Archive for 2012
October 9, 2012
BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION: San Francisco Tea Party greets Obama; Picks up the trash. “Tea Partiers shouted ‘pick up your garbage’ and ‘this is San Francisco, what about recycling?’ There was no response. They chanted ‘Obama leaves a mess.’ Still no response. Eventually, a tea partier (wearing the black cowboy hat) crosses over and starts to pick up the trash on his own.” Judging by the photos, a pretty big crowd.
Plus this: “You can help clean up the trash too: go to the nearest swing state and campaign for Romney. If you live in California, there is still time to volunteer for NobamaNevada.”
DO YOU HAVE Free Will? If I don’t, then neither do the people who say I don’t, and want to substitute their will for mine. . . .
THE HILL: Romney Surges Past Obama In Second Poll. “Mitt Romney has overtaken President Obama in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Tuesday. Romney won 49 percent support from likely voters in the poll, compared to 47 percent for Obama. It’s the first time all year Romney has led in the poll, which was conducted on behalf of the liberal Daily Kos website and the Service Employees International Union. Obama led 49-45 percent in the group’s previous poll, conducted before last week’s debate.”
UPDATE: Romney Ahead in Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio. And pulling close in Pennsylvania.
Also: Obama loses lead on key voter issues: economy, national security. “The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout ‘Liar!’ loudly enough. Given a choice between casting off their false idol and giving up the cult of liberalism, there is no competition. Liberals will have no compunction about dumping Obama.”
MORE: IowaHawk: White House Scientists Struggle to Contain Outbreak of Scrutonium. “Engaged a relentless battle against time and fatigue, a select group of message scientists assembled by the White House’s Center for Narrative Control say they will take “all steps necessary” to contain a recent outbreak of scrutonium, a deadly poll-eating supervirus that attacks the immuno-hope system, leaving victims vulnerable to material facts.”
Related: Obama cultists’ crack-up.
Also: Washington Post Joins “Poll Truthers.” “Exit Question: Is this sample Pew’s attempt to correct itself pre-election or will we see a new poll just before the day re-skewed to try and create the Obama comeback?”
STILL MORE: Fine, enjoy the meltdown — but don’t get cocky!
But reader William Miller emails: “I ran the Chicago Marathon this past weekend, which went through several different neighborhoods in and around downtown Chicago. I did not see one pro-Obama sign. I did see a few Romney signs though. I know it wasn’t a political event, but I assumed that I would be overwhelmed by all of the Obama supporters that the press has been telling me about especially on his home turf.”
Maybe he just isn’t cool any more, and people are embarrassed? Kind of like Jimmy Carter, at the end.
MORE STILL: Reader Carey Cline writes:
I live in an intown Atlanta neighborhood that is very near Emory University, the CDC and a large conservative Jewish synagogue. So my yard is a little island of conservatism in a vast sea of liberal moonbats.
In 2008 every yard (except mine) it seemed had the requisite Obama yard sign. A yeti would have been an easier find than a McCain/Palin sign or sticker.
This morning on my way to work I counted six Romney/Ryan signs….If Obama is losing my neighborhood….oh you know the rest….
Well, don’t get cocky, kids.
THE MOST OVERSOLD MURDERER EVER: “Don’t Shoot!—I’m Che!” (A Glorious Anniversary) For a long time now, I’ve wanted to start a site in which one could post pictures of people caught wearing Che or Mao or hammer and sickle shirts with the question: Have you seen this commie? And under it an excerpt of Che’s bio or the bloody history of communism. I haven’t done it because I hate violating people’s privacy. On the other hand we have to defeat communism’s chic image. Mass murder is not cool.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Romney’s Foreign Policy: A Weary America Must Lead. “GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney made his most significant public appearance since last week’s presidential debate. You can read the whole thing here. It was for the most part a frank and brave speech, but it defended some unpopular points of view even as it sharpened the contrast between the two men vying to lead the country for the next four years. At a time when many Americans are tired and frustrated by the world, Governor Romney is calling on the United States to lead and engage.”
THE MAN WHO VOLUNTEERED FOR AUSCHWITZ. “The Polish resistance had been hearing horrific first- or second-hand accounts about the conditions inside Auschwitz. These early accounts came primarily from released prisoners, but also from casual observers like railway employees and residents of the nearby village of Oswiecim. The resistance decided they needed someone on the inside.”
IT’S ALL ABOUT TAGG. Compare Politico (Tagg’s been more “assertive,” “aggressive,” and “will basically call people out when they have something stupid to say”) with The Daily News (“There’s no internal squabbling or fighting for territory or turf”).
