MARK HALPERIN IN TIME: Maybe a horrendous act of violence will kill hundreds, even thousands, of Americans and thereby brighten Obama’s political future. “No one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe. But when a struggling Bill Clinton was faced with the Oklahoma City bombing and a floundering George W. Bush was confronted by 9/11, they found their voices and a route to political revival.”
It’s like they had the narrative pre-written.
“HATE SPEECH” FROM GOOGLE EARTH? Nah, they donate to Democrats.
INTERN OF THE YEAR: DANIEL HERNANDEZ: “Daniel Hernandez had only been Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ intern for five days, and on Saturday, he may have saved her life.”
ANN ALTHOUSE: “Professor Liberman has failed to consider an obvious hypothesis — that West’s books are edited.”
ED DRISCOLL: Breeding Men Who Riot.
Related: Professor Jacobson: Two Sicknesses On Display In Arizona. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have seen this type of reaction. The meme that opponents of Obama are crazy and dangerous has been an explicit Democratic Party campaign strategy for over two years. Here is just a partial list of events in which the left-wing and Democratic Party media operation has immediately blamed right-wing rhetoric, only to be proven wrong when the facts finally came out: Bill Sparkman, Amy Bishop, The Fort Hood Shooter, The IRS Plane Crasher, The Cabbie Stabbing, and The Pentagon Shooter. The facts will come out about the shooting and murder by Loughner. Until then, we’ll be subjected to the sickness of people who seek to use the crime to their political advantage and who will worry about the facts later on, if ever.”
OBAMA LOOKING AT TAX REFORM. We could use something along the lines of 1986 — lower rates coupled with fewer deductions, etc. — but given the shambolic nightmare of healthcare “reform,” this is going to be a tough sell, even to Democrats.
I’VE GOT A COLUMN IN TOMORROW’S WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel. “Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don’t help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.”
MARKDOWNS ON reconditioned tools.
JACK SHAFER: The awesome stupidity of the calls to tamp down political speech in the wake of the Giffords shooting.
Sheriff Dupnik’s political sermon came before any conclusive or even circumstantial proof had been offered that the shooter had been incited by anything except the gas music from Jupiter playing inside his head.
For as long as I’ve been alive, crosshairs and bull’s-eyes have been an accepted part of the graphical lexicon when it comes to political debates. Such “inflammatory” words as targeting, attacking, destroying, blasting, crushing, burying, knee-capping, and others have similarly guided political thought and action. Not once have the use of these images or words tempted me or anybody else I know to kill. I’ve listened to, read—and even written!—vicious attacks on government without reaching for my gun. I’ve even gotten angry, for goodness’ sake, without coming close to assassinating a politician or a judge.
From what I can tell, I’m not an outlier. Only the tiniest handful of people—most of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-meds—can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer.
The call by Sheriff Dupnik and others to take our political conversation down a few notches might make sense if anybody had been calling for the assassination in the first place, which they hadn’t.
FROM DAN MITCHELL: A Two-Part Quiz for Libertarians and other Advocates of Limited Government.
Related: The Perils Hidden In Success. “It is clearly the case that failing to be be more successful and wealthy than your ancestors is worse than having the opportunity to eat yourself into an expensive and debilitating degenerative condition – but why sabotage the benefits that you do have?”
BOB OWENS: Salon Posts Completely False Article About Giffords Shooting. “Elliott’s post isn’t just wrong, it’s embarrassingly wrong.”
I dunno, I found the part about Sarah Palin being the second shooter on the grassy knoll quite compelling.
ED MORRISSEY: The shame — and hypocrisy — of CNN. “CNN clearly didn’t inadvertently cross the line once, but repeatedly kept insisting on a link between the shooting and political activism on the Right, especially Palin’s.” CNN’s coverage could be fairly described as “hate speech,” couldn’t it? Because that’s what blood libel is.
Plus this: “Contra David Frum, I don’t see this as a particular moment to reflect on ‘extreme political rhetoric,’ since there’s nothing to connect political rhetoric from either side of the political spectrum to this crime. I wouldn’t even call for reflection on the continued sales of Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto, even though the suspect credits both of these as among his favorites, as they have no causal connection to the actions of a lunatic. Perhaps, though, this is a good moment to reflect on those who rush to exploit tragedy in an attempt to bully political activists into silence.”
