Archive for 2012
October 1, 2012
IRAQ WILL ALWAYS BE IRAQ: September was the deadliest month in Iraq for the last two years.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Is Fall/Autumn The Only Season With Two Names?
HERE’S HOW THE MSM WILL COVER WEDNESDAY’S OBAMA/ROMNEY DEBATE: Peter Roff, a U.S. News & World Report contributing editor who also happens to be among the best columnists around these days, has the details, including how Obama seemed to be floating a foot or so off the ground as he first took to the stage.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: With Liberty, And Taxes, For All: Why Everyone Should Pay Income Tax.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, REDUX: Next Wednesday (Oct. 10), the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in another affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas. The case comes just a few years after the Supreme Court decided a pair of landmark affirmative action cases involving the University of Michigan. In the main Michigan case, Grutter v. Bollinger, a deeply divided (5-4) Court upheld the use of race as “one factor” in a “holistic” admissions program with the end goal of creating a “critical mass” of certain minority students in the name of racial “diversity.”
The University of Texas policy being challenged does two things: (1) It automatically admits, in a race-blind manner, the top 10% of every high school’s graduating class; and (2) for the remaining seats, the University uses the “holistic” approach, in which race is one factor. The challenger of the law, a white female, asserts that using option 1 (race-neutral “top 10%”) negates the need for using option 2 (race consciousness). Because, in other words, option1 yields a sufficiently “diverse” student body, why continue to use race at all?
The question before the Court is pretty straightforward: Once a race-neutral policy is in place that creates a diverse student body, is it consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to then use race in the name of “diversity”?
Justice Kagan has recused herself from the Fisher case, leaving only 8 Justices to decide.
WAIT, WHEN DID KLINGONS START WEARING DESIGNER SUNGLASSES? Kicking it Qo’noS Style. K’Plah!
TWO JERRY BROWNS IN ONE:
“Brown wants voters to OK a huge tax hike on Election Day. If they balk — as they have at the last two tax-increase propositions — he says he’ll have to slash $6 billion from the public schools and state universities, and shorten the school year by three weeks.”
— The New York Post: “Jerry Brown’s tax-hike Hail Mary.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed legislation extending the state’s $100 million tax-credit fund for two more years.
The measure allows California producers a 20 percent or 25 percent credit against income and sales and use taxes and is designed to help stem the production exodus that has plagued the state in recent years.
— The Wrap, “Gov. Brown Signs California TV, Film Tax Credit Extension.”
In 1995, Brown blurted out, “The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.”
If you define welfare to mean both corporate and individual, and add in California’s double-digit unemployment rate, he’s certainly living up to both halves of his motto.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sports & Outdoors.
Also, today only: 50% Off Select BEARPAW Boots & Slippers.
THE CULTURE OF CHEATING.
CRADLE TO GRAVE SERVICE: “Huh? The Washington Post Company buys a hospice:”
Michael Roston, Social Media Producer at NYTimes.com, says the Washington Post Company bought a zoo. We’re pretty sure Roston is joking, but the truth is almost as surprising:
The Washington Post Co. said Monday that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare, a provider of skilled home health-care and hospice services in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions.
The purchase price was not disclosed, but Donald E. Graham, chief executive of The Washington Post Co., said in a statement that the acquisition is “part of the Post Co.’s ongoing strategy of investing in companies with demonstrated earnings potential and strong management teams attracted to our long-term investment horizon.”
A few years ago, Old Media built for itself what John Podhoretz dubbed “The News Mausoleum;” why not build the antechamber as well?
UNDERGROUND ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH: Ezra Levant writes:
A so-called journalist, a so-called American was bringing Muslim Brotherhood-style censorship to America. There’s no other way to describe defacing ads you disagree with. And she went further — spray-painting and pushing around someone who supported the ads and stood in front of them.
Eltahawy was charged with assault. But she hasn’t expressed regret or called it a lapse in judgment or professionalism or even sanity. She has embraced her darker, violent side.
