NEW BOOK: Nancy Pelosi’s AmGen Conflict.
Archive for 2011
November 18, 2011
THE DEBT GENERATION: “I voted for Obama.” Note the past tense.
I guess the New York Times was right.
#OCCUPYFAIL: PR Expert: “The whole world is watching. And it’s generally repulsed by what it’s seen.”
Related: ‘Frothing Degenerate Mob’ Would Make a Great Name for a Punk-Rock Band. “What the MSNBC crowd refuses to recognize is that the offensive aspects of the Occupy movement are not incidental to it, but an expression of the movement’s anti-social essence. The mobs who are attacking ‘Wall Street’ are anti-wealth and anti-capitalism and, if you understand what wealth and capitalism represent, you understand that the Occupiers are also anti-work, anti-thrift and anti-enterprise. That is to say, they are fundamentally hostile to bourgeois values.” For some, of course, that’s the primary appeal.
Plus this: “Stipulate that wealthy interests have gamed ‘the System’ to their own advantage, so that Goldman Sachs, General Motors and other corporations deemed ‘too big to fail’ have received windfalls at taxpayer expense, in repayment of their support for the bipartisan corruption in Washington. But the Occupiers aren’t reading Peter Schweizer’s shocking new expose of crony capitalism or demanding criminal prosecution of Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, et al.”
AGE DISCRIMINATION out in the open.
SPEAKING OF RECIPES, here’s my recipe for Lamb and Guinness Stew.
And, while I’m posting these, here’s the recipe for Insta-Chicken. Plus, a quick recipe for Pasta with Tomato, Basil and Chevre sauce.
THE HILL: Forty Republicans call for resignation of Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general. “Forty Republicans sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday pushing him to ask for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), highlights Holder’s role in the botched gun-tracking operation known as Fast and Furious, which was run under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”
The number keeps climbing. And at this point, the “botched gun-tracking operation” explanation is somewhere between most-charitable and just plain implausible.
JAMES TARANTO: The Brain-Dead Left: Obamaville’s incoherence is a symptom of intellectual exhaustion.
“They paused to scream at the walls of a Citibank branch.”
To our mind, that sentence more than anything we’ve read encapsulates the spirit of Obamaville. It originally appeared in a San Francisco Chronicle story about an incident in which “dozens of college students” invaded a Bank of America Branch, “pitching a tent and chanting ‘shame, shame’ until they were arrested.” (The original Web version of the story is available here.)
On the way to B of A, they paused at Citi to scream at the walls. These are college students, acting like 2-year-olds throwing a tantrum. What does that tell you about their critical thinking skills–and about the standards of American higher education? The likes of the New York Times expect us to take such incoherent spasms of rage seriously as a political “movement.” What does that tell us about the standards of the liberal media?
NPR, as a reader emailed and as I noticed myself, has been all over the Occupy movement in the most charitable of ways. The contrast with the Tea Party — both in terms of the behavior of the participants, and the tone of the media coverage — is stunning, even to those of us jaded by past performances.
CONN CARROLL: Obama Can’t Run Away From #Occupy.
ELIZABETH WARREN not so big on Harvard being Occupied.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): For many retirees, 80 is the new 65.
A quarter of middle-class Americans — defined as earning between $25,000 and $99,000 annually — say they will “need to work until at least age 80,” according to the annual retirement study by Wells Fargo.
“Another interesting shift in the mindset of Americans is their perception of how much money they need. Three-fourths of respondents said it’s more important to have a specific amount versus a date: $350,000 was the median nest-egg goal, but median retirement savings were only $25,000 dollars,” said Laurie Nordquist, executive vice president of institutional retirement at Wells Fargo.
Money managers will tell you that the driving force behind delayed retirement is the savings gap. The gap is widened by grim economic factors hitting the middle class.
Indeed.
SALE, TODAY ONLY: Altec Lansing MIX Digital Boombox. It’s cool that you can toggle between multiple iPods, etc.
#OCCUPYFAIL: What I Saw At “Occupy Louisville.”
HEATHER SOLOS’ BOOK Home Ec 101 is free for Kindle if you’ve got Amazon Prime. And, of course, if you bought a Kindle Fire, you’ve got 30 days of Prime for free.
UPDATE: Okay, it’s a little confusing, but it’s free through the Kindle Lending Library. If you just buy it, it’s still $8.99.
DAVE KOPEL: Will the Necessary & Proper clause save Obamacare? Not if the Court follows McCulloch v. Maryland. Here’s Kopel’s Yale Law Journal piece, coauthored with Gary Lawson.
INFLATION: Poll: 90% Say They’re Paying More For Groceries Compared To A Year Ago. Plus this: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of U.S. Adults shows that 81% are at least somewhat concerned about inflation, including 47% who are Very Concerned.”
#OCCUPYFAIL: Gingrich to media: Let me explain the difference between the tea party and OWS.
UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: An Occupy Movement Based On 99% Lies. “In fact, the average income for the top 1% has dropped about 9% in real terms over the past decade, according to IRS data. Census data show a similar decline for top-income earners. Meanwhile, the Gini Index — a common measure of income inequality — has been almost dead flat since 2000. And to the extent that inequality has climbed over the past 30 years, it’s been in concert with economic growth, rising during the Reagan and Clinton boom years and sagging during economic slumps. . . . Sachs’ claim that Reagan’s policies punished the country with crushing unemployment is even more ludicrous. Reagan’s tax-cutting, deregulating, fiscal conservative policies propelled the economy to an unprecedented era of sustained growth. Between 1981 and 2008, unemployment averaged just 6%. Only after Obama started to undo everything Reagan achieved did unemployment spike, averaging 9.3% since he took office.”
Well, you don’t want to take economic advice from Jeffrey Sachs. Just ask the Russians.
THANKSGIVING RECIPES: Here’s my recipe for Thanksgiving Leg of Lamb. I’ll be making it again this year, though I’ve noticed that the price at Kroger’s is higher than last year.
But I guess that’s no surprise.
UPDATE: On grocery prices, reader Michael Roberson writes: “It’s not just that we are paying more but we are paying more for less. The packaging got smaller, i.e. going from 16 oz. to 12 oz. but stayed essentially the same price. Now the smaller package has gotten more expensive as well. Double whammy.”
GREEN FAIL: Beacon Power Follows Solyndra Into Bankruptcy.
This week, even the usually hesitant Anti-Defamation League released a report that showed how much of the OWS included supporters of Hamas, opponents of Israel’s right to exist, and old fashioned anti-Semites. “History demonstrates,” Abe Foxman of the ADL said, how “time and again… economic downturns can embolden anti-Semites to spread malicious conspiracy theories and promote stereotypes about Jews and money. As a consequence, these statements must not be left unchallenged.” To date, no official representatives of OWS have addressed this issue.
A few days ago, the ADL released a more definitive condemnation, obviously because no one from the OWS responded to Foxman, who implied that the anti-Semites were just a fringe element of the protest.
When you go after “the banker” and “the 1%,” anti-semitism is going to wind up being more than a fringe.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: MLA Decries Impact of Rising Student Debt.
ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE at the EPA?
November 17, 2011
#OCCUPYFAIL: “Well over 1,000, eh? The Wisconsin protests at their height topped 100,000. And these folks are in New York City. Madison, Wisconsin has less than 3% of the population of NYC, yet we had 100 times as many protesters. And OWS has 1,000 times the press coverage. How do you figure that? I guess it’s like the reason why I covered the Wisconsin protests: They were right down the street.”