Archive for 2011
May 5, 2011
MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOODING: “I’ve never seen it this bad.”
MESSAGING FAIL: WaPo: White House Goes Silent On Bin Laden Raid.
Related: In Bin Laden Victory, Echoes Of The Bush Years. Yeah, their messaging was bad, too.
UPDATE: You can’t keep track of the changing stories without a scorecard.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Associated Press: Only 1 killed in bin Laden raid was armed.
MORE: Tariq Ramadan: Changing Osama stories ‘bizarre’.
I heard what the president, Barack Obama, was saying, that they wanted to bring him to justice. And then all these different versions and just very bizarre and weird that we don’t get a straightforward version of what happened.
And look at what is happening now in the Muslim majority countries, is that all the people are asking questions. It’s very strange and that we drop his body in the sea, against all the Islamic rituals and we are told the Islamic rituals and principles are respected.
Not ready for prime time.
THE ECONOMIST: America’s Jobless Men. “Of all the big, rich Group of Seven economies, America has the lowest share of ‘prime age’ males in work: just over 80% of those aged between 25 and 54 have a job. In the late 1960s 95% worked.”
Some background on why here.
NYT MAG COVER FAIL: “We’ll call this the mother of all narrative fails. The very week that the NYT magazine runs a negative, anti-military cover story with a brooding graphic on the cover, the beast within the heart of the US Navy SEALs takes down the world’s worst terrorist. No kidding.”
AT AMAZON, spring deals in camera and photo.
UNEXPECTEDLY! NEW JOBLESS CLAIMS JUMP TO 8-MONTH HIGH: “New U.S. claims for unemployment aid unexpectedly rose last week to touch their highest level in eight months, pushed up by factors ranging from spring break layoffs to the introduction of an emergency benefits program, a government report showed on Thursday.” Or, you know, the whole recovery could basically be stalling.
Meanwhile, should the motto for our economic forecasters be “expect the unexpected?”
UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers emails: “What? The MSM can’t say ‘jobless recovery’ anymore?” Not until at least 2013.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Ubaldi writes: “So much as glancing at a chart of initial jobless claims over five years shows how ridiculous it is to discuss anything other than why the metric is miles away from where it should be. Just one of these days I’d like to see read that third-to-fifth sentence in a wire report as ‘Claims were pushed up by factors including hopeless employers laying their workers the f___ off again.'”
LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.
PROF. KENNETH ANDERSON: Suppose John Brennan Had Simply Repeated Harold Koh? “The NGOs and advocates and academics have an instinctive sense for exploitable weakness and go after it. Brennan (as well as later spokespeople, including Holder) was not direct in stating that of course it was legal to target OBL, legal to target with lethal force, legal to target without warning or invitation to surrender, and that has always been the US legal position. I don’t understand how this entirely obvious question wasn’t briefed and anticipated, with an answer directly from Harold Koh’s 2010 American Society of International Law address on exactly this point.”
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH asks the hard questions: “I cannot help but notice your endorsement of the Obama Administration’s decision not to release the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden. I guess that your post makes me wonder whatever happened to ‘the validity of asking empirical questions’.”
UPDATE: From the comments: “Osama is only dead because he’s Trig Palin’s real father.”
IF SUPERMARKETS WERE LIKE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?
PATHETIC: The European Media Reacts to Death of Osama Bin Laden. “European journalists have focused on whether the killing was permissible under international law; some are now calling for an international commission to investigate the American action. . . . In a reflection of the acute sense of moral superiority that is so common in contemporary Europe, secular analysts who are normally highly disdainful of Judeo-Christian moral codes have gone so far as to accuse the United States of violating the Fifth Commandment, without a hint of irony.”
Two things: First, if international law makes killing Osama bin Laden illegal, then the problem is with international law. Second — and you knew this was coming — “They told me if I voted Republican, Europeans would be calling our president a war criminal. And they were right!”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: NLRB plays fast and loose in Boeing case.
CHANGE: Obama Floats Plan To Tax Cars By The Mile:
The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.
The plan is a part of the administration’s “Transportation Opportunities Act,” an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
This follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.
Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.
No privacy issues there. I had some thoughts on that here.
UPDATE: Reader Brian Trosko writes: “The gas tax makes much more sense than a mileage tax, without the privacy implications, *until* revenues start collapsing because everyone switches to hybrids or EVs that don’t use as much gas. Then you still need a way to raise revenues, which is probably what they’re desperate about.” Well, that’s a long way off unless they know something about gas prices that I don’t. Uh oh. . . .
TODAY ONLY: A sale on women’s Swarovski watches. Also, they’re offering free one-day shipping on select watches until 3 p.m. this afternoon.
POLITICO: Rule of law allows killing Qadhafi.
Hi all, Helen Smith, Glenn’s wife here. I just wanted to say thanks to all of his readers who sent in comments and suggestions on how to deal with getting my Tikosyn prescription filled. It was informative and very helpful. Thanks!
STACY MCCAIN: How to Lose $10 Million on a Startup Web Site in Three Months. No, he’s not speaking from experience — and I suspect he wishes he could.
CHANGE: America’s Middle Class Crisis: The Sobering Facts. “Two recessions, a couple of market crashes, and stubbornly high unemployment are all wreaking havoc on America’s middle class.”
ONLY IF YOU DO IT PUBLICLY, AND RUB HIS FRIENDS’ AND SUPPORTERS’ NOSES IN IT: When a terrorist dies, is it OK to gloat?