PRESIDENT THINSKIN: Ha Ha Ha: Obama Has No Patience for ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Attacks. That’s because they’re working.
Archive for 2012
July 25, 2012
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Texas State University System Has $10,000 Degree Plan. “The Texas State University System is the state’s third major university system to announce the development of a bachelor’s degree that only costs $10,000 — a response to Gov. Rick Perry’s 2011 call for more affordable higher education offerings.”
TALKING POINTS MEMO: Dems Set Hostage Trap For GOP On Bush Tax Cuts.
This is why Republicans need to have some carefully chosen tax increases at hand to call the Dems’ bluff. Repeal the Eisenhower tax cuts!
UPDATE: A reader suggests that Repeal The Hollywood Tax Cuts! is a better slogan. And it is!
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Could ObamaCare Make The Uninsured Problem Worse?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: An Academic Auto-da-fe? This seems correct, and indicates that there’s an intellectual, as well as a financial bubble in place:
Sociologists tend to be political and cultural liberals, leftists, and progressives. That itself is not a problem, in my view. (I am not a conservative.) A critical progressive outlook is part of sociology’s character and contribution to the world, making it an interesting and often useful discipline, especially when it comes to understanding poverty and inequality, determining whether social policies are effective, and establishing why education systems succeed and fail. But the ideological and political proclivities of some sociologists can create real problems.
Many sociologists view higher education as the perfect gig, a way to be paid to engage in “consciousness raising” through teaching, research, and publishing—at the expense of taxpayers, donors, and tuition-paying parents, many of whom thoughtfully believe that what those sociologists are pushing is wrong.
It is also easy for some sociologists to lose perspective on the minority status of their own views, to take for granted much that is still worth arguing about, and to fall into a kind of groupthink. The culture in such circles can be parochial and mean. I have seen colleagues ignore, stereotype, and belittle people and perspectives they do not like, rather than respectfully provide good arguments against those they do not agree with and for their own views.
The intellectual bubble, too, is heading for a bust.
UH OH: Romney on security: ‘The surest path to danger is always weakness and indecision.’
If only Obama dealt as harshly with the country’s enemies abroad as he does with his political enemies at home . . .
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Government Motors: GM Stock Hits New Low, Taxpayer Loss Hits $35 Billion.
JAMES TARANTO: More Thoughts on Bloomberg’s Idiotic Police-Strike Plan.
We are unable to comprehend what Bloomberg could have in mind when he says he didn’t mean his comment “literally.” Last year, when lefties went hysterical over “violent” and “eliminationist” rhetoric from the right, it was clear that almost all of the examples they cited were not literal. Politicians and political observers have long drawn metaphors from the language of combat. Some such metaphors, like the word “campaign,” are so ingrained in the language that they are dead ones.
By contrast, as far as we know there is no metaphorical meaning of the phrase “go on strike.” Further, the context of Bloomberg’s remarks makes clear that he did mean the phrase literally. Merriam-Webster defines strike as “a work stoppage by a body of workers to enforce compliance with demands made on an employer.” Bloomberg said he wants police to declare “collectively”: “We’re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”
I predict that such a strike — not that it’s likely to happen — would lead to less crime, and far less political support for the police. Meanwhile, just to prepare against the eventuality, I think I’ll go buy a gun.
Plus this:
The prospect of police shirking their duty to protect the citizenry strengthens, not weakens, the case for private ownership of firearms and other tools of self-defense.
A police strike, as Bloomberg figured out a day late, is illegal in itself. Bloomberg’s strike would be for the purpose of curtailing the citizenry’s constitutional rights. The mayor urged an unlawful rebellion by government employees against their employers, the people. Since ours is a government of the people, established by the Constitution, this was nothing less than a call for insurrection.
Bloomberg’s an embarrassment to New York. They should be ashamed to have such an ignorant, anti-civil-rights hick running the show.
UPDATE: Mike Bloomberg, criminal? It’s not just the strike that’s illegal. It’s also illegal in New York for public employees to call for one:
You may be familiar with the Taylor Law for its prohibition on strikes by public employees, such as teachers, transit workers, and, yes, police officers. But the law also declares that “no public employee or employee organization shall cause, instigate, encourage, or condone a strike.” Bloomberg is a public employee, no? And he appears to be encouraging a strike? Not that we expect Bloomberg to be brought up on charges or anything, but still, he’s the mayor! He’s not supposed to be violating the law.
He may wriggle out on a technicality, but that’s hardly the point. A truly pathetic exhibition by an increasingly embarrassing politician.
IN WISCONSIN, A GUN RIGHTS ACTIVIST WINS A JURY VERDICT: “This is America, and we’ve got our gun rights… and our jury rights.”
IN TODAY’S NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Concealed weapons save lives. “The evidence is clear: Massacres are stopped by legally armed citizens.”
CLAYTON CRAMER: ‘Deinstitutionalization’: Mass Murder and Untreated Madness. “It’s all but impossible now to involuntarily commit the obviously ill.”
WHAT DID TIM KNOW, AND WHEN DID TIM KNOW IT? The Hill: Geithner To Be Grilled On Libor Scandal.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Solyndra figures attend swank Obama fundraiser.
DONALD SENSING: Want a Janitor’s Job? Get A College Degree. Hey, if Obama gets another term, we’ll probably have PhD’s pushing brooms — and feeling lucky to have the work.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: You Don’t Owe That: An Obama proposal would make it easier not to repay student loans.
OPRAH OFFENDS the Indians. Oprah? Wasn’t she pretty famous once?
July 24, 2012
HOW BAD HAVE THINGS GOTTEN FOR PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS? They Can’t Even Organize The Democratic-Controlled Senate Cafeteria: “Senate food service workers voted today not to join a Service Employees International Union-affiliated local. The Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board — the SEIU-affiliated union under which the Senate employees would have been organized — reported to Roll Call that while it could not yet release an official tally, the number of votes needed to certify the union had clearly fallen short.”
FORGET THE CONDOR: Three Days Of The Jackass.
BAD ECONOMIC NEWS CONTINUES: “This time it’s manufacturing: U.S. manufacturing expanded in July at the slowest rate in 19 months. This is consistent with slowing GDP growth, which is expected to decline from an unacceptable 1.9% rate in the first quarter to an even worse 1.5% rate in the second.”
HANNA ROSIN: In the Aurora Theater the Men Protected the Women. What Does that Mean? Something uncomfortable, apparently.
UPDATE: Reader John Steakley emails: “Hanna Rosin 1912: ‘An inordinate number of distinguished gentlemen remained aboard the Titanic whilst the ladies boarded lifeboats. Whatever does it mean?'”
ANOTHER UPDATE: “Your family needs you alive.”
MORE: Reader Jim Randolph writes: “It’s amazing how people become conservative in a crisis. Liberalism is a luxury to be cast aside in emergencies like so many other costly possessions. Those who cling to liberalism in these cases become the victims they so strive to protect.”