ROSS DOUTHAT: Why Moderates Should Like Paul Ryan.
Archive for 2012
August 15, 2012
THE TWO-MINUTE-HATE OF LAST MONTH BORE VIOLENT FRUIT TODAY: Family Research Council shooter carried Chick-fil-A bag, posed as intern.
When will the Administration and its allies restrain their violent, eliminationist hate-speech attacks on those who believe differently?
Related: Jim Treacher: It’s only an “atmosphere of hate” if it’s useful to liberals. “An organization that’s been vilified by the left gets shot up by somebody yelling about their policies. Ho-hum. Politically motivated shootings are only news when they can be twisted around to make conservatives look bad. Not much chance of that here.”
Also: “Don’t shoot me, it was not about you, it was what this place stands for.”
CHANGE: Khan Academy Launches The Future of Computer Science Education.
As educators struggle to motivate more students to take up technology-related majors, breakout online education startup, Khan Academy, has a novel approach. ”Computer Science is an intensely creative field,” says Shantanu Sinha, President of Khan Academy, which gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at their brand new education portal that teaches Computer Science fundamentals through interactive drawing. “We really wanted to focus on creating something that could inspire young children, and get them excited and motivated to explore CS further.” The portal’s interactive design is a major evolutionary step for a website that has since been almost entirely based on YouTube lectures (with over 178 million views). I rarely get excited about online education, which often just recycles our antiquated education system into a digital format, but the new Khan Academy Computer Science project is beyond impressive.
Well, we need that.
IN SEARCH OF the next bubble.
A READER EMAILS THIS PICTURE of the line waiting to see Paul Ryan at Miami University in Ohio. Click to see it full size so you can see how far it stretches.
VIDEO: WE’RE NASA AND WE KNOW IT!
But will SpaceX respond and set up a whole East Coast / West Coast thing?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Women Are Usually Better At Cheating.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Grocery & Personal Care.
DAN BALZ: A Most Poisonous Campaign.
Vice President Biden triggered the latest round Tuesday with lines, that, had they been uttered by a Republican, likely would have set off an even bigger firestorm. Biden told an audience in Virginia that Romney would “unchain” the big banks if he were elected president and then added, “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
Biden later tried to temper his language, but the damage was done.
Nice to see the admission that there’s a double-standard.
THE WORLD’S SCARIEST SWIMMING POOL?
EVEN MORE TROUBLINGLY, THE “ERRATIC” BROCK IS ALREADY KNOWN TO HAVE EMPLOYED “ASSISTANTS” WITH ILLEGAL GUNS AS “SECURITY:” David Brock’s Far Left Hate PAC to “Target” Conservatives.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Push Grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: How Did Harry Reid Get Rich? His career in public service has ended up being remarkably lucrative.
Related: House members’ VIP loans from Countrywide excluded from subpoena, report says. “A Democratic committee chairman overrode his own subpoena three years ago in an investigation of former subprime mortgage lender Countrywide to exclude records showing that he, other House members and congressional aides got VIP discounted loans from the company, documents show. The procedure to keep the names secret was devised by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. In 2003, the 15-term congressman had two loans processed by Countrywide’s VIP section, which was established to give discounts to favored borrowers.”
MARY KATHARINE HAM: Video: Chicks Dig Paul Ryan.
DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Democrats Literally Do Not Want To Debate Simpson-Bowles. “President Obama commissioned former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles to come up with a deficit reduction plan. When they delivered their plan, Obama ignored them and proceeded to rack up about $5 trillion in new debt for the nation. One might expect that the president’s actions could come up in the presidential debates this fall. But if several Democrats get their way, no questions about Simpson-Bowles will be asked.”
Have you noticed how they always try to rewrite the rules so that they can win without fighting?
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): AP: This is the Feeblest Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression.
THE ECONOMIST: The Sad Demise Of The Three-Martini Lunch. “This may be short-sighted. Another recent paper from the journal Consciousness and Cognition by psychologists at the University of Illinois confirms what many have long suspected: a couple of drinks makes workers more creative. Tipsy employees, they say, find it hard to focus on a task, but this makes them more likely to come up with innovative ideas. This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge.”