AIR FORCE GETTING STRICT:
The U.S. Air Force has been using a rarely enforced 19th century law (the Anti-Deficiency Act, or ADA), and more inspections, to get rid of generals and senior commanders who do not do their jobs. This all began because of the embarrassing problems with nuclear weapons security last three years ago. Since then, commanders have come under more pressure to do things right. That means more strictness in following the rules. Scary inspections have become fashionable again, along with fiscal responsibility. Commanders who don’t get with the program are headed for early retirement. This has happened to 14 air force generals and dozens of colonels in the last three years.
Well, this seems like a good place for strictness in following the rules.
DOES THE PROPOSED INVASIVE-SPECIES POLICY discriminate against the hairless?
POPULAR MECHANICS: Top 19 Gadgets From The Consumer Electronics Show.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on sports and outdoor equipment.
VIDEO: MIT Media Lab Prints Out Sweet-Sounding Flute With 3D Printer. “The flute was created on an Objet Connex500 rapid prototyper, a 3-D printer that can print in multiple materials at the same time. The flute was constructed from a few different materials – a rigid material for the body, a softer one for the mouthpiece, another for sealing the air in at the proper places – during a print run of about 15 hours, during which time the materials were added on one thin layer at a time.”
BEER: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? People who drink more, exercise more. “In fact, the data show, the more people drink, the more they exercise.”
GRAPHS: Energy Production And Usage.
FACEBOOK IS AT OR NEAR “PEAK HYPE.”
A MOTORIZED UNICYCLE that converts to a motorcycle.
REMINDER: Virginia Postrel is surveying Star Trek fans for her book on Glamour. If you’re one, fill out her questionnaire!
BYRON YORK: Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin: “You can almost hear the disappointment from the left that he was a pothead rather than a Tea Partyer.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Politico: Dems Want To Blame Tea Partyers:
One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did. “They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
Because unfounded accusations of complicity in murder are what America needs right now. Well, Mark Penn said Obama needs another Oklahoma City. And they want to give it to him. But aren’t they being a bit transparent, here?
Or is it a ruse?
But whose interests are served by chewing up the wounded flesh in the meat grinder of political rhetoric and whose interests are served by pretending to be above all that? Liberals have an interest in creating a big distraction that might undercut the prevailing conservative momentum. To conservatives, I would say: Don’t help them.
Hmm.
Another former high school classmate said that Mr. Loughner may have met Representative Giffords, who was shot in the head outside the Safeway supermarket, several years ago.
“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”
“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ” she wrote.
So: “Quite liberal,” and didn’t like Giffords in 2007, before anyone had heard of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party. But it’s their fault.
OUTER SPACE: Not So Great For Making Babies? A whole line of science fiction stories revolves around the idea that zero-G pregnancy doesn’t work, meaning that space-dwellers must spend time on planets or in rotating stations to have kids.
MICKEY KAUS: “Hmm. Fannie Mae. … Somehow that detail gets left out of Daley bios, including his Wikipedia page. … What did Daley not know and when did he not know it when Fannie was helping to create the housing bubble and lead the American economy into an abyss from which it has yet to extricate itself?”
MICHAEL BARONE: Deal-maker Daley: Obama’s emissary to Boehner?
RAND SIMBERG: Giffords Shooting: Don’t Just Do Something — Stand There. “No, the solution to this problem is to recognize that there is no solution to this problem, at least one acceptable to Americans, and to be thankful that with the millions of guns in the land, it happens so seldom. That’s what makes it news, unlike (say) Mexico, where the assassination of a politician in the drug wars is hardly worthy of mention any more. Like the rest of us, our politicians and public officials aren’t immortal, and there is no safety this side of the dirt. While I’ve had my differences with her on space policy, from what I know of Gabrielle Giffords, when she gets well, I suspect that she’s going to go out to the next town meeting, worrying no more about a repeat occurrence than she does about a meteorite strike. And that’s what the rest of us, who aren’t prone to use every tragic event to shove our political agendas down other peoples throats, should do as well.”
WE’RE THE GOVERNMENT, and we’re here to claim we helped you.
A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE on Sony Home Theater speakers.
BARACK OBAMA: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
UPDATE: Reader Ron Hardin emails: “It’s time to stamp out violent figures of speech.” Heh.
MORE: In 2008, Markos Moulitsas put a “bullseye” on Gabrielle Giffords’ district. While we’re tracking those violent figures of speech . . . .
Give it up guys. Your efforts to politicize this tragedy have been pathetic.
To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Markos’s post, which is about primary challenges. But I do think there’s something wrong with pretending that this sort of language is to blame for nuts. And if you’re going to claim that, well, sauce for the goose. . . .
Related: Democrat Harry Mitchell Places Opponent in Crosshairs.
