Archive for 2011
January 6, 2011
A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT: In Exchange for Buying American Jets, Turkish Officials Tried to Finagle a Shuttle Ride.
NAH, JUST THINK OF IT AS COMFORTABLY CASUAL: We Need A Fashion “Reset” Button.
THE HOTTEST NEW kitchen gadget of 2011.
MARY KATHARINE HAM EMAILS about this video contest for young filmmakers — dramatize the deficit, and win $5000. But the deadline is January 24, so work fast!
EXPLOSIONS REPORTED in two Maryland government buildings.
UPDATE: More here.
FROM SOCCER MOMS TO GENERATION X: The Return Of The Minivan. “The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who, when they have kids, worry they are no longer cool, and those who, when they have kids, think being a parent is cooler than anything they’ve ever done. The latter group will consider a minivan. The former won’t, even if you paint a skull and crossbones on it.”
DIRE STATES: Deep in debt, most governors will have to either raise taxes or cut spending— exactly what not to do when recovering from a recession. For most, the spending cuts are going to have to take priority. “Neither taxpayers nor bondholders will fund ever-increasing spending. It can’t go on forever; it will stop.” Yes, that rule from Herb Stein — things that can’t go on forever, won’t — is the defining rule of this age.
WAITRESS: iPhone Software Glitch Got Me Fired.
UPDATE: Reader Robert Hegblom writes:
“Garvey, a 2005 Tulane University graduate, told the Herald yesterday that she worked late on New Year’s Eve and went to bed at 5 a.m., setting her alarm for 10 a.m. so she’d have plenty of time to make her noon shift.”
Shouldn’t this be filed under the “Higher Education Bubble” category?
Sounds like it.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, we’d still be pouring troops into Afghanistan in 2011, and they were right!
REP. LAMAR SMITH SENDS OUT the first DOJ oversight letter to Eric Holder.
I DON’T WEAR ‘EM YET, BUT THIS WOULD BE NICE: Will Autofocus Liquid Crystal Lenses That Adjust ‘In A Fraction Of A Second’ Replace Your Bifocals? Faster, please.
BALDNESS CAUSED BY not enough stem cells?
A CUSTOMER-RELATIONS PROBLEM at KFC.
Related: “The KFC where this took place is Halal-friendly but evidently customer-hostile.”
Plus, “In any place I’ve worked an outburst like that would get you fired on the spot.”
MORE ON HUNTING AND EATING INVASIVE SPECIES. I think when we message space aliens, the first question we should ask is, “Do you taste like chicken?”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Sophists. “In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street. . . . The public might have better believed the deficit nostrums of former budget director Peter Orszag had he not retired after less than two years on the job to position himself for a multimillion-dollar billet at Citigroup — itself a recent recipient of some $25 billion in government bailout funds. Are we to wonder why an angry, grassroots tea party movement spread — or why it was instantly derided by our experts and technocrats as ill-informed or worse?”
GM drives your Volt before you do. “Don’t worry if you go to pick up your Chevy Volt and you see it has 25+ miles on the odometer. Chances are, a Volt-trained technician has taken it for an evaluation to make sure all systems are working properly. General Motors is calling it the In-Field Quality Assessment Program, and it will run through June of this year as the company ramps up production and gets these Volts dialed-in.”
IN NASHVILLE, a guitar auction for flood relief.
INSTAVISION: I talk with bestselling author (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Stephen Hunter, author of Dead Zero, about fiction, snipers, and gun culture.
AN EMAIL FROM SPEAKER BOEHNER ON THE DEBT LIMIT:
I’ve been notified that the Obama Administration intends to formally request an increase in the debt limit. The American people will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the President and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington. While America cannot default on its debt, we also cannot continue to borrow recklessly, dig ourselves deeper into this hole, and mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren. Spending cuts – and reforming a broken budget process – are top priorities for the American people and for the new majority in the House this year, and it is essential that the President and Democrats in Congress work with us in that effort.
Interesting. So is the blogospheric outreach.
CHANGE: Democrats’ Defection From Pelosi Is Historic. “With 19 Democrats withholding support from Nancy Pelosi for House speaker on Wednesday, it represented the largest defection from a party’s speaker nominee in nearly a century. The resistance in the Democratic Party to back now-former Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the ceremonial first vote of the 112th Congress registered higher than at any point since 1913, according to data from the Congressional Research Service.”
A QUESTION: Has Henry Waxman Driven Around His District Lately? “Is he aware of the vacant storefronts on the once bustling commercial thoroughfares that transect his district? Now that Republicans have regained the majority in the House, Waxman has lost his perch as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, giving him more time to return to Los Angeles and see the damage his policies (combined with those of overzealous California legislators) have wrought.”
THE BEST HEALTH CARE political pull can buy.
MEDIA IGNORING scandals at the ATF? “For many years, the answer would have been that to the MSM gun laws were a pet project and thus ATF a pet agency. Today, it may be a more generic problem. I don’t see much reporting in depth on … well, on anything. If the reporter couldn’t understand the issue in five minutes (or quote a press release in that time) it gets ignored.”