HOW TECHNOLOGY IS DESTROYING JOBS. Yeah, but it’s also being substituted for workers because of over-regulation, including ObamaCare.
Archive for 2013
June 17, 2013
SATELLITES MONITOR aquifer depletion.
ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS THE INSTA-WIFE about her new book, Men On Strike. Did I mention that she has a new book out?
IN THE MAIL: Data Points: Visualization That Means Something.
BRUCE SCHNEIER: Blowback from NSA scandal will lead to more ‘Internet Nationalism,’ undermining U.S. diplomatic initiative for global Internet freedom. “Now, when countries like Russia and Iran say the US is simply too untrustworthy to manage the Internet, no one will be able to argue. We can’t fight for Internet freedom around the world, then turn around and destroy it back home. Even if we don’t see the contradiction, the rest of the world does.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Barack’s Best Friend Erdogan Not Looking Pretty.
Violence in Istanbul is threatening President Obama’s relationship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What started out as a protest against the development of a park has morphed into a show of much wider discontent. Over the weekend, more than two weeks after the protests started, police used tear gas and water cannons to clear Gezi Park of its protesters and spent most of Sunday chasing protesters and looters into shopping malls and upscale hotels.
To most outsiders, this looks like an excellent time for some soothing words and calming speeches in Turkey. Erdogan has a solid majority in parliament and his core supporters don’t seem fazed by the protests in Istanbul. (Think of Erdogan as the George W. Bush of Turkey, and the protesters are secular liberals who hate him as much or more than the American left hated W. The more the left protests, the more Erdogan’s base rallies to its man.) Making a few concessions, pulling the police back except where violence or looting actually occurs, and calming things down were the actions most of us would advise at a time like this.
But Turkish politics has its own rhythms, and Erdogan has his own priorities—and temperament. In response to the protests, he’s toughening his rhetoric and promising a crackdown.
Actually, Obama and Erdogan have similar approaches. Obama is just more constrained.
SITTING ON THEIR HANDS IN MASSACHUSETTS: Salena Zito: GOP not seizing chance to stun Dems.
Republicans have talked about pursuing a different kind of candidate since what seems like forever. Heck, the national party even convened a special, secret task force just for that purpose late last year, after losing key demographic groups such as women and Hispanics.
Yet, given exactly the kind of candidate they hire people to find out in the hinterlands, Republicans are oddly not engaged with helping him cross the finish line in a special election that would significantly stun Democrats.
Gabriel Gomez is a Massachusetts Republican running to fill John Kerry’s vacated U.S. Senate seat; the 47-year-old political newcomer is within striking distance of wounding Democrats right where it hurts.
Gomez, a first-generation American whose parents came here from Colombia, has a compelling life story that includes an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and service as a Navy SEAL and fighter pilot. He is Roman Catholic, personally pro-life; fluent in Spanish; a father of four who met his wife when he was deployed as a SEAL in Grenada, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer.
His opponent, Congressman Ed Markey, began his Washington career the same year that Apple Computer was founded in Steve Jobs’ garage, “Play That Funky Music, White Boy” was Billboard’s No. 1 song and the United States celebrated its bicentennial. . . .
Republicans have spent 10 years telling themselves their problem with Hispanic voters on Election Day is fixable because those same voters share so many Republican values. But that will be just theory until they start electing Latinos to high-profile offices as Republicans.
Special elections present special opportunities; winning one as a surprise does more to reboot a party than a dozen blue-ribbon commissions, task forces and post-mortem conferences ever could.
Democrats know they have a problem; privately, they worry about Markey’s long, unremarkable Washington career. So they have called in the two best reinforcements they could think of: outside money and some speechifying by Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, crickets.
I guess a Gomez victory wouldn’t generate enough revenues for consultants or something.
ED DRISCOLL: Hollywood ‘Completely Broke.’ But That’s Good News, Right? “Last weekend, my wife and I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, a Paramount movie, at the theater in Santana Row — our local Northern California holodeck recreation of a fin de siècle European village. It’s fascinating to watch a movie made 30 years ago — after the cultural revolution of the late ’60s and ’70s, in which Hollywood had its first go-around at burning down traditional American values — and realize it probably couldn’t be made today; PC would transform those ’30s characters into oblivion.”
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We’re Prepared To Prevent Another Holocaust. “The leaders of the Allies knew about the Holocaust in real time. . . . They understood exactly what was happening in the death camps. They were asked to act, they could have acted, and they did not. To us Jews the lesson is clear.”
AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Health & Personal Care.
Also, today only: Up to 70% Off Select Energy Home Theater Speakers.
THEY’LL BE LIVE-BLOGGING SUPREME COURT ORDERS TODAY at ScotusBlog.