STILL MORE: Peter Ingemi weighs in.
A ROUNDUP OF VIOLENT POLITICAL RHETORIC FROM THE LEFT.
THE TEN MOST VULNERABLE HOUSE SEATS IN 2012.
WHY HOLDING A GRUDGE AGAINST YOUR SPOUSE may turn out to be rational.
AMY CHUA EXPLAINS WHY CHINESE MOTHERS ARE SUPERIOR.
It’s nice to see this stirring endorsement of rigorous bourgeois values coming from someone nonwhite. Because if it came from a white person, it would be racist. Chua even pretty much says that. . . .
Meanwhile, there’s this question: “One wonders why Asians, if they’ve got things so figured out, need to emigrate to the land of the substandard ‘Westerner’ in order to live prosperously and free.” Yes, one might also wonder what Westerners know — or, at any rate, knew until recently — that China didn’t.
UPDATE: Reader Leo Jiang writes: “What’s so superior about taking a whole decade to realize I’m not a piano prodigy? Congrats to Amy that her children are, I guess.”
PAUL HELMKE TRIES TO SEIZE ON TRAGEDY TO RESTORE HIS RELEVANCE. Nice try.
Related: Liberals blast Palin and ‘rhetoric’ following AZ shooting. “Did liberals like Congressman Raul Grijalva, Arizona Democrat, Markos, Moulitsas, and Andrew Sullivan speak too soon for the sake of hoping that the Tucson shooter could have had a tea party or a right of center affiliation? From all of their statements today, both said and written, it sure seems like it.”
As with Mike Bloomberg’s immediate effort to blame the Times Square bombing attempt on the Tea Party, this swift reaction betrays their hope for an issue that could save Obama by defaming his opposition. It also demonstrates that all their “have you no decency?” talk is a sham, since when push comes to shove, they have no decency themselves. Just desperate blood libels.
Related: The Contemptible Paul Krugman. “This would be outrageous even if Krugman himself were not one of the worst hatemongers in public life, a man whose hysterical rhetoric exceeds anything you hear from Limbaugh, Beck, or any significant figure on the right who comes to mind. But this sort of contemptible demagoguery is exactly the kind of thing we have come to expect from Krugman.” No decency. And no shame.
Meanwhile, better sense from Howard Kurtz:
Let’s be honest: Journalists often use military terminology in describing campaigns. We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off, candidates returning fire or being out of ammunition. So we shouldn’t act shocked when politicians do the same thing. Obviously, Palin should have used dots or asterisks on her map. But does anyone seriously believe she was trying to incite violence?
I guess the Democrats’ map with targets was fomenting violence, too, then.
Let me be clear, as a great man says: If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?
UPDATE: Paul Krugman can’t Google.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, films critical of the president would be killed. And they were right!
NEWSWEEK’S EVAN THOMAS: “The health care bill is a disaster.”
SO, AMAZON CARRIES GAS MASKS? Apparently quite a selection. Go figure.
NATIONAL JOURNAL: DEMOCRATIC PARTY FACING white flight? “The voters who went with Obama in 2008 did not know what they were going to get with that vote. Now that they’ve seen the health care bill, the stimulus bill, the bailout, the cap-and-trade proposal—issue after issue, they don’t like what they see.”
THE UNKILLABLE Toyota Camry.
RICH KARLGAARD: A 12-Step Program For America.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Iranian War Of All Against All.
DON SURBER: Tax Non-Profits.
MORE ON WHY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS are jealous of “the rich.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Illinois talking about borrowing money to fund its broke pension system.
“We owe this money to the pension fund. What we’re saying instead is we should put the money in the pension fund and owe the money instead to someone who would issue the bonds,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, said.
With this kind of financial wizardry on tap, it’s amazing they ever went broke to begin with. But if I understand this correctly, if they borrow the money and put it into the pension fund, then they can — with much lower political cost — stiff the bondholders as opposed to the unionized state employees they owe now. So it’s sort of like running up your credit cards to pay off your mortgage or some other secured debt. . . .
DEREK LOWE: The PhD Problem: “Talk of a ‘higher education bubble’ may not be idle chatter. . .”
POLITIFACT: Score One Promise Kept In The House.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: The Problem With A Paul Ryan / Marco Rubio Ticket. “They’re practically still kids, at least in my aging eyes. And having them running the country would make me feel very, very old.”
FOR HER BOOK ON GLAMOUR, Virginia Postrel Is Surveying Star Trek Fans. If you’re one, do her a favor and take the survey!
