THE GUN-CONTROL MOVEMENT IS A MOVEMENT OF OLD, WHITE MEN: New York Times: The Rising Voice of Gun Ownership is Female. “Women’s participation in shooting sports has surged over the last decade, increasing by 51.5 percent for target shooting from 2001 to 2011, to just over 5 million women, and by 41.8 percent for hunting, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. Gun sales to women have risen in concert.”
Archive for 2013
February 11, 2013
FRANCE POUNDS SAND IN THE SAHARA:
When French and Malian forces captured the town of Kidal last week, Islamist militants lost control of the last major town in northern Mali. Yet the battle continues despite France’s success at capturing the cities as the militants have moved to the vast, empty mountains in the north. African and French forces have begun to push forward to flush the Islamists out of their last desert strongholds, but they’re discovering that fighting in this inhospitable terrain is considerably more difficult than the urban combat they’ve seen so far. . . .
The fun part of the Mali war is over, but the war itself has only just begun. The bombing raids that wipe out enemy formations, the fall of cities, the parades with the kisses and flowers: All that is pretty much over and done with, but the enemy survives and will be heard from again.
The Malian government remains a pathetic shambles; the Malian armed forces make Italy look like Prussia, and the French lack the will and the capacity for successful desert warfare in the high desert. Trying to work out a political settlement that gets the Tuareg on board against the religious nutcases is the best strategy, but neither the Malian government nor its neighbors welcome that prospect.
Also, cut off their money. But for that, you’d have to go after some rich Saudis.
JOEL KOTKIN: The Cities Winning The Battle For The Fastest Growing High-Wage Sector In The U.S. “Notably absent from the top 10 are Chicago and the big metropolitan areas of the Northeast and California that have traditionally dominated high-end business services. The only exception is the third-ranked San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan statistical area. . . . Yet the other leaders on our list are generally smaller, growing metro areas whose expansions have been propelled by a rapid increase in employment in technology and professional management services. These include our top-ranked metro area, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, which enjoyed over 46% growth in employment in professional services since 2001; fourth-place Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and No. 5 Salt Lake City, Utah. These areas have enjoyed strong net-in migration of educated workers, and have poached companies from more expensive regions. More surprising still has been the rapid ascent of such unheralded regions as second-place Jacksonville, Fla., and Oklahoma City (sixth place).”
WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN? More on San Francisco’s deadly plastic-bag ban. “California politicians didn’t even bother studying the possible health effects of their anti-bag laws. They were in such a hurry to tell their constituents what’s best for them, they forgot to check how their busybody scheme might go wrong.”
POINTS AND FIGURES: Debt Is Your Frenemy. “In the real world, debt isn’t meaningless. It can help you grow, but debt can kill. When it kills, it’s a brutal death. . . . we are rapidly reaching a danger zone today.”
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MICHAEL BARONE: Obama’s weak policies increase rather than lessen risk of war.
JIM TREACHER ON COMIC BOOKS: Occupy Metropolis! “And if we want to find out just how bad it is to be GREEDY and CORRUPT, it’ll cost us $2.99 an issue from a company that has made billions by ripping off Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. In real life, the Occupy movement has only managed to ruin public parks and become a staple of police blotters across the country. Let’s hope the fictional version does a better job of… whatever it is they even want to do.”
THE WSJ SAYS, “BEN CARSON FOR PRESIDENT!” Ben Carson On The Flat Tax.
WELL, THAT SORT OF THING IS THEIR SPECIALTY, AFTER ALL: Was Petraeus Taken Out By A CIA Palace Coup?
FOUAD AJAMI: The Silence of the Drones. “The drone strikes were the choice of a president who had given up on winning ‘hearts and minds’ in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan. . . . There remains the discrepancy between an extensive campaign of drones and a passive foreign policy that maintains — the president’s very words — that an era of war is ending. Forgive those Syrians left at the mercy of their dictator’s cruel war: It is hard to explain to them why those drones don’t somehow find their way to Bashar al-Assad’s bunker.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): DHS Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border. Boy, if Bush were President, we’d be hearing a lot of complaints.
OR IS IT MORE LIKE “RETIRE?” Pope Benedict XVI to Resign.
HUFFINGTON POST READERS who support mass murder.
IT’S LIKE GROUNDHOG DAY: Byron York: After ignoring unemployment, Obama seeks to convince Americans it’s his top priority. He keeps saying he’ll pivot to jobs, but he never does.
he unemployment rate is 7.9 percent — one tenth of a point higher than it was when Obama took office in January 2009. But the true toll of joblessness is far higher. The Labor Department’s so-called U-6 rate, which includes people who want a job but have become so discouraged they have quit looking, is 14.4 percent. And a new study, by Rutgers University scholars, shows that 23 percent of those surveyed have lost a job sometime in the last four years, while another 11 percent have seen someone in their household lose a job. That is one-third of the American people who have experienced unemployment during Obama’s time in office, along with many more who have experienced other hardships of the economic downturn. . . .
Obama’s slighting of the economy is nothing new. Critics charged throughout his first term that at a time when economic conditions bordered on the desperate, the president devoted more than a year of his energies to passing a national health care scheme. At the time, the White House promised it would “pivot” to the issue of jobs and the economy at some future time. That time never came. Meanwhile, all the polls showed deep public concern over the economy.
Now, apparently, Obama has noticed public opinion.
Meh. He’d rather “fundamentally transform” America. You’re just collateral damage.
USING REGULATION to stop innovation in Higher Ed.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Watchdog: Vets trapped in endless Veterans Affairs bureaucracy.
SALON.COM COVERS REPORTS THAT JOHN BRENNAN IS A SECRET MUSLIM. Well, if it’s in Salon, you can take it to the bank.
UPDATE: Okay, they’re more like “allegations” than “reports,” I guess.
ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS AMITY SHLAES about her new book on the misunderstood Calvin Coolidge. “He was in office more than one presidential term. And when he left that office, the federal budget was lower than when he came in. Real, nominal — with vanilla sprinkles on top. Wow, how’d he do that?” And could we find someone to do it again?
A SELF-INFLICTED WEDGE ISSUE? WaPo: Gun debate divides Democrats and tests Obama’s second-term strategy.
With Dems bringing shooting victims to the State Of The Union, I hope that Republicans will be smart enough to bring some people whose lives were saved by having a gun. It’s not like such people are in short supply.
JOHN TAMNY: Sorry, Left And Right: No Job Requires A College Degree. “Politicians love to talk up the need for more engineers, but then lost on the political class is that the Soviet Union had literally ten times the number of engineers that the U.S. did in the ‘70s. That it did in no way staved off the country’s eventual economic collapse.”
ROGER SIMON: Who’s the Racist? Sam Tanenhaus, Meet Dr. Benjamin Carson. “I found what I read of Tanenhaus to be stultifyingly banal and predictable.” Plus, Howard Berman’s brother goes Republican, “Because of what the Democratic Party did to black people.”