RON FUTRELL: Who In the MSM Will Stand Up For Michael Yon? “Let the administration boot Helen Thomas out of her seat in the front of a White House press conference and there would be outrage. Remove Jonathan Karl from the Capitol and media would revolt. Kick Andrea Kremer off Sunday Night Football and there would be pandemonium. And yet nobody in the media seems to have much of a problem with Michael Yon being removed from the front lines by Obama/General McChrystal.”
EUROCHAOS: “You just can’t save some people from themselves. . . . How astonishing that Germans have not only advanced beyond all the other reasons they used to be eager to use military force, but are now at least somewhat willing to chip in to make the world a safer, more stable place where we can all get rich. About the most sensible thing I’ve heard out of a German in decades. Unflinchingly Teutonic in its logic. And for stating this, they run him out.”
OKAY, EARLIER I MENTIONED PolitZoid’s Money For Nothing stimulus video, but via William Sulik on Facebook I saw this gem from Weird Al Yankovic, putting the Beverly Hillbillies theme song to the Money for Nothing tune.
Posted at 6:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds
IT’S NOT JUST SESTAK: AP Sources: Admin talked jobs with Romanoff. “The Obama administration dangled the possibility of a government job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forgo a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.”
I mentioned Elena Kagan in this post because my sense — based on no inside information, of course — is that her selection reflects a strategic calculation by President Obama similar to FDR’s. What the President wants is a Supreme Court that will stand aside when or if Congress enacts the programs the President favors, and is relatively indifferent to his nominees’ views on other questions.
Read the whole thing.
Posted at 6:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds
RISE OF THE REPLICATORS. “MakerBot is one of a range of desktop manufacturing plants being developed by researchers and hobbyists around the world. Their goal is to create a machine that is able to fix itself and, ultimately, to replicate.”
Neil Gershenfeld had a book on this phenomenon a while back, and I wrote a column about it.
Posted at 5:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds
SPACE COMPANIES get NASA’s attention. “For many years the entrepreneurial space industry–collectively called ‘NewSpace’–has criticized NASA as slow, bureaucratic, and difficult to deal with. NASA, in turn, has devoted the bulk of its spending to major aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, not the entrepreneurs. However, as NASA and the White House redirect U.S. space exploration efforts, NewSpace companies are finding fresh opportunities to work with NASA.”
THE TEN BIGGEST OIL SPILLS IN HISTORY, plus some hopeful background: “The largest oil spill the world has seen exacted little permanent damage on coral ecosystems and local fisheries, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at Unesco. The study concluded that about half the oil evaporated, one-eighth of it was recovered and another quarter washed ashore, mostly in Saudi Arabia.”
NO WORRIES, WE’VE GOT “SMART DIPLOMACY” FOR THAT: “In the meantime, we should pay attention to a growing concern in the southeastern Mediterranean: A bankrupt Greece has alienated its patrons in northern Europe, has alienated the U.S. through years of anti-American rhetoric, has little or no financial resources, and will be facing cutbacks in its military — and a newly assertive Turkey is carving out a position of influence in the region as the real, and far more serious, representative of Islamic government, perhaps in the fashion of the old Ottomans.”
MOVE OVER ETHANOL: A car powered by Diet Coke and Mentos. “Sadly, the economics of scale required to make Coke Zero and Mentos an actual substitute for gasoline and diesel make the newfound fuel unlikely to gain widespread acceptance. For what it’s worth, it apparently takes 108 two-liter bottles of Coke Zero along with 648 Mentos to travel exactly 221 feet.”
CHANGE: Obama down to 46% in Gallup weekly poll. “Gallup’s weekly presidential approval survey shows Barack Obama sliding to the lowest level of his presidency, 46%, while his disapproval ties its highest mark, also 46%, for the third time this year. The approval rating has reached 45% once on the daily tracking polls, but this has been the lowest full-week rating of Obama’s term. The survey doesn’t include any data on issues, but clearly the response to the Gulf oil spill is dragging down job-approval numbers in a manner similar to what happened to George W. Bush and Katrina.”
