GALLUP: 2011 Is The New 1979. Plus this advice from Don Surber: “The economy will win the presidency for Republicans in 2012. Republicans should talk about nothing else, and should avoid troll questions by any reporter who tries to distract them. It’s desperation time.”
Archive for 2011
December 22, 2011
SUSANNAH BRESLIN: 3 Ways To Kick Start Your Career In The New Year.
IN THE MAIL: Hell on High: Devil’s Point: Book 3.
INSTAVISION: I talk with weightlifting expert Mark Rippetoe about his new book, Starting Strength, 3d edition, about what Arnold doesn’t know, and about how weight work can promote fitness for people of all ages. Plus, he answers InstaPundit reader questions.
And check out his website, StartingStrength.com, too. Lots of discussion in the forums.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “I was procrastinating, putting off a trip to the gym, and loaded up Instapundit. Your interview with Mark Rippetoe was all it took to get me off my duff and out the door to the gym.” Well, good.
MORE PUSHBACK ON ROMNEY: Moon Mines: Visionary or Senseless?
UPDATE: Reader Rosie Moore writes: “As we mining folk say, ‘Earth first: we’ll mine the other planets later.'”
ECONOMICS: The Most Important Graphs of 2011.
I’M NOT SURE IF I SHOULD TAG THIS “HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE” OR “LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:” Cal State campuses overwhelmed by remedial needs. “Wracked with frustration over the state’s legions of unprepared high school graduates, the California State University system next summer will force freshmen with remedial needs to brush up on math or English before arriving on campus. But many professors at the 23-campus university, which has spent the past 13 years dismissing students who fail remedial classes, doubt the Early Start program will do much to help students unable to handle college math or English. . . . The remedial numbers are staggering, given that the Cal State system admits only freshmen who graduated in the top one-third of their high-school class. About 27,300 freshmen in the 2010 entering class of about 42,700 needed remedial work in math, English or both.”
And yet California spends a fortune on schools and pays its (unionized) teachers very well.
TOM BLUMER ON SPENDING: A dysfunctional political class is uninterested in real solutions. Check out the graph on federal spending vs. revenue.
IT’S LIKE IT’S SOME SORT OF INSIDER CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE INTERNET OR SOMETHING: Legacy media bankrolling campaigns of SOPA cosponsors. “Traditional big media firms have contributed more than $5 million to the sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act, with California Democratic Reps. Howard Berman and Adam Schiff as the top recipients.”
Lots of Republicans among these names, too. I see that Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is a cosponsor and got $261,700. Is it too late for a Tea Party primary challenger?
UPDATE: Reader Jeff Mitchell writes:
Glenn. Saw your post this morning regarding donations to various pols… including my representative Marsha Blackburn. I went to her Facebook page and posted this on her wall:
“Regarding SOPA: Marsha Blackburn’s co-sponsorship of this bill is an outrage. This bill is a direct attack on First Amendment rights of every citizen with a computer and a blog. Any unmonitored comment linking a post to a “suspected site” would make any site a potential target of “big brother”. Do you, as a Republican not understand how this could be used for political purposes? Remember when youtube took down all of McCains content just prior to the 2008 election because some news footage was declared protected? this bill would extend those Draconian policies across the entire internet to be controlled by any content providers (mostly entertainment and MSM which have a decidedly LIBERAL bias) without DUE PROCESS of LAW. Marsha, you have to withdraw your support and return the corrupting donation of $261,700 from liberal entertainment special interests! ”
Her staff dutifully took it down immediately. I then went to my own FB wall and posted the identical content. I received the FB error msg, “Something went wrong. Try again later”. I repeatedly tried to post and received the same error. Interesting, eh? Is this what it has come to? Maybe it’s just a fluke or a coincidence. Or maybe not.
As an experiment, I posted “Marsha Blackburn’s cosponsorship of SOPA is an outrage. But she got a lot of money from the legacy media.” on Facebook, together with the link above. It went through just fine. I think it’s good to post stuff on pols’ facebook pages even if their staff takes it down — they still get the message.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Mitchell’s comment is on Marsha Blackburn’s facebook page now, along with quite a few other negative responses. I suspect it was just a Facebook glitch.
INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: Pentagon: US lacks knowledge to gauge Iran’s nuke program.
AT AMAZON, a bunch of holiday gift ideas.
Also, a bunch of new “lightning deals” every couple of hours.
But today’s the last day to get it there by Christmas, unless you live in an “express local delivery” area.
PROF. PAUL BUTLER: Jury Nullification Is A Good Thing. “Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 — in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, ’60 Minutes’ and YouTube — I guess I, too, have committed a crime.”
MADISON WISCONSIN SETTLES LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY OPEN CARRY ACTIVISTS. “The city settled the case without admitting wrong-doing. A condition of the settlement was it had to be accepted by all five plaintiffs against all of the defendants, which included the city and Police Chief Noble Wray.” (Via Ann Althouse).
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Liz Peek: Is The New York Times Obama’s Publicity Agent?
MICKEY KAUS: Big Trouble For Obama’s GM.
LOVE, PEACE, AND GREASE: SEIU Job Description: Train & Lead Members to Occupy State Buildings & Takeover Banks. Save this evidence for the RICO suits. . . .
WHY GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WORK: Promising Pilot Projects Don’t Scale:
It seems that the LA Unified School District recently revamped its lunch menus to eliminate fattening standbys like chicken nuggets, nachos, and flavored milk. The resulting meals are much healthier, but apparently also much less appetizing. As a result, participation in the program is down, and the LA Times found students replacing the Beef Jambalaya and lentil cutlets with things like Cheetos.
This happened despite the fact that the menu was tested extensively before they put it into operation. . . . I think one anecdote in the article is particularly telling. People complained that salads dated October 7th were served on the 17th–and the district responded by first, pointing out that that was the “best served by” date, not the date when the food actually went bad; and second, removing the labels because they were “confusing”. Now, as anyone who has forgotten to eat a bag of lettuce knows, while it may not actually be rotten after 10 days, it probably doesn’t look much like something you’d eat voluntarily. This is not something that you can change by stamping a different “sell by” date on the container. If that were my choice, I too would come to school with a backup bag of Cheetos.
So why would he say something so obviously weird? There are two reasons I can think of: 1) in a large and complicated distribution system, and with their limited funds, he knows that there is no way to actually solve this problem, so they mounted the only defense they could. Or 2) the school district still has the mentality of the old system, which is mostly focused on not poisoning anyone. In fact, there isn’t much difference between Chicken nuggets that won’t poison you, and Chicken nuggets at their absolute peak of freshness. And the employees just sort of assumed that the same set of rules would work for lettuce.
That’s what real world applications are up against.
I think that chicken nuggets deserve more respect than that. And changing the labels seems particularly like something that would happen in a public school system. Meanwhile, let me once again recommend James Scott’s Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed.
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY, PART TWO: More concealed carry correlates with less crime.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Light Bulb Ban Shines A Light on Crony Capitalism.
JULIAN SANCHEZ: Killing The Internet to Save Hollywood.