REP. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS KILLED in Arizona mass shooting. Not clear what happened, but haven’t several other Arizona politicians suffered assaults lately?
UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has more.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.
And judging from the comments to this post, people are already trying to score political points. Well, they kind of telegraphed this strategy, didn’t they? Remember Bloomberg making a fool of himself by blaming the Times Square bombing on the Tea Party? How about waiting until we actually know something, this time? That’s likely to be soon enough.
MORE: KOLD reports Giffords is alive and in surgery. Stay tuned.
MORE STILL: A blogger-email from Speaker Boehner’s office: “I am horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff. An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured, and their families. This is a sad day for our country.”
Ed Driscoll is updating with news. Kos is airbrushing.
EVEN MORE: His name’s Jared Lee Loughner and he seems like a garden variety nut:
Among his long list of favorite books in his YouTube profile are Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha.
Loughner also “favorited” just one video on YouTube, which shows the burning of an American flag and is accompanied by an anti-government screed.
Doesn’t sound much like a Tea Partier. And what the hell is “conscience dreaming?”
Media Matters: Don’t Score Political Points. Oh, wait . . . .
MORE: High School Friend: “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.” More here.
Also: Man linked to Giffords shooting called ‘very disturbed.’
A former classmate of Loughner at Pima Community College said he was “obviously very disturbed.”
“He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts,” said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College’s Northwest campus.
Sorenson doesn’t recall if he ever made any threats or uttered political statements but he was very disruptive, she said. He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident. . . . In a youtube.com video dated Dec. 15, entitled “Introduction: Jared Loughner” the accused gunman describes himself as a U.S. military recruit who had applied to join the Army. The Army, however, said it rejected Lougher as a recruit in 2008.
Stay tuned.
VIDEO: Testing An Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb. This is real One Second After stuff, though some say that’s a worst-case scenario. Well, I’d hate to think of worse cases.
THE CARNIVAL OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IS UP!
SOMEBODY TELL JONAH GOLDBERG: Cleveland woman, family saved from fire by heroic feline.
A LAWSUIT? AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO SEND SOMEONE ON A QUEST OR SOMETHING? Brown Sues To Recover Stolen Sword.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF military human enhancement. It’ll be back. And research into the civilian kind is continuing apace.
GAS PRICES UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA, in pictures. This two-year vs. two-year comparison leaves out the big 2005 runup under Bush, though, which I think helped turn Congress over to the Dems in 2006.
Related: Deep-Water Drilling Permits Down 88% in Gulf Since Obama Lifted Moratorium.
TRANSPARENCY: School District Puts Checkbook Online.
HUFFINGTON POST: If only the problem were simply “factual inaccuracies.”
A VISIT FROM THE SECRET SERVICE. “Something doesn’t sit right here.”
MITCH DANIELS: Hey, that Illinois tax increase will be great — for Indiana!
PEOPLE ASKED BACK OVER CHRISTMAS, but I’ve finally gotten around to putting an Amazon link at the top of the page — the tab labeled “Shop Amazon,” surprisingly enough. Just click there, and it’ll take you to Amazon and you can support InstaPundit at no cost to you, as Amazon will kick back a percentage of whatever you buy. Thanks!
UPDATE: Reader Michael Derrick writes: “Respectful suggestion: Don’t assume your readers will remember we can support Instapundit via Amazon. Help us to help you with regular reminders. This is the classic win-win. You get a percentage of something I was going to buy anyway!”
Thanks! I’ll try.
A HEARTENING REPORT FROM EGYPT: Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields.”
PASSPORT APPLICATIONS REPLACING “MOTHER” AND “FATHER” WITH “Parent One” and “Parent Two.”
Fausta Wertz is reminded of The Prisoner.
FINANCIAL TIMES: U.S. Jobs Report “An Utter Mess.”
BRENDAN O’NEILL: “You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes. . . . Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid.”
TODAY ONLY: Elliptical Trainer sale. This one might actually fit in my basement.
I HAD HOPED TO MAKE IT DOWN AND COVER THIS, BUT ALAS, I COULDN’T: Decommissioned U.S. Navy ship scuttled off Cayman Islands to create artificial reef. But maybe I’ll get down there later in the year and do a video dive report.
Meanwhile, here’s a nice pre/post sinking video from the folks at Sunset House.
UPDATE: Reader M.C. Parsons writes:
As a 22 year old Lt. I was the Chief Engineer of the Kittiwake. The video brought tears – the last to go down was my stateroom.
