NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Fight Rust — And Win.
Archive for 2013
January 4, 2013
AT AMAZON, new releases in Historical Fiction.
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Alexis Garcia: How The Obama Administration Is Dumbing Down Education.
PETER ORSZAG: Obama lost leverage for fiscal fights ahead. “Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, President Obama’s former top budget adviser thinks his old boss has lost leverage for the budget battles to come in the wake of this week’s deal avoiding an immediate fall over the ‘fiscal cliff.'”
ANDY KESSLER: In the Privacy Wars, It’s iSpy vs. gSpy. “Big Brother is watching us. But we are watching back. . . . I know the precise number of red-light cameras because a website (poi-factory.com) crowdsources their locations and updates them daily for download to GPS devices. And 30 million surveillance cameras are a pittance compared with the 327 million cellphones in use across America, almost all of them with video cameras built in.”
MESSAGE TO LAW SCHOOL APPLICANTS: Caveat Emptor. “There is a crisis in law-school education, but don’t expect the institutions to tell potential applicants about it. In short, there are far too many graduates for the number of jobs available, and the majority of those who get jobs are not being paid nearly enough to service their debt.”
AMY ALKON: I get tired of the notion that men don’t show their feelings. “What they don’t do is show them like women do, in the Approved Women’s Magazine Way Of Doing It.”
JOHN TIERNEY: Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be.
HARRY REID’S FILIBUSTER PLAN really about ramming through hard-left Supreme Court nominees? Such a move would seriously undercut the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but I doubt they care.
ISN’T THAT BASICALLY JUST DEFAULT? Paying off the debt with a coin arbitrarily valued at $1 Trillion? It’s a nice touch to make it a platinum coin, but it might as well be a dog turd. The Gods Of The Copybook Headings are clearing their throats.
CHANGE: Leading Environmental Activist’s Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong To Oppose GMOs. “As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.”
MARRIAGE PENALTY: TIME FOR A TAX DIVORCE.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama’s New Year’s Resolution: More Drone Strikes.
STEPHEN L. CARTER: Angry at the NRA? That Won’t Reduce Gun Violence. “Support for stricter U.S. gun laws hasn’t jumped as fast or as far in recent weeks as many liberals had hoped and expected. If you’re wondering why, maybe the reason is the shakiness of the public’s trust in government itself. . . . We are now approaching four years since the U.S. Senate enacted a budget. The last was in April 2009. And bear in mind that federal law requires an annual budget. Imagine the ire of the senators toward a private firm that treated legal requirements so casually. Amid such ineptitude, ‘Trust us, we’ll protect you,’ isn’t a very persuasive case to make to the tens of millions of Americans who have guns — often very powerful ones — in their homes. And directing fury at gun owners for their lack of trust isn’t likely to increase their faith in government.”
WELL, THERE’S GOOD MONEY IN DOOMSAYING. JUST ASK AL GORE! America: Doomed by Scarcity, Doomed by Plenty, Doomed, Doomed!
Pessimists move so fast they can make your head spin. A few months ago, the conventional wisdom held that America was running out of oil and gas—and so was the whole world. Peak oil and an age of scarcity were falling upon us. Alas and alack, o woe!
But then a few people and publications, including VM, began to take note of something new: vast, once-inaccessible U.S. energy reserves that might outstrip all the reserves in the Middle East (and Canada has even more than we do).
This did not fox pessimists and worriers for long. David Rothkopf has gotten in fastest with what we expect will soon be a common theme: America, once doomed because it had no more oil, is now even more doomed because it has too much.
As long as there’s a market, people will move to fill it.
HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: Study: Affirmative-Action Bans May Actually Speed Integration.
JAMES TARANTO: ‘Tokenism’ vs. ‘Diversity:’ The left’s racially charged attack on Sen. Tim Scott. Among others: “White liberals like Timothy Noah and Maureen Dowd seem to enjoy the frisson of denouncing Justice Thomas in racially charged terms that would be regarded as invidious if not career-ending in reference to any nonconservative black person.” Frisson or not, it’s still racism.
AT AMAZON, natural and organic groceries.
Also, today only: Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook, $699.99 (30% off).
GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD (CONT’D): Workers making $30,000 will take a bigger hit on their pay than those earning $500,000 under new fiscal deal.
NOW ON YOUTUBE: InstaVision: I talk with Bob Owens about guns and gun control.
SO I RAN THIS DEFICIT CHART YESTERDAY, pointing out that things were actually improving in Bush’s presidency until the election of a Democratic congress in 2007:
And the Anchoress emailed:
The deficit WAS being paid down in both 2005 and 2006, (yes, before the Pelosi congress came in, in 2007), and why?
Because unemployment was low, people were working and that meant tax revenues were approaching record heights, and the deficit was being paid down.
This is confirmed by none other than the “paper of record.”
2005: “Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit.”
2006: “Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit.”I reminded folks about this in 2010, when the Democrats and the NY Times seemed to have forgotten same.
it can’t be reminded enough. :-)
Apparently not.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Tax Deal A Victory For Hollywood Cronyism.
BYRON YORK: Republicans Bet On Stronger Hand In Spending Fight. “Our view is that the revenue question has now been settled. It’s behind us. Now we fight on spending, and we’ve got two good opportunities to do so coming up — the debt limit and the continuing resolution.”