Archive for 2014
January 26, 2014
AT AMAZON, 25% off on Compact Camera Systems.
Also, deals galore on Digital Games.
Plus, today only: 75 Top-Rated Kindle Books $1.99 Each: Novels, Nonfiction, and More.
CHARLIE MARTIN: 13 Weeks: Misunderstanding Obesity.
TEXAS: Challenger to John Cornyn Brings NDAA Controversy into Texas Race. “Why is it in the best interest of Texas to hand more power to an administration already hostile to conservatives? When the IRS is used to target Texas conservatives, as Sen. Cornyn well knows because he sits on the IRS oversight committee, there is no reason to hand this administration more ability to target patriotic, law-abiding Texans. Prior to his vote to pass the NDAA, Sen. Cornyn voted that he didn’t want debate to end, but that effort failed. Rather than continue to oppose a bill that he felt needed more debate as Sen. Cruz did, Sen. Cornyn voted for this very bill, which greatly expanded government powers.”
MAYBE PEOPLE ARE WISING UP: WaPo/ABC News Poll Finds Americans Have Little Faith In The Nation’s Leaders. I mean, why would people have faith?
PROF. JACOBSON: Sexism defense of Wendy Davis is attempt to give her an easier double standard. “There is no double standard. Both Newt Gingrich and John McCain were seriously attacked because of their treatment of first wives and kids, as I shared with Powers in a Twitter exchange. . . . Every case is different, and the world of politics rarely is entirely consistent. But if anything, Davis has been treated the way we would expect a man to be treated if it were discovered that his entire political narrative was exaggerated if not fabricated. The reasons her treatment of her husband and children matters is that it always matters, and that she made her parenting a critical part of her political narrative.”
When women say that Wendy Davis is being treated more harshly than a man, I wonder if they aren’t really reflecting just that it bothers them more when a woman is criticized this way than when it happens to a man?
IF YOU LIKE YOUR MONEY, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR MONEY: HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals. Are they short of cash, or just busybodies? Either way, I’d bank elsewhere.
SO LEFTIES WERE ALL OVER TWITTER RIDICULING this letter in the Wall Street Journal, mostly on the grounds that its author is rich, and has a fancy penthouse place. (Ironic, given the digs some of said lefties enjoy.)
But then there’s this: Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer. “Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of protesters targeted a Google engineer best known for helping to develop the company’s self-driving car.”
More here: “Is the anti-tech worker sentiment nearing a boiling point? And are tech workers and companies responsible for the world’s ills? Protesters have now reportedly targeted an individual Google employee, not just the buses carrying workers like him. And whereas previous protests by other groups have addressed complaints such as gentrification in San Francisco, a flier accompanying the protest at the Google engineer’s Berkeley house is basically a diatribe against capitalism. . . . That means this has gone past the stage where people roll their eyes at the quaint protesters. Google has reportedly hired security guards for its shuttles, and Brandon Bailey wrote that the company has also launched a private ferry service.Could things get worse? Let’s go back to Lennard’s mention of the animal-rights activists’ protests against biotech companies: One of those activists, Daniel Andreas San Diego, is believed to have been responsible for the 2003 bombings of Chiron in Emeryville and Shaklee in Pleasanton. No one was injured, but San Diego remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.”
When Tea Partiers show up at somebody’s house to protest, I don’t want to hear any complaints about civility. But you can bet that the press will act like nothing of the sort has ever happened before.
UPDATE: From the comments:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck’.”
More and more of late I’ve been getting this ominous feeling that we are about to have an extended period of bad luck.
When you adopt policies that promote stagnation and make the economy more of a zero-sum game, jealousy becomes much greater. And many commenters note that the Google crowd, via its generally left-leaning politics, has enabled such. True enough.
GENDER INEQUALITY IN HEALTHCARE: “Adolescent boys and young-adult males do not see doctors or access the health care system nearly as much as teen girls and young women — and that gap has significant health consequences for guys throughout their lives.”
EVALUATING online vigilantism.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT (CONT’D): The Hill: IRS Attack On Tea Party Urged. “New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D) doubled down on his previous calls for President Obama to use the IRS to target Tea Party groups while speaking before the extreme-left, tax-exempt Center for American Progress (CAP) yesterday.”
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: S&P Gets the Pitchfork Treatment: The Obama administration retaliates with a fraud suit . . . or is it a fraudulent suit?
A dour President Obama was in no mood to hear about Wall Street’s troubles. “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” he warned a room full of the nation’s banking titans.