In an Orwellian twist, she has rechristened her censorship free speech, calling her vandalism “protected speech” and her assault “non-violent disobedience.” Nope.
She boasts she’d do it again. Here is a privileged journalist with access to CNN and MSNBC to make her case to argue, to put her ideas forward. But she would rather stop other people from buying a little poster on a wall.
The poster didn’t call all Muslims savages. It didn’t even use the world Muslim. It didn’t even say who the savages were — other than jihadists against Israel. Eltahawy was outraged that Geller’s posters called terrorists “savages.” Why would that bother Eltahawy? Are al-Qaida not savages?
Back in 2005, Mark Steyn wrote that he had underestimated the pull of multiculturalism:
After 9/11, I assumed the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain — that a cult of “tolerance” would in the end founder against a demographic so cheerfully upfront in its intolerance. Instead, Islamic “militants” have become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you’re nice about gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense shudder of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.
Related thoughts today from Andrew G. Bostom at PJM.
(Via 5’F)
UPDATE: From Jim Treacher, a more traditional Orwellian use of spray painting: Not All Muslims make Ikea airbrush women out of catalog.
A STUDENT INTERNSHIP/CO-OP in Asteroid Mining. Well, this is the 21st Century, after all.
LOTTERY WINNERS as natural experiments.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Bald Guys Can Look More Manly and Dominant. “In three experiments, researcher Albert Mannes, a lecturer at the Wharton School at U. Penn — and a balding man himself — found that guys with shaved heads are not only perceived by others as more manly and dominant than other men, but also taller, stronger and having greater potential as leaders.”
Mr. Clean was unavailable for comment.
OBAMA CORNERS A COVETED ENDORSEMENT: if this doesn’t get out the vote, nothing will.
“If I were American, I’d vote for Obama,” Mr Chavez said in a televised interview that aired Sunday.
The Venezuelan leader called Obama “a good guy” and said if the US president were a Venezuelan, “I think … he’d vote for Chavez.”
And I wish I could doubt any of that…
BROKEN PROMISE: How the Government Failed to Fix Wall Street. Nice story, but the basic answer is payola.
A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO DRUNK OFF YOUR A**: Apparently the frat boys at the University of Tennessee have discovered a new, faster, and dangerous way to get drunk: the alcohol enema. It was discovered by hospital emergency room physicians after a very drunk young man presented for blood alcohol poisoning and personnel observed lacerations/wounds to his rectal area, raising concerns that he’d been sodomized.
The young ladies’ (and I use this term liberally) version? Alcohol-soaked tampons.
THE INDISPENSABLE ELI LAKE on the intel behind Obama’s Libya line.
IF WALL STREET BANKERS HATE OBAMA SO MUCH, HOW COME THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH? Check out the top five organization employees giving to Obama, as compiled by CNS.com and OpenSecrets.org.
WELL, THAT’S EMBARRASSING! Seems I mis-read the CNS graph regarding Wall Street contributions. Had I read it correctly, the headline here would have said WALL STREET BANKERS LOVE ROMNEY SO MUCH, THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH. For the record, Obama’s top five include: University of California, Microsoft, Google, Harvard and the U.S. government. My apologies to Obama, Romney, CNS.com, OpenSecrets.org, Glenn Reynolds and, most importantly, Instapundit’s readers. And my thanks to my good friend at the Sunlight Foundation, Bill Allison, for so diplomatically pointing out that I royally, totally, and I do mean completely, screwed this one up.
WHEN THE WINNER DEMANDS A RECOUNT: University of Virginia not too pleased with ranking as #1 Party School.
THE TEA PARTY IS NO SLEEPING GIANT, BECAUSE IT’S NOT SLEEPING: A Breitbart story reveals that a recent AP/GfK poll (not covered, of course, by the mainstream media) reveals that 31% of likely voters– almost one-third– are self-identified tea party supporters.
I’ve been saying this all along: The tea partiers can’t wait to vote this year. They will turn up in droves to pull the lever in protest against President Obama’s policies. Wait and see.