She was commissioned in 1946 as a forward sub tender. She worked on the recovery of the Challenger and picked up quiet a few sunken air craft. One sailor had a bumper sticker that read, “Fly Navy, divers need the work”.
When visitors asked me, “What’s a Kittiwake” I always quipped, “Its what you get when you drag a cat through the water.” That always pissed the skipper off.
Thanks for sharing the video.
Heh. It’s always sad to see a ship retired, but this is a better home than being broken up. She’ll bring pleasure to many people — and fish.
BLIZZARD FAIL UPDATE: New York City’s No-Show SEIU Snow Jobs. Will Bloomberg do anything?
PUBLIC PENSION UPDATE: Assembly bill caps public worker pensions.
Spooked by the University of California’s pension revolt – in which its highest paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC fattens their retirement benefits – a Democratic state lawmaker introduced a bill Thursday to prevent all public employees from gaining dramatically increased pension benefits.
And Republicans are applauding.
“You’re witnessing a moment of bipartisan joy,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-San Bernardino, vice chairman of the Higher Education Committee. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t think of this myself.”
The UC executives, some of whom earn more than $700,000 a year, want their pensions calculated as a percentage of their full salary, not just the first $245,000, the cap imposed by the Internal Revenue Service.
Read the whole thing. And expect to see more of this sort of thing in coming years.
“IF WE GOT TO FIGHT, WE GOT TO FIGHT:” Pistol-packin’ manager answers robber with hot lead.
Dihanna McCullock says she is a fighter, and Thursday she proved it. Two men, one armed with a knife and one with a gun, attacked her. She always wears a gun on her hip for protection, and she says there is no doubt it saved her life. . . . McCullock carries ‘the Judge’ in a holster. It’s a pistol that shoots a shotgun shell as well as .45 caliber bullet. McCullock said the robber’s bullet just grazed her right arm. She fired back a shotgun blast at point blank range.
Are you sure you hit him? “Yes, I’m positive. I’m positive. I’m a good shooter. Definitely a good shooter. My husband taught me well.”
The two robbers took off running, dropping her wallet and the knife.
John McCullock says he taught his entire family to shoot, and he is proud of his wife. “If we got to fight, we got to fight. I’m glad that she did.”
The Judge is a revolver by Taurus, popular with judges for under-robe wear.
SCIENCE: Lice DNA Study Shows Humans First Wore Clothes 170,000 Years Ago. “A new University of Florida study following the evolution of lice shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, a technology which enabled them to successfully migrate out of Africa. . . . The study also shows humans started wearing clothes well after they lost body hair, which genetic skin-coloration research pinpoints at about 1 million years ago, meaning humans spent a considerable amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed said.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN PRESIDENTIAL FASHION HISTORY.
STACY MCCAIN: Best. Republican. Scandal. EVAH!
WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: With The Dollar In Freefall, The System Is Breaking Down. “What Hazlitt knew, and Nixon didn’t, is that inflation has great momentum. The price level can withstand significant monetary abuse, but once inflationary expectations cement they are impossible to dislodge without extreme economic and political pain, as Ford, Carter, and Reagan soon discovered. The similarities between then and now are obvious.”
UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader writes:
The dollar has RALLIED eight percent since the November election. Seems Europe and Japan have bigger problems than we do.
I wonder if that’s a positive sign or not . . . .
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR: Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter Demands Evidence of White House Corruption, Gets It.
UP TO 54% OFF ON Blu-Ray and DVD.
UPDATE: Reader Bill Rickords emails:
That guy is right about the Feds getting into the “trusting” part. And Intels new motherboard and chips are the lynchpin in this. Called – South Bridge – They have a hard coded chip level anti copy thing that any info the TV and or Movie or RIAA folks label will simply be refused to run at the chip level and there is nothing you will be able to do. Software cant route around it. Nasty stuff.
And he is also right about the right and this anti neutrality trope that has been foisted out and about by ATT, CBS and all the other media as “regulating the net” is rubbish. ATT sent out memos to their troops to call Neutrality “regulation” and they knew the Right would glom onto that word and run with it. They are the ones that want to control the speed and most importantly they absolutely have to control “ACCESS” none of their business models work without controlling BOTH access and content. They want to control and sell the speed of your access and by prioritizing bits and letting them through the pipes based on who pays up first and most. Neutrality has nothing to do with “regulating” the net. It says they can’t do that. Best to try and keep the net as a utility open to all.
