MY DUCK-AND-COVER VIDEO, now on YouTube.
Archive for 2011
February 9, 2011
L.A. TIMES: Just as things looked brighter for Obama, Americans’ approval of his deficit handling craters. “A new Gallup Poll out this morning finds nearly seven-in-ten Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling — or, rather, lack of handling — of the federal deficit. That disapproval is up from 64% in November. Worse, the approval of his deficit unhandling has plummeted 16%, or five points, from 32 down to 27.”
MEGAN MCARDLE ON UNBIASING ACADEMIA: “Trying to be more conscious of one’s own bias, and even to attempt to work against it, should not be such a hard task for people as brilliant, open-minded, and committed to equality and social justice as I keep hearing that liberal academics are. So it doesn’t really seem like so much to ask.”
GRADUATE STUDENTS: They’re Mad As Hell. “When I wrote last month about the need for professional-development seminars for graduate students, my only intention was to offer some straightforward advice to the profession. Instead, I tapped a vein—no, an artery—and released a lot of pent-up emotion in readers that went way beyond the subject at hand.”
DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM JUSTIN RAIMONDO: I usually ignore his ravings, and I hate to send him traffic with this link, but his site has this outright lie: “Hat tip: Zeyad, an Iraqi doctor whose ‘Healing Iraq’ blog was promoted by war-blogger Glenn Reynolds and others in the run up to the Iraq war, and then abruptly dropped when Zeyad’s cousin was murdered by US troops and he had the bad taste to make a big deal about it.”
Actually, I played a big role in drawing attention to what happened to Zeyad’s cousin, and continued to link to him regularly for years afterward until he came to the States, as a simple search for “Zeyad” in my archives will reveal. I actually hadn’t realized he was back in Iraq and blogging again. I haven’t paid enough attention to what’s going on in Iraq lately, but over the past couple of years I’ve been preoccupied with disasters closer to home, alas.
Anyway, if Justin has any decency, he’ll retract and apologize. I’m not holding my breath, though.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Regarding Raimondo, it almost sounds like he had a narrative that he needed to confirm. …except checking his view against your archive might lead to a case of narrative-Interruptus. The Left seems to be suffering from an epidemic of that lately.” Indeed.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rather than retract his lie, Raimondo blows smoke. No surprise there, but this is an unimpressive effort even by his standards. Meanwhile, Greyhawk of The Mudville Gazette — who knows more about Iraq than Raimondo knows about . . . well, never mind — weighs in.
MORE: Reader Coby Wholeben emails to note that Raimondo calls himself a libertarian, not a lefty. That’s true, he does. I should have appended a note to that effect to the reader quote above, though in fact the epidemic of narrative-interruptus is on the left these days. But perhaps it’s contagious.
JEFF FLAKE pushing House GOP on budget cuts.
MARK HEMINGWAY: California taxes away jobs while Texas adds them. “In 2008, 70 percent of all the jobs in the country were created in Texas. In 2009, all of America’s top five job-creating cities were in Texas.”
AS P.J. O’ROURKE PUT IT THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED, “Yes, the dumb buggers stepped on the gas instead of the brake.”
Government investigators have rejected claims that electronic defects caused Toyota cars and trucks to accelerate out of control, a finding released Tuesday that offers a measure of long-awaited vindication for the world’s largest automaker and shifts blame to the drivers who reported the incidents.
The report, based on work by NASA engineers, deflates accusations by drivers suing Toyota that mysterious electronic glitches instigated the episodes of runaway cars. It also supports the industry trend of entrusting critical engine operations to ever more sophisticated electronics and microprocessors.
So can we expect an apology from all the politicians and journalists who jumped at the chance to dump all over Toyota? Perhaps we could have Congressional hearings in which the hacks publicly explain why they dumped on Toyota when it was pretty obvious that this was a rerun of the Audi 5000 hysteria.
UPDATE: More history here.
TREATING OBAMACARE like Vietnam.
OBAMA STARTS TO BAIL OUT THE STATES: “States that have borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to cover the soaring cost of unemployment benefits would get immediate relief from the Obama administration under a plan to suspend interest payments for the next two years.” By letting states keep unemployment insurance taxes down, this is probably good for employment, but can the Federal government — which is also broke — afford it? And what it gives in lower taxes now, it takes back later, conveniently after the election. “Starting in 2014, Obama would target companies for sharply higher payroll taxes to help states replenish their depleted unemployment funds and repay their debts to Washington.”
BLUMENTHAL DOES IT AGAIN: “Nine months after his campaign was staggered by reports that he had incorrectly claimed to have served in Vietnam, Sen. Richard Blumenthal made what seemed to be a similar misstatement Tuesday, putting himself at the center of the action in the historic 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. . . . Blumenthal’s slip might not normally generate much attention or scrutiny. But it comes on the heels of an election that focused in part of revelations that Blumenthal made similar misstatements about his Vietnam-era military service. Blumenthal served stateside as a reservist during the Vietnam War. But on at least two occasions, Blumenthal claimed to have been in Vietnam.”
DON SURBER: Dumping ObamaCare Without Lawyers.
UH OH: WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices. “US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world’s biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%.”
We’ve heard this kind of thing before. That was the gist of Matthew Simmons’ Twilight In The Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.
February 8, 2011
JUSTICE: Despite his federal conviction, former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge will be able to keep his pension, according to a vote by a police pension board Thursday. “Burge, 63, was sentenced last week to 4 1/2 years in prison following a conviction last summer on perjury and obstruction of justice related to the way he gave answers in a lawsuit that claimed he and underlings tortured murder suspects who were in police custody. He’s scheduled to report to prison in March.”
EXTREME CAVE DIVING.
AT AMAZON, top deals in electronics.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF responds to Pejman Yousefzadeh, and Pejman Yousefzadeh responds to Conor Friedersdorf.
THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE HEARING ABOUT: U.S. handling of Egypt protests now alienating pretty much everyone.
CHANGE: Treasurys fall after weak auction of 3-year notes. “Treasurys extended a weeklong fall on Tuesday after the government’s auction of $32 billion in new debt met with tepid demand. The yield on the 10-year note rose to the highest level in 10 months. The government auctioned three-year notes at a yield of 1.34 percent. That’s the most expensive borrowing cost the government has had to pay on those notes since last May. Foreign buyers showed weak interest in the sale. Indirect bidders, a rough proxy for foreign funds and banks, took 27 percent of the notes, the lowest share since May 2007.”
BILL WHITTLE ON COMMERCIAL SPACE: THE FREE FRONTIER. With help from Rand Simberg. (Bumped.)
TEA PARTY stirs up New Hampshire.
POLITIFACT TO OBAMA: YOU LIE! “During his Super Bowl pregame interview with Bill O’Reilly, President Obama flatly declared that he has not raised taxes as president. PolitiFact flatly declares that statement to be false.”