Saturday, January 10. 2009
 Remembering Antietam. Jules
What card check would do to the Sun Belt
In search of the just-right desk. Desk feng shui? Gimme a break.
via Jim Miller:
U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.
Bailing out one of the 20th Century's best business models. Quote from Reason:
Blaming the customer is the second-to-last refuge of any crappy industry, business, or organization (the last refuge being asking for a handout on Capitol Hill). As my ex-L.A. Times colleague and current Reason magazine Contributing Editor Tim Cavanaugh has noted in our pages, the paper we both short-timed for was filled with people making jokes about whether we could just "fire our readers." Over the recent holidays, an entire journalistic Festivus celebration of customer-blaming broke out over New Yorker finance columnist James Surowiecki's lament that, "The real problem for newspapers…isn't the Internet; it's us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free." To extrapolate, if only us greedy human beings would realize that our very democracy was at stake, that we "are taking an active step in the formation of a country without a civic conscience," then we'd damned well volunteer to pay an unnecessary premium to keep our finest journalists in permanent six figures. Sounds precisely as convincing as the argument that enlightened voters will surely agree to pay extra taxes so that political campaigns can be financed through "clean" money.
Related: The Seattle P-I is dying.
Allah Akbar in Oslo. Oslo?
Where to put your money: Why mattress sales will take off. Warren Buffet:
“This should be bullish for Berkshire. With great foresight, I long ago entered the mattress business in a big way through our furniture operation. Now mattresses have become fully competitive as a place to put your money, and sales will soon take off.”
Friday, January 9. 2009
h/t, Theo:
Joe the Journalist, plus the fake CNN Gaza clip, at Michelle.
 A sand expert
Spending too much? Bad. Saving too much? Bad. It's true: people are not buying stuff. But I am. Some rugs, a standing lamp, and a new Colt in December. Somebody's got to keep the economy moving. I need a sofa too. Everything is on sale these days.
Why party boss Soros wants Norm Coleman out.
How we know that they know that they are lying
A new world economic order? Who are they kidding?
The highest crane operator in the world. In Dubai. of course.
Thursday, January 8. 2009
 Nepotism Nation
Big government never needs justification.
Neoneo loves Sanjay
More on the health care Trojan Horse. Coyote
The Generational Theft Act. Michelle
Porn biz wants a bailout too.
How Bush tried to rein in Fanny and Freddie.Rove
Chesler: “The non-Muslim world must have no illusions.”
Jimmy Carter’s defensive tunnels
Kennedy vs. Palin: Driscoll. Related: Palin strikes back
A little ME history. Tiger
How will people handle the end of The New York times?
Via No Left Turns, from Dick Morris:
So it is both fair and sensible to give the poor a tax break and to draw the bulk of federal revenues from the rich. But to exempt the bottom half - a majority of the voters - from paying any taxes and to award them refund checks instead would dangerously alter the fundamental balance of national politics. For the economically well off, it could effectively become taxation without representation - which, as the founders of our nation warned, leads to tyranny.
London busses: There’s no God, so have some fun Via Mr. Free Market:
Dang link problems and spacing problems have me needing a few cold Morettis.
Extreme Alaska cold grounds planes, disables cars
Deadly cold, heavy snow grip Europe; Poles freeze to death
Wheat prices rise as unusual cold snap may damage U.S. crop
Cold and freezing rain in south and central China
Still having linking problems. This from Insty:
IF ONLY BUSH HAD BEEN SUCH A RAMPANT FREE-MARKETEER: “Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation. . . . Rather than a failure of capitalism, the housing meltdown shows what’s likely to happen when government grants special privileges to favored private entities that facilitate bad actors and lousy practices.”
Wednesday, January 7. 2009
Homeland Security's records of your travel. Creepy.
Take two aspirin and call your Congressman in the morning
Vicar: Crucifix too scarey. What? Sacrificial love?
Record snows. Where's the warming we've been waiting for?
Rebuilding the GOP, one internet user at a time. But we aren't Repubs - we're Conservatives.
