent viewing it positively and 43 percent seeing it in a negative light.
For the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative fav/unfav, at 35-45 percent.
By comparison, the NBC/WSJ poll shows the Tea Party movement with a net-positive 41-23 percent score.
Well, Tea Partiers haven’t screwed anyone over, you know.
AMITY SHLAES: Memo To Obama: Scolding Never Works.
GOOD NEWS: Scientists crack ‘entire genetic code’ of cancer. “Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers – skin and lung – a move they say could revolutionise cancer care. Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.” Faster, please.
RON BAILEY FILES another report from Copenhagen. “It’s déjà vu all over again. Another year, another climate summit on the verge of collapse. As usual, this year’s conference is filled with lots of diplomatic drama, outraged activists, and high-minded rhetoric. This is the sixth time I’ve reported on the annual U.N. climate change conference and the script has not changed.”
SO MANY DESPOTS, SO LITTLE TIME: Roger Simon reports from Copenhagen. “I kept thinking of Marx’s famous rewrite of Hegel – the one about history being replayed the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I don’t know about tragedy, but there certainly was plenty of farce to go around – demonstrators dressed as clowns, middle-aged Brazilian ladies in tiger suits and Amazonian false breasts promising to save the rain forests, an old guy from Estonia pushing a model elephant he had constructed entirely of recycled trash. These were Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night gone globalist and, boy, did they appear useless. What will they all do when it’s over and they have to go home?”