I think American business did better back in the days of the executive three-martini lunch. Back then, managers were only active and alert for half the day; that meant that in the afternoon, workers could get stuff done unmolested. Today’s mineral-water-and-jogging managers are able to interfere all day long.
BIDEN BAGGAGE: Democrats Are Stuck With the Embarrassing Joe Biden. I dunno, if I were Joe, I’d be nervous.
Ah, who am I kidding? If I were Joe, I’d be clueless.
UPDATE: Sarah Palin: Dump Joe, Pick Hillary!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Beldar:
The only thing remarkable about the latest Biden gaffe is how routine these gaffes have become, and what a cosmic double standard everyone in the public eye — the press, both campaigns, everyone but the general public and its snarky bloggers — employs to avoid asking the question, “Just how panicked would we all be if Barack Obama suddenly had chest pains?” . . .
The best chance the Dems have to respond to the Ryan selection would be asymmetric political warfare — which translates quite neatly into replacing Biden with the most ambitious and most popular Democrat in the country, Hillary Clinton. Indeed, that will mesh like clockwork with the coming Obama pivot to foreign policy as the best possible distractraction, and the only substantive distraction, from the economic ruin he’s wrought.
Of course, replacing Biden would be an admission that the original choice was a dreadful mistake — intended, amazingly enough, to shore up Obama’s own weak experience credentials by adding the “expert” Joe Biden to the ticket — and Obama doesn’t like to admit mistakes.
MORE: Joe Biden: The Admiral Stockdale of the 2012 race?
MORE STILL: Several readers point out, correctly, that this is unfair . . . to Admiral Stockdale. Reader John Henry writes:
It is grossly unfair to mention Stockdale and Biden in the same breath much less compare them.
Stockdale was a highly decorated Naval Aviator (26 personal combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor and four Silver Stars) Served as President of the Naval War College, POW for 9 years in whihc he served as an example we should all hope to be able to emulate. President of the Citadel, Fellow at the Hoover Institute and more.
What has Biden ever done? Not particularly smart, he managed to get elected to the public trough. His primary accomplishment has been getting re-elected. His life has been so unaccomplished he had to plagiarize someone else’s biography when he ran for prez a few years ago.
Shame on you for comparing them. Biden isn’t fit to scrape the mud from Stockdale’s boots.
True.
PREPARING FOR the coming Mega-Quake. “Meanwhile, Americans have been reminded that earthquakes aren’t purely a California hazard. In August 2011, a 5.8-magnitude tremor struck near Richmond, Va. That quake, felt from Georgia to Quebec, was the largest to hit the Southeast in more than a century. Using new paleoseismic data and more complex computer-forecasting techniques, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is refining risk estimates for places such as the Cascadia subduction zone off the Pacific Northwest coast, the Wasatch fault near Salt Lake City, and the New Madrid seismic zone, extending from southern Illinois into Arkansas, which experienced four magnitude-7 quakes back in 1811 and 1812.”
CHANGE: Obama 2008 Co-Chair Hits Trail … for Mitt in Virginia today. “I can’t wait until Joe Biden calls Artur Davis a racist.”
I predict he’ll call him one of the worst racists of the 20th Century!
REINVENTING your kid’s lunchbox.
This kind of small-big partnership is part of a phenomenon I wrote about years ago.
UH, HOW ABOUT ON EVERY CALENDAR, JOE? Biden: ‘Folks, Where’s it Written We Cannot Lead the World in the 20th Century in Making Automobiles?’ Somebody remind him which century — er, and millennium for that matter — he’s living in. . . .
Actually, of course, we did lead the world in the 20th Century in making automobiles, until the UAW and the idiot managers at the auto companies ruined things.
And remember: Putting Biden on the ticket was Obama’s first presidential-level decision. Contrast that with the choice of Paul Ryan . . . .
HOMELAND SECURITY SEX SCANDAL WIDENS, ICE CHIEF GOES ON LEAVE: “Both Barr and Schriro are named offenders in the growing sex scandal within Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security. DHS has gone from angrily denying that it has a sex scandal, to putting government workers on ‘voluntary’ leave.”