IN THE MAIL: From Chris K. Daley, Becoming Breitbart: The Impact of a New Media Revolutionary.
Archive for 2012
April 20, 2012
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Obama Effect Is Wearing Off.
FOLLOW THE BOUNCING CHECKS: N.C. Democratic Chair To Resign In May, Following Sex-Harassment Charges. “So the push from Perdue, as well as several other Democratic officeholders in North Carolina, to get Parker to resign over his supposed mishandling of a harassment complaint would have produced a chair that has bounced-check charges outstanding. Apparently, this is something else that North Carolina Democrats didn’t know about the leadership of their own party.”
Hey, John Edwards needs a job.
IS DR. PHIL TRAFFICKING IN damaging stereotypes about veterans?
DO WEALTHY COLLEGES DESERVE THEIR TAX BREAKS?
JOHN HINDERAKER: The GSA Scandal: What Does It Mean?
AS THE RULING CLASS GETS NERVOUS: Congressman Proposes Amendment to Strip Most Newspapers, Churches, Nonprofits, and Other Corporations of All Constitutional Rights.
I think I’ll propose my own amendment, which will involve tar and feathers.
THE ATLANTIC: Why The U.S. Economy Is Biased Against Men. “Visit American workplaces, especially major corporations, and you’ll find that anti-men practices are not only tolerated but routinely imposed by employers. Women but not men are encouraged to form committees and caucuses to advance their sex’s causes in the workplace, often at men’s expense.”
Women also get a third more in lifetime medical spending than do men.
ANTI-GUN BANK OF AMERICA on the wrong side of history.
DEMOGRAPHY: China’s Achilles Heel. “Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that rate (see table). Because very low fertility can become self-reinforcing, with children of one-child families wanting only one child themselves, China now probably faces a long period of ultra-low fertility, regardless of what happens to its one-child policy. . . . In 1980 China’s median (the age at which half the population is younger, half older) was 22. That is characteristic of a young developing country. It is now 34.5, more like a rich country and not very different from America’s, which is 37. But China is ageing at an unprecedented pace. Because fewer children are being born as larger generations of adults are getting older, its median age will rise to 49 by 2050, nearly nine years more than America at that point.”
SARAH PALIN TO OGLING SECRET SERVICE AGENT: “”Well check this out, bodyguard — you’re fired. And I hope his wife sends him to the doghouse. As long as he’s not eating the dog, along with his former boss.”
AT AMAZON, top deals in GPS and Navigation.
MISMANAGEMENT: Unrepaired Education Department System Leaves Thousands Stuck in Default. “Four months after The Chronicle broke news of widespread problems with the Education Department’s new debt-management system, tens of thousands of defaulted borrowers remain in financial limbo, unable to clear their credit histories. Meanwhile, delays in issuing wage-garnishment orders continue to cost the government millions in lost recoveries each month.”
UPDATE: Reader Chris Smith emails: “It’s easy to forget this, but the take-over of student loan underwriting was one of the first things enacted in the Affordable Care Act. I just want to hammer that home.”
TENNESSEE LEGISLATURE joins in the Battle Of Vanderbilt. I predict that universities, both public and private, will face more of this sort of outside scrutiny in the future.
REBECCA MACKINNON: The Not-So-Great Firewall of China. “Social media won’t drive the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party, but it is forcing government to be more transparent and responsive to the public.”
MICKEY KAUS: James Johnson, Toxic Asset: “‘Mr. Johnson has been at the center of several egregious corporate governance debacles. … We believe Mr. Johnson’s history should disqualify him from service on the board of any public company.’ Managers of the Sequoia Fund are campaigning to vote former Mondale campaign manager, Obama veep-vetter, and Man Who Destroyed the World (as head of Fannie Mae) James Johnson off the board of Goldman Sachs, a position for which (Felix Salmon reports) he was paid $523,000 last year. He’s also on the board of Target Corp.”
NEW YORK POST: Obama Jab At Romney Boomerangs. That seems to be happening a lot lately.
PROF. JACOBSON: Dick Lugar At Risk of Losing Senate Seat and Reputation.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Investigate Nugent But Not Farrakhan?
We need to remind the administration and the Secret Service that “Braveheart” is only a movie and that Nugent is no more likely to ride a horse down Pennsylvania Avenue wielding a medieval battle-ax than Obama was to bring a handgun to the first presidential debate. . . .
Meanwhile, an administration that let the New Black Panthers avoid criminal charges for wielding a billy club outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 and that ignored the bounty placed by the Panthers on the head of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting is concerned about Nugent.
Did anyone in the liberal universe or administration take note when Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said at Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tenn., Saturday that “people tomorrow, maybe in a few days, are gonna kill their leaders who’ve been selling them out”?
Farrakhan added: “That’s why we’re in this shape that we’re in right now, because we had corrupt people, or people that started off good and got corrupt.”
We’re not sure if calling people criminals is worse than calling them corrupt, but Ted Nugent didn’t say any leaders would die as a result. Farrakhan did in a statement that no one in the so-called mainstream media obsessed over or that anyone in the administration wanted to talk to him about.
Speaking of opposition by the Tea Party and others to Obama administration policies, union leader Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said “let’s take those SOBs out,” except he didn’t abbreviate “SOB.” But no one in the liberal universe called that a threat, despite volumes of documented union violence.
It’s all politics, and the Secret Service, by getting sucked into this, is doing at least as much harm to its reputation as did the hookers in Cartagena.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE U.S. CAPITOL? “An Architect of the Capitol employee is suing her agency for allegedly tolerating several years of sexual harassment.”
HA! TOP THIS, BARACK! Bobcat eating suspect in court next week. “Henry Arnibal, the west Morgan Hill man accused of killing and eating a wild bobcat, will be back in court for pre-trial proceedings April 26, according to South Santa Clara County deputy supervising district attorney Steve Lowney.”
I guess this is what you do when dog’s not good enough for you. . . .
REMEMBER HOW IN 2008 HIS THEME WAS RESTORING COMPETENCE TO GOVERNMENT, BECAUSE THOSE AWFUL ANTI-GOVERNMENT REPUBLICANS COULDN’T POSSIBLY RUN THINGS AS WELL AS A PRO-GOVERNMENT DEMOCRAT? Twin GSA, Secret Service scandals pose new threat to Obama.