They’ve already deployed the most effective copy-protection of all from my perspective: They don’t make anything I’d want to copy anyway. But here’s my FCC Testimony on “network neutrality.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader sends this correction:
The reader email you published from Bill Rickords has one error that should probably be corrected. While Intel does make technology that could help enforce the “Trusted Identity” scheme, the name for that technology is not South Bridge, it’s Trusted Computing. A “south bridge” is simply a chip on the motherboard that helps with
input/output functions — *any* input/output functions. (The “north bridge” is the chip that delivers data from memory to the processor; the names come from the traditional diagram layout, where the processor is drawn at the top of the diagram, the “north bridge” chip below it, and the “south bridge” chip even further down the diagram). Just because a motherboard has a “south bridge” chip on it does *not* mean that it can enforce what you do with your PC; the name you want to look for there is the so-called “Trusted Computing” scheme.
Whatever it’s called, I don’t like it. If my computer doesn’t belong to me, why am I paying you for it?
A READER SENDS THIS QUESTION FOR SOME REPORTER TO ASK OBAMA: Q: If you were in the Senate today, and knew that the vote to raise the debt ceiling was going to pass, would you give a similar speech blaming a lack of leadership and vote no?
This is Obama in 2006.
GLOBAL SPAM LEVELS decline dramatically.
VERIZON FINALLY LANDS THE IPHONE.
ANDREW CUOMO, LIVING IN SIN! “The Cuomos are a famously Catholic family. They use that to their political advantage at every turn.” Well, sure, when it’s to their advantage. That doesn’t mean it should stop them from doing what they want, though. What is this, the 17th century? But Professor Bainbridge opines: “Living in sin is bad enough. Living in sin with fake fairy godmother Sandra Lee is beyond the pale.”
At least he’s not living in sin with Sara.
UPDATE: Reader Randy Wilde writes: “What do you mean, ‘at least’? NOBODY doesn’t like Sara Lee!” Well, that’s my point. If it were Sara, we’d all be jealous.
THE PALEO RODEO: A Paleo-diet blog carnival.
READ IT AGAIN, JOHN: “I thought it was a good idea for the Constitution to be read aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives as that body kicked off its new session. The reading reminded those present of the contents of our fundamental law and symbolized a commitment to adhere to that law. But what seemed like a good idea turned out to be a great one. For instead of good naturedly going along with the exercise, or suffering in silence, a number of leftists publicly displayed their lack of comfort with, if not contempt for, the Constitution. Thus, the public received its clearest indication to date that the left regards the words of the Constitution as an impediment to its agenda.”
CORRECTING PAUL KRUGMAN on Texas. That’s not a subject on which I’d expect Krugman to possess any particular degree of expertise.
MICHAEL WALSH: The Rising Dictatorship Of The Bureaucrats.
CORNEL WEST IS BACK: “I do have some sympathy for West here, though, because I think PC folk have failed — over a long period of time — to give him the feedback that would have kept him from developing this absurdly inflated style of speech, with its danger of missteps like this, and the self-serious demeanor that makes his mistakes especially funny.”
REDSTATE: Gov. Pat Quinn (D, IL) about to destroy IL Amazon affliliates? I should note that the State Rep. who wanted to do this in Tennessee — a long-time incumbent — was handily defeated last November. But that’s why Tennessee is Tennessee . . . and Illinois is Illinois.
UPDATE: And Tennessee is getting a big Amazon distribution center. “Gov. Phil Bredesen termed Amazon’s announcement ‘a strong endorsement of Tennessee’s business climate.’” Take that, Illinois! (Thanks to reader Charles Browning for the tip. I didn’t know this.)
IN DEFENSE OF THE USELESS UNIVERSITY. I think that knowledge for its own sake is great. I just don’t think it should be purchased with massive quantities of borrowed money. And I’m betting that Socrates would have agreed. A Ferrari is beautiful, too, but we don’t encourage 18-year-olds to mortgage their futures for one. Meanwhile, I’m not so sure that the flow of academics from other countries to the U.S. disproves the notion that the U.S. is experiencing a higher education bubble. Rather the contrary, I would think.
UPDATE: Reader Tim Maguire writes:
Agreed that knowledge for its own sake is a good and valuable thing and I also think every university education should include a certain amount of it, but building a course of instruction around the humanities is a luxury of the affluent. The rest of us need jobs. So if we want to promote the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, then we should promote the affluence that will allow people the luxury to pursue it.
Yes, the humanities originally flourished under rich patrons. Now they need a rich society. Yet, interestingly, folks in the humanities tend to argue against policies that promote a wealthy society.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.
