Tuesday, June 14. 2011
As I have twice before (here in June 2010 and here in September 2010), I asked my friend Gerald Robbins, the Turkish-speaking expert and a Senior Fellow at Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, to comment on this past weekend’s parliamentary elections in Turkey.
In brief recap of prior posts:
Turkey’s AKP political party and its leader Prime Minister Recep Erdogan have held parliamentary power since 2002. Their program has been a combination of several elements: successfully encouraging economic development in the interior which has also benefited the usual coastal economic centers, and pursuing a gradual turning from the secularist path set almost a century ago for modern Turkey by Kemal Attarturk. AKP’s Turkey turned to a more Islamist focus aligned with Ottoman-like pretensions of influence throughout the Middle East. Turkey’s former closeness with the West via NATO membership has become an empty promise, as shown in its refusal to allow Western forces to enter Iraq via its territory in 2003 and subsequent footsy with radical states in the Middle East and support for anti-Israel propaganda and actions. Facing strongly entrenched business, secular and military interests, like a frog in slowly warming water, these interests have had their power sapped (coopted in the case of many traditional business interests, whose social-democratic/statist linkages make them particularly susceptible to AKP blandishments and programs).
Now, for Robbins latest:
Continue reading "Turkey and the Frog"
Monday, June 13. 2011
As Promised, Obama Is Destroying Coal Industry
Dude, Where’s My Freedom? The government tightens the noose on guns, health, travel, and more.
Where’s the warming?
Scrutinize the president, not Palin
Steyn: Obama’s Road to Nowhere - This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road.
Fanning Imaginary Flames: A Look Back At The Great Church Fire Propaganda Campaign:
Fifteen summers ago, America's news media informed us that black churches throughout the South were being torched by white racists. The purported wave of arsons dominated the airwaves and generated thousands of newspaper articles. Pundits, politicians and preachers decried the terrorism and the hate it represented.
In fact, it never happened.
Via Flopping:
“It turns out that one of the women Congressman Anthony Weiner was communicating with was a porn star. When asked how it was possible to get involved with someone in such a sleazy business, the porn star said, ‘I don’t know.’” – Conan O’Brien
Superb Chris Muir toon below the fold (totally SFW)
Continue reading "Monday morning links"
Sunday, June 12. 2011
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006
Hugh Hewitt interviews David Mamet.
Mamet is late to the party, but better late than never. I don't think he thought much about politics before.
 The 50 Best Books for Urban History Buffs. h/t, Old Urbanist
Nylon Riots
Sayet: Why Jews Support the Democratic Party
More Marriage Advice from the Media
"Amoralising"? Good neologism
N.H. lives up to its billing
I completely agree with NYM re the candidates
Via Dr. Merc, Worldwide ages of consent
Cocksure Weiner MOCKED Larry Craig Sex Scandal
Teachers’ unions will never willingly give up their power, says Terry Moe.
Krauthammer: 'Keep it Ideological'
Y’Know What I See? I See Dead Donkeys.
"The liberals are taking a HUGE gamble that a majority of Americans will throw in their lot with the party of immorality."
Advice from Dr. Sanity:
For all those online addicts; twitter freaks and cyberpaths out there -- GET A REAL LIFE !
It's so much more fun.
Kamikaze government in the UK
O'Reilly: Obama sees rich as his to plunder
Actress defends Weiner, says 'everyone lies about sex'
When the 2-year hate of Palin starts losing Left-feminists …
This is not a witch-hunt
Teachers’ unions will never willingly give up their power, says Terry Moe.
China ratings house says US defaulting: report
Will: Obama and free trade: Appease big labor
Driscoll:
Both Hollywood and politics have been called “high school with money,” to reflect their petty, puerile nature. But it’s rare to see a politician — especially one with such powerful connections as Weiner — wish so overtly to infantilize himself. Particularly at what will likely be looked back at as being the peak of his career in politics
Saturday, June 11. 2011
From a piece at IBD:
Imagine a newspaper in 2008 asking readers' help in perusing Barack Obama's emails as U.S. senator and Illinois state senator. Or for that matter, help in unearthing his college records. The howls from "mainstream" journalists and Democratic politicians would have been deafening.
Also, LA Times Won’t Release Obama-Khalidi Tape But Posts 24,000 Sarah Palin Emails
Above pic from my visit to Newport, RI, last summer
Big return of Little Anthony
Many of us won’t be able to retire until our 80s
Retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be anyway
Prison Math - What are the costs and benefits of leading the world in locking up human beings?
