SOME BAD NEWS: I was in Lenoir City yesterday, and saw that Leo’s Pulled Pig is gone, replaced by a pawn shop.
Archive for 2011
November 6, 2011
#OCCUPYFAIL: Hey, that hashtag seems to be getting some traction. So is #OccupyHollywood.
HOW TO PREP YOUR HOME AND TOOLS for the winter cold.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Online dating is no longer just for weirdos.
MEANWHILE, IN LIBERTARIAN NEWS: Libertarians Promote Justice For All. “While Occupy Boston has dominated headlines recently by marching on streets and turning parks to campgrounds, Students For Liberty, which claims to share some of the same ideas and values, has quietly sprouted up on college campuses, organization leaders said.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: Walter Russell Mead: Occupy Blue Wall Street. “Members of what Howard Dean likes to call ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’ prefer not to think too much about Blue Wall Street and its role in the Democratic coalition, but particularly as times get tougher for the blue social model, it is Blue Wall Street that makes things work and calls the shots. For Blue Wall Street the conflict between the interests of the private sector and the power of the government does not really exist. The symbiosis between Blue Wall Street and the state is strong and deep. The pension funds, bond issues and other financial transactions that blue city and state governments need helps nourish Blue Wall Street; Blue Wall Street helps integrate the policy agenda of other government focused interest groups with larger national priorities and movements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the archetypes of this symbiosis: they are government-backed forces in the capital markets built around support for the single most important American social program of the blue period: home ownership. . . . Blue Wall Street benefits much more from the blue social model than the other elements in the coalition. Five figure cop salaries and low six figure salaries for goo-goo social engineers pale before the seven, eight, nine and ten figure paydays on the Street. There is a direct connection between those big paydays and the connection between big finance, big government and Democratic (as well as Republican) interest group politics. Good relations with politicians help make money: ask the leadership of Goldman Sachs.”
Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.
Knoxville, Tennessee. I dropped by Sam and Andy’s the other day for lunch. It was just as good as always, which was very good.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Grade Inflation Hurts Math And Science Education. “If taking math, science and engineering courses requires students to sacrifice their GPAs and class standing, it should be no surprise that many choose other courses of study.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: Assaults raise concerns about crime at Occupy L.A.
NO CHARGE: Duke Energy Warns Customers to Not Use EV Charging Stations After Fire Involving Siemens Charger and Chevy Volt. “After a house fire in Mooresville, NC which started in the home’s garage was traced the the area near a charging station for an electric vehicle, WSOC-TV reported that Duke Energy, which installed the Siemens built charging station, has warned customers to not use similar units while the investigation into the fire proceeds. When fire investigators went through the burned out garage, they found a Chevy Volt plugged into the 240 volt station, the second garage fire reportedly involving a Volt. Since it was not the only electrical appliance plugged in that area of the garage, the charging station may not be at fault.”
Way back in 1968, after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley declared that his forces were there to “preserve disorder.” I believe that was one of Hizzoner’s famous malapropisms. Forty-three years later Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland city council have made “preserving disorder” the official municipal policy. On Wednesday, the “Occupy Oakland” occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation’s fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of “shopping,” destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation “F**k,” etc. And how did the Oakland city council react? The following day they considered a resolution to express their support for “Occupy Oakland” and to call on the city administration to “collaborate with protesters.”
That’s “collaborate” in the Nazi-occupied-France sense: The city’s feckless political class are collaborating with anarchists against the taxpayers who maintain them in their sinecures. They’re not the only ones.
Plus this: “At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. . . . At heart, Oakland’s occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the ‘idealism’ that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge — at least until the window-smashing starts.”
UPDATE: Reader Bart Hall writes: “Those #Occupy elitists do not expect to live in a statist society, they plan to RUN it, with all attendant benefits. The AN-archism part is that nobody else will have any power to stop them. These are folks whose dysfunctional attitudes and weak work ethic have denied them what they so fervently believe they’re fully entitled to, so they plan instead to seize it. Because, by right, it should be theirs.”
THE HILL: Eric Holder Has A Gun Problem.
As the chief law enforcement officer Attorney General Eric Holder came out swinging in the first months of the Obama administration as he pushed to reinstate the assault weapons ban, pointing to the rising levels of violence in Mexico and increased presence of U.S. guns south of the border.
But nearly two years later assault weapons can still be bought and Holder has found himself at the center of a quagmire involving a botched gun-tracking operation that sent thousands of high-powered firearms to Mexico in the hands of known or suspected straw buyers for drug cartels.
Amid a plethora of Republican calls for Holder’s resignation, Democrats have silently indicated their support for the attorney general. Instead of taking him to task for Operation Fast and Furious, Democratic lawmakers have tried to draw attention to what they describe as the country’s weak network of gun laws.
In other words, they’re trying to stage a distraction. Let me be clear: I think it’s possible, and maybe even likely, that this operation was intended to provide PR support for the Administration’s gun-control program by putting traceable U.S. guns at Mexican crime scenes so that Holder could point to them as a reason for more gun control in the United States. (Other explanations — such as that this was a sort of Iran/Contra deal involving the U.S. Government deliberately arming one side in the Mexican drug wars, are even worse). Heads should roll, starting with Holder’s, but not ending there.
#OCCUPYFAIL: Leaders of Leaderless Movement Seizing the Money? “On Sunday, October 23, a meeting was held at 60 Wall Street. Six leaders discussed what to do with the half-million dollars that had been donated to their organization, since, in their estimation, the organization was incapable of making sound financial decisions. The proposed solution was not to spend the money educating their co-workers or stimulating more active participation by improving the organization’s structures and tactics. Instead, those present discussed how they could commandeer the $500,000 for their new, more exclusive organization.”
More exclusive. It really is playing out just like Animal Farm, isn’t it?
#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD: Forget Wall Street: Occupy Hollywood!
5.6 EARTHQUAKE in Oklahoma? Story here. Nobody hurt, but another preparedness reminder.
UPDATE: More.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kevin Furr writes: “I felt it, sitting at home in Dallas 200 miles away! The wonder of the Internet — felt some slight rocking, so I got on Facebook and all my Arkansas friends were suddenly checking in babbling about houses and shelves shaking. I could pretty well estimate it to be in Oklahoma just based on social media!”
MORE: XKCD on social media and earthquakes. Heh. Seems about right.
HISTORY: Egyptian Mummy Had Prostate Cancer; Lots More Ancient Peeps Probably Did Too. “Scientists report in a paper soon to appear in the International Journal of Paleopathology that the mummy, known as M1, died when he was between 51 and 60. He is the oldest case of prostate cancer identified in ancient Egypt, and the second oldest in the world (the oldest was in the 2700-year-old skeleton of a Scythian king in Russia). M1’s scans also show a malignant cancer that had spread to his spine and other areas around his pelvis.”
SO MUCH FOR THE “HOPE AND CHANGE” STUFF, I GUESS: A year from Election 2012, a dark mood awaits Obama and GOP rival.
ED DRISCOLL: Andrew Cuomo Is Kidding Himself.
November 5, 2011
HAPPY HOLIDAYS: President Obama marks the Hajj and Eid al-Adha.
MATT WELCH COMPLICATES WILL WILKINSON’S NARRATIVE: “But here’s the thing that non-Republican, gay-marrying, pro-immigration, pro-choice, anti-empire potheads like me (and Will) need to grapple with if we insist on talking about the relationship between ourselves and various large political blocs: The GOP has been more receptive to libertarian ideas these past couple of years.” And the Democrats, not so much, despite all the “liberaltarian” hype.