RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Personal Or Business?
Archive for 2012
October 7, 2012
DEEP THOUGHTS with a homeless billionaire.
KATIE PAVLICH: Rumors Swirl: How Bad Will The Obama Foreign Donor Scandal Be? Depends on how good the reporting is.
JAMES TARANTO: “I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no way to defend his record as president.”
I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW ROBOT HONEY-MAKERS: Coming in 2015: Electronic Bee Brains Uploaded into Robot Insects Interestingly, my sons immediately remembered a Disney comic where Gyro Gearloose creates robot bees. I feel more confident in my pre-k educational strategy which for years consisted of buying them comics so I had a couple of hours a day to work in peace.
THE DINNER TABLE: “This is happening out there, all over. Best political ad I’ve ever seen.”
PAUL RYAN’S IMPOSSIBLE DEBATE CHALLENGE:
In a rational world, Paul Ryan should have a fairly easy time in the upcoming debate against Vice President Joe Biden. Ryan is a man who has mastered the intricacies of legislation and the federal budget while Biden has shown scant interest in anything in his senatorial career other than the AMTRAK schedule from Washington, DC to Delaware.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational world. We live in one where Barack Obama is president AND Joe Biden is vice president. To win a debate against Joe Biden one must be prepared to engage with a man who has hardly more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth.
Read the whole thing, to get a sense of Biden’s remarkably tenuous relationship with reality as the rest of us understand it.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Meet the High Priest of Runaway College Inflation (He Regrets Nothing). This sounds comforting: “Students have more debt than ever before. But the university president who helped propel a tuition arms race says schools are just getting started.”
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on DeWalt 20-volt cordless power tools.
Also, 50 Tools, One Battery with Makita Bare. (Bumped).
FOREVER SIX: The Traits of a Narcissist.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT REPORTER ARRESTED, RELEASED: “Okay… we get that you can’t find and deport 20 million people. But it seems like you could have found this guy without a lot of extra resources, eh?”
DEMS OUT ANDREA MITCHELL AS PARTISAN: This isn’t exactly breaking news, but the confirmation is always welcome.
‘LEEROY JENKINS COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT:’ “A Democratic state senate candidate in Maine has come under fire for her online alter ego, a level 85 orc named Santiaga who stalks the ashen lands of Azeroth,” in the online game World of Warcraft.
THE GRAND DELUSION: Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi boasts about his country’s great “victory” over Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a war that Egypt decisively lost
WHY DO HIPSTERS LOVE out-of-date technology?
…UNLESS A SPONTANEOUS MOVIE REVIEW BREAKS OUT.
RELATED: State Department withdrew 16-member special forces team from Benghazi one month before 9/11/12 terrorist attack.
CLIFF MAY ON JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE and what Ahmadinejad really said at the UN.
AND YET, HE’S HAD YEARS OF PRACTICE HIMSELF: Paul Krugman on ABC’S This Week: “The press just doesn’t know how to handle flat out untruths.”
Perhaps a good alien invasion would shake up the MSM.
WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY, CONTINUED: EPA Celebrates ‘Children Health Month,’ Encourages Recruiting Students for ‘Energy Patrols’ at School. Meanwhile, Lake County Florida considers ‘trash-cams’ at school cafeterias.
Perhaps MasterCard can sponsor these programs:
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UPDATE: This quote from Walter Russell Mead seems apropos:
Green jobs, green energy, green cars: the record of green public policy is far more problematic than most environmentalists are willing to acknowledge. Like the “peace activists” of the 1930s whose foolish policies helped Hitler stage a bid for global mastery by disarming the democracies, green activists today are often doing more harm than good.
The world needs better environmental policies; unfortunately, environmentalists are often some of the biggest obstacles to clear thinking and smart policy. The movement isn’t ready for prime time.
And yet, between MasterCard, American Express and GE-NBC, it’s certainly remarkably well sponsored.
RELATED: Harrison Bergeron’s Lunchline.
WAPO TO OBAMA: No, The Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Lead To The Economic Crisis.
SUSPICIOUS: Windfall: Obama Raises $181 Million, Only Around 2% of Donations Reportable.
Remember those dubious unverified credit card donations from 2008? Is this donation-smurfing?
GOING POGO: Pogo’s hoary old 1970 Earth Day cartoon rebounds in the reality of 21st century California:
On the first Earth Day, in 1970, a cartoon poster appeared at rallies in all 50 states. It showed a rueful opossum picking up papers, bottles, cans, wrappers—the detritus of modern life. Superimposed on the image were the words WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.
“What are they doing to us?” said Marilyn Tucker, a FedEx employee, as she stopped pumping at a central Los Angeles gas station at $37, well before the tank of her sedan was full. “It’s just ridiculous.”
As Lance of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog asks, “Who is the ‘they’?”
(And just as a reminder, “Under my plan…”)
THE KINDLE DAILY DEAL: 14 Novels By Philip K. Dick, $1.99 each.
SHOCKER: Gas Prices Rise Again Overnight In California. I had dinner last night with Rand Simberg, who thought that Romney should do a press conference in front of one of these gas stations, saying that this is how the whole country will go if Obama’s re-elected.