USEFUL IDIOT: Greenwald and Gaza. “Since Glenn Greenwald is showing up on MSNBC and elsewhere, as an ‘expert’ on Israel and Gaza, this is as good a time as any to recall his record with regard to the last major Hamas-Israel blowup, the Gaza incursion in 2008-09. . . . And while we’re on the subject of Greenwald, here’s an interview with Greenwald in which he (a) claims that Israel’s boarding of a blockade-running ship violates international law because the ship was in international waters. Ruth Wedgwood, an actual expert in international law, then comes on to rebut him. . . . and (b) accuses everyone who disagrees with him about Israel’s blockade of simply regurgitating propaganda, which is amusing coming from someone who unhesitatingly repeated the following false propaganda from the ‘Free Gaza’ activists.”
Harrisonburg’s top prosecutor and James Madison University’s student newspaper have reached a settlement under which the state will pay $10,000 in legal fees that the paper accumulated while arguing against the seizure of staff photographs documenting a riot. . . . The Washington-based attorney for The Breeze said the most important piece of the settlement between the student newspaper and Garst was her admission that a seizure of photos wasn’t the right way to go.
“I admire the commonwealth’s attorney for her willingness to stand up and say so,” said attorney Seth Berlin.
Better late than never on that realization, I guess.
In a 1996 law review article, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan warned that campaign finance laws “easily can serve as incumbent-protection devices, insulating current officeholders from challenge and criticism.” The DISCLOSE Act, a speech-squelching bill supported by the man who nominated Kagan, is a good example.
President Obama and congressional Democrats say the DISCLOSE Act, which is expected to come up for a vote soon, is aimed at ensuring transparency and preventing corruption in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC, the January decision in which the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on political speech by corporations and unions. But the bill’s onerous, lopsided requirements suggest its supporters are more interested in silencing their critics. . . . Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) said he wants people to worry about a fine or prison sentence when they dare to speak ill of him.
“I hope it chills out all—not one side, all sides!” said Capuano. “I have no problem whatsoever keeping everybody out. If I could keep all outside entities out, I would.”
Hacks don’t like criticism. But they should be careful. They’ll like tar and feathers even less, and that’s what you get when you make criticism illegal.
Posted at 10:13 am by Glenn Reynolds
OBAMA’S very bad year so far. Lots of problems, and he seems unequal to all of ‘em. What’s really news, though, is that the legacy media is starting to point it out.
POLITICO:Rod Blagojevich trial rattles insiders. “The corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is already shaping up to be a political circus, promising to lay bare the underbelly of Chicago politics. But while the stakes are clear for Blagojevich – he could be the fourth Illinois governor in 40 years to retire to a federal prison – some of the most powerful Washington insiders are braced for potential political damage from the trial, which begins Thursday.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: “There are, indeed, two Americas: the increasingly straitened world of the private sector, where jobs are competitive, money is scarce, and job security is, for many, nonexistent; and the lush world of the government employee, where competition is more or less unknown, salaries and benefits often double those available to private workers, retirement is ten or more years earlier than in the private sector, and it may take a felony to get fired. This is the central economic conflict of our time, between lavishly compensated and ever more gluttonous government employees, and wealth-creating private citizens who are increasingly unable to support their public-sector masters in the style to which they have become accustomed.”
Check out this video from Dan Mitchell:
Posted at 7:18 am by Glenn Reynolds
June 1, 2010
AL AND TIPPER: What happened? “The inconvenient truth, it seems, is that they simply grew apart—a side effect of his traveling for climate change, spending less and less time together.”
UPDATE: Engineering Prof Chris Kobus writes: “Glenn – you’re absolutely correct. Diesel technology is inherently more efficient. If all spark-ignition engines were replaced with diesel, we’d reduce our dependence on foreign oil by almost 50%. As good as hybrids are in terms of fuel economy, hybrid diesels would blow them all away. Locomotives have been hybrid diesels for some time now.”
It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old. It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
Well, I’m certainly happier than I was in my 20s, or even 30s. But I’m not really feeling any physical effects of aging yet. I suggest, however, that this is a good argument for life extension — if people get happier as they live longer, and if that remains true even as their bodies fall apart, they’re likely to be happier still if they remain healthy.
“ ‘Nervous breakdown’ is one of those sturdy old terms, like ‘melancholia’ and ‘nervous illness,’ that haven’t really been surpassed, although they sound antiquated,” the historian Edward Shorter, co-author with Max Fink of the book “Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia,” said in an e-mail message.
