WHILE SUPPLIES LAST: Steep markdowns on headphones.
UPDATE: Reader Dan McAfee writes: “Thanks so much… my wife’s a medical transcriptionist and not only needs quality headphones, but runs through several sets a year… you just saved me about a hundred bucks or more.” More than covering the cost of your InstaPundit subscription — hey, wait . . .!
“SOMETIMES THE SMARTEST OF US CAN BE THE MOST CHILDISH.” Just watched the Simpsons episode where Springfield is ruled by a self-appointed junta of its smartest citizens. Seemed kinda familiar, somehow.
ANOTHER DEMOCRATIC RETIREMENT: Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark.
If the Democrats are looking for a wake-up call from Massachusetts, the big rooster in the room is the plethora of underwhelming candidates they are fielding.
In Illinois, where Barack Obama’s former Senate seat is on the line, the leading Democratic contender is a 33-year-old who spent almost all of his adult life working for the bank that his family owns. Perhaps the president forgot that last week when he told Massachusetts voters that “bankers don’t need another vote in the Senate.”
Ouch.
FROM HOPE AND CHANGE TO THIS, IN THE ECONOMIST: Stop! The size and power of the state is growing, and discontent is on the rise.
America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement. Even in leftish Massachusetts people are worried that Mr Obama’s spending splurge, notably his still-unpassed health-care bill, will send the deficit soaring. In Britain, where elections are usually spending competitions, the contest this year will be fought about where to cut. Even in regions as historically statist as Scandinavia and southern Europe debates are beginning to emerge about the size and effectiveness of government. . . .
The Economist will return to these areas in coming months. All raise different issues; and different countries may need to deal with them in different ways. But one large general point links them: a great battle about the state is brewing. And, as in another influential revolution, the first shot may have been heard in Massachusetts.
Read the whole thing. And I love the illustration . . . .
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “I think deep down inside the rest of us are beginning to understand how that little fella in the illustration that’s about to get eaten feels. Heretofore it’s been the journalist’s job to level the playing field for him. Now he has to do it himself. That’s why there are tea parties.”
BUILDING SAFER SCHOOLS in poor, shaky places.
ROGER KIMBALL: How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
MESSAGE DISCIPLINE BREAKS DOWN: White House Advisers Give Three Different Numbers on ‘Saved or Created’ Jobs.
These guys can’t even lie convincingly. The country’s in the very best of hands!
Related: White House Fumbling Jobs, Obamacare Message.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “One of the crimes McCarthy is still attacked for (60 years on) by the Left is making up the number of communists as he went along. NPR would have a fit if a conservative did this.”
BRUCE SCHNEIER: U.S. Enables Chinese Hacking Of Google. “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access. Google’s system isn’t unique. Democratic governments around the world — in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.” Great.
ED SCHULTZ VS. ROBERT GIBBS.
Chris Matthews vs. Alan Grayson.
Jack Cafferty vs. Political Correctness on terrorism.
Plus, Total Protonic Reversal: Dennis Kucinich Defends Tea-Partiers, Shreds Democrat Hacks and Chicago-style Politics. Guess somebody crossed the streams. Normally that’s not recommended, but it has been known to save the day in extreme crises. There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive. . . .
WELCOME TO Harrison Bergeron High.
NISSAN LEAF UPDATE: In Race to Market, Nissan’s Electric Car Takes Shortcuts. “Nissan’s confidence on this matter aside, early purchasers of the Leaf should consider taking the company up on its offer to lease the battery, which would leave any financial risk of early battery degradation where it belongs — with Nissan.”
CNN POLL: 56% of Americans Oppose “Stimulus” Program. Well, since most of the money remains unspent, it could be stopped. . . .
UPDATE: Washington Post: Political push-back stalls stock market rally on Wall Street. “Washington spent months nursing the financial system back to health after the 2008 economic crisis, stabilizing then reviving battered markets and ultimately restoring trillions of dollars in investor losses. Wall Street’s political fortunes have not fared as well. Now, an aggressive stance against the bankers, financiers and even government officials popularly blamed for causing the crisis is gaining political momentum, and there are signs it is eroding the very financial stability the government championed.”
