ANTIBIOTICS AND irritable bowel. Also help from probiotics. Pretty sure you can’t do both at once, though . . . .
Archive for 2010
December 23, 2010
GIMME A BIG MAC, FRIES, AND A BUNCH OF KILOWATTS.
A BREAKTHROUGH IN TB Diagnostics.
SWEATING OVER THOSE Christmas dinner menus. No sweat for me — we did Thanksgiving, so Christmas is at other people’s houses!
JENNIFER RUBIN: Did The “No Labels” Folks Read Arlen Specter’s Speech? Two thoughts: (1) I’m not even sure that Arlen Specter read Arlen Specter’s speech; (2) When people like Specter talk about “civility,” what they really mean is “deference to me.”
HOME INTERNET with anonymity built in.
NAVY USES RAILGUN to launch fighter jet.
IRAQ: “A Rough Version of Mr. Bush’s Dream May Yet Come True.” Plus this:
There is no need here to rehearse the names of the few who did not buckle at the moment when the war seemed lost. They know who they are. In the words of Milton, they were “faithful found among the faithless.” Their faithfulness, and in many cases their courage, is being vindicated.
I disagree, and want to single out Joe Lieberman for praise here.
THERE WAS A WHOLE LOT OF CAVEMAN INTERBREEDING GOING ON. Well, good. Otherwise those genes would be lost. Plus, I assume it was fun for the cavemen and cavewomen involved. I mean, they didn’t have the Internet, so they had to amuse each other somehow.
STEPHEN HUNTER reviews the new True Grit.
WITHOUT GOVERNMENT MANDATES: Report: Americans using 8% less gasoline than 2006 peak, will never go up again. “Before environmentalists get too excited, though, the falling trend of gasoline usage only applies to the United States. This is good, because the U.S. is still, by far, the world’s largest consumer of oil. The trouble is that demand from emerging countries, especially China and India, will more than make up for the declining usage in the U.S., leading to an expected record of 88.3 million barrels of oil produced in 2011.”
MORE FLAK FOR POLITIFACT over its big lie of the year. “Somehow when picking their lie of the year, Politifact settled on a minority party exaggeration with elements of truth—and managed to ignore the near-continuous stream of full-blooded whoppers coming from the folks actually running things.”
A WORLD MAP of lightning strikes.
WHY ARE ANTIGUN ACTIVISTS SO VIOLENT? Antigun Leader Charged With Harassment.
JIM TREACHER MIKE RIGGS ON MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION: Is Pat Robertson More Progressive Than Barack Obama? “Totally serious question.”
IN THE MAIL: From Timothy Zahn, Cobra Alliance: Cobra War: Book I.
TAX ANGER: Miami Mayor Faces Recall. “Recalls are also being sought in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Omaha after proposed tax increases.”
UPDATE: Chattanooga reader Bill Johnson writes: “Once again the fact-checkers at NYT and Bloomberg are AWOL. The recall effort in Chattanooga began last summer and failed to carry at the polls Nov. 2. No understanding of present vs past tense? Written several weeks ago and pulled off the shelf to fill a small hole in the layout?” Oops.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Re Omaha, reader Nick Gustafson emails:
I saw you posted a NYT story on mayoral recalls. The Omaha situation is somewhat unique. I’m not buying it as a Tea Party phenomenon. The old mayor (who we thoughtfully named a street after 6 months after he left office) signed a series of disastrous union contracts and did everything he could to trash the city’s bond rating. The new guy is dealing with a bad hand of cards. I’m not sure if it’s unfortunate or not, but he’s an engineer by trade and doesn’t seem to understand the value of good communications. In any case, Suttle – the current mayor – hasn’t done anything wrong, he’s just somewhat unpopular and is basically getting recalled for the sins of Fahey – the old mayor. There is a tax element here, but realistically the city’s spending has been cut to the bone over the last few years and Suttle’s doing the right thing to keep our bond rating intact.
That said, when you have local restaurants adding a line item to receipts labeled “Mayor’s Tax” you’re clearly doing something wrong.
Sigh.
POLITICO: Barack Obama’s plan to close Gitmo ‘in shambles.’
UPDATE: Psst, there’s no Obama comeback. “Would Republicans have traded wins on DADT and START for their wins on the DREAM act, the tax deal and the omnibus spending bill? Not in a million years. . . . Obama may yet stage a comeback. But to do that, he’ll have to do what the left loathes — cut domestic programs, rework entitlement programs, stand up to foreign adversaries (Obama’s legacy is irretrievably ruined if Iran gets the bomb on his watch), cut back on growth-restricting regulations and keep tax rates low. And so long as unemployment remains at historic highs, Obama’s chances of re-election remain poor.”
CATHY YOUNG ON Julian Assange, Feminism, and Rape. “Once, feminist reformers rightly fought against laws that required a rape victim to fight her attacker ‘to the utmost.’ But removing any element of actual or threatened force from the crime of rape makes it too easy to criminalize miscommunications and morning-after regrets.” If morning-after regrets are a ground for rape charges, many, many women can expect to be targeted in the future. . . .
Plus this:
Earlier generations of feminists argued that rape should be treated the same as any other violent crime: The victim should not be subjected to special standards of resistance or chastity. These days, the demand for special treatment is so blatant that some activists openly support abolishing the presumption of innocence for rape cases and requiring the accused to prove consent (a proposal Valenti cites with obvious approval). In an ironic twist, these activists actually seem to hold women in very little esteem: in their world, women are too timid to push a man away if he won’t take no for an answer and too addled to know that they have been raped.
It’s as if the whole thing is some sort of political shell game with no concern for justice or equality at all.
ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH: Iran Just Shipped Missiles to Venezuela. Hello? Is This Thing On? “A massive security threat just blossomed, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an MSM or administration official who cares.”
MAKING THE CASE against college?