NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to avoid a purple heart in the war on pubic hair.
Archive for 2013
February 12, 2013
AT AMAZON, markdowns in Apparel. For men, women, and children.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: John Tierney looks at whether eHarmony’s algorithm actually works.
A CHANCE TO NAME PLUTO’S TINY MOONS.
RANDY BARNETT’S LETTER TO TED CRUZ on gun control proposals. I wrote one of those, too — I’ll try to post it later.
Oh, and here’s Dave Kopel’s letter.
UPDATE: And Clayton Cramer on mental illness and safety.
CAN A BAD DIET interfere with your sleep?
OUT: TINY PURSE DOGS. In: Big Fashion Dogs.
PREVIOUS SOTU GUEST, FORT HOOD HERO, SAYS OBAMA BETRAYED HER: “Three years after the White House arranged a hero’s welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.”
Well, when the guy who shot bin Laden is feeling underappreciated, it does seem that being touted by Obama isn’t the path to happiness and success.
PROFESSORS NOT SO IMPRESSED with latest classroom technology. “Professors at top research universities are highly skeptical of the value of the instructional technologies being injected into their classrooms, which many see as making their job harder and doing little to improve teaching and learning.”
NICK GILLESPIE: State of the Union: Will Obama Tell Young People He’s Screwing Them Big Time?
Listen up, kids! Your parents are robbing your futures blind and you’re chumps enough not only to go along but to say – like the adorable title orphan in the classic baby boomer musical Oliver! – please, sir, I want some more.
From virtually every possible angle, Obama is helping to diminish the prospects for today’s younger generation. First and foremost, his response to the Great Recession – stimulus and the massive piling up of debt – is slowing the recovery. Ginormous regulatory schemes such as Dodd-Frank and the creation of huge new soul-and-bucks-sucking programs such as Obamacare weigh heavily on the economy now and in the future too. His refusal to discuss seriously old-age entitlement reform – Medicare and Social Security and the 40 percent of Medicaid that goes to old folks – is a massive storm front on the economic horizon. His preference for secrecy and overreach when it comes to executive power won’t screw young people as obviously as his economic policies, but when he leaves office in 2017, he will have created far more terrorists than he needed to.
Yet The New York Times reports that not only did 18-to-29-year-olds vote for Obama by far-higher-than-average percentages than folks over 30 years old, they believe that by far-higher-than-average percentages that the government needs to be doing more, not less. This, despite record levels of government spending and debt – and awful results – for the whole of the 21st century.
Hey, rubes! Related thoughts here.
LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT CHECKERS nowhere in sight as WaPo falsely reports Sarah Palin taking job at Al Jazeera.
STATE OF THE UNION PROMISES: Obama ’09: Stimulus Will Lift 2 Million Out of Poverty; Today: 2.6 Million More in Poverty.
PEW: A January 2013 survey finds only about a quarter (26%) saying they can trust the government always or most of the time, while nearly three-quarters (73%) say that they can trust government only some of the time, or volunteer that they can never trust the government. “Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government.”
Well, that’s the subject of my USA Today column today.
FOR THOSE WHO COULDN’T SEE THE SITE THIS MORNING, the problems seem to be resolved now. Remember that when it’s down, the backup is at GlennReynolds.com.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Obama Hits Sour Spot On Syria.
Once again President Obama has found the sour spot in his foreign policy—this time on Syria. Already pilloried by the left and right for his garbled strategy, Obama is now drawing the ire of the center as well. Following Leon Panetta’s admission last week that the President overruled his national security team’s wish to arm the rebels, the FT is calling Obama out. . . .
As the FT points out, President Obama wants it both ways: he’s demanded Assad step down and called preventing genocide “a core national-security interest,” but promised in his second inaugural that “a decade of war is now ending.” He’s also threatened war with Syria if chemical weapons are used and proclaimed a “responsibility to protect,” but seeks to slash defense spending, might withdraw a U.S. carrier from the Gulf, and vetoed his cabinet’s recommendations on Syria.
The problem is not that the President is turning his back on Syria; there’s certainly a case that one could make for such a policy. The problem is that the President has neglected to make a case at all. He’s been content to make certain rhetorical promises while pursuing contradictory lines of policy. This is not only insincere to the American people, it is an extremely dangerous strategy: Iran, Assad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel might no longer know what to expect from the U.S., or believe anything its Commander in Chief says. When one of the region’s most powerful actors projects that kind of weakness, it’s a game changer.
Well, when you elect a guy whose biggest experience was in the Illinois State Senate, and writing two autobiographies, what do you expect? And there’s no evidence that he learned anything in his first term.
TOO BIG TO FAIL is too big to exist. But it’s no guarantee of safety: “But we know that smaller banks do not, by themselves, make us safe, because that was the state of the U.S. banking market in 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression. Having thousands and thousands of small banks fail was not safer than having a few big ones go down. Meanwhile, Canada, which had a few big banks, avoided both the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis.”
Plus, from the comments: “Putting Jon Corzine in jail is a lot easier.” But he’s a member of the Ruling Class.
DEREK KHANNA: The Law Against Unlocking Cellphones Is Anti-Consumer, Anti-Business, and Anti-Common Sense. “The real problem is not the danger that average people would get a $500,000 fine and 5 years in jail. The problem is that 95% of the accused currently accept a plea deal and would accept almost anything to avoid risking such a stark penalty and that this stark penalty can be used by companies to scare average consumers from exercising their own property rights. For that reason, this restriction violates one of our most basic and fundamental of freedoms and represents an Orwellian invasion of our personal liberty. . . . This isn’t a debate about big business vs. little consumers. It’s a story of crony-capitalism.”
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases On Blu-Ray.
LOSING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT: My USA Today column is up.
BENGHAZI: “Here’s what I’ve been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours…. When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?”
FAIL: Democratic House chairwoman Wasserman Schultz caught in deception with reporters.
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz attempted a bit of deception Monday in an effort to criticize GOP rising star Marco Rubio ahead of his State of the Union rebuttal Tuesday night. But on this occasion, the press wasn’t falling for it.
In a conference call Monday, Wasserman Schultz enlisted the help of Annette Capella, described by party officials as a “Medicare recipient from Florida,” to warn of the “extreme budget priorities,” they believe Rubio is likely to outline in his televised response to President Obama’s address.
Capella gave a lengthy and unflattering statement about Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida and Tea Party favorite. She admitted he is an attractive politician but one who would make life more difficult for seniors by supporting a plan to alter Medicare by reducing benefits.
It turns out, however, that Capella is hardly your standard Medicare-dependent Floridian. She’s the Democratic Party’s state committeewoman for St. Johns County.
More of the astroturf.