PHOTO GALLERY: U.S. Military Presence In The Haiti Relief Effort.
ANNOUNCING THE NOMINEES for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.
FROM MILES O’BRIEN: This Week In Space.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN, but I’m glad someone else is working the bugs out first . . . . Daredevil Space Diver To Leap Toward World’s First Supersonic Free-Fall From 120,000 Feet. “Dubbed the Red Bull Stratos and sponsored by the energy drink company, the jump will send Baumgartner to the stratosphere in a small space capsule, lifted by a helium-filled balloon. Once he reaches 120,000 feet after three hours of ascension, ground control will give him the “all clear” sign and he’ll pop open the door and jump, as video cameras on the capsule and his suit record his descent. Within 35 seconds or so, Baumgartner will hit supersonic speeds and break the sound barrier. No one really knows what will happen at that point, but the scientists seem confident that he’ll maintain consciousness. He will free fall for roughly six more minutes, pulling his chute at about 5,000 feet and coasting for 15 minutes back to solid ground.”
UPDATE: Various readers point out that Joe Kittinger came close to breaking the sound barrier in his skydive from 102,000 feet back in 1960.
A BOOK QUERY from the Insta-Wife.
CELL THERAPIES for osteoarthritis? “Aging and accumulated damage are expensive. If they didn’t happen the total cost of health care would be a small fraction of what it is today. Rejuvenation of the body’s own repair systems is the best way to solve most aging problems. The most promising technique for joint repair involves extracting cells from cartilage, growing up the cells, and then reinjecting these cells so that they’ll repair the joint.”
SOME CARGO PROGRESS IN PORT AU PRINCE.
UPDATE: More from the USNS Comfort.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Bad news: Quake Victims Go Without Aid While Supplies Pile Up At UN’s “Cold Beer” Compound.
AWESOME hand ninja.
THE BOFFO FINISH: And what to do about “pop culture amnesia.”
IN THE MAIL: From fellow Popular Mechanics Contributing Editor Jeff Wise, Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger. Looks very interesting.
MICHAEL S. MALONE ON INTERNET FREEDOM: Two cheers for Google and Secretary of State Clinton.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE: A modest proposal for curing back pain.
OVER AT HILLBUZZ, not taking kindly to threats. As I’ve noted in the past, it’s almost always a mistake to threaten bloggers.
MORE THOUGHTS ON inflation fears. “Inflation is not something you should be afraid of for 2010. But what we need is a convincing commitment from the government to both near-term stimulus and longer-term fiscal responsibility in order to be assured that it’s not a concern over the next decade. And that’s not what I’m seeing from the U.S. Congress.”
ANNOUNCING THE Tournament Of Books field.
TELEGRAPH: Pachauri: the real story behind the Glaciergate scandal. “Dr Pachauri has rapidly distanced himself from the IPCC’s baseless claim about vanishing glaciers. But the scientist who made the claim now works for Pachauri.”
FOUND? ELLIE LIGHT.
UPDATE: Heh.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Will the Tea Party tear itself apart? Some people certainly hope so, but I’m not seeing it. That Tea Party folks could look at Scott Brown and see that while he might not be an example of Tea Party perfection, he was good enough, and well-positioned to kill ObamaCare, bespeaks a lot more political maturity than many were willing to credit Tea Party activists with.
CONAN OBAMA.
UH OH: Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified. “The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.”
“MR. RIGHT” has left the building.
IF YOU MISSED IT ON SIRIUS-XM SATELLITE RADIO LAST NIGHT, the latest PJM Political is now online.
Barry Eynon of Coopersburg, Pa., said in a phone interview that he was in the third row when another passsenger “saw this person trying to open the airplane door and trying to get into the cockpit.” The other passenger “jumped up and grabbed him from behind and yelled for help.”
Eynon said, “I jumped up and grabbed him from the front.”
Three or four other passengers also helped to subdue the man, putting him in a seat and ensuring he remained there, Eynon said.
Somebody ought to come up with a name for this surprisingly effective approach to security . . . .
