AFL-CIO RUNNING misleading push-calls in Wisconsin Republican primary? “MediaTrackers further notes that while allegations of misleading robocalls by a pro-life group received widespread mainstream media coverage, the same was not true for the misleading pro-Wirch calls.”
Archive for 2011
July 16, 2011
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Panic at the White House? Gloomy Goldman Sachs sees high unemployment, possible recession. “Alarms bells must be ringing all over Obamaland today. Unemployment on Election Day about where it is right now? Sputtering — if not stalling — economic growth? To many Americans that would sound like the car is back in the ditch — if it was ever out. . . . Goldman Sachs doesn’t have to tell you things are bad. I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. Unemployment is at 9.2 percent (11.4 percent if the official labor force hadn’t collapsed since 2008 and 16.2 percent if you include discouraged and underemployed workers.) Moreover, the economy grew at just 1.9 percent in the first quarter of this year and may have grown less than 2 percent in the second. Wages and income are going nowhere fast. When will the White House signal a change of economic direction? Will cutting tax rates and regulation ever make it on the agenda? That may be the only way Obama can win another term. And time is running short.”
I’ve said before that if Congress and the Administration knew that they would be hanged in a year unless the economy drastically improved, they’d cut taxes and regulation regardless of their rhetoric now. This may wind up putting that assertion to the test . . . .
HE’LL FIT RIGHT IN: Charged With Gun Smuggling, Former Mayor Seeks New Career With ATF.
L.A.’S “CARMAGEDDON:” A big nothing? Plus this: “In another example of the expert malpractice I reported on the other day, road authorities have done a lousy job of making it clear to the public what time the closing of the 405 would begin. All week, highway LED beacons have given only dates of construction, not times. Today, they finally put in a correct time on this LED sign that was almost entirely obscured from drivers by shrubbery. . . . As commenters Rob McMillin and Fire Tiger have noted, there is a public-outrage angle to Carmageddon, involving the unnecessary overscheduling of this work, a bunch of NIMBYs, and general incompetence. While I appreciate that angle, I have been more fascinated by the spectacle of big government and big media taking an easily resolved problem (alerting people that a handy stretch of a major highway would be closed for 53 hours) into a condescending exercise in lifestyle hectoring. In La La Land, making it clear to drivers what time the work would begin and end took a lower priority than having William Shatner and Lady GaGa tweet about what they’ll be doing instead of using cars this weekend.”
Our public officials are increasingly more interested in lifestyle hectoring than in actually doing their jobs.
BOB OWENS: Obfuscation: Dems Push Gun Control To Hide ‘Gunwalker’ Scandal. “The exact same agencies that would be charged with enforcing the proposal are currently under investigation — and may eventually face felony charges — because they broke existing laws and participated in widespread gun trafficking. To borrow from a reader, the federal government is using federal agencies to break federal laws so that same federal government can impose more federal laws on the people that did not break the law.”
TORONTO SCHOOL BOARD: Only White People Are Racist. “This is child abuse, it is hate speech, I strongly encourage any parent unfortunate enough to have a child in this filth ridden system to file a complaint with the Toronto Police Services Hate Crimes Unit and to launch a civil suit against the TDSB.” I think that’s a great idea. Flood the system with complaints — especially as they’re valid ones.
INTRODUCING “The sexless generation.” Well, I’m not sure this phenomenon is real, but if it is maybe that’ll slow down the gonorrhea superbug, anyway.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Create a Special Job Credit for the Long-Term Unemployed.
This isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t see it happening. First, there are no obvious opportunities for graft. Second, the long-term unemployed aren’t a group that the Administration cares much about, or it would have done something already.
CHRIS FOUNTAIN: Don’t Like CFLs? Mail ’em to Congress.
July 15, 2011
WISCONSIN UPDATE: They told me if I voted for John McCain, we’d see the reemergence of a culture of lynching. And they were right!
AN ARMED SOCIETY IS A POLITE SOCIETY: “It seems the presence of a gun suppressed the very rage anti-human rights campaigners claim a gun exacerbates.”
STEVE HAYWARD ON POLYGAMIST-RIGHTS LAWSUITS IN AMERICA, and their likely effect on the gender balance:
The first Republican Party platform of 1856 said that the main object of the new party was to rid the nation of “the twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.” The argument at that time was that the “barbarism” of both “peculiar institutions” rested on the same ground—both are an affront to human equality. In the simplest terms, if one man is to have more than one wife, some other man will have none. Why should we care about this? Well, check in with China in a few years, where the widespread practice of sex-selective reproduction favoring males (where are the global feminists on this, by the way?) is leading to a major demographic distortion that will surely have significant social consequences.
Relax, Steve. This logic would have held in the America of 1856, or even 1956, but now the technological revolution — coupled with events in China and India — means that by the time this problem hits the states, humanity will have perfected the Fembot, and the real problem will be getting men to marry actual women at all. That, of course, raises its own problems.
WANT TO HELP WOUNDED SOLDIERS? Support Project Valour-IT.
KEITH OLBERMANN: The Lost Months. Plus, what happens when you egg Michelle Malkin’s car. It’s not pretty — or much of a surprise, really!
INTERVIEW GOLD: Q&A with Award-Winning Author and PJM Contributor Sarah Hoyt.
I liked her award-winning novel, Darkship Thieves, quite a lot.
ON SALE: AA Batteries. You can never have too many. Plus, pair with one of these for compact, long-lasting emergency light. I went ahead and ordered both.
LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE? UT regents call for increased hedging to protect endowment fund. “Concern that Texas’ public university endowment may lose a fifth of its value from a major eurozone default or a crisis in the dollar prompted calls for more aggressive hedging Thursday. . . . The management company already uses about $50 million a year for hedges to limit the fund’s exposure to market risks, and the endowment has more than $1 billion in gold bullion stashed away, said Bruce Zimmerman, the management company’s chief executive.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, PEOPLE WOULD BE PLANNING TO BRING BACK THE DRAFT: And they were right!
CONGRATULATIONS: Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty is still #7 on Amazon’s list of top Science Fiction bestsellers.
YEAH, THAT’LL WORK: Law School Sues Law Firm and Bloggers for Criticizing its Placement Data. It’s hard for me to imagine how Thomas Cooley’s reputation could be damaged.
They really should have read this carefully before filing.
21ST CENTURY ETIQUETTE PROBLEMS: “My Mother’s Pissed I Didn’t Ask Her New Husband to Walk me Down the Aisle.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The University of California is cutting back on many things, but not useless diversity programs. “California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. ‘Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,’ the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine. Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing.”
It’s a religion.
HOPE AND CHANGE: House votes to save traditional incandescent bulb for 2012.