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August 10, 2010

EXPLAINING THE DIFFERENCE between bloggers and blog commenters: “The people who come after the blog post? They are commenters. They are not bloggers. Calling them bloggers is like calling everyone on a bus the bus driver. No, there are entertaining people who ride the bus and scary people who ride the bus and annoying people who ride the bus. There are even people who will try to make the bus go some place the driver doesn’t want to take it. But that doesn’t make any of them the bus driver.”

IN THE MAIL: From Jane Green, Promises to Keep: A Novel.

ALAS, I HAD TO LEAVE THE CONFERENCE before Randy Barnett, Jack Balkin, Dave Kopel, Gillian Metzger and Brad Smith debated the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate, but the audio is now online.

FAILURE IS DEFINITELY AN OPTION: “Recovery Summer” vs. “Mission Accomplished.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE GROUND ZERO GAY BAR: “I am hoping that at least one person will attempt to explain why we should support the mosque near Ground Zero, but not the gay bar next to the mosque near Ground Zero. I would find that very entertaining. . . . I’ll be surprised, however, if he manages to get a liquor license from Bloomberg’s government.” Do you need a liquor license for an Islamic gay bar? I mean, they’re not supposed to drink alcohol. Of course, they’re not supposed to be gay, either. . . .

UPDATE: A New York reader emails:

New York state issues liquor licenses, not Bloomberg’s City Hall. And no bar can be within 200 feet of a place of worship. Will the state rule the Islamic site is such a facility? Or a mere “cultural center”? As it is, there’s no shortage of watering holes downtown…one can certainly unfurl a gay pride rainbow flag with a crescent superimposed…

Fun galore!

A SEXUAL HARASSMENT DOUBLE STANDARD ON THE VIEW:

“The women on the show, by virtue of their age and status into the media world are able to say and do pretty much what they please, including invading the personal space of male guests and talking to them about subjects that would be taboo if the genders were reversed.” Examples include their discussion of Robert Pattinson’s private parts, their grilling of Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino regarding his condom usage, and their flat-out declaration of Benicio Del Toro as “sexy.”

And yes, he is sexy. But this does, admittedly, reek of double standards

The View is all about entitlement, so this makes sense . . . .

ILLINOIS IS BROKE: “These are the organizations that the State of Illinois owes $100,000 or more as of July 22, 2010, according to the Office of the Illinois Comptroller. For many small businesses and social service agencies, the delay in state payments has been ruinous. Illinois owes nearly 2,000 organizations $100,000 or more.”

UPDATE: Reader Michael Rutman emails:

I think that a lot of people are missing that this kind of situation is actually very common in business. Almost everyone that has worked at a dot bomb or other startup has taken stock in lieu of pay. They have earned a certain percent of the company in expectation of cashing in when they go public.

Over time people leave, new people join, old people are still around. You have a major mix of people with too much owed to them. Then you have the new people come in to take you public and they want a big chunk. These companies are in the exact same position that the USA is in. How do they handle the current investors without just printing more stock and upsetting their long term valued employees?

They do it by separating everyone into three groups.

1) Those you owe that you don’t care about.
2) Those you want to owe because you need them.
3) Those you owe and care about.

They then do a reverse stock split, which sounds like it would screw both groups 1 and 3, however, they can make it up to group 3 by just issuing new stock. Those in group 1, well, they don’t care about group 1. Those are the ex-employees and initial seed money. They can’t offer you anything today. Those in group 3, they won’t care, you made them whole. Those in group 2, well, you need them.

Look at what happened in North Korea recently, or any other country that revalued its money. They split people into the same three groups and did the exact same thing to them. Those with clout got to revalue much more than a typical citizen. Those really connected got to buy worthless money for pennies on the dollar and exchange it.

Now you might think the pensions for unions and the government are going to be favored and therefore benefit, but that ignores the fact that the pension is owed to the retired workers with little clout and owed by governments and unions with amazing clout. Imagine if guaranteed payouts are revalued down while current assets are made whole. In a stroke of a pen every union and government is suddenly solvent.

Internationally, China wants to flee from our bonds, just make them whole. Mauritania wants to flee, oh well, they don’t count.

Hmm.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader David Tulka writes: “I copied the page into a spreadsheet and ran some math. The outstanding total is $3,176,751,338.20”

And reader Timothy Voigtman emails: “Reader Michael Rutman’s analysis perfectly explains the government auto bailout.”

RADLEY BALKO talks to police officers about why you should go to jail for daring to videotape them. Reading the result, it’s troubling that these people are in positions of authority.

SCOTT JOHNSON: Civility for thee…, cont’d .

UTZ CRAB CHIPS. Yum.

DEFLATION: Are We Heading For America’s “Lost Decade?” One hopes that the inflation-fears and the deflation-fears will somehow cancel out, but recent experience suggests that they will instead find some sort of unpleasant synergy . . . .

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg. As with other blogs, if you like what you see, consider hitting his tipjar.

YESTERDAY’S “SAVE THE COUNTRY” CHALLENGE from reader John Steakley created more email than I’ve been able to digest so far — I’ll try to post something later. But in the meantime, they’re talking about it at ChicagoBoyz.

MORE higher education bubble stories.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Karl Rove Is No Rush Limbaugh. No, but who is, really?

UPDATE: Ann Althouse comments: “Oh, Tunku! Do you really imagine the President, in his confidential, private conversations, listening to a Limbaugh-like blowhard overwhelming him with a big rant? Try to imagine why Rove’s style works in the context in which he was highly successful. Gentleness and friendly, quiet, sound advice… is it really such a puzzle?”

WORTH REPOSTING: Raise The Speed Limit To Fight Global Warming!

SWINE FLU UPDATE: WHO says decision on whether to downgrade swine flu pandemic is likely Tuesday.

PERHAPS THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT WILL GO GLOBAL: Quashing rallies may not stave off discontent in Russia. It’s not like other countries’ political classes are any better than ours, really . . . .

DON SURBER: How Dare Germans Bring Up Hiroshima? They used to lecture Americans about race relations, too . . . .

IN THE COURSE OF COMPLAINING ABOUT AN OUT-OF-CONTEXT YOUTUBE CLIP, Kurt Walling commits the sin he decries by misreporting on the Shirley Sherrod affair: “Especially in light of the Shirley Sherrod incident, in which a conservative blogger defamed a member of the Obama administration by deliberately posting a clip from her remarks that made her seem to say the opposite of what she intended and actually said, prudence would dictate a careful investigation of the facts, including a transcript when it is available, before making hasty judgments.”

While the general point — context matters, and hasty judgment is a bad idea — certainly holds, Walling’s version of the Sherrod affair is incorrect, as Prof. William Jacobson has pointed out. Walling, in fact, seems to have taken that version from media talking points, rather than actually examining the matter himself . . . .