UPDATE: Reader Richard Macklin writes:
It would be worth updating with a comparison of the Pack response to 9/11 and the Herd response to Katrina. Particularly looking at how much of the federal response is based on the expectation of a pack mentality and how that factored into the “failures” of FEMA.
Hmm. Good point.
WASHINGTON POST: Did the Obama administration blow an opportunity in the Flight 253 case? “It is now clear that the administration did not give serious thought to anything but Door No. 1. This was myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.”
A YEAR AGO IT WAS ALL “HOPE AND CHANGE,” but now it’s Leviathan stirs again.
Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology. Britain’s public spending is set to exceed 50% of GDP (see chart 1). America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry. Huge state-run companies such as Gazprom and PetroChina are on the march. Nicolas Sarkozy, having run for office as a French Margaret Thatcher, now argues that the main feature of the credit crisis is “the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness”.
“The return of the state” is stirring up fiery opposition as well as praise. In America the Republican Party’s anti-government base is more agitated than it has been at any time since the days of the Gingrich revolution in 1994. “Tea-party” protesters have been marching across the country with an amusing assortment of banners and buttons: “Born free, taxed to death” and “God only requires 10%”. On January 19th Scott Brown, a Republican, captured the Massachusetts Senate seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy, America’s most prominent supporter of big-government liberalism. . . .
“The question that we ask today”, said Barack Obama in his inaugural address, “is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” This is clearly naive: with deficits soaring, nobody can afford to ignore the size of government. Mr Obama’s appeal for pragmatism has some value: conservative attempts to roll back government regulations have led to disaster in the finance industry. But left-wing attempts to defend entitlements and public-sector privileges willy-nilly will condemn the state to collapse under its own weight.
Read the whole thing.
CAN YOU pass a polygraph? “You’ll have to take a polygraph exam and get multiple security clearances if you want to be Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s associate lab director for global security.”
TENS OF THOUSANDS PROTEST CHAVEZ IN CARACAS. I maybe be wrong, but it seems to me that the time for protesting is over there, and the time for more serious action has arrived.
TEA PARTY UPDATE: Quincy Tea Party Event Standing Room Only Success.
FLIGHT DIVERTED after man tried to open door midflight.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: IPCC Head In GlacierGate Crime? “The London Times continues to follow the glaciergate story — and it keeps getting worse. The latest disclosure: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s (formerly) prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (known as the IPCC), may have raised millions of dollars for his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.”
SEXISM IN CONGRESS: Shea-Porter: Send the men home and Congress could pass health care reform.
VARIOUS PEOPLE ARE ASKING ABOUT THE “GHOST” IN THE WINDOW BEHIND OBAMA in this pic from a Financial Times article.
I dunno. It looks like Jimmy Carter to me, but he’s not dead — except politically.
UPDATE: A reader suggests: “I was thinking it is more likely to be Herbert Hoover…”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “Warren G. Harding isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. But I can guarantee you it isn’t Abraham Lincoln.”
MORE: Ghosts In The Machine. Plus an amusing Dick Cheney reminder.
STILL MORE: Chris Fountain writes: “Wesley Mouch.” But of course! It’s the Ghost Of Appointees Yet To Come! Or maybe not . . . .
DON’T TELL ANYONE: US Marines Wrap Up Mission in Iraq–Victorious.
SOLAR POWER RELIEF for Haiti.
MICKEY KAUS: It’s Not Rahm’s Fault. It’s Obama’s Fault. “What do presidents do when they should fire themselves? They fire their advisers and bring in a new crew. That’s what may happen here. I’d guess we’re about 36 hours away from a Beltway call for ‘wise men.’”
NICK GILLESPIE: Obamanomics: Crony Capitalism Disguised as Progressive Reforms.
Related: Populist Politics, Economic Panic. “Pundits debate whether Obama’s new populist red meat will ‘work’ — that is, allow him to recover his political footing. But if he unnerves the markets and spooks investors, he’ll be in further trouble. After all, he might insist that the economy is all George W. Bush’s fault, but fewer and fewer voters are buying that. And if his own policies — spending with abandon, pursuing a junk-a-thon stimulus plan, spending a year on the job-killing ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, and now frightening the financial markets – have paralyzed employers, then he surely is accountable for those results.”
