GRAVEYARD OF LUXURY: 14-car crackup includes, 8 Ferraris, Lamborghini, Mercedes.
Archive for 2011
December 5, 2011
FINALLY: A Beer Holder That Blocks Incriminating Facebook Photos: “Introducing Photoblocker: Cerveza Norte’s solution to unwarranted, potentially embarrassing photos taken in bars, pubs, clubs, dives, and lounges. Developed with Buenos Aires-based agency Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Photoblocker is — no joke — a beer cooler which senses cell phone flashes in its vicinity and flashes its own counteractive light, rendering the photos overexposed and the inebriated subjects unidentifiable.”
Well, there’s half my Christmas list taken care of.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Federal Role In Pricing:
Federal efforts in the past have focused on shining a spotlight on institutions with the highest rates of tuition growth and exhorting college officials to do more to restrain their spending growth and rein in their price increases. Recent news stories indicate that these largely symbolic approaches will continue to dominate the debate as the focus seems to be on extolling the virtues of those schools or states that freeze or reduce their tuition levels, move to three-year degrees, measure learning outcomes, or find ways to use technology to lower their costs per student and hopefully their prices
But these efforts are unlikely to yield satisfactory results, just as previous efforts have failed to slow cost and price growth or to reduce the amount students must borrow to pay for their education and related expenses. They will continue to fail unless the aim is to reshape the relationship between governments and institutions and the rules that determine how much students can and do borrow. Federal and state officials must recognize that the signals embedded in a number of policies have contributed to the past growth in costs, prices and student debt — and then do something about it.
We’re not serious enough about that yet.
PUBLIC PENSIONS: Some Numbers And Reality. “I can get into the details of the situation where $29 billion in deposits and $62 billion in payouts aren’t a problem… but that’s not the situation that holds in NJ.”
CLIMATEGATE 2: EMAILS LOADED WITH BOMBSHELLS.
HOT ON THE TRAIL of a planet that’s just right for life.
I DOUBT IT, BUT WE CAN HOPE: Is A Workable EuroDeal Actually In The Works?
UPDATE: This doesn’t look so good.
CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Eyeglasses That Don’t Smudge.
TIRE SCIENCE: Bridgestone Goes Airless.
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: How To Pick A Candidate.
STEPHEN GREEN: WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. “For the Democrats, it might all come down to Florida. Again. It didn’t have to be that way, if only they’d listened.” This administration hasn’t been big on listening.
IN THE MAIL: From Michael and Mary Eades, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle: The Simple Plan to Flatten Your Belly Fast.
MORE PROBLEMS FOR ERIC HOLDER: Gunwalker: Justice Dept. Violated U.S. Laws Beyond Those Being Investigated.
As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred.
I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to include departments and agencies of the U.S. government — and all foreign drug cartels.
I am familiar with these prohibitive statues because several years ago, while serving as the senior drug analyst for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was tasked to initiate and became the principal drafter of legislation which became known as the Kingpin Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 1901-08). The Kingpin Act is an extension of the highly successful IEEPA sanctioning program specifically targeting Colombian drug cartels. It expands sanctions authority against various drug cartel operations worldwide — including Mexico — which have been determined by the president to be threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.
A violation of any of the IEEPA sanctioning programs or the Kingpin Act carries stiff penalties, both criminal and civil, and potentially totaling decades in prison and tens of millions of dollars in fines. It is not necessary that an individual or governmental entity be shown to have “knowingly” violated any of these programs: it is illegal for any U.S. entity or individual to aid, abet, or materially assist — or in the case of Operation Fast and Furious, to facilitate others to aid, abet, or materially assist — designated drug traffickers. There are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Ariz. congressman: Pressure to resign is getting to Eric Holder. It should be. “At least 300 Mexicans were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: DEA Laundering Money For Drug Cartels? “Unlike Fast & Furious, this doesn’t appear to be an operation designed primarily for domestic policy manipulation rather than law enforcement, but it does call into question the judgment of high-ranking US officials.” Can we just shut down ATF & DEA?
#OCCUPYFAIL: Wall Street Plays Occupy White House. “Despite his occasional remarks that decry ‘fat cat’ bankers, Obama has effectively serviced the financial bigwigs. Bank prosecutions have declined markedly under Obama — to levels not seen for more than 25 years. Obama has even tried to derail aggressive bank prosecutions pursued by state attorneys general, most of them liberal Democrats.”
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Graphic: How Presidents’ Pay Compares With Professors’ Salaries.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Why I Wish I’d Gone Ahead And Voted For McCain. “I don’t care for pretty much any of the GOP candidates, but any of them are still better than a second term of President Obama with nothing to lose. And that realization makes a pretty big difference for me.” Remember this come next November.
UPDATE: Reader Kim Sommer writes: “Have you come up with a syphilitic camel t-shirt yet for the 2012 election? I’d buy one.” Heh.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Related item here.
MORE: From reader Ken James:
A prediction: If Gingrich wins the GOP nomination the MSM will make sure everyone knows that debating is not the way to select a President and is an over-rated forum. Substance is what counts and Obama has so much more of that than Gingrich. They will rattle off all Obama’s accomplishments, followed by all Gingrich’s failures. Cherry-picked of course, with untruths scattered liberally about.
But, they will give Obama an out from debating. And his supporters will accept it gladly, and use the media’s talking points for justification, rather than see their Won, lose.
I won’t take that bet.
THE HILL: Ties to Corzine put Democratic lawmakers in tricky position.
A former U.S. senator from New Jersey and governor of that state, Corzine is a longtime leader of the Democratic Party who served as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2004. He is also a generous financial supporter of President Obama.
Corzine gave $15,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Sept. 28 and $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee in June.
While he has contributed to Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Reps. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and George Miller (D-Calif.), Corzine has become a political liability to his former allies on the Hill. . . . The recipients of Corzine’s campaign contributions include Holt, Pallone, Miller, and Reps. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Steve Rothman (D-N.J.).
Quick, go through the archives to see what they said about Abramoff.
MICHAEL WALSH: Eric Holder’s Fast And Furious Lies:
It was all a lie. The angry denials, the high dudgeon, the how-dare-you accuse-us bleating emanating from Eric Holder’s Justice Department these last nine months.
Operation Fast and Furious — the “botched” gun-tracking program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — did, in fact, deliberately allow some 2,000 high-powered weapons to be sold to Mexican drug cartel agents and then waltzed across the border and into the Mexican drug wars — just as Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, who are leading the congressional investigations, have charged all along.
That’s the conclusion we can draw from Friday night’s nearly 1,400-page document dump, which gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the Justice Department as it struggled earlier this year to come up with an explanation for the deadly mess — and “misled” Congress.
Now the man who supervised it, Attorney General Holder, will appears before Congress again Thursday to testify in the exploding fiasco. But there’s really only one question he needs to answer: Why?
Why did Justice, the ATF and an alphabet soup of federal agencies facilitate the transfer of guns across the border — without the knowledge of Mexican authorities — when they knew they couldn’t trace them properly?
I have my suspicions.
FINANCIAL TIMES: China To Prepare For Social Unrest.
THE HILL POLL: Voters want to cut lawmaker pay and make them work longer. Personally, I’d like to pay them more but have them work less. Double their salary, and have Congress meet for no more than 90 days a year. . . .
HAROLD & KUMAR’S AMERICA: Is Kumar the 99%?