Archive for 2011
April 19, 2011
FROM OBAMA, a bogus bridge-collapse argument for higher taxes: “Being from Minneapolis, the implication that the St. Anthony Falls bridge collapse in August 2007 had to do with infrastructure spending isn’t just ignorant of basic civics, it’s downright false and offensive. . . . The bridge collapse occurred because of a design defect, a conclusion reached by the National Transportation Safety Board. The bridge was designed and built in an era when architects thought that redundant systems were both unnecessary and inefficient. Gusset plates installed at the time of the bridge’s building were too thin, and without any redundancy to account for a major failure on a single point, it was a tragedy waiting to happen from day 1. It had nothing to do with any lack of maintenance, and in fact collapsed because of scheduled maintenance to the deck that inadvertently destabilized it to the point of collapse. It’s dishonest in the extreme to use this tragedy as an argument that we neglected our infrastructure, and ghoulish to use the dead for a false political point. Obama should be ashamed of himself.” How bad was it? So bad that even CBS news is calling Obama out on it.
DESIGN YOUR HOME WITH GOOGLE: Couple builds eco-friendly home like no other using free program.
Many Internet users rely on Google to instantly find information about almost anyone and anything. Philippe and Thao Jeanty went a step further. They used Google to design their solar-powered home in Fairview, Tenn.
“The beauty of Google Sketchup is you can move things around until it looks good. Anything Google does is good. And it’s free,” said Philippe, a physician who practices radiology in Nashville.
Using Google Sketchup, a 3D modeling program usually used by architects, engineers and other design professionals – not homeowners – the couple drew the plans for their home and all of its high-tech, low-environmental-impact features on a computer screen.
Bad news for architects.
FASTER, PLEASE: Glass-Like Solar Cells Set Stage for Power-Producing Windows.
HOWARD LOVY: When Nanotech Meets Biotech.
WELL, YOU KNOW, THE BRITS HAVE ALREADY DEPLOYED “SKYNET:” Drone weapons systems risk leading us to “a Terminator-like reality,” warns a British government study.
CHANGE: NASA Funds Next-Gen Spaceships.
MICHAEL WALSH: Uncle Sam’s Sinking Credit.
UPDATE: Skunked. “This country appears to have an off-balance-sheet, unrecorded debt burden of close to 500% of GDP! We are out-Greeking the Greeks, dear reader.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Clive Crook: “If I were a ratings agency, by the way, US government bonds would already be less than AAA. The unresolved quarrel over the debt ceiling is reason enough all by itself for a lower rating.”
IN THE MAIL: Flandry’s Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga. I’m glad they’re keeping these classics in print.
DAN MITCHELL: Greetings from Argentina – An Obamaesque Land of Crony Capitalism and a Warning to America. “There is nothing magical about the United States. If we copy Argentina (actually, a very bad combination of Argentine-style crony capitalism and Swedish-style high-tax redistribution), we will suffer similar consequences.”
ARNOLD KLING: “I don’t think of the long-term budget fight as being between Democrats and Republicans or between rich and poor. I look at it as a fight between people with funded retirements and unfunded retirements.”
SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Federal Tax Rules: 72,536 Pages.
IT’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIGGEST ACTION IN THE WARSAW GHETTO REVOLT. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the movie Uprising, which is so good that David Schwimmer is macho. Here’s a review that Dave Kopel and I wrote at the time.
BROADSIDE BOOKS: VOICES OF THE TEA PARTY.
MUCH MORE ON TENNESSEE’S guns on campus bill.
AT AMAZON, 25-50% off toys.
IS THE LIBYAN INTERVENTION LEGAL? “It is preposterous to use a euphemism like ‘kinetic military action’ and claim that the military campaign against the Gaddafi regime is not a ‘war.’ If any nation sent hundreds of missiles and bombs into the United States, all of them aimed at the American armed forces, the American people would of course consider this to be an act of war.”
Read the whole thing for some cogent arguments. Personally, I think it’s legal — ineffectual so far, but legal — but I’m certainly enjoying the irony of this administration’s endorsement of executive supremacy in matters military.
POLITICO: Why P.J. Crowley Went Rogue: “Crowley might have kept his job, or at least found a softer landing, had President Obama not been asked about his comment 18 hours later at a news conference and voiced full support of the Pentagon.” They told me if I voted for John McCain, dissenters within the defense establishment would be eliminated. And they were right!
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Heritage’s Beach responds to scurrilous Krugman attack. Krugman’s become such a joke, I’m not sure responding to his attacks matters. But maybe it does.
SLATE: IS THIS THE FUTURE OF THE TEA PARTY?
The Tea Party is often seen as being made up entirely of cranky middle-aged people who don’t like paying taxes. But here is smart, engaging young woman speaking with the poise of someone older. . . . What’s not so apparent in the above video, which was shot from very close to the stage, is how difficult it must have been to maintain that poise. Ann Althouse and her husband were near some anti-Tea Party protesters at the rally and captured them on film during Willoughby’s speech. They are beating drums, waving cowbells and ultimately boo Willoughby and tell her to “go home.”
Scared? They should be.
ERIC HOLDER UPDATE: Obama Admin on PJM ‘Holdergate’ Reporting: ‘We Blame Bush!’. “It seems a little odd that the Obama administration, which, mind you, was elected after campaigning vigorously that the Bush administration had been guilty of politicizing the Department of Justice, would fall back on the alleged decisions of that same administration.”
SYRIA UPDATE: Syrian Forces Fire At Protesters, Unrest Intensifies.