ELLIE LIGHT: Obama Astroturfer? “Editors all over the country found Light’s message strangely compelling. It was reprinted at The Politico; the Philadelphia Daily News; the San Francisco Examiner; the Washington Times; and a USA Today blog. In addition, the letter has appeared at literally dozens of small-town papers across the country, with names like the Los Banos Enterprise, the North Adams Transcript, and the Danbury News-Times. Ms. Light always claims to be a local in these letters. Her real estate holdings are apparently prodigious, as she has claimed residences in Philadelphia, PA; Daly City, California; Mansfield, Ohio; Waynesboro, Virginia; Algoma, Wisconsin; Bangor, Maine; and dozens of other places. Who said Obama supporters were all downtrodden?”
UPDATE: The new Greg Packer? “Insert obvious snark about layers and layers of fact checkers and editors earning their pay, here.” Actually, it’s worse than that. . . .
I WONDER IF THIS ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE GUN might be dangerous to people, like my wife, with implanted medical electronics.
HAVING TROUBLE FINDING Mr. Right.
TRANSPARENCY: Scorned Mistress of Married Obama Adviser Posts Billboards Nationwide. “YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that her lover, Charles E. Phillips — president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board — had reconciled with his wife, the New York Post reported.”
A ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM THE APPLE EMPIRE: Bites from the Apple: Something Tablet-ey This Way Comes.
MAY THE CORSET BE WITH YOU: You’ve waited all week for it, and now Stephen Green’s The Week In Blogs is up!
RICHARD HAASS: Regime Change Is The Only Way To Stop Iran.
THE MYTH OF “Pharm-Parties.”
GEE, THANKS MR. OBAMA: Reader David Davila writes:
Wednesday-Friday, the Dow lost 552 points, or 5.2 percent.
Thanks Mr. President!
Your new tilting at windmills ploy,errr, bad mouthing Wall Street, just blew up my 401(k), not to mention my other investments. Again. Right after they were just about even with the pounding they took a year or so ago. What a stellar job this administration is doing. Riiiight…
About now, I’m thinking if I wanted something screwed up, I can trust the Chicago boys to come through.
If I want something done right, the high school kid down the street who is always looking for work around the neighborhood would be a far better choice.
He’s prompt, cleans up after himself, does whatever work we give him with a smile on his face and sincere gratefulness for what he gets paid.
In other words he’s NOT a f_ck up, and the money he gets is earned and gladly paid by me. I’d nominate him to take Obama’s job right about now, he definitely wouldn’t screw it up as badly as this lot of clowns has/is.
Sheesh….
DD
My sense is that a lot of people feel this way. You know, the proletarian vanguard.
BAH. IT DOES SOMETHING USEFUL, AFTER ALL. Vols fan wants to rename waste treatment plant after Lane Kiffin. I think that TVA sludge pond dam that broke down suddenly would be a better choice. . . . .
ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Reader Mary Daly writes: “Could you please post a link to your recommendations on crockpots and crockpot cookbooks? ( It’s 10 degrees here in northern New Hampshire.)”
It’s right here. And there’s much more here.
MASSACHUSETTS IS THE MOB. And that’s not making folks at the NYT happy. They were hoping for a different batch of people with pitchforks, than they wound up with, apparently.
UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer: “You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one.”
I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT THE ORION NUCLEAR-SPACE CRAFT CONCEPT BEFORE, here and (in the context of China) here. But now a reader points out there’s an Orion model kit, and here’s a blog entry on it. Wonder how many Chinese buyers have appeared? . . .
RON BAILEY ON the split among environmentalists regarding nuclear power. “Environmentalists fiercely disagree about the role nuclear power might play in addressing global warming. Two new books by big names in the green movement stake out the boundaries of that debate. On the pro-nuclear side stands Stewart Brand with Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. In the other corner you’ll find Al Gore with Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.”
ROGER SIMON: Shootin’ with the Governor (Perry).
JULES CRITTENDEN: Bitter Ironies.
BEST WEEK, ever?
RASMUSSEN: 61% Say It’s Time for Congress To Drop Health Care.
