VIRGINIA POSTREL on judging people by their shoes.
Archive for 2012
July 10, 2012
THE MAC-TO-PC GAP has narrowed. In my house, Macs now outnumber PCs.
DESPERATE: Obama Administration Takes Credit for Inspiring Lexus Hybrid SUV–Which Began Production in 2004. Or maybe this is just a time-travel version of “leading from behind.” Of course, Ray LaHood’s no credit to the GOP, either.
AUTOGRAPHED COPIES OF MICHAEL TOTTEN’S NEW BOOK, WHERE THE WEST ENDS, are now available for preorder.
HAPPY 75TH BIRTHDAY TO SPAM: America’s favorite canned meat!
I think it may be dethroned by Tactical Bacon, though. It’s not just canned meat. It’s canned bacon.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Supreme Court’s Other Bogus Ruling.
VIDEO: Don’t Eat Your Dog: The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise.
President Obama may disagree on all counts! Video by Arthur Brooks, based on The Road To Freedom.
ARGENTINA’S DOLLAR BAN: Doomed To Fail. “In the latest chapter of Argentina’s war on economic reality, President Cristina Fernandez has banned the buying of dollars in a bid to halt capital flight. It’s a market verdict on her policies, and it won’t stop dollarization.” These are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama To Sign U.N. Anti-Gun Treaty. “We are assured by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who enthusiastically backs the treaty, that it only deals with international trade and trafficking and does not affect our Second Amendment rights. How the treaty would have dealt with Operation Fast and Furious, the administration program that walked guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, she does not say. We don’t believe such assurances, given by an administration that has shown no respect for the U.S. Constitution and has a robust gun-control agenda of which Fast and Furious may have been a part.”
SALON ATTEMPTS damage control for Brett Kimberlin.
UPDATE: Prof. Jacobson writes: “Remember that Pareene is the guy who made the ping pong balls joke about Michelle Malkin.”
WAPO: Obama’s record on outsourcing draws criticism from the left. “I think he has walked away from the campaign commitments.”
Related: Obama: “A Record of Failure Spanning The Globe.” “Through his ‘stimulus’ program billions of dollars from hard-working taxpayers were sent overseas.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Online Revolution Comes to Public Education. “If online education can really be made to work in secondary school, the shift away from big box high schools and centralized school districts is likely to pick up steam. In practical terms, it will mean that smaller schools can offer a more diverse curriculum (Mandarin classes in small town schools, art and music classes without the expense in every school of full time faculty and so on). America has the chance to build school systems that slash bureaucratic overhead and red tape while giving teachers more autonomy and parents and students more choice. Online instruction is a big part of making that happen; congratulations to all the students, parents, teachers and administrators brave enough to give this a try.”
FREE SPEECH UPDATE: Blogger Gag Order Quashed By Judge. “A judge on Monday lifted the harassment prevention order against local blogger Dan Valenti that had kept him from writing about Meredith Nilan and forced him to remove old blog posts about her. . . . District Court Judge Bethzaida Sanabria-Vega on June 27 ordered Valenti to remove references to the Pittsfield woman from his Planet Valenti blog.”
No order of remedial Constitutional Law courses for Judge Bethzaida Sanabria-Vega, alas. Congrats to the Western Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU for taking a hand.
PROMISES, PROMISES: “Barack Obama has an accountability problem. It’s not simply that during the 2008 campaign he made extravagant promises to heal the planet, slow the rise of the oceans, end political divisions in America, and usher in an era of hope and change. It’s that as a candidate and in the early days of his presidency, Obama and his top aides made a series of very specific promises on a range of issues.”
AT AMAZON, up to 55% off on Blu-Ray.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What’s Going On In California?
WAPO POLL: 54% Disapprove of Obama’s Handling of Economy. But wait, it gets worse: “When you consider how slanted the poll is, the numbers should terrify Team Obama. Of respondents only 24% call themselves Republicans, with a full 60% listed as Democrat or independent.”
THESE ARE CLASSIC SYMPTOMS OF A MONETARY SQUEEZE: Trades at Tehran’s currency bazaar ripple through Iran’s struggling economy. “Iranian authorities never took much notice of the traders at the bazaar — which feels like something between a stock exchange floor and an off-track betting center — until the difference between the central bank’s official rate for dollars and the street rate began to widen, lowering confidence in the rial and greatly increasing the amount of currency being traded on the unofficial market.”
I don’t know how they came to get the Bette Davis knees . . .
PROF. JACOBSON: Anti-pinkwashing conferences whitewash anti-gay terror in Palestinian areas. Of course they do. “Various anti-Israeli left-wing professors and professional activists, including those who hold themselves out as part of the gay rights movement, hold conferences to denounce pinkwashing, the positive publicity generated by Israel because of its record on treatment of gays, which stands alone in the Middle East as one of tolerance. Yet there is nary a word about the plight of gays in Palestinian Authority controlled areas.”
And of course there isn’t.
UPHILL BATTLE: Federal officials to defend EPA air rules.
GM’S DELPHI PENSION TOP-UP: Another billion-dollar slush fund scandal? “In other words, a bankrupt company spent $1 billion to pay for the pensions of the retirees of a complete separate company (GM spun-off Delphi in 1999). Until now the members of the Obama Administration Task Force have been unwilling to answer questions by the Inspector General of TARP as to how this decision was made and whether maybe, just maybe, the decision had something to do with the political clout of the UAW rather than being a prudent business decision by GM.”
WAR ON WOMEN: Democrat MA State Representative Punched Out Girlfriend.
MICKEY KAUS: “If I were a Republican I wouldn’t be happy that Rich Trumka’s AFL-CIO is backing off its traditional role supporting the Democratic convention. Given the dramatic post-2008 turn in the polls against organized labor, the lower profile planned by Trumka is a feature, not a bug, from Obama’s point of view.”