THIS STILL SEEMS TRUE: 5 Ways The Immigration Bill Is Like ObamaCare.
Can we have a simple bill, put through in regular order with no “gangs” meeting behind closed doors?
Also, why aren’t some GOP folks pushing amendments like an end to taxing Americans on income earned abroad, a repeal of the provisions punishing Americans who give up their citizenship, and a requirement for reciprocity regarding U.S. citizens’ rights to own property, participate in politics, etc., in Mexico?
CHANGE: States Aim To Arm Teachers.
FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL GERALD WALPIN: Why the IRS IG Stopped with an Audit: Probably in part because the Obama administration intimidates inspector generals.
Rubio has killed himself with his base through a classic example of hubris and Freshman overreach. He could have gotten behind an immigration bill, but getting behind this immigration bill, another cooked-up-in-a-backroom you’ve-got-to-pass-it-to-find-out-what’s-in-it monstrosity was a mistake. His second mistake, and the really fatal one, has been expressions of contempt toward his base. Suggesting that people who don’t support his bill are racist, and that American workers are dumb, is political poison. And his staff should know better than to say this kind of thing to any journalist, however friendly-seeming. All in all, a really disappointing performance from Rubio.
UPDATE: “And a lot of them work on Capitol Hill.”
MORE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:
Rubio’s staff, in instances like this, don’t reflect well upon his organization. He has since denounced the comments you quote. That said, I believe two things: First is that despite his Tea Party support, Rubio strikes me as instinctively a Bush-type moderate when it comes to the role of the federal government: compassionate conservatism take two. Second is that he is firmly convinced that he can carry moderates and a significant minority, if not the majority, of Hispanic voters in a general. He’s moving away from the base that elected him in hopes of enlarging his base for a national run. Unlike Paul or Cruz, he is explicitly courting the establishment of the Republican party. That tack has not hurt candidates running for the party’s presidential nomination. So his actions may alienate the base that first elected him, but he’s probably made the calculation that this base won’t get him the nomination in 2016.
P.S. He’s also courting the MSM constituency with his support of the current immigration bill: McCain is the model here.
And that worked out so well for McCain in the general election.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Obama puts up dukes and blunders into Syria. “President Obama’s decision to provide weapons to rebels in Syria has the potential to become another foreign policy blunder at a time when the Nobel Prize winner’s second term is mired in scandal. Obama had been saying for months that he would not send troops into the region, but has now stationed 300 troops just outside Syria on its border with Jordan. Obama attributes the abrupt escalation in U.S. involvement to the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But another factor could be Obama’s desire to appear tough on the issue during the G8 summit this week and to divert attention from the IRS, NSA and Benghazi scandals.”
UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: Syria: Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s Next War.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Erdogan’s Majority Rule. “Recent events in Turkey ought remind us, if we needed reminding, that freedom and parliamentary democracy are not identical, though many people mistake the one for the other.”
AT LEGAL INSURRECTION, A REVIEW of James O’Keefe’s Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy. “If today’s reporters found themselves in revolutionary France, they would be endorsing the head choppers, and their audience would cheer as each head hit the basket.”
ROLL CALL: Congress Craters in Poll Question That Matters Most. “The new poll suggests something more worrisome about the workings of our democratic society. Whether the people are confident the legislative branch is functioning properly, an admittedly vague concept, sounds like a more reliable gauge of the institution’s long-term viability than whether they like what’s being served up at the Capitol at the moment. . . . In the first four days of June, only 10 percent of 1,529 people surveyed described themselves as having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, ranking it last on a list of 16 societal institutions for the fourth consecutive year. No institution has scored lower since Gallup started asking in 1973.”
THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE PROMISED: On Europe trip, Obama will face a continent frustrated by his actions and inaction.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New American Enemies List. “Of all the legacies of Barack Obama, the most pernicious will be the creation of a rogue government that has cut off and terrified half the population — and for no other reason than that they seem to represent things that Mr. Obama simply does not seem to understand.”
MICKEY KAUS: Immigration: The Search For The Magic Fig Leaf.
Benghazi. The IRS targeting of conservative groups. Secret e-mail accounts used by top federal officials — such as former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez — to conduct official business. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s efforts to promote Obamacare with a private slush fund solicited from companies she regulates. Subpoenas for records of journalists. The NSA revelations.
How many warning signs — emerging virtually all at once — do we need to realize that the American people have lost control of their government? Not only that, but large sectors of the government have lost any ability to provide checks and balances or even monitor the bureaucracy.
Read the whole thing.
I’M SURE OBAMA WILL BE GRATEFUL FOR HIS SUPPORT: Cheney calls Snowden a ‘traitor,’ defends NSA surveillance programs.