Tuesday, January 6. 2009
Owl Wars in the Pacific Northwest. Some want to kill the Barred Owls. However, the two species are essentially different races of the same big bird. I thought they decided to reduce their fossil fuel consumption anyway. So what's the problem? Bush designates more vast marine sanctuaries. Thanks, W. Politics, Chicago-style Half of economists believe the New Deal worsened the Depression From Nyquist on Strategic Reality 101: I believe there is a societal motive behind our culture’s marginalization of “enmity,” and it should be discussed; but first let us give an example of enmity’s marginalization. As America has been targeted by Islamic forces, America’s political establishment refuses to see Islam as an enemy. In fact, today’s Western culture adroitly fends off the notion that traditional Islam signifies universal submission to the will of Allah. Regardless of the fact that nominal Muslims readily coexist with Westerners, the teachings of Islam are unequivocal. The only reason Europe is not under Islamic law today, is because Europe’s military power surpassed that of Islam in the sixteenth century. This point is lost on nearly everyone, and shows the extent to which enmity has been marginalized in the West.
A quote from Krauthammer, on The Necessity of Israel: For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.
Man, am I busy and frazzled at work now that the holiday season is over. My posting will be frazzled too.
Remembering a Maggie's favorite President: Vermont's Silent Cal (fixed)
Remembering Edward Aloysius Murphy
Pelosi opens war against House Repubs. Gateway. Besides the thuggishness, it's a bad idea for many reasons. Related, VDH via NRO on Who will police the police?: If it was true that when the Republicans enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate and ran the White House, there was no one to object when they overspent, grew the government, and ran up the debt, who now will police the Democratic police in matters of corruption? Rep. Rangel oversees (on Ways and Means) U.S. tax policy, but is himself a tax offender, among other, far greater charges and allegations about his behavior and character. Sen. Dodd simply cannot tell the truth about his cut-rate, quid pro quo mortgage deals. His actions and the Barney Frank-Franklin Raines exchange are metaphors for the entire subprime mortgage crisis. It would take a genealogist to sort out all the tribal ties, inside pay-offs, and pay-for-play deals involved in the selling of Obama's Senate seat; meanwhile, we await the tapes of Jesse Jackson Jr., Rahm Emanuel, and co. Al Franken simply relied on Minnesota Democratic officials to keep counting until they came up with the right result. On matters of nepotism, entitlement, and insider favoritism, Democratic egalitarians will probably anoint Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York. Bill Richardson didn't even try to pull off being secretary of commerce. Nowhere is there anyone on the Democratic side to decry the culture of corruption as in the days of Duke Cunningham and Ted Stevens.
Crickets chirping, as they used to say.
Monday, January 5. 2009
 Broadway for 20 bucks.
Hope and Change! 600,000 new government jobs. Heck, we all work for the gummint half the year already. Keep a civil tongue in your head for the next 365 days Obama's New Deal. Bad as the Old New Deal? The Gramsci Award du Jour: Bill Ayers Chavez' secret fan club Sea Ice back to 1979. The earth is cooling, but it doesn't fit the narrative. The funny business, in Minnesota. Related: Stop, thief cries Dick Morris Harry Reid's "worst President," and what he's done The gang rape of a Lesbian you never heard about A blog whose time has come: Democracy in Venezuela Will Neo-Conservatism die for Compassionate Conservatism's Sins?
 Algore got so many innocent and well-intentioned but scientifically-uneducated people upset with his fear-mongering silliness. It's a damn shame. Those with a familiarity with how science works, and who had no political agenda to drive, just stood back and watched bemusedly.
Finally, even the HuffPo gets it. Harold Ambler's Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. (h/t, No Looking Backwards, whence the borrowed image.) One quote:
If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.
If Lefties want to take over the world's economy, they need to try Plan D.
Smart thing to do. Obama eyes tax cuts. It's one of the only effective things a government can do to try to shorten a recession. In the end, though, recessions just have to play themselves out. It's the natural history of economies, and, now that economics is fully global, local efforts can have minimal impact on the big picture. Maybe (let's hope) Obama will be more practical and less ideological than has been feared.
