WASHINGTON POST: Where Obama failed on forging peace in the Middle East. “The way Obama managed the Israeli-Palestinian issue exhibited many of the hallmarks that have defined his first term. It began with a bid for historic change. But it foundered ultimately on his political and tactical misjudgments, on a lack of trusted relationships and on an outdated view of a conflict that many of his closest advisers imparted to him. And those advisers — veterans of the Middle East peace issue — clashed among themselves over tactics and turf.”
Archive for 2012
July 15, 2012
YOU’VE GOT TO FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO GO PALEO:
In May the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina on behalf of blogger Steve Cooksey. The suit claims the state violated Cooksey’s First Amendment right to free speech when it informed him that his anti-diabetes blog runs afoul of North Carolina laws requiring a license to dispense anything the state considers dietary advice.
This week Forbes is reporting that the main driver of the state crackdown on Cooksey is the national Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association). Forbes reports this group, based on internal documents the magazine says it obtained, pushes states to establish powerful dietetics and nutrition boards—like the board in North Carolina that has targeted Cooksey—“for the express purpose of limiting market competition for its Registered Dietitian members.” (Emphasis in original.)
If true, this is both illegal and troubling. But surprising? Hardly.
Punch back twice as hard.
A CULTURE OF COVERUPS? Rand Simberg: After the Sandusky coverup, can we trust Penn State’s internal ClimateGate “exoneration” of Michael Mann? “We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?”
UPDATE: Reader Aaron Chmielewski writes: “It should be noted, Mann was a major revenue source for the university.”
SCIENCE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists. “A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show. What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort. Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and ‘defamatory’ information about the agency.”
They told me if I voted for John McCain we’d have a paranoid administration full of surveillance efforts and enemies lists. And they were right!
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Texas Tech Law Student Crowned Miss Texas 2012.
NOT IF OBAMA AND THE GREENS CAN HELP IT: Shale will free US from oil imports, says ex-BP boss.
SOME BLUENOSE IS ALWAYS COMPLAINING: Sexual Liberation In Fish Is Nothing To Celebrate.
24TH CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Levar Burton Discusses His “Star Trek” Sexuality. “Yeah, one [romance] was with an entity that was actually a monster. And the other was with a holographic representation of the woman who designed the Enterprise engines. Neither of which I would necessarily call a healthy relationship.”
ED DRISCOLL: Apocalyptic Daze for the Secular Elites.
July 14, 2012
SEXUAL SIDE EFFECTS of the hair-loss drug Propecia.
AT AMAZON, summer essentials in Kitchen & Dining.
STACY MCCAIN REPORTS FROM anti-Obama protests in Fairfax County.
Meanwhile, reader James Wink emails: “I live about a mile away from where President Obama is speaking right now in Centreville. He is speaking at my daughter’s future High School….think about it. The President of the United states could have spoken 5 miles away at George Mason University….but decided to on a high school in must win Northern Virginia. The president’s most valuable commodity is time and instead of speaking to 1000s he decided on a smaller scale. Was he worried about filling an audience?”
UPDATE: Reader Larry Bronstein writes: “The Obama supporters who came to the rally at Centreville High School in Clifton, VA (Fairfax County) came from outside the voting precinct. Many drove cars with Maryland license plates and none of them were recognized by the 100’s of neighbors who turned out to protest Obama’s tax increases. The Obama rally was a terrible inconvenience as streets were closed and traffic stacked up, preventing residents from leaving or returning to their homes. And it appeared there weren’t even enough Obama folks to fill the high school gymnasium.”
SO THIS WEEK’S SUZE ORMAN SHOW WAS ALL ABOUT STUDENT LOANS: THE MOST DANGEROUS DEBT! It’s like she’s been reading up on the higher education bubble or something.
The stories were pretty bad: A guy with $160,000 in loans that his parents cosigned, but he never finished college and the parents are bankrupt. And a girl who Suze talked out of going to Vet school at a cost of over $240,000 in student loans. But mostly, the change from a few years ago — when financial-advice shows usually called student loans “good debt” because they were an “investment” in your future — to today is really noticeable and suggests to me that popular consciousness is likely to shift pretty fast.
SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ORIGINAL NATIVES? Native Americans arrived to find natives already there, fossil poo shows. “The scientists say that their results demonstrate conclusively their somewhat controversial thesis: that the ‘Clovis’ culture dating from around 13,000 years ago – which has long been thought to be the earliest human society in the Americas – was actually preceded by human habitation at the Paisley caves in Oregon.”
REMEMBERING WHEN MATT TAIBBI CALLED A BLACK MAN A “CORPULENT OREO.” More here.
THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.
THE LUNAR X-PRIZE: A Preview Of The Next Space Age?
Never mind the fact that the Google Lunar X Prize teams won’t launch their crafts until 2015. Those teams are already meeting extremely high demand for their still-hypothetical moon missions as different organizations lobby for space onboard.
“Our first mission payload is oversubscribed and our second is fully subscribed,” said Alan Stern, director of the Florida Space Institute and chief scientist for the Google Moon Express team. “There are a number of market segments for commercial lunar travel.”
Stern and his fellow X Prize teammates are hoping that the demand for access to their experimental lunar lander is a hint at things to come. At the recent SETIcon II conference, the entrepreneurs and scientists on hand say that the only way humanity is going to stay in space, especially with governments continuing to tighten the belt around their space agencies, is for commercial space companies to make a sustained profit. And the signs of change are already showing.
Faster, please.
CANCER BEATS NEW THERAPIES with evolution.
INKJET PRINTING as Extreme Art.
THOUGHTS ON BEING HEARD: Sarah Hoyt stands up to Oikophobia.
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