We lock up too many people for non-violent crimes. In the end, it's the taxpayers who pay for it. Let them pay for their errors with money or work instead of residing on my nickel.
Negotiator for CT State Employees Brags: ‘They Want to Know How We Did It’
Easy as pie, if you own the governor. Government unions elected this guy, so he is paying them back.
Infantilizing the Culture - Our students may have stopped working, but they have not stopped playing.
A clever diversion: "It wasn't indecent"
It's indecent on the face of it, for heaven's sake. Even Bill Clinton left the charming high school girls alone. Adults just aren't supposed to do that, Humbert Humbert: it's not "sick" - it's plain old bad. The guy has a pattern of bad, of all sorts.
Media Darling Chris Matthews: Weiner in Trouble Because his Behavior Offends“Culturally Backward” Christian Conservatives
Darn uptight Christian Conservatives don't think guys should be hitting on high school girls. It's somebody's daughter. Sheesh. I guess it is not unseemly, in the view of like really hip dudes like Matthews. Is "unseemly" obsolete?
Friday, June 10. 2011
Mr. Strauss-Kahn is leaving a mess for his successor. A quote from the essay at The American:
The real problem for Europe’s peripheral countries is that the very large economic imbalances that they are now experiencing are extraordinarily difficult to correct within the straitjacket of EU membership. No longer having their own currency to manage, these countries cannot resort to currency devaluation to boost exports. Instead, they now have to earn competitiveness through the painful process of wage and price deflation. And a big boost in exports is exactly what these countries now need to withstand the many years of public sector belt-tightening that they will have to endure to put their public finances on sustainable paths.
Strauss-Kahn should have recognized that Greece, Ireland, and Portugal were all essentially bankrupt. In particular, he should have accepted that, without a meaningful write down of their government debt, there was no way that these countries could restore order to their public finances without provoking the deepest of economic recessions. Instead, Strauss-Kahn chose to believe that all that was required to tide these countries over their economic crises was the usual IMF recipe of draconian budget belt-tightening backed by very large public-sector bailout lending from the IMF and the European Union.
 Obama Proclaims June 'Gender Confusion' Month
Up To 8-Foot Long, 160-Pound Mountain Lion On The Loose In Conn.
Mitt Romney Endorses Global Warming Hoax
Remind me why we are at war with Gadhafi
Thursday, June 9. 2011
Feldman: The Economy Is Worse Than You Think
'Ground Zero' mosque halted
Judges sharply challenge healthcare law
Medicare pay board is losing vital support
Fanniegate: Gamechanger For The GOP?
Dead bodies demand organic food moratorium
More killed by organic foods in Germany than Gulf spill or Japan meltdown. Time for a moratorium on organic food!
Steyn:
...I have minimal expectations of this country’s depraved political class. But if you can’t draw the line at being ruled by creeps with a spambot penis, you can’t draw it anywhere.
Rudy is running
Wednesday, June 8. 2011
 Windmills slaughtering Golden Eagles. Isn't it illegal to kill an endangered species?
Suburban Follies: The Rear Alleyway
Driscoll: ‘Terror is Glamour’
Democrats Rarely Resign
NYC NAACP President Accuses Pro-Charter School Parent of 'Doing the Business of Slave Masters'
Freedom is Slavery, etc.
How Free Is Your State?
Hayward thinks the Central Planners are clueless
...despite all the debt and cash we devote to producing BAs, the market can’t find use for even half of them.
Why Can’t More Poor People Escape Poverty? A radical new explanation from psychologists.
Circular argument, seems to me. Most everbody starts out adult life poor. Furthermore, wealth is not everybody's life goal (tho few would reject it if it landed in their lap).
Bookworm: A sentimental service in a cynical society — our Navy
Mexico: kindergarten teacher keeps class calm with song as narco gun massacre rages outside
Mankiw: The Next Step on the Road to Serfdom
From One Cosmos:
I would really need solid proof before branding a particular individual a racist, or misogynist, or homophobe, or greedy bastard. But conservatives are routinely accused of these evils with no proof whatsoever.
Rather, being conservative is its own proof, so to speak. The charge is a metaphysical/theological one, not dissimilar to our belief that man is a fallen creature, except that our principle applies to everyone, not just our political opponents (which in turn is an important reason why we oppose big government).
