OH, GOODY: The Navy Bought Fake Chinese Microchips That Could Have Disarmed U.S. Missiles. “Last year, the U.S. Navy bought 59,000 microchips for use in everything from missiles to transponders and all of them turned out to be counterfeits from China. Wired reports the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time. If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe.”
Archive for June, 2011
June 30, 2011
SKADDEN ASSOCIATE DIES of overwork?
WHAT IS UP IN GARNER, NORTH CAROLINA? Burglar shoots at homeowner, homeowner shoots back, gets ticket for “unlawful discharge of a firearm.”
UPDATE: Police say otherwise.
SHOCKING NEW FINDINGS ABOUT STATIC ELECTRICITY: “A new study has found that the age-old understanding of this everyday phenomenon—one item becoming positively charged while the other becomes uniformly negative—is incorrect.”
JERRY POURNELLE has a new, WordPress-powered site.
THAT WAS FAST: CNN says Chevrolet Volt tech is “obsolete” compared to Toyota Prius Plug-in. “It all boils down to price. Stickered with a base price of $41,000, the Volt ain’t cheap. Pricing for the Prius Plug-In, though not officially confirmed, is expected to start at approximately $28,000, meaning that it will likely undercut the Volt’s MSRP by more than $10,000. Yes, rebates alter that number, but CNN finds it difficult to justify the hefty premium for what amounts to less than 30 miles of added electric-only range. Do you agree?”
PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL: Proceed at Your Peril: Crowdfunding and the Securities Act of 1933.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Obamanomics, Leaving On A Jet Plane. “But the clumsy attempt at class warfare probably wasn’t even Obama’s most disheartening moment during the presