HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: L.A. Times: 2012 is tragic, but mass shootings not increasing, experts say.
Archive for 2013
January 3, 2013
LEARNING: ‘Invisible Exhibition’ opens eyes to blindness. “The visitors take on the role of the blind.”
FASTER, BETTER, CHEAPER: Architecture Pirates May Finish Copycat Building Before Original. Well, two out of three, anyway.
POLITICO: Obama’s Debt Problem. “The staggering national debt — up about 60 percent from the $10 trillion Obama inherited when he took office in January 2009 — is the single biggest blemish on Obama’s record. . . . Obama has long emphasized Bush’s role in digging the immense hole. But he owns it now, and it’s a significant political liability as he girds for a fast-approaching brawl with the GOP over how to deal with converging deadlines of a new debt ceiling fight and the need to come up with $1 trillion in deficit reduction mandated by the so-called ‘sequester.'”
You can blame Bush all you want, and Obama likes to talk about “two wars on the credit card,” but this chart illustrates that things were actually improving until we got a Democratic Congress in 2007, and got worse when we elected Obama.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Work Out Secretly At The Office.
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Michael Rank, From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000 Years of Middle East History. $2.99 on Kindle.
HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles. I like the photo of Chuck “Clawhammer” Schumer.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mono, ‘The Kissing Disease’, Really Is Spread Primarily Through Kissing.
WALTER SHAPIRO: Hey, don’t dump on Boehner and McConnell.
GALLERY: Dance-stepping back in time: Vintage photos of an Oklahoma square dance that capture an innocent slice of 1940s America. I don’t think these couples are square-dancing, though.
THE ART OF PROTEST in 2012.
HARVEY SILVERGLATE: Black and Whitey: How the Feds Disable Criminal Defense. “The feds have used certain techniques that virtually assure convictions of both the innocent and the guilty, the wealthy and the poor, the violent drug dealer and the white collar defendant, indifferent to the niceties of ‘due process of law,’ particularly the right to effective assistance of legal counsel. . . . These techniques are the rule, not the exception, when the Department of Justice really wants to win a case.”
HEH: Al Jazeera hands Al Gore the second-chakra-releasing sum of $100 million. Best headline on this story yet. But wait, there’s more: “Hey, I just thought up a slogan Al Jazeera can use as it promotes itself to the American people: You Can Call Us Al.”
I’LL TAKE SHORT-LIVED INTERNATIONAL LAW DOCTRINES FOR $500, ALEX: Duty to Protect: RIP. “A new UN report estimates that 60,000-plus people have been killed in Syria between March 2011 and today. Worse, the rate of casualties is increasing as the war drags on, as both sides begin to use heavier weapons. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay put it bluntly: ‘Collectively, we have fiddled at the edges while Syria burns.’ . . . It’s certainly not too late for the U.S. to get more involved in fixing the mess in Syria, but our options are now considerably worse than they were two years ago. Years have passed, and we’re continuing to pay for our ill-advised decision to intervene in Libya while ignoring the more serious crisis in Syria—as are hundreds of thousands of Syrians.”
I guess this is more of that “smart diplomacy” we were promised. Hillary Clinton was unavailable for comment because of health reasons, but somebody could ask Susan Rice or Samantha Power. . . . .
MORE, MORE, MORE! After The Fiscal Cliff, What Do Democrats Want? “President Obama just successfully raised taxes on the rich. Is he going to go back and do it again in a few months? I’m not sure about the optics here: while I think that a tax increase on the rich was popular and inevitable, I don’t think that Democrats will do well to position themselves as the party that does nothing but demand more tax increases, even on rich people.”
Oh, I think they’re okay with that. The real problem is that further tax increases will hit Democratic constituencies particularly hard.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
You’re missing the point. Look at what was passed in the last-minute fiscal cliff parachute… the Democratic strategy is not just to raise taxes on the rich, but also to exempt their favored constituencies from those taxes. If tax rates are intolerably high for everyone with money, everyone with money has to go to the democrats and beg for a loophole in smoke-filled back rooms. This is exactly what politicians want: invisible leverage, the wealthy and powerful coming to them, hat in hand, begging to be allowed to get their money back in a secret tax loophole.
Well, yes, but that only works for the Warren Buffett/George Soros rich people. Lawyers, ad execs, and nonprofit executives making $500K/year can’t do that. And they got significant pushback from the NY and CA delegations for that very reason.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE invents Craigslist.
WHEN ROBOTS TAKE ALL OUR JOBS.
I, for one, welcome our new robot employees.
WELL, HAWAII WAS BECKONING: Obama signs ‘fiscal cliff’ bill using autopen.
AT AMAZON, New Year’s markdowns in Exercise & Fitness.
Also, today only: Trigger Point Performance The Grid Revolutionary Foam Roller. I’m a big fan of foam-rolling for addressing all sorts of muscle pain. We have a 3-foot foam roller, but I just ordered one of these because it’s smaller and something we might take with us when traveling.
DAVID SHUSTER: Time For David Gregory To Apologize.
Meet the Press is the oldest and most treasured public affairs show on television. The program’s host, merely by occupying the job, is a leader in broadcast journalism and in the Washington, D.C. community where the show is based.
This is why the ongoing silence of David Gregory and NBC News — following his apparent on-air violation of D.C. gun laws — is so disconcerting. By choosing not to comment, not only is Gregory diminished, but it harms the legacy of Meet the Press and leaves Washington, D.C. police with no opportunity to save face and move on.
Well, apology or not, he seems to be benefiting from a legal double standard. An apology won’t fix that.
ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS WANT TO BAN basically all modern firearms. “You would have a very short window to turn in your guns to the state police and avoid prosecution.” The bill sounds unconstitutional, but that’s never been a great concern in Illinois.
Plus, another aspect that fits the Illinois pattern: “Gun manufacturers in Illinois have already threatened to leave the area if laws limiting guns are put in place. ArmaLite owner Mark Westrom told FoxNews.com that he’s been fielding offers from at least two others states to move his operation if gun control laws in Illinois are pushed through.”
MORE, MORE, MORE! Obama: We raised taxes, but the rich still aren’t paying their fair share. I’d love to see someone pin him down as to exactly what constitutes a “fair share.”
UPDATE: Related: The Media And Democrats’ Flexible Definition Of “The Rich.” “Apparently to Democrats, the party of the little guy and the media, ‘The Rich’ doesn’t include General Electric, Citigroup, Diageo (makers of Puerto Rican Rum) Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Wind Energy Association and The Motion Picture Association of America.”