Thanks Barack… Class of 2011 Faces Highest Unemployment Rate For College Grads in History
Insty:
WHY ROUGHHOUSING IS GOOD FOR KIDS and their parents. Too bad nannyists have treated it like some sort of social disorder.
Connecticut Decriminalizes Real Pot, Criminalizes Fake Pot
Surber again:
From James Taranto on Anthony Weiner: “But he isn’t resigning, and it isn’t hard to see why. The last thing a man in his position wants to do is spend more time with his family.”
Like Bill Clinton before him, Anthony Weiner just coarsened the American conversation by betraying the woman he said before God and the world he would love and honor.
Klavan: I blame the women
Tuesday, June 7. 2011
 I don't think you can attribute all of the prosperity of Medieval Europe to the Medieval Warm Period, but surely some of it.
At Maggie's, we retain a healthy skepticism about AGW just as we do about most or all scientific theories - and especially those driven by political or economic agendas.
What we mostly hear from the Climate Change propagandists are the terrifying effects of some planetary warming. We never hear about the benefits.
I took a minute to google "advantages+global warming" and "benefits+global warming," and found tons of links. A few samples of them:
Special Report: Global Warming Benefits May Exceed Risks
The Bright Side of Global Warming
Global Warming Health Benefits
By coincidence, I see that SDA had the idea of googling "climate porn."
If she has any sense, she is outta there. She deserves better than sleazy and dishonest.
I recently learned that there is software out there to make overly crisp digital images into more film-like images. Here's one of them. Other programs are out there to specifically change your images to Kodachrome-like, Ektachrome-like, etc.
New and Improved (Well, Not Really) Justification for Affirmative Discrimination
Latest Thing You're Supposed To Be In Carbon-Fear of: Searching For Stuff Online
America's Hottest Investment: Farmland
NAACP vs. Black Parents - Standing in the doorway to protect failed schools.
What Is A College Education Really Worth?
Saudi Cleric Warns of Western Conspiracy: Design of Jedda Airport Resembles a Penis And a Vagina…
Let them eat cake? President Obama wolfs down TWO chili dogs and fries... the day after his wife unveils new dietary guide
Surely it's time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.
Re Weiner, Surber observes:
Foley resigned over e-mails to one guy.
Kick Weiner out of Congress already.
The problems the nation faces are too big to allow even one 46-year-old adolescent in Congress. I am sick of him already.
and in the WSJ:
Anthony Weiner now joins a disturbing list of elected officials in our
time who've lost any sense of self-discipline. If there are others out
there wandering in the confused ethers that trapped Anthony Weiner, we
have a request: Get out now. Spare the rest of us.
Monday, June 6. 2011
Chart via Outside the Beltway
Barone says:
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.
Saturday, June 4. 2011
Story here.
You can't make this stuff up. What's this country coming to? The government doesn't have enough to do? If something is copyrighted, should it be embeddable on YouTube in the first place? No.
Crazy thing is, lots of people use YouTube for self-promotion. If you are a would-be performer or show or whatever, and copyright your stuff, do not make it embeddable. Simple. Can't have it both ways. Can't tell me not to post a photo of your billboard along the road.
YouTube is good fun, a vast resource, and one of the best time-wasters ever invented. If George Shearing's estate, or the Feds, come after Maggie's for embedding his YouTube vid, I have good defenses planned already. Make my day!
Focus on the Family: Foundations of a Lifelong Marriage
Detroit: It Was Necessary to Destroy the Town in Order to Revive it
McArdle: Why Hasn't Anyone Signed Up For the High-Risk Health Insurance Pools?
Cupcakes? British Intelligence Still Has a Sense of Humor
Dino: The continuing structural instabilities in the banking system
UK update: Proposals include ban on sale of 'adult' pre-teen clothes, and requiring 'lads mags' to sell in brown covers
Old Blighty continues to beclown itself.
Beavers ripped my flesh
"The world is getting warmer": Romney
Says who? The guy who invented Obamacare?
Obama pal Fareed Zakaria Castigates Constitution, Founding Fathers:
Liberals just love hearing America denounced as "parochial." It makes them feel worldly and superior. This phony posture in part explains the tasteless joke we now have in the White House.
Goldberg is amusing: Is Weiner Being Frank?
Powerline: In Defense of John Edwards
Politics sure does attract slimeballs
PJ: How Not to Choose a Presidential Candidate
My Dad-in-law and I were mentioning last night that, at this point in the last cycle, nobody had ever heard of Obama
Sipp:
Every tree has end tables in it. You just have to let them out.
