GEORGE McGOVERN, 90, IN HOSPICE CARE.
Archive for 2012
October 16, 2012
EUROPE STANDS UP FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Against Google. No, seriously. (I’m having trouble not saying this is like two wolves arguing whether they want their sheep broiled or baked. So, I guess I’ll say it.)
SIX PITFALLS IN TOWN HALL STYLE DEBATE.
THIS IS WHAT MY GUT SAYS: Romney Wins In A Landslide — Las Vegas Oddsmaker Doubles Down on Prediction. I’ll point out though I have never won a lottery or even a raffle, and my head is worried sick.
SHOCKED, I TELL YOU: Legal Expert: Salazar Violated Hatch Act During Colorado Campaign Swing.
ROMNEY 50, OBAMA 46 — IN DAILYKOS/SEIU POLL. “Finally, a demographic note—in this poll, 44 percent of respondents were conservative, compared to 16 percent who were liberal. In 2008, 34 percent were conservative, and 22 percent were liberal. Now this could point to a bad sample, or it could point to depressed enthusiasm among our base. Let’s really hope it’s the former.”
Well, maybe this is an indicator: “A friend in Texas told me of some local difficulties in getting big Romney lawn signs. Its possible there’s been a run on those signs since the first debate, and maybe local GOP organizations are running out. You know what Romney supporters who can’t find lawn signs should do? Put an empty chair on the lawn instead. Just one big empty chair. Says it all. Says it better.”
Related: 7 key states move toward Romney on new Rove Electoral Map.
UPDATE: Alex Nunez emails: “Sure, it’s anecdotal and hyper-localized, but compared to 2008, when it was All Obama, All Day, the signs in my neighborhood and town suggest a purpling of deep-blue Connecticut. Signs for Linda McMahon and Romney/Ryan dramatically outnumber those for the Democrats, and more have sprouted on lawns in the last couple weeks. Obama signs are virtually nonexistent.”
STORY UNRAVELING: AP sources: State Dept officials deny linking attack to anti-Islam video, raising questions. “The State Department said Tuesday it never concluded that the consulate attack in Libya stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam, raising further questions about why the Obama administration used that explanation for more than a week after assailants killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.”
Related thoughts here. “Don’t forget, Hillary has seen a variation on this play work before. Remember Janet Reno taking the blame for Waco? Clinton looked weak and Reno owned him for the rest of his presidency.”
AT AMAZON, New Releases on Blu-Ray and DVD.
Also, today only: Dark Shadows: The Complete Original Series (Deluxe Edition), $279.99. Sounds expensive, but it’s “a 131-DVD collection with all 1,225 episodes.”
IF YOU MISSED MY LINK LAST NIGHT, HERE’S THIS WEEK’S USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama’s Odd Space Success. And why doesn’t he try this sort of thing on Earth?
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, CRAZED RELIGIOUS FANATICS LED BY TALK-RADIO HOSTS WOULD BE CLAIMING A POLITICAL MANDATE FROM GOD. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “‘God is not going to allow this man to fail, because of people like you,’ radio host Yolanda Adams told the volunteers who had gathered to make calls and knock on doors, encouraging neighbors to register and then vote for Obama.”
ROSS PEROT REAPPEARS: We Can’t Afford Obama. “The fact is the United States is on an unsustainable course. At stake is nothing less than our position in the world, our standard of living at home and our constitutional freedoms. That is why I am endorsing Mitt Romney for president. We can’t afford four more years in which debt mushrooms out of control, our government grows and our military is weakened.”
WHY OBAMACARE = RATIONING FOR SENIORS: Dr. Mark Neerhof explains why Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will ineluctably lead to rationing of health care for seniors enrolled in Medicare. In a nutshell: severely ratcheting down payment for certain health care services will lead to a decreased supply of those services. Decreased supply will lead to waiting lists. For example, pacemakers may still technically be “covered” under Medicare, but if there aren’t enough physicians and hospitals willing to implant them (because of unprofitable levels of reimbursement), seniors will be forced to wait, as they are under the UK’s National Health Service. The queue for access may be too long for many.
ANDY MORRISS REVIEWS Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools. “It is no doubt uncomfortable for today’s law professors, largely a politically left-leaning group, to acknowledge that their high salaries and light work loads are merely the side effect of a system designed to exclude blacks.”
MORE COMPLAINTS about the iPhone 5. “Though overall customer satisfaction and demand remain high, some customers fret about a variety of problems — from intolerably slow hang times when email is loading to frustrating battery life.”
WATERGATE, IRAN-CONTRA, BENGHAZI — AND THE DEBATE QUESTIONS: “So what’s a moderator to do? If the 90 questions contain 9 or 10 about Libya and various aspects of what is emerging as a cover-up, there is a very good case for allowing them all to be asked,” Hugh Hewitt writes. “As they would have been if the issue was the break-in and the president was Nixon.”
IT’S BIG BROTHER, SISTERS: Helen Alvare’s op-ed in the Washington Examiner exposes Obamacare’s draconian, intolerant pro-abortion position and its not-so-subtle desire to force women into specific types of contraceptives such as injections, implants and IUDs, and away from birth control pills, rings, and more easily reversible methods. Talk about a War on Women.
GAMING THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE.
SCIENCE: How the Discovery of Penicillin Reshaped Modern Sexuality. “Regression analysis demonstrated that most measures of sexual behavior significantly increased immediately following the collapse of syphilis and most measures were significantly associated with the syphilis death rate. Together, the findings supported the notion that the discovery of penicillin decreased the cost of syphilis and thereby played an important role in shaping modern sexuality.”
RETIREMENT: The Scary Numbers Behind The Soothing Lies. What’s really scary is that those of us who’ve saved for our retirement will probably be robbed for the benefit of those who didn’t. In the name of “fairness,” you know.
ROGER L. SIMON: No, Hillary. Benghazi Will Not Go Away. Plus this:
This inability to confront the issue in an honest way has ramifications in Benghazi because, if this problem is not to be taken seriously, then security really isn’t necessary. Al Qaeda died with bin Laden. Of course now obviously it didn’t. Far from it. In fact, stamping out al Qaeda is an extraordinarily difficult task because it doesn’t really exist like a conventional organization. It is for the most part an ideology and for that reason can metastasize easily under multiple names. Indeed it seems to be constantly metastasizing.
So when Obama goes on The View or Letterman he is hiding something far more significant than his choice between Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey. He is hiding his viewpoint on the war of civilizations.
It must feel very odd to him as one who grew up in atmosphere that assumed Western Civilization was evil, at the same time that civilization gave him every honor and privilege. Now it’s yet more confusing as he is asked to defend the West against a deeply disturbed ideology that wants to engulf it.
Talk about something difficult to explain on The View. Or in a presidential debate. But I submit to you that is what is lurking beneath the debacle in Benghazi.
To paraphrase a line I think I once read about the late Peter Sellers, the president is quite an…interesting bunch of fellas it seems. Fortunately, only a few more weeks, and then all the pressure will be off.
UPDATE: An Insta-reader writes that it was Zoot Sims who called his fellow sax man Stan Getz “a nice bunch of guys.” Tough to find much “nice” about Mr. Obama, but to build on the basic idea, I love the photo of Obamaphenia currently atop on Drudge:
Which one — if either — is real?
READ’EM AND WEEP! SEN. TOM COBURN’S 2012 WASTEBOOK IS OUT: Nobody knows the lunacy of federal spending better than this Oklahoma senator. Here’s the 100 worst examples he and his investigators have found this year, like Martian pizza!
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A reader emails: “I don’t know your policy of commenting on your helpers’ posts, but in my opinion, the Mars Pizza (Mark Tapscott at 7:09 today) thing is a misplaced criticism in Senator Coburn’s report. I’m only now (in light of some recent emergency preparation work) coming to realize some of the food challenges related to Mars travel, or any travel beyond Low Earth Orbit. The military has only been interested in storing food for on the order of a couple years. The Meals Ready-to-Eat packs have about a three year shelf life, and are only meant as short-term rations for on the order of a week. In a Mars Direct scenario, it’s possible that the crew would need to eat food on the return to Earth which was sent to Mars over four years before departure (2 launch windows previously, or 52 months) which has its own set of challenges. I’m not sure that there’s a good response to this, though the pithiest would be ‘If Tom Coburn is worried about spending $947,000 a year on space food research, he must be really concerned about spending $3,000,000,000 or more a year on the Space Launch System, which NASA’s own research shows that the SLS makes exploration more expensive.'”
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): If you read this, it’s clear that Coburn’s complaint is largely based on the research being premature, since no human missions are in the offing any time soon.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University of Texas Plans To Join EdX. “Because the Texas announcement involves an entire system, it represents a major expansion of edX, which was founded by two universities (Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and was later joined by one other (the University of California at Berkeley). Coursera, another major MOOC provider, has been adding universities at a rapid pace.”
EDUCATION REFORM, PROGRESSIVE STYLE: Ban homework. I kid you not. Progressive French President François Hollande has proposed banning all homework in his quest to achieve the ever-elusive “social justice.” According to the Wall Street Journal:
As Education Minister Vincent Peillon told Le Monde, the state needs to “support all students in their personal work, rather than abandon them to their private resources, including financial, as is too often the case today.” The problem, in other words, isn’t with homework per se. It’s that some homes are more conducive to homework than others.
Kinda like a French “No Child Gets Ahead,” I suppose. We wouldn’t want to “abandon” kids to “private resources” like support, love, and a culture of hard work. Better to let the government take over all that stuff. Now that’s “progress”!
WE KNEW THAT ALREADY: Pakistan’s president admits his country created terrorist organizations.