CHANGE: Protesters chant ‘Russia without Putin’ as Kremlin’s opponents stage unprecedented rally by Moscow river. “Only last year beaten to within an inch of his life for writing something the authorities did not like, Oleg Kashin appeared to be without fear as he addressed his audience, at the biggest anti-government rally to be held in Russia for two decades.”
Archive for 2011
December 10, 2011
CBS POLL: 54% say Obama doesn’t deserve re-election. So maybe the answer to my poll question below is “any of the above.”
#OCCUYPYFAIL: Boston Occupiers Leave Site In The Kind Of Condition The Country Would Be In If They Were Listened To:
The Utopian dreamers of Occupy Boston are leaving behind a disgusting field of filth on the formerly scenic Rose Kennedy Greenway, where trees will have to be replanted, grass resodded, sprinklers repaired or replaced and the entire area power-hosed in a massive cleanup that could take weeks.
“We’re close to the end of it, which is very good news. Soon, the park can be repaired and open to the general public,” Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, said late yesterday. “We hope everyone makes a voluntary decision, and this can be a good, dignified end.”
The conservancy has been pushing the city to take action to remove the protesters, sending a letter to Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s office last month expressing frustration at rampant deterioration of the site, plus health and safety issues, including “disturbing” instances of drug use and interference of a farmers market. A judge this week lifted a restraining order on the city, giving it the green light to boot them out. . . .
Brennan said the grass, which has turned into a mud pit, will need to be completely resodded, and she fears several trees that have been damaged will have to be replanted.
“Three or four trees might be lost. There’s browning of the foliage, and there are some broken and bent limbs,” she said. “Part of what we need to do is check on the root systems, and that is just going to take a little bit of time.”
Brennan also expects that the sprinkler system was damaged so much it will have to be repaired or replaced. Also in need of replacement are about 20 percent of the shrubbery and the pebbles from a pedestrian walkway that runs along Purchase Street.
By contrast, I’ll note once more that the Tea Party protesters left things cleaner when they departed. Any comment from Elizabeth Warren?
IN LIGHT OF YESTERDAY’S POST ON POWER SYSTEM / CELLPHONE VULNERABILITY, I should also link back to earlier posts on low-budget disaster preparation and on generators. And remember, with any kind of generator or backup heat system it’s good to have a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector.
FRANK J. FLEMING: Anti-Intellectualism:
The main problem may be confusing “simple” with “dumb.”
If something is simple, then dumb people will believe it. And if dumb people believe something, then soon some conclude that smart people should believe something else. There’s a flaw in that philosophy.
Why shouldn’t you touch a hot stove? There’s no complex, smart answer to that. You’ll get roughly the same answer from Stephen Hawking that you’d get from Forrest Gump: It’s hot, and it will hurt.
But say you were going to argue that you should touch a hot stove. That would have to be a very complex answer, since it defies basic logic. And some people could run with that, talking in detail about pain receptors and the brain’s reaction to stimulus, and come up with a very smart-sounding argument on why touching a hot stove is a great idea.
Others will go further and mock all those ignorant people in the flyover states for their irrational fear of hot stoves and announce, “The most enlightened thing to do is to press one’s face against a hot stove.” Those people are what we call intellectuals.
Similarly, when someone comes up with a well-reasoned argument backed by top economists that two plus two equals five, there’s no brilliant way to refute it. The only response is: “No, you’re an idiot; it’s four.” But if you say that, you’ll be called anti-smart people.
Well, when the wave of anti-intellectualism sweeps America, Frank’s probably safe.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Growth Is Not An Easy Solution For Europe’s Woes. “For one thing, the euro itself is a major contributor to the lack of growth. Italy and Greece, especially, used to rely on serial devaluation to keep their relatively low-productivity tradeable sectors competitive. Do we have a way to dramatically increase productivity in their small, family-owned farms and firms? Keep in mind that a preponderance of such firms is not simply a historical accident; it’s generally thought to be a symptom of fairly low trust levels which make it problematic to hire strangers or invest your money in them. Greece, Italy, and Spain also have terrible demographics.”
It’s very costly to be a low-trust society. That’s something some of our political leaders should keep in mind, as they pursue policies likely to lower social trust and cohesion.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Who benefits from a low trust society? And why would they care if such an outcome imposed costs on others?”
HOW TO FIND YOUR FLASHLIGHT DURING A BLACKOUT.
Personally, I have these things scattered around the house, especially at the bottom of the stairs and in the basement hallway, bathroom, etc. They’re nightlights, but they turn on as flashlights if the power goes out. I also keep one of these keychain LED flashlights on my keychain. It’s amazingly handy.
UPDATE: Changed the link on the keychain flashlight. Reader Ben Samuel emailed that some reviewers on the other link were complaining that it was a counterfeit. Everybody seems happy on the one I changed it to. I think I bought through that link, though.
LET’S HOPE: TSA Facing Death By A Thousand Cuts.
IN THE MAIL: From Larry Correia, Monster Hunter Alpha.
AN INSTA-POLL:
UPDATE: Why no Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, or Buddy Roemer? I like Johnson, but he’s never gotten traction. The others have even less chance. On the other hand, John Galvin writes:
You left out Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and anybody else.
When Reagan ran against Carter, I, like a lot of others, would have voted for Anybody, including Donald Duck, over that clown. Same goes this time.
I left out the syphilitic camel, too. That disappointed reader Shane Boyd. Hey, you can’t please everybody.
THE HILL: House GOP releases payroll-tax package under Obama veto threat. “The legislation will add $25.3 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The congressional scorekeeper also noted that the bill includes lower caps on discretionary-spending ceilings agreed to in the summer’s debt-ceiling deal that could reduce the deficit by $1 billion. But CBO cannot include those assumptions in its official score, it said, because they are subject to the enactment of future legislation.”
If revenue is an issue, just add some of my tax proposals to the bill.
#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD:: Filmmaker Busted For Tax Scam.
AND NOW, IN “HUMAN RIGHTS” NEWS: Red Cross To Investigate If Gamers Are War Criminals.
UPDATE: Charlie Martin says there’s less to this story than meets the eye, and sends the ICRC response.
WAS RUSSIA behind Stuxnet? “So what better way to maintain Russian interests, and innocence, than to plant a worm with digital U.S.-Israeli fingerprints? After all, Russian scientists and engineers are familiar with the cascading centrifuges whose numbers and configuration – and Siemen’s SCADA PLC controller schematics – they have full access to by virtue of designing the plants.”
FRANCE HAS second thoughts on the Euro. “The French have growing reservations about the euro: 36% want to withdraw from the eurozone and go back to the franc, the old national currency; 4% have no opinion, which means that they don’t warmly support the single European currency; 44% say it is a handicap in the present context of a world economic crisis; 45% say it doesn’t serve the national interests of France; and a staggering 62% say it is damaging the average French family’s standards of living and purchasing power.”
#GREENFAIL: Durban Climate Change Talks Suspended.
IN RUSSIA, THOUSANDS PROTEST PUTIN, VOTE FRAUD. “Tens of thousands of Muscovites thronged to a city square to protest against alleged electoral fraud and against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party on Saturday, and demonstrators gathered in other rallies across the vast country, the largest public show of discontent in post-Soviet Russia. CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports there have been clashes in St. Petersburg, with riot police dragging away protesters. Demonstrations in Moscow have so far been peaceful but they are growing in number and anger.”
This in spite of the fact that the government has imprisoned the blogger who called for them, and opened school today to keep students away from the marches. Can you say “running scared?”
MICKEY KAUS: Obama Suddenly Not So Hot On Unions? “It’s almost as if Obama thinks private sector Wagner act unions are 1) doomed 2) politically toxic or 3) unnecessary in the coming age of benevolent paternalistic charity capitalists! … P.S.: Abandoning unions would of course fit in all too well with Tom Edsall’s ‘abandoning white working class’ thesis.”
JOEL KOTKIN: Wanted: Blue-Collar Workers. “That may sound odd, given that the region has suffered from unemployment for a generation and is just emerging from the worst recession in decades. Yet across the heartland, even in high-unemployment areas, one hears the same concern: a shortage of skilled workers capable of running increasingly sophisticated, globally competitive factories. That shortage is surely a problem for manufacturers like Wright. But it also represents an opportunity, should Americans be wise enough to embrace it, to reduce the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate.”
EUROPE: Jim Bennett wasn’t crazy about the Felix Salmon post I linked yesterday, and instead recommends this by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Europe’s blithering idiots and their flim-flam treaty.
Given that Merkozy cannot bring themselves to accept that Europe’s debacle stems from the euro itself, from a 30pc currency misalignment between from North and South, and from an over-leveraged €23 trillion banking bubble that German, French, Dutch, Belgian regulators allowed to happen… given that, yes, I suppose they have to find a scapegoat.
They have to whip up a witchhunt against somebody, so why not Anglo-Saxon bankers? Nasty reflexes are at work. German and French politicians in particular should be very careful about inciting populist hatred against a group that makes such easy prey. We have been there before. . . . No doubt these dramatic events will be uncomfortable for Britain, but this will all be swept away by bigger events before long. The Europols have not begun to work out a viable solution to their deformed and unworkable currency union, and perhaps no such solution exists. The system will lurch from crisis to crisis until it blows up in acrimony.
By then, a separate cluster will have emerged (not the 10 “outs” against the 17 “ins”, always a ludicrous concept), but rather a loose Anglo-Nordic-Swiss grouping that may not do so badly on the fringes and may begin to solidify into a seductively comfortable outer tier.
The mere existence of such a constellation might change the calculus of isolation for Spain should it finally tire of Franco-German dictates and depression, or should the Portuguese at last conclude that enough is enough.
Does France, for that matter, really want to be locked into a clammy embrace with an ever stronger Germany? The whole purpose of monetary union for Paris was to tie down a reunited Germany with silken cords. France now finds its own hands tied because of EMU, reduced to a humiliating side-kick.
Jim comments: “Of course, Ambrose is full of English understatement and reticence; I wish he would let go and tell us what he really thinks.”