UPDATE: Related: Financial Times: White House Nightmare Persists.
REPORTING ON HAITI RELIEF FROM TEAM RUBICON. You want it done right, send a Milblogger. Here’s their blog. I donated a hundred bucks the other day. (Bumped).
HUFFINGTON POST: Can Harold Ford Survive New York’s ‘Angry Gays?’
SIGN OF THE TIMES? BK to open Whopper Bar to sell beer with burgers.
ASTEROID DEFENSE: Bigger, Better Telescopes Needed to Find Near-Earth Asteroids.
A ONE-DAY-ONLY treadmill markdown. Or you can just follow the Cougar Diet. Rrrowr!
ILYA SOMIN: Should People Acting through Corporations be Denied Constitutional Rights Because Corporations are “State-Created Entities”? “On this view, the government would be free to censor the New York Times, Fox News, the Nation, National Review, and so on. Nearly every newspaper and political journal in the country is a corporation. If the Supreme Court accepted this view, it would have to overturn decisions like New York Times v. Sullivan and the Pentagon Papers case.”
UPDATE: A victory for free speech.
HAROLD FORD UPDATE: Powerful Brooklyn Democratic Chair Thinks Harold Ford Jr. Is Smooth Like That.
A NEW BLACKLIST: Oakland Mayor to Theatre Board Member — ‘Do you now or have you ever supported traditional marriage?’ Good grief.
NEW YORK POST: “President Obama seems intent on destroying Wall Street — and, with it, New York. Amazingly, the state’s congressional delegation appears quite happy to let him.”
Plus this: “Just three years ago, Schumer was frantic about New York’s fragile position in the global marketplace: “If New York goes from being the financial capital of the world to becoming only a regional market,” he said, ‘every aspect of New York life will suffer.’ He was right, of course. But in the wake of the Massachusetts revolt, the senator stands mute while Obama suddenly waxes populist. Gillibrand? She’s in favor of Obama’s hit on New York. ‘Nuff said about her.”
Seems like a perfect opening for Harold Ford, Jr. . . . And if you vote for him, you can oppose Obama without being a racist! Some related thoughts here.
EVERYONE COMES TO KNOXVILLE: Heather “Dooce” Armstrong signs on with HGTV. Actually, I don’t think she’s moving here, but this is close enough . . .
ANDREW IAN DODGE: What Now For The Tea Parties? I think the very first comment pretty much answers the question. Key bit: “It is likely that Brown is going to be a problem in the future for conservative libertarian ideals, but for the purpose of stopping a train wreck in progress, he is doing what we need now.”
DOCTOR ZERO: WHY THE MIDDLE CLASS IS FRUSTRATED:
The middle class is the great enemy of collectivist politics . . . Only they have the combination of voting power, money, and economic self-interest to see the growth of government as undesirable, and provide effective resistance. They generally view their interactions with government in a negative light – they’ve all spent time in the Department of Motor Vehicles mausoleum, spent hours wrestling with tax forms, or been slapped with a traffic citation they don’t think they deserved. They understand the inefficiency and emotional instability of government, and instinctively resent its intrusion into their lives. . . . The middle class is a vast group in a capitalist society, which is one of the things collectivists really hate about capitalism. Its upper reaches include the entrepreneurs and small business owners that bring economic vitality. Virtually every aspect of Obama’s agenda is designed to injure or burden small businessmen, and this is no accident.
Read the whole thing.
READER JOSEPH TRISCARI WRITES: “This appeared in the Friday edition of the Tucson newspaper. Amusingly, the editors were complaining earlier this year about a lack of civility among tea party attendees.”
JIM GERAGHTY: Obama’s Train Wreck of a Town Hall in Ohio. “Today in Ohio, it seemed like the president was way off his game. But I thought he was defensive, prickly, almost indignant that he’s found himself in the tough spot that he’s in. . . . I realize he’s using it to justify a new tax on banks, but I think ‘we want our money back’ is a dangerous chant for a man who so steadily expands government spending.”
OUCH: Conrad Black: Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge. “He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called ‘the gift’ of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent. . . . It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover.”
