Archive for 2011
December 12, 2011
BYRON YORK: “You know a candidate is having an interesting day on the trail when he starts out in an evangelical megachurch, testifying to his faith, and ends up in a college-town coffee shop being yelled at by a professor of Queer Studies. For Rick Perry, that was Sunday in Iowa.”
ILLINOIS: Doing Business With The Simpsons. “The Illinois legislature passed a tax package that is designed to keep the $CME and $CBOE from leaving the state. Is it enough? Indiana governor Mitch Daniels has said that being next to Illinois is like living next door to the Simpsons. . . . The core problem is that Illinois is one of the most expensive places to do business in the nation. The Democratic tax increase last January has cost the state many businesses, and it has lost thousands of jobs. The migration of companies from high tax/high cost states has accelerated in the last decade. The American south is rising again.”
The CBOE and CME are welcome to relocate to Nashville. Or Knoxville. Or even Chattanooga, where they have superfast Internet now.
MORE FROM RAND SIMBERG ON ROMNEY’S MOON-MINING EMBARRASSMENT: “I also suspect Governor Romney assumed that Newt was proposing a massive NASA project to build the ‘lunar colony’ that the governor derided as unrealistic pie-in-the-sky (almost literally) in austere times. If so, he knocked the stuffing out of a straw man, because Newt is actually on record as wanting to bypass the agency, if not abolish it outright. . . . What does this exchange tell us about the two candidates? I think it provides a window into their mindsets. Newt sees space as a frontier of human opportunity and plenty, and wants to direct space policy toward opening it using the traditional American tools of entrepreneurship and competition (unlike most people on the Hill who care about space, who only do so as a means of national prestige and jobs in their states and districts). It’s hard to tell how Mitt Romney views it, since he has not offered an alternative to Gingrich’s vision, but by denigrating the development of new resources because it’s a little too ‘far out,’ he comes off as someone who not only has given no serious thought to space policy other than as a cudgel against his political opponent, but as a soulless technocrat. To me, it was worse than his ten-grand-bet gaffe.”
Read the whole thing. Er, especially if you do issues work for Romney . . . .
UPDATE: By way of background — including for you Romney issues people — try reading this.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “Well considering the Chinese view a lunar facility part of their long term goals, Tom Friedman ought to be a Gingrich supporter right? Heh.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: SHOWING SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKING CLASSES BY KEEPING THEM FROM EARNING A BUCK. “No longshore workers will be called in to the Port of Oakland tonight as Occupy protesters renew their efforts to blockade the docks, according to a spokesman for the International Longshore Workers Union. . . . Roughly 150 longshoremen on the morning shift were sent home with little or no pay, some because they were unable to get to work and others because trucks that haul shipping containers couldn’t reach the docks, Merrilees said. Another 50 longshore workers were able to report to their jobs.”
TAR SANDS MINING: Coming Soon To The U.S.? Faster, please.
FROM MAKE MAGAZINE: The Ultimate Kit Guide.
AT AMAZON, holiday deals in Musical Instruments.
HIGHER EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT TRIES TO REFORM ITSELF:
But, in general, the visions of innovation offered up by panelists—more online learning, greater engagement with public schools, new forms of financial aid—were far from revolutionary and frequently short on specifics. During Thursday night’s keynote talk, the panelists, all academic heavy hitters, were pressed by a questioner from the audience to give one example of transformative change they would like to see enacted. Most of the panelists demurred, with Mr. Bharucha finally volunteering, “More vibrant, multidisciplinary projects for students and faculty.”
If speakers were short on prescriptions for change, they were long on the diagnoses of what ails higher education, from unprepared students to public officials preoccupied with standardized testing.
The bursting higher education bubble will lead to change, but disruptive change seldom comes from within.
VIDEO: Reinventing Education with Khan Academy and AI Class.
And I should mention again that Andy Rosen’s Change.edu is free on the Kindle for one more day.