A reader sent in this hunting photo from Saturday. That is clearly an old, raggedy CT apple orchard, so I can assume he was hunting grouse. Nice spot. Dinosaurs grew feathers before they became birds. Bailout Bonds. Get 'em while they're fresh. Our blog friend Prof Deneen at Georgetown is going on indefinite blog sabbatical. And I don't blame him. If I could clone my inner dog self to handle this job, I'd do the same thing.  A friend of mine loves the new Garrison Keilor book. It's about aging.
The Lib love affair with Castro Why Clinton as Sec of State? Paglia How the UN funds Pali Jihad The Obama team needs to continue following Tiger's advice Re the seven things nobody tells you about marriage Carville: Watch for a Dem streak of scandals All that talk about "peak oil" has disappeared Steyn (via Driscoll) What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? "We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we'll be fine." And boy, we took the great man's words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home's thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama's logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world's resources. And in these last few months we've made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents. And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn't seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He's proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar "stimulus" package or whatever it is now to "stimulate" it back into its bad old ways.
Sunday, January 4. 2009
 I agree with Gateway: These kids must want jobs.
Alternative buildings and cities, from the 60s. EU denounces carbon offset scams projects The cost of hollow virtuousness: Taxpayers pay for UK's mountain of recycling. Isn't it called "garbage" for a reason? Does Israel really want a victory? Related, via SC&A at Shrinkwrapped from March: Has Israel lost the will to live? Rangel update (h/t, Insty). Yes, Rangel is an expert in ways and means. Branford Marsalis: What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t. More Burris Fun 'n Games. Politics is one disgusting game. Two camps on climate in the new admin: Crazy, and crazier. Related, from Junk Science: Obama energy/environment 'czar' is an offical with Socialist International - That's right comrades... Carol Browner is a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Check out SI's principles -- including, "it is imperative to establish a genuinely new international economic order."
Just one more totalitarian bureaucrat who thinks she is smarter than me. She is not. She just likes power more than I do.
From our occasional guest poster Nathan in Israel:  Last night -
My coffee guy (long hair past his shoulders, very cool, very left) spent the night watching the news. "Eyn ma la'asot" - "Nothing else one could do." He says it is like walkiing into zefl (tar); have to fight meter by meter with mines and weapons not only in the ground but in houses. My electrician , Avi, came back from Miluim a few days before the war started (father of four). He has more to say (will write when I have time) . Temenite background; very quiet, diligent. He describes how Isr airforce gives warning 10 minutes before hitting a target; then the Hamas tells women and children to stand on top of the roof to wave at the planes and deter the bombing. He goes on to speak about a Palestinian laborer worked for him for years; good worker. But, when he would telephone his wife, he would get violent and warn her that she would get what is coming to her when he got home. Avi asked him why he didn't speak more respectfully to her -- she makes a life for you, cooks, raises your kids. Guy says, "But, she's a woman."
I plan to visit the children in Kiryat Malachi on Monday.
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
The primary and overriding obligation of a government and its military during war is to accomplish its objectives. Support among its own public and that of influential outside powers is surely important, particularly the longer the armed engagement.
The press’ role can be either constructive toward this, or not. The government may, or may not, be correct in its management of the war and of the press, but it is the government at war that has the requirement to decide, not the press.
It is argued, often correctly, that the press in a war sometimes sees more clearly than the government or offers useful additional insights. Still, it remains that it is the government and its people that suffers from failing to meet war’s objectives, not the press. Failure at war is a far more grievous harm than can be recompensed by a corrections column or apologetic retrospective re-analysis in the newspaper.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza and the West Bank, have always focused on this priority. All journalists and stringers there are under their strict control, only allowed access to those areas and stories chosen by Hamas and the PA, and physically penalized for straying into criticism or embarrassment of Hamas or the PA. The Western media has gone along with this, in virtual silence and even cover-up, in order to retain any access at all. Meanwhile, the world’s media has had unlimited access and freedom to report anything it wishes in and about Israel. Mostly hewing to excess Western sensitivities and even to anti-Israeli attitudes, much of the world’s media have in effect been active accomplices of Palestinian propaganda. Western and world audiences have thereby been manipulated into undue negativity toward Israel and sympathy toward Palestinians.
Israel recognizes this imbalance and in the current Gaza offensive has taken measures to restrain the press’ undermining of its war effort.
This lengthy article, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/86631with much more detail than here offers a useful summary of the measures that Israel has taken, and of the establishment press’ opposition. Among Israel’s new approaches is going around the West’s established reporting screen and filters by going directly to the increasingly influential alternative media outlets, including YouTube. As reported in the Jerusalem Post: “'In terms of communicating our message, new media is the future', Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu, the IDF's spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post.”
The ending observation made by the Israeli Defense Force spokesman gets to the heart of the matter: “An army has to fight, not to spend its time in front of television cameras.” Israel is not allowing journalists in Israel to enter Gaza at will, to flash emotional scenes – often stage managed by Hamas – to incite the natural distaste the world’s civilians have toward the hell that is war. For that matter, Egypt is also barring entry for journalists via Egypt.
The Israeli Supreme Court, in the manner of a civilized state, has ruled that some safe pooled entry will be allowed. Egypt has no such civilized, independent court. The response by the Western media, from its Foreign Press Association in Israel: “We believe the Israeli Government should ensure unfettered access for the world's media to Gaza during this crisis.” Of note, there is no such press entity or hue allowed in Egypt, but that is not mentioned or mentionable by these Western press representatives.
It is not the responsibility of Israel to cut its own throat by allowing the sensationalist emphasis, negativity and bias of much of the West’s media “unfettered access.”
Saturday, January 3. 2009
Among other things, Kindleberger's classic Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. From a review at Amazon: If you believe in efficient markets or the overriding importance of macroeconomics, you will be angered and annoyed by this book. Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes each take their shots here, although in polite ways. As Peter L. Bernstein summarizes nicely in his introduction, Professor Kindleberger's argument boils down to four principles: (1) Irrational behavior does occur from time to time in financial markets. (2) There is a general, repeatable pattern in how this irrational behavior plays out (a positive economic displacement is followed by euphoria that takes the form of overtrading, then distress following revulsion, discredit by lenders in the overtraded assets, and then panic leading possibly to a crash brought on by those who bought high). (3) The economic system needs a lender of last resort to step in at the right time and in the right way to restore confidence and liquidity. (4) Trying to solve these problems by being doctrinaire is "wrong . . . and dangerous."
How about a net worth test for Charlie Rangel? The medical and spiritual dangers of WiFi Good point, via Driscoll. Be sure to read the Jamie Lee Curtis link. Reasons global warming may not exist at all New Year's resolutions you can keep Peoples' Paradise update: Cuba celebrates 50 years of oppression, fear, and misery. Powerline A book: Larry Elder's Stupid Black Men
Friday, January 2. 2009
 Was 2008 really all that bad? Only to us who have been spoiled and expect life to be easy.
Good news. Earth has cooled since Bush took office. Good going, George. But I think you overdid it. School endowments are saving for what? It's greed, I tell ya. This guy Senator Burris sure does dig himself. I wonder what it feels like to have that much "self-esteem." (h/t, Betsy) Related: Bobby Rush says take a chill pill. I'm fresh out of 'em. Our cuz Mr. Free Market not only pokes a friendly stick in Maggie's eye, but, more importantly, into the eye of the Nannies. Make my day, Nanny. How did California become so suicidal? We always knew they were nutty and flakey, but not suicidal. Unpleasant truths about Germany. No, not about the Nazis. Quagmire update: Most under-reported item of yesterday: Green Zone handed off to Iraqis. I know she's good, but how does Small Dead Lemmings do this? Jealous? Who, me? Pondering parenthood in that agonizing, Liberal way. Sheesh. What a putz. The C of E today: Crazy people. Certifiable. Student of the Great Depression Amity Schlaes on What Obama should do. He won't. George Will: Health care costs keep growing All this rug stuff on Maggie's. Now I've been bidding on old rugs on eBay. Most of the eBay rug items are coarse new crap, but some looks very nice. Life does need beauty in it. But does one need to own it? Photo: Borrowed from Moonbattery. At first I thought it was satire, but now I wonder. That shirt has got to come off.
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