AT AMAZON, up to 20% off on Men’s Electric Razors.
MICHAEL BARONE: A lawyer by training, Obama ignores rules of law.
Barack Obama was a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. But he seems to take the attitude familiar to me, as an alumnus of Yale Law School, that the law is simply a bunch of words which people who are clever with words can manipulate to get any result they want.
In public speeches he has defended such policies by shouting, “We can’t wait!” The results are good, or at least politically convenient, so why be held back by a few words written on paper?
The Constitution was written by men who had a different idea. They wanted a government bound by the rule of law. Do we?
Once Romney’s in, the Dems will want that, too. And pretend that Obama never happened.
RAND SIMBERG IN POPULAR MECHANICS: Why The Engine Failure Could Be Good News For SpaceX.
From an engineering perspective, all of this is good news for two reasons.
First, prior to this flight, the idea that the Falcon 9 could still get to orbit even with an engine out was just a marketing claim. Proving it would have required a demonstration in a test flight. Now that claim has been demonstrated and validated in an operational flight, if accidentally. While SpaceX’s competitors and opponents will point to the engine loss as a reason for concern, in reality it should increase confidence in the company’s product. Every rocket provider has problems (United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV, one of Falcon’s competitors, had a second-stage engine issue itself just last week), but in this case the design was sufficiently robust to overcome them exactly as the designers intended.
Second, if the engine really had exploded, this would have potential safety implications for a crewed version of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Consider that the upper stage of the Falcon 9 uses the same Merlin 1C engine as the first stage, except with a few changes such as a larger nozzle for vacuum operations and passive radiative cooling rather than the “regenerative” cooling in the first-stage engines (it pumps fuel through channels in the nozzles to carry away the heat). The biggest difference, though, is that there is only one Merlin engine for the upper stage. So if it fails, the mission fails.
There have now been four flights of the Falcon 9, with ten engines each (nine for the first stage, one for the second). Counting the one engine failure from last night’s launch, that means that the engine has a demonstrated operational reliability of 39 out of 40, or 97.5%. That means that there’s a 2.5% chance that the engine would fail in an upper stage (where it has no backup), and would imply that this is an upper boundary on the reliability of the rocket itself (because other things could go wrong). This is in the typical ballpark of mission reliability for expendable launch vehicles for the past half century.
Read the whole thing.
MICKEY KAUS: Does ObamaCare Produce Part-Time Work? “Here’s some evidence to support the suggestion that Obamacare = Part-Time work (as employers cut back hours to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s pay-or-play mandate for full time–30 hour–employees). … P.S.: At least the recent BLS data didn’t show a massive increase in involuntary part-time employment. ….Oh, wait.”
JOHN TIERNEY REPORTS: “Fearless Felix” Baumgartner To Try To Become First Sky Diver To Break Sound Barrier. “Felix Baumgartner, a professional daredevil, plans to step off a balloon-borne capsule 22 miles above Earth on Tuesday morning and plummet for five and a half minutes until opening his parachute a mile above the New Mexico desert. If all goes as planned, he will do a series of barrel rolls in the near-vacuum of the stratosphere and then plunge headfirst at more than 700 miles per hour, becoming the first sky diver to break the sound barrier.”
ROLL CALL: Blue Dogs Brace For Another Drubbing. “The House Blue Dog Coalition, still reeling from 2010 elections that cut its ranks in half, looks likely to sustain additional losses this year that would cast doubt on the group’s influence in the 113th Congress.”
WHAT EXACTLY DOES OBAMA LIKE ABOUT BEING PRESIDENT? “According to Game Change author John Heilemann, Obama is one of those rare politicians who ‘don’t like people…[and] don’t like politics,’” Alana Goodman writes at Commentary. “If that’s the case, why is he running for reelection?”
BYRON YORK: With new stature, Romney takes offense on Libya.
TURKEY AND SYRIA have been firing artillery shells at each other for six days in a row now. And check out this photo of Homs. That’s what it looks like when Syria shells itself.
MARC THIESSEN: Joe Biden’s bin Laden Hypocrisy.
BEFORE THEY BECAME A NATION OF GOVERNMENT DEPENDENTS: Scotland’s vitality was the envy of the world
October 8, 2012
LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT CHECKERS: The editor’s note at the bottom is priceless. Always remember, these people are trustworthy, unlike those bloggers working in their pajamas. (And that’s in something where their politics don’t matter.)
WELL, WHO NEEDS JOBS ANYWAY? Gun Microstamping Could Close American Factories.