AMERICA TODAY: Women On Top, Men At The Bottom.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Wake Up And Smell The Espresso.
THE JOY OF HOMEBREWING.
AT AMAZON, holiday deals in Jewelry. Also watches.
DATECHGUY ON WHAT OCCUPY HAS THAT THE TEA PARTY DOES NOT: “The left makes an effort to keep those who fight their battles supplied and ready to fight. On the right it is a bit leaner.”
HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL OR SOMETHING: New York Times silent on Hollywood pedophilia charges. The football stuff is news. Covering the Hollywood stories, on the other hand, would just give comfort to class enemies. We can’t have that.
UH OH: Volt Woes Spread To Europe, Affect Ampera. ”We are not currently delivering the cars to customers while we set up the process to deal with these highly charged batteries to make sure they are safe.”
MATT WELCH: THE BOGUS FACTS BEHIND WASHINGTON’S BIG-GOVERNMENT CONSENSUS.
Not a day goes by when George W. Bush’s deregulation is not blamed for the financial crisis, and yet he hired 90,000 net new regulators, passed the largest Wall Street reform since the Depression, and increased fiscally significant regulations by more than any president since Richard Nixon. We are told by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and his friends in The Nation that the country is being ruled by a ruthless “austerity class,” yet federal spending has continued to increase even after the summer’s debt-ceiling agreement. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the (mostly Democratic) politicians who support it have shifted the national conversation to the “fact” that the middle class is worse off than it was three decades ago, yet as University of Chicago economist Bruce Meyer and Notre Dame economist James Sullivan found in a recent paper, “median income and consumption both rose by more than 50 percent in real terms between 1980 and 2009.”
We are entitled to facts, yes. Just not theirs.
Hey, it’s not like they could sell their programs with the truth.
A VISUAL COMPARISON of earthquake strength.
RECOMMENDED GIFTS for boys and teens.
J.W. VERRET TO ENERGY SECRETARY CHU: I Told You So On Solyndra.
WHY NOT JUST SUPPORT FRACKING, OR THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE? U.S. Navy Paying $15/gallon for “green fuel.”
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Obama’s strange, revisionist history on ‘60 Minutes.’ “Actually, Obama did overpromise—and underdeliver—on dealing with the U.S. economy. Back in August 2009, the Obama White House put out its updated economic forecast. Now, this was after the $800 billion stimulus had passed and, technically, after the Great Recession had ended. Here is where the White House thought the economy was headed over the next few years.” Hint: Not where we wound up. “Talk about overpromising. According to the 2009 Obama forecast, 2011 was supposed to start a five-year mini-boom where GDP growth averaged 4 percent, taking the unemployment rate down below 6 percent by 2014. But few outside economists are so rosy today. The latest Wall Street Journal survey of economists predicts the unemployment rate will still be above 7 percent through 2014 with GDP growth averaging a subpar 2.5 percent. The White House explanation is that no one knew back in 2009 how bad the Great Recession really was. Indeed, instead of contracting by 2.8 percent in 2009, as indicated in the above chart, GDP actually contracted by 3.5 percent. Yet even after 2009, the White House continued to be strangely bullish.”
Obama lied, the economy died. Related: February 2009: Obama Vows To Cut The Deficit In Half By End Of His “First Term.”
WAR CRIMES: Arrest Bill Clinton! “I asked Amnesty spokeswoman Sharon Singh, whether Amnesty had ever made a similar request for foreign governments to detain Bill Clinton and Al Gore when they traveled abroad? She sent me a press release Amnesty had put out in 1999 calling for an investigation of alleged war crimes during the Kosovo war but could not provide a single example of any time Amnesty had demanded the arrest of Clinton or Gore.” Of course not. They’re Democrats. Conclusion: “If Amnesty wants to behave like a left-wing fringe group, it should expect to be treated as such.” I agree. They’ve long since squandered whatever moral capital they possessed.