Archive for 2011
November 1, 2011
WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: ACLU Sues Los Angeles Police For Harassing Photographers For Taking Photos With “No Apparent Aesthetic Value.”
Send ’em a copy of Morgan Manning’s article.
THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE BOBO ELITES: A Shocking Chart on Vaccination. “We spent most of the last century trying to stamp out the infectious diseases that used to cripple and kill hundreds and thousands of people every year. Sometimes it seems like the Bobo elites plan to spend the 21st century bringing them all back.”
They’re not much of an elite, really.
FAST AND FURIOUS UPDATE: NRA Calls For Eric Holder’s Resignation. Part of a growing chorus.
CORRESPONDENTS: Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot. “The second volume of T.S. Eliot’s letters was recently published by Yale University Press, with new materials and previously unpublished missives. This is as good a time as any to reflect on Eliot’s most fascinating correspondent. Ezra Pound? Well, no. James Joyce? Hmm. No. Paul Valery. Non! I am referring to Groucho Marx. And no, this isn’t a joke. The letters between T.S. Eliot and Julius Henry Marx are among the strangest and most delightful epistles ever created.”
BUT OF COURSE: The Solyndra-ization of Philanthropy: The White House Wants to Steer Your Charitable Giving to Pet Causes. Or causes favored by their pets.
MORE ON THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AND NEW-CLASS THEORY: The Rage of the Almost-Elite. “Occupy Wall Street is mostly the lower elite revolting against the upper elite. . . . Orwell’s next passage points out that it is the lower-upper-middle-class who have the most venom towards those below them–precisely because to preserve their status, they have to keep themselves sharply apart from the workers and tradesmen. And I think that that does apply here as well, at least to some extent. One of the interesting things about going back to my business school reunion earlier in the month was simply the absence of the sort of cutting remarks about flyover country that I have grown used to hearing in any large gathering of people.”
Plus, from the comments: “Of course it is the lower elite, against the upper elite. The key word is ‘elite’. That’s the reason OWS gets such respectful treatment, and the Tea Party – expressing much the same discontents – was an object of ridicule.”
DANIEL BLATT: Is increase in government power necessary to achieve “equality”? No.
COOLEY LAW SCHOOL moves to out an anonymous blog critic. Strangely, this doesn’t make me think better of them.
CHARLIE MARTIN: My “sexual harassment” reprimand.
October 31, 2011
WHAT BUSH UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST, that Obama just doesn’t get.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: The seductive allure of reverting to national European currencies.
RUSH LIMBAUGH’S CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE. Plus this, from the comments: “I think the thing that made Rush so popular was his sense of cheerful optimism. Unlike the O’Reillys and Savages of the world, Rush has always been optimistic about the future. I think that the Obama presidency has been such a disaster of Biblical proportions that Rush is no longer optimistic about the future.” I’m still optimistic. But, yeah, I can see that.
DO NOT TRUST CONTENT from the Star Tribune? “If you relied on the article for your knowledge about the case, as I stupidly did, you were poorly served.”
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Toys & Games.
PROF. JACOBSON ON THE POLITICO CAIN HIT:
The story was a legitimate issue for a presidential candidate; we only wish the mainstream media would investigate Obama’s past with half as much enthusiasm.
But there’s a bigger point here, visible only from 35,000 feet.
This is a taste of the medicine the mainstream media, which includes Politico as I have pointed out before, has in store for the eventual Republican nominee.
Whatever the source of the tip, the presentation was rolled out by Politico in a fashion to do maximum damage to Cain. The Sunday release was timed to be all over the media on Monday morning. Jonathan Martin, the lead reporter on the story for Politico, even conducted an ambush interview with Cain shortly after the story broke, receiving a muddled response from Cain.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear what was going on here. It’s true it was pretty much a failure — see Pro Publica’s takedown, even — but let me repeat my question: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it? I think we know the answer.
Meanwhile, Roxeanne De Luca has a question for feminists.
Plus, a look back at Politico’s involvement with the Journolist story-coordination scandal.
P.J. CULTURE: PJ Media unveils a new team of seven weekly columnists.
FIGHTING VIOLENT GANG CRIME with math.
AT AMAZON, a coupon sale.
JOEL KOTKIN: Overpopulation Isn’t The Problem: It’s Too Few Babies. “For the next generation of Chinese leaders, Deng Xiaoping’s rightful concern about overpopulation at the end of the Mao era will shift into a future of eldercare costs, shrinking domestic markets and labor shortages. This scenario is already a reality in Japan and much of the European continent, including Greece, Spain, Portugal, much of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and Germany. Adults over the age of 65 make up more than 20% of these countries’ populations — compared with 15% in the U.S. — and their numbers could double by 2030, according to researchers Emma Chen and Wendell Cox. In many of these countries, rising debt burdens and shrinking labor markets have already slowed economic growth and suppressed any hope for a major long-term turnaround. The same will happen to even the best-run European economies, just as it has in Japan, whose decades-long growth spurt ended as its workforce began to shrink.”
LOOKING AT Herman Cain as a turnaround artist. He was good at taking once-valuable properties that had been devalued by inept management and making them work again.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HALLOWEEN CANDY? Eat it.