They’d been summoned to the White House woodshed over what Dear Leader had decided was excessive compensation for industry execs. The president had been on the job for less than three months, but his community-organizer roots were already showing: the fraudulent narrative — in this instance, “income inequality” — helped along by whatever arm-twisting the occasion required. The narrative camouflages execution of the statist game-plan: (1) government creates problem, (2) government locates scapegoat, and (3) government exploits scapegoat to juxtapose itself as savior — rationalizing more regulation and more power.
The pitchfork imagery leapt to mind this week because Timothy Geithner, Obama’s tax-challenged former Treasury secretary, was back in the news — specifically, the extortion news. Turbo Tim had been in the room back in 2009, absorbing the boss’s lesson in Alinsky-style government-corporate relations. Now we learn, at least according to Standard & Poor’s top honcho, that Geithner made the Obama method his own.
In an affidavit filed in a California federal court, S&P chairman Harold McGraw III alleges that on August 8, 2011 — i.e., when the Obama reelection campaign was gearing up — Geithner tracked him down by phone. The then-secretary was irate because, three days earlier, S&P had downgraded the credit rating of the United States to a notch below triple-A for the first time in history. McGraw had been forewarned by a Geithner associate that the secretary “was very angry at S&P.” When the two men finally spoke, Geithner ripped McGraw for having “done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country.” He further warned that S&P’s insolence — er, I mean, S&P’s decision — would “be looked at very carefully” and would prompt “a response from the government.”
You know, a lot of us out here in America have pitchforks of our own.
THIS IS MOSTLY EVIDENCE THAT CHESS SKILL ISN’T EVERYTHING: 23-year-old beats Bill Gates in 9 moves.
January 25, 2014
EXPECT MORE LEFTY OPPOSITION WHEN IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT SELF-DRIVING CARS WILL kill public transit unions.
IS THE RISE OF CENTRAL HEATING a contributor to the obesity epidemic?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: A Lawyer and Partner, and Also Bankrupt.
Anyone who wonders why law school applications are plunging and there’s widespread malaise in many big law firms might consider the case of Gregory M. Owens.
The silver-haired, distinguished-looking Mr. Owens would seem the embodiment of a successful Wall Street lawyer. A graduate of Denison University and Vanderbilt Law School, Mr. Owens moved to New York City and was named a partner at the then old-line law firm of Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood, and after a merger, at Dewey & LeBoeuf.
Today, Mr. Owens, 55, is a partner at an even more eminent global law firm, White & Case. A partnership there or any of the major firms collectively known as “Big Law” was long regarded as the brass ring of the profession, a virtual guarantee of lifelong prosperity and job security.
But on New Year’s Eve, Mr. Owens filed for personal bankruptcy.
According to his petition, he had $400 in his checking account and $400 in savings. He lives in a rental apartment at 151st Street and Broadway. He owns clothing he estimated was worth $900 and his only jewelry is a Concord watch, which he described as “broken.”
Ouch.
#PANIC: “Is the WashPo going gun nut?”
BACKING DOWN: Newspaper boss says gun permit database idea was misfire. Ya think? “A national newspaper chain never intended to create a multi-state database of gun owners with permits allowing them to carry concealed weapons according to its top executive, who told FoxNews.com a ‘poorly crafted’ internal memo erroneously indicated such an idea was being planned.”
CLEVER TRICK: How To Remove A Stuck Ring.
PEGGY NOONAN: Snoozing Through The State Of The Union. “No one’s really listening to the president now. He has been for five years a nonstop windup talk machine. Most of it has been facile, bland, the same rounded words and rounded sentiments, the same soft accusations and excuses. I see him enjoying the sound of his voice as the network newsman leans forward eagerly, intently, nodding at the pearls, enacting interest, for this is the president and he is the anchorman and surely something important is being said with two such important men engaged.” Only not so much. Some of us noticed this earlier than Peggy did, but she has noticed.
AT AMAZON, Deals For Your Valentine.
Plus, bargains at the Baby Nursery Event.
Also, today only: ProForm 7.0 RE Elliptical Trainer, $334.99 (58% off).
THIS JANUARY: Coldest Month In A Century?
MIA LOVE UPDATE: National Journal: Mia Love most likely challenger to win House seat in 2014. “Repeat GOP candidate Mia Love, who would be the first African-American Republican woman in Congress if she won, is now the biggest early favorite to become a House freshman in 2015.”
INSTEAD OF GLOBAL WARMING, perhaps we should be worrying about ocean acidification. Either way, though, the answer is the same: If you’re worried about carbon emissions, you should support fracking and nuclear power.