JEFF CARTER: Not so hot on stock buybacks. I think he omits the tax advantages.
Archive for 2011
September 30, 2011
“THE SPOT I HAVE, I EARNED.” No, honey, you didn’t. And you know it, too. Which is why you are holding a sign, instead of studying.
AT AMAZON, it’s the computer outlet sale.
POLIWOOD: Herman Cain ‘Teas’ Off After Morgan Freeman Plays the Race Card. Particularly powerful is the juxtaposition of the race-neutral 2006 Morgan Freeman with the race-baiting 2011 Morgan Freeman. Is this hope and change? According to Lionel Chetwynd, Freeman can’t deal with the first black president as “a powerful guy who’s a comprehensive failure.”
ANDREW KLAVAN talks about Willpower.
A. BARTON HINKLE: What’s wrong with “extremism?”
Suppose that, in 1955, a Southern political candidate had declared segregation obscene, laws against ethnic intermarriage odious and the notion of racial supremacy grotesque. Suppose he organized bus boycotts and lunch-counter sit-ins and marches for civil rights. Suppose he promised to overturn Jim Crow as soon as he took office. If any candidate had done that, he would have been widely denounced as the “most extreme” you-know-what-lover ever.
He also would have been right.
Kind of like people today who say the jig is up for the post-New Deal era of bottomless spending, and actually mean it.
IT’S MORE ABOUT THE LYING: The OnStar Scandal Isn’t About Privacy.
FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT, HE’S VERY FIT: “A lawyer who donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.”
BASS DEPLETED BY OVERFISHING in Southern California.
FROM STEPHEN GREEN: An Open Letter To A President Who Thinks We’ve “Gone A Little Soft.” “In 2008, we elected a man who promised us ‘a net spending cut,’ a guy who would go ‘line by line’ through the budget with steely eyes under his green eyeshade and trim Washington down to the bone. We elected — we thought we elected — a tough man to do a tough job. Who is soft, Mr. President, the electorate who went crazy for the tough guy, or the president who broke his promises while refusing to make a single tough decision about spending?” There was a lot of golf, though.
NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY BLOG: The SpaceX Falcon Heavy Booster: Why Is It Important?
FROM TIM CAVANAUGH, A SOLYNDRA ROUNDUP: Steven Chu, Oh Where Are You? “As Chu spends time with his family, we may have a clue to why the FBI launched its investigation of Solyndra: an investigation into possible inaccurate financial statements. The DoE’s impeccably timed $737 million loan to the Solar Energy Project is also smelling worse by the day. It can’t be a good sign when one of the most prominent beneficiaries of the loan is former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California)’s brother-in-law, and that isn’t even the scandalous part.” So where’s Chu?
Right here: Chu takes responsibility for a loan deal that put more taxpayer money at risk in Solyndra. “Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged Thursday making the final decision to allow a struggling solar company to continue receiving taxpayer money after it had technically defaulted on a $535 million federal loan guaranteed by his agency.”
GREEN CARS UNDERWHELM: Nissan Leaf nets middling 78-point Consumer Reports score, still beats Volt. Plus, range anxiety: “CR discovered that, under gentle driving conditions, the Leaf averaged 90 miles on a full charge. But in cold weather, CR’s testers report the range dropped to approximately 60 miles. It’s for this reason that CR refers to the Leaf as an urban runabout.”
IN THE MAIL: Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee Cuts Depression In Women.
Who knows what it’ll do for Anderson Cooper?
EUROZONE UPDATE: NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, and the death of EU Fiscal Union. “Judging by the commentary, there has been a colossal misunderstanding around the world of what has just has happened in Germany. The significance of yesterday’s vote by the Bundestag to make the EU’s €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) more flexible is not that the outcome was a ‘Yes’. . . . The significance is entirely the opposite. The furious debate over the erosion of German fiscal sovereignty and democracy – as well as the escalating costs of the EU rescue machinery – has made it absolutely clear that the Bundestag will not prop up the ruins of monetary union for much longer. . . . Yet Europe and the world are so used to German self-abnegation for the EU Project – so used to the teleological destiny of ever-closer Union – that they cannot seem to grasp the fact. It reminds me of 1989 and the establishment failure to understand the Soviet game was up.”
FRANK J. FLEMING: How To Make Obama Like Us. “Obama was elected on the promise of hope and change; he was going to make everything better by fixing the economy, ending all wars, and making every rainbow a double rainbow. As smart and capable as we all knew he was, he should have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. But instead, we’re even worse off than before — I don’t remember the last time I even saw a single rainbow. The only explanation is that somehow we’ve angered Obama and caused him to turn against us. It’s just that I’m not sure how. . . . We just need to accept the fact that we’re a bad country, and that’s why Obama is not following through on the hope and change he promised. So now what we need to do is try to figure out how to become a better country so Obama will like us and decide that he doesn’t need to destroy us. So I’ve done my best to study Obama and figure out some ideas to make us a country he considers worth saving.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Graphene nanoribbons grown inside carbon nanotubes develop electronic properties.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Weak income curbs consumer spending. “Incomes fell for the first time in nearly two years in August and consumers dug into their savings to keep spending, according to a government report that showed the impact of the weak jobs market.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Washington’s Quietest Disaster: Student loan defaults are growing, and the worst is still to come.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION (CONT’D): More Pay for Play… Obama DOE Awarded $400 Million Loan Guarantee to Top Bundler’s Solar Investment Project.
LIVE FREE OR DIE: A new Afterburner from Bill Whittle.