“BUTTONGATE:” Losing the David Brooks vote? “Can David Brooks possibly love an Obama that can’t even button a jacket correctly? Sure, you and I may think ‘Eh, it happens.’ But we’re not hyper-fashion-aware columnists for The New York Times.”
Archive for 2011
January 7, 2011
A BOGUS HIT PIECE ON FOR-PROFIT EDUCATION: Village Voice Caught in Jayson Blair-Style Fabrication Scandal.
CHANGE: House Votes to Repeal “Job-Killing” Health Care Law 236-181. In a bipartisan vote!
UPDATE: Related: “After Obamacare’s passage, if you had told Republicans that by January 2011 only 64 percent of Democrats would want to keep it, they would have danced jigs. The notion that nearly a quarter of Democrats support repeal of Obamacare is a big deal. Joe Biden might even throw in another modifier.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: BREAKING: CBO Says Repealing ObamaCare Would Reduce Net Spending by $540 Billion. “Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes.”
AT AMAZON, big markdowns on textbooks. Also, free shipping for students.
HEY, COMMANDER SPOCK, NICE BEARD! ACLU supports gun rights, Gun Owners of America opposes.
TOO MUCH FLUORIDE IN THE WATER. “Fluoride in drinking water — credited with dramatically cutting cavities and tooth decay — may now be too much of a good thing. It’s causing spots on some kids’ teeth. A reported increase in the spotting problem is one reason the federal government will announce Friday it plans to lower the recommended limit for fluoride in water supplies — the first such change in nearly 50 years.”
IS THE TSA living on borrowed time? “In America, after a holiday season rife with body scanning backlash, many of the nation’s airports have admitted they could eliminate TSA screeners altogether. Officials at Dulles International as well as Reagan National Airport say they are are actively considering such a switch. As the Washington Post reports: ‘lawmakers and lobbyists estimated that one in four of the nation’s airports expressed interest in switching to private security firms.'”
YOUR ODDS OF various autoimmune disorders.
CHANGE: Labor Force Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 25 Year Low, Adjusted Unemployment Rate At 11.7%. “While today’s unemployment number came at a low 9.4%, well below expectations, the one and only reason for this is that the labor force in America has plunged to a fresh 25 year low. Assuming a reversion to the mean in the long-term average participation rate back to 66%, means that the civilian labor force, which in December came at 153,690, a drop of 260,000 from November, is in reality 157.6 million, a delta of 3.91 million currently unaccounted for. Maybe someone can ask Bernanke during his imminent presentation before Congress what happened to the unemployed population, which would have been 18.4 million if this labor force delta was incorporated, resulting in an unemployment rate of 11.7%.”
SHOULD UNIVERSITY FACULTY live with their students?
BLAST FROM THE PAST:
Love the recutting of Radio Moscow. Hey, no fear.
CRONY CAPITALISM: “Big Labor and Big Business are teaming up to protect Big Government.” “This is a golden opportunity for Republican lawmakers and the 2012 contenders. Independent voters mistrust both government and Wall Street, and the sight of those entities in cahoots with organized labor should alarm them as well as Tea Partyers.”
BOSTON: SWAT Shooting Spurs Debate: “The fatal shooting of an innocent 68-year-old man by Framingham police reignited debate among law enforcement experts yesterday over the role of heavily armed, specialized units for routine drug busts.”
Here’s something I wrote on the subject a while back.
MEXICO: “The Mexico-is-a-failed-state meme is cropping up again in the U.S. media. It does get attention, which is why the media types go with it. Mexico could be a failed state, but it is a long, long way from being in that condition. It is, however, a stressed state finally confronting many destructive long-term social and economic problems, and corrupt political arrangements. . . . The Cartel War is a mix of counter-insurgency military operations, police action, and social modernization. It will go on for a long time. The point the failed-staters miss is that a failed state would not be able to confront its systemic problems. Mexico, to its credit, is confronting them.”
LESSON OF 2010: I have an inviolable right to your paycheck, but not to my own. When you consider that politicians extract graft from the transfer of wealth, but not from its retention, this actually makes perfect sense.
VERIZON WANTS 4G EVERYWHERE, even remote rural areas. Well, as someone who has their 3G broadband I have to say that they’ve done a good job deploying it even in quite remote areas.
UPDATE: Reader Deb Call emails:
I followed your link and just wanted to throw in my two cents on Verizon’s 3G mobile hot spot. I work from home and live in very rural Iowa farm country. I’ve exhausted every internet option that has come down the pike over the last 10 years and finally ended up with Verizon’s 3G when it arrived here in late 2009. I transcribe for a large hospital in Kansas City, 250 miles away, and as electronic medical records (EMR) has gained traction and become more interactive, it has been a struggle to keep up with the speed requirements. The company I work for has migrated from a batch format to real-time in the last couple of years and the latency issue was becoming a huge productivity killer for me. I almost had to close up shop about a year ago because I was using HughesNet and the latency was so bad I was spending more time waiting than typing. (I only get paid when my fingers are moving). At that time HughesNet was the fastest and most reliable of all options available in my area, and that is not saying much.
Right around that time, Verizon expanded their 3G coverage out here and I signed up without much confidence that this was going to be the solution. It was! While it’s still the limiting factor in my productivity, the lag is drastically reduced. I do occasionally run up against the 5 gig monthly limit, which can be an issue, but otherwise I can’t say enough about their service. Even in very bad weather, ice, blizzards, etc, I rarely notice a difference in the download speed. That was definitely not the case with my prior service providers. I used to literally plan my workload around the weather forecast so I wouldn’t miss a deadline due to loss of connection, especially during winter months. Not anymore. I even took it with me on a trip to Kauai last year and had great service in spite of being on the north shore, shrouded in rain and thick cloud cover for much of the time. It may take a couple of years for 4G to make its way out here but I’ll be first in line to upgrade the minute it’s available in my area.
Yes, my sister deployed it as a solution to living out in the sticks where she couldn’t get cable or DSL. It worked great for her.
IN THE MAIL: Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars.
PETER BERKOWITZ: What Would A Return To The Constitution Entail?
REASON TV: Slashing Spending In Post-Soviet Slovakia.
MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE DEBT CEILING: “I don’t have a problem with Republicans using the opportunity of raising the debt ceiling to demagogue the deficit problem–this is one issue that needs all the passion it can get. And Democrats can hardly complain, since one Senator Barack Obama was doing just that four years ago. However. If Republicans want to reduce the deficit–and they say they do!–then they should find some damn spending cuts to match the gargantuan tax cut they just demanded.”
I can think of some. And so can Nick Gillespie!
SHOCKER: After blowing the snow, Bloomberg’s poll ratings plunge. “A poll taken after the storm showed Bloomberg’s approval rating had plunged from 50% to 37% and only one in five New Yorkers think he handled it well.”
BLOWBACK: “For over 60 years, China has accused the West, particularly the United States, of surrounding China with a web of allies, united in a desire to keep China weak. Now China grows stronger, and China is, as they characterize it, pushing back. That is making the anti-Chinese alliance a reality, where it wasn’t before.”
TODAY ONLY: A 42″ Panasonic LCD TV for $499.