Archive for 2013
November 30, 2013
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Genetically modified cells monitor blood fat levels and release hormones to make you feel full, tested on obese mice help them lose weight.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: How NASA might build its very first warp drive. “That’s a significant change in calculations to say the least. The reduction in mass from a Jupiter-sized planet to an object that weighs a mere 1,600 pounds has completely reset White’s sense of plausibility — and NASA’s.”
But note the key caveat: “Mathematically, the field equations predict that this is possible, but it remains to be seen if we could ever reduce this to practice.”
ANNALS OF THE REGULATORY STATE: Topless Barber Charged With Unlicensed Cosmetology.
TODAY’S THE LAST DAY TO ENTER Victor Davis Hanson’s November Military History Challenge.
I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Study Linking Genetically Modified Corn to Rat Tumors Is Retracted.
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader J.J. DiBenedeto, A Box of Dreams (the collected Dream Series, books 1-5). $7.99 on Kindle.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Drug-carrying nanoparticles that can be taken orally in pill form.
HOW SMALL IS SMALL? The Nanoscale Explained In One Chart.
UKRAINE: Police Break Up Pro-Europe Protests With Tear Gas and Clubs. A reader in Ukraine reports that the President’s chief of staff has resigned in protest, though that’s not in the story.
UPDATE: Here’s a report.
IN THE MAIL: A Cosmic Christmas 2 You.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 205.
MICHAEL BARONE: Welcome to the Kludgeocracy.
How is it possible that Barack Obama did not know that his beloved healthcare.gov website was a botch? That’s a question many thoughtful people (including thoughtful Democrats) are asking.
We heard him say that he wouldn’t have boasted that it would be as easy to use as amazon.com or obitz.com had he known that it wouldn’t. I’m not “stupid enough,” he said at his Nov. 14 press conference. Most Americans agree that’s true.
One thing we do know is that this is a chief executive who does not want to hear bad news, or at least effectively discourages his subordinates from bringing it to him.
He made a decision to take the question of intervention in Syria to Congress after consulting, on a walk in the White House lawn, with his chief of staff. Any staffer with knowledge of congressional opinion on the issue could have told him that he didn’t come close to having the votes.
And it’s known that his White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, learned the week of April 22 from Treasury lawyers that the Internal Revenue Service had, in her words, “improperly scrutinized several … organizations by using words like ‘Tea Party’ and ‘patriot.'”
Evidently, she didn’t tell the president, who said he learned about the scandal only when it was made public by IRS official Lois Lerner May 10. Counsels to former presidents of both parties say they would have informed their bosses immediately.
Effective executives take special pains to ferret out bad news from the organizations they command. They know that most underlings like to tell their superiors that things are going fine.
“A culture that prefers deluding the boss over delivering bad news isn’t well equipped to try new things,” writes Internet pioneer Clay Shirky on his eponymous blog. . . .
Obama knows how to use words well. But he doesn’t seem to understand how the world works. “We’re also discovering,” he said at that press conference, “that insurance is complicated to buy.” Yup.
There is a reason public policy in industrial age America (and other democratic countries) moved toward greater regimentation and standardization. Centralized command and control was a good way to run assembly lines.
There is a reason also that public policy in the information age, elsewhere and here until 2008, moved toward more market mechanisms. Central planners have a hard time anticipating how IT systems and consumers will respond.
That’s especially true when chief executive doesn’t want to hear — and perhaps cannot imagine that there will be — bad news. Welcome to the kludgeocracy.
Indeed.
HARD SELL: Going Door-To-Door For ObamaCare.
WELCOME TO THE AGE OF OBAMA: Between Wal-Mart and Tiffany, No Middle Ground.
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals in TV, Audio & Video.
Plus, Hot New Toy Releases.
And, today only: Bond 50: The Complete 23 Film Collection on Blu-ray, $99.99 (67% off).
Also today only: Escort Passport 9500ix Radar/Laser Detector, $349.99 (30% off).
BYRON YORK: Why is President Obama trying to politicize the holidays?
But the first floor of the Stasi Museum is not about spying. Instead, it is devoted to the propaganda that East German bureaucrats used to foster socialist consciousness in an unwilling public. One display explains the GDR’s efforts in the 1950s to politicize what in the past had been family and religious occasions. The state sought to transform weddings, confirmations, and other personal events into “socialist celebrations,” to be “committed collectively and aimed at a confession to socialism,” according to the awkward English translation of the exhibit.
The exhibition informs visitors that the project “did not gain popular acceptance.” Amazingly enough, people didn’t want to turn their family holidays into socialist celebrations.
Here at home, this Thanksgiving brings an effort by the Obama administration to turn a day of giving thanks into a day of discussion about the virtues of national health care. On Wednesday afternoon, just hours before Thanksgiving, President Obama’s Twitter account — which has more than 40 million followers — sent out this message: “Make sure everyone who sits down with you for #Thanksgivukkah dinner is covered.” (“Thanksgivukkah” refers to this year’s rare overlap of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.)
The president’s tweet linked to a photo of a young man sitting at a table with a turkey and a menorah. The accompanying text: “Celebrating Thanksgiving. Lighting the Hanukkah candles. Talking about health insurance. Gotta love dinners like these.”
It’s revealing stuff.
DAVE SWINDLE: Why Kanye West Is An Antisemite.
OH, I WOULDN’T BE SO SURE ABOUT THAT: Obama: ‘I’ve Got Nowhere To Go But Up.’
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama ‘tossed away’ George W. Bush’s Iraq War victory.
The Iraq War “was won and we were in a position, if we had just negotiated a status of forces agreement, to have an ally in the region, to have a base, to train their air force — that would have changed the course of the future,” he told The Daily Caller. “Instead, a decision was made by the new administration to evacuate, leaving a vacuum where Iran has come in, where al-Qaida thrives and al-Qaida actually has extended itself into Syria. This was all unnecessary — and all the result of the liquidation of a war that was won.”
Ideology required that the Iraq War be a failure, even if it needed a nunc pro tunc effort to make it so.
WHY WOULD OBAMA SAY HE’S NOT IDEOLOGICAL?
The president’s belief that little of what he does is ideologically driven suggests he is living with a pampered, unchallenged mind. He has been told he is so smart for so long that he sees only clarity in his actions and unchallengeable reason in his conclusions. The president’s belief in his own intellect makes him think that whatever he does is simply the only thing a thinking person would do. Nothing ideological about that. And as president, he is constantly flattered, and his confidence that his analysis and conclusions are superior to others is readily reinforced. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett tells us that Obama has been “bored to death his whole life.” Perhaps she is onto something. I guess there is something ho-hum and tiresome about being right all the time.
It appears that President Obama believes that dissenting views are irrational or the result of clouded, lesser thinking. Being blind to his own ideology makes him unable to respectfully deal with others who might readily embrace an ideological point of view. The president’s inability to effectively work with Congress, orchestrate Washington, or build strong alliances or even friendships overseas probably stems from his belief that others should defer to his clear thinking without many questions or objections. He doesn’t see politics as a great debate with multiple possibilities among equal voices.
After about five years as president, it is unlikely he will change his modus operandi. In fact, given all we have observed about Obama, it is safe to say that he cannot adapt and will never be able to produce win-win outcomes among competing interests and ideologies. For anything to get done, others must manage around him.
I suspect we’ll see more of that “managing around” over the next three years.
HE HAS LESS POWER TO PUSH THEIR AGENDA THEN HE USED TO, BUT HE ALSO HAS LESS POWER TO RESIST THEIR AGENDA THAN HE USED TO: The Hill: Liberals push wish list on Obama.