I’m feeling a touch of the vapors, myself. Perhaps a couple of vodka and tonics will set me on my feet again . . . .
Posted at 4:51 pm by Glenn Reynolds
PJTV: Al Qaeda On Board: Who Was on the Flotilla the Israelis Raided? “Roger L. Simon talks to the former features editor of The Jerusalem Post Ruthie Blum Leibowitz. Was the aid being delivered to Gaza really humanitarian? Leibowitz shares some key details on the raid that may not be getting the coverage they deserve.”
THE MICKEY KAUS CAMPAIGN launches its first TV ad. “Mickey Kaus is no politician — he can tell the truth.”
Posted at 2:09 pm by Glenn Reynolds
CLAIM: Being at the birth ‘can make dad feel a failure’. It didn’t make me feel that way. And, if the obstetrician had been five minutes later I would have delivered my daughter myself, which would have made him feel like a failure. Plus — as I told a nurse at the time — if that had happened, I wouldn’t have paid one thin dime. . . .
ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER ON THE ATMOSPHERE IN ISRAEL. “Knesset testimony begins, amidst calls to treat ‘peace groups’ as potentially violent allies of terrorists rather than benign protesters.”
STUDY: Mass adoption of EVs in China will lead to tremendously higher emissions. “We have here another study that points to the fact that widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EV) could actually increase greenhouse-gas emissions rather than reduce them as we had hoped. This study, conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory and China’s Tsinghua University, specifically focuses on China and concludes that mass EV adoption could lead to tremendously higher emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide due to the country’s widespread use of coal as a power source.”
Posted at 1:36 pm by Glenn Reynolds
IS AUTOMATION ELIMINATING JOBS? “Martin Ford — who joined us on FastForward Radio not long ago — directs us to this story about HP planning to cut 9000 jobs via automation. This development looks like more support for Martin’s thesis, outlined in his book The Lights in the Tunnel, that automation is advancing at a rate that makes the displacement of most human beings from the workforce inevitable (and sooner than you would think.)”
I, for one, welcome our new robot employees. I feel like I’m safe, though. Before they can replace me, they’ve got to figure out what it is, exactly, that I do.
SO, YESTERDAY I MENTIONED LIKETOTALLY80S.COM for Eighties music, TV and culture. And for 90s music, TV and culture, there’s 90s411.com. How long before there’s an aughties nostalgia site?
Posted at 12:48 pm by Glenn Reynolds
SOME PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW how to help out Katie Granju. Michael Silence has the story.
Posted at 12:28 pm by Glenn Reynolds
IN THE MAIL: Robert Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones. I’m glad they’re keeping these in print.
THE SEIU: A PAPER TIGER? Union fails in move aimed at N.C. Democrats who opposed health bill. “A defiant move by one of the nation’s most powerful unions to help oust Democrats who voted against the health-care bill by establishing a third political party in North Carolina has failed because organizers did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the November midterm elections.” Remember, this isn’t a union made up of tough, disciplined coal miners. It’s a union made up of DMV clerks . . . .
JAMES LEWIS: “I think the decision to stop the ‘peace’ flotilla with commandos was a deliberate signal to Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and most of all the United States. Are you listening, President Obama?”
VIRUS RAVAGES cassava plants in Africa. Making life worse for some people whose lives don’t need to be worse. “After rice and wheat, cassava is the world’s third-largest source of calories. Under many names, including manioc, tapioca and yuca, it is eaten by 800 million people in Africa, South America and Asia. The danger has been likened to that of Phytophthora infestans, the blight that struck European potatoes in the 1840s, setting off a famine that killed perhaps a million people in Ireland and forced even more to emigrate.”
CHINESE HIDING THREE MILLION BABIES A YEAR: “As many as three million Chinese babies are hidden by their parents every year in order to get around the country’s one-child policy, a researcher has discovered.”
G.O.P. SEES A WAY TO REVIVE HEALTHCARE DEBATE. “President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system. But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed ‘love’ of the British system. . . . Now Senate Republicans are vowing to press their case against Obama’s sweeping new health care law by challenging Berwick’s nomination — just in time to resurrect the brutal yearlong health reform battle ahead of the midterm elections.”
