CRITICS OF THE “UNITARY EXECUTIVE” WILL NO DOUBT PROTEST: President-elect Obama plans to use his executive powers to make an immediate impact when he takes office, perhaps reversing Bush administration policies on stem cell research and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.
I’m okay on the stem cells, but the anti-drilling move is dumb, and will come back to haunt him when gas prices, inevitably, go back up.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING CAREFUL. Governing isn’t like campaigning.
TIGERHAWK: We will soon learn whether we can rely on our “traditional allies.” “For seven years of war, we have been told that our ‘traditional allies’ would help us more if only our president were more consultative and less, well, detestable. Well, we are about to learn whether that hypothesis is true, or if it has been nothing more than a Democratic attack point and a nifty excuse for other countries to abdicate their responsibilities to the Atlantic alliance.”
THEY WOULDN’T DO THIS IF IT WERE A MOSQUE: Marching against Rick Warren’s church.
Plus, related thoughts from Dale Carpenter: “Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion? People were warned that churches would lose their tax-exempt status, which was untrue. So now we have (frivolous) calls for the Mormon Church to lose its tax-exempt status?”
THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “AstraZeneca Plc’s Crestor slashed the risk of heart attack, stroke and death by nearly half in people with normal or low cholesterol in a study, potentially opening a way to save the lives of thousands of seemingly healthy people. The benefits were shown in patients with high levels of a protein called CRP, an indicator of inflammation. CRP is tied to heart risk even in people with no additional symptoms. Crestor is approved by U.S. regulators only to lower bad cholesterol.”
I’d like to see if this is borne out by followup studies, though.
HOPE AND CHANGE! Jamie Gorelick being considered for Attorney General.
I think she’d be a great choice. I mean, any friend of Angelo’s is a friend of mine! And, really, what could go wrong?
UPDATE: I’d almost forgotten the “Clipper Chip” fiasco. Thanks to reader Mike Gannis for reminding me. I’m guessing that Gorelick has learned how to use email since, though . . . .
“WHEN GOOD MEN DID NOTHING:” It’s the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht.
UPDATE: It’s also the anniversary of the Berlin wall’s fall, which was brought about when good men didn’t just do nothing.
GPS UPDATE: People occasionally write to ask if I still like the Garmin 660 GPS I bought last year, and the answer is yes. I notice that the latest Consumer Reports gives its top rating to the Garmin 850 by a pretty significant margin. My only real complaint about mine is that the suction-cup mount doesn’t stick to the windshield very well.
CALLING FOR a more positive approach in training physicians.
MICHAEL CRICHTON’S QUESTION: “How do we separate science from religion in environmentalism?”
NORM GERAS: The return of the real.
REPORTER INVESTIGATED FOR LOOTING: Some entirely non-exploitative coverage from Jules Crittenden.
A LINK BETWEEN chronic inflammation and Parkinson’s disease?
PALOMA UPDATE: “Ivan-like damage” on Cayman Brac.
THE TENNESSEE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND BLOGS: A roundup.
ANOTHER BAILOUT? The Great Carbon Crash of ’08.
MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC PENSIONS, from Illinois:
This turmoil on Wall Street likely will result in taxpayers making up for investment losses within the state’s public-employee pension systems either with higher taxes or through state spending cuts. State pension assets dropped almost $14 billion in the period from Oct. 1, 2007, to Sept. 30.
What this means is that pension systems, underfunded by the state for years, face an even bigger gap between their assets and what they’ll ultimately pay retirees. For example, in June 2007, the Illinois Teacher’s Retirement System, or TRS, was at a funding level of 64 percent, making it one of the most underfunded public pension systems in the nation.
But the bear market has sent investments within the system into a tailspin. A June 30, 2008, audit found that due to investment losses the fund is now funded at only 56 percent level, according to a report issued Thursday by TRS.
Illinois, with its history of political corruption and mismanagement, is probably one of the more serious cases, but this problem is likely widespread. And I suspect things are much worse now than they were on June 30.
UPDATE: Reader Michael Grubbs writes:
I live in the metropolitan New York area. I love when the sniffy urbanites claim superiority to those living in suburban or rural regions of that great unknown west of the Passaic river. I point out that their dependence on big government and public services will bankrupt their institutions and ultimately their way of life. We had a transit strike when the city asked the transporation union members to chip in something akin to 3% of their health care cost. Never mind a toll booth attendant can make over 100k a year and retire in 20 years. Permanent disability claims are never investigated.
I like to remind those who nostalgically dream of living in the gritty New York of 1982 that they only need to wait. Somewhere down the line, the city will go bankrupt and need to raise taxes to an untenble levels. Anyone with who needs to earn money will set off for gentler climates. New York will be reduced to the idle rich and the idle poor.
That seems like a risk. And Tom W. Bell emails:
I thought, Glenn, that I at least once saw you speak in praise of describing problematic political pensions as “over-generous” rather than “under-funded.” I very much favor the former usage, for what I suppose are obvious rhetorical (and factual!) reasons. Allow me to kindly suggest you consider using it in lieu of the latter, more popular but misleading, label.
Good point. They’re underfunded in terms of providing overgenerous benefits, since people are really only willing to pay for the benefits they fund . . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Donald Gately writes: “If my personal 401k plan is down, it is my problem. But if a public employees’ pension fund is down, it is also my problem. I’ll probably have to work a few more years to make up what I’ve lost in the past 6 months. Is it really too much to ask government bureaucrats to do the same?”
HERE’S MORE on RFK Jr.’s opposition to the Cape Wind wind power project. We’ll sacrifice anything for the environment — except our mansions’ ocean views!
Of course, he’s not the only Kennedy with those views . . . .
MORE ON gays vs. blacks in Los Angeles. “By any standard, the conduct displayed by the bigoted gay demonstrators is outrageous, inexcusable, and indefensible. However, speaking as an individualist, I don’t think it any more reflects on gays as a whole than it would reflect on blacks as a whole if some angry black demonstrators hurled epithets at gays or Jews.” Plus this: “Can there be any doubt about the Muslim position on gay marriage? While there are no statistics on the Muslim vote, I would be flabbergasted if support for gay marriage mustered more than the single digits. Yet Mormons have been singled out as bigots. I’m wondering whether some bigots are more equal….”
UPDATE: Bill Quick disagrees.
NETBOOK COMPUTERS costing Microsoft sales?
A KKK MARCH IN KNOXVILLE? That’s the first one of those I can remember. Katie Granju comments: “Maybe they were marching to protest Robert Byrd’s just-announced Senate retirement?”
UPDATE: Could it have been a Prop. 8 protest? . . .
DIGITAL CAMERA UPDATE: So I got a Panasonic LX-3 the other day, and I’ve been trying it out as I’ve had time. It’s supposed to be the compact camera for people who own high-end digital SLRs — with a fast f 2.0 Leica lens, upgraded sensor, etc. So far, the quality seems excellent. (Here’s a picture from the other day). The attractions to me were its unusually wide-angle lens for a pocket camera, and its low-light capabilities. Both seem good so far. It also shoots HD video, but I haven’t really experimented with that much. Full report later. Meanwhile, here’s the DPReview.com assessment.
One thing that struck me first off, though was that it radiates an aura of quality. It feels solid, the controls feel high-quality, everything just seems like a high-end camera. Whether that’s just clever human engineering, or actually reflects a better build quality, I don’t know, but it’s very noticeable and I like it.
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