Blame Breitbart for Weiner
Punishing Sleep-Rape?
The devil made me do it
Friday, June 3. 2011
 I must confess before God and a jury of my peers:
I'm an airline disaster buff.
They're the ultimate Sherlock Holmes mysteries. You're given mere scraps of information, the wreckage is usually twisted beyond recognition, and you're faced with the knowledge that nine times out of ten you're looking for a chain of failures, not just a single part that suddenly went kaflooey.
And unless it's an actual bomb, which is fairly easy to detect afterward because of the micro-pitting that takes place during an explosion, the one thing that modern airliners almost never, ever, do is suddenly just go poof and drop off the radar screen without a peep from the crew.
As Air France Flight 447 did two years ago, taking 228 people to a watery grave.
Below the fold I'll present a 1-hour video on the mystery and an update on the recent findings. Unlike normally, where the black boxes provide the vital clues that solve the enigma, this time around the complete opposite occurred.
Continue reading "The continuing mystery of Flight 447"
People seem to feel it's pretty lousy, unless you are lucky enough to have a government job. Since we all work as serfs for the government from January 'til May, and since the Chinese are loaning us money to pay the bills, no surprise there.
Speaking of jobs, Dogs Make Employees More Productive At Work. Perhaps our economy needs more puppies.
Or perhaps we need less government: Businesses afraid to hire here
Speaking of the economy, my neighbors down the road are adding a fancy new master bath, and I stopped by to take a look. I like construction. Things are not universally bad, I guess. Those are legal Mexicans working on it, of course. The jobs Americans don't want to do.
Tuesday, May 31. 2011
One of the problems facing the United States is deteriorating infrastructure. Everything from highways, byways, airports and freight facilities are in need of some sort of repair, renovation or downright replacement.
Recently at the launch/commissioning ceremony for the USS William McClean (part of the Navy’s Prepositioning Program) Fred Harris President and CEO of General Dynamics NASSCO (NASSCO is a large shipbuilding complex outside of San Diego) spoke of the need for a National Marine Highway System . Mr. Harris made the case that vital part of the national transportation is being neglected – mainly the Maritime Coastal routes and facilities.
America needs a marine highway system.
What Harris is talking about is using what used to be called “coasters” – basically small ships to handle freight movement along coastal routes. His point addresses a larger issue – that our maritime industry has fallen on some hard times. As a nation that relies on sea power to extend our military and diplomatic reach across the world, we have basically relegated our Merchant Marine to other nations to build ships and transport goods. Our Maritime tradition not only extended from the Merchant Marine through the Navy and Coast Guard, but at one time, the world’s second largest Navy was the United States Army!
The problems, of course, are simple – we just aren’t competitive in terms of labor costs and building/maintenance facilities. Our Merchant Marine is highly unionized with the attendant costs associated with union shops – including feather bedding. We’ve lost our ability to produce the tons and tons of high quality steel needed for a vibrant ship building industry. And the same infrastructure problems facing our highway and railway system also affect the Maritime routes that already exist. Our intracoastal waterways system is seeing less and less dredging needed to keep it open and traffic flowing. While the Gulf system seems to be fairly stable in terms of maintenance, the Atlantic system is in dire need of dredging and width repair in several places along it’s length. The last time I brought a boat down that route (a 53 foot Viking sport fisher) there where places in the Atlantic system where we were plowing through the sand and silt – not a good thing for raw water cooled engines. Tugs and barges are also restricted in certain parts of the Atlantic system.
There are other challenges facing a new, bigger and better maritime system. NIMBY is a huge factor in the placement of facilities to off load or on load goods and raw materials. The recent contretemps in Narragansett Bay over the LNG facility is a good example. “Honest” Dick Blumenthal when he was Attorney General of Connecticut killed the Long Island Sound LNG/oil platform facility with misinformation and downright lying about the facilities impact on both the LIS ecosystem and it’s financial impact. Last, but certainly not least, access to distribution points are almost not existent due to the sale of port facilities to real estate developers to build hotels, convention centers, sports stadiums and private marinas. Harbor real estate is expensive and the competition is fierce to obtain and develop it.
Mr. Harris has the right idea – a strong national maritime system able to move cargo, goods and materials using our long seacoasts and river systems should be a priority. I’m certain private investors would welcome the opportunity to be involved in building small ships, tugs, barges and facilities – as long as the government and the Maritime and Port labor unions can be kept at bay.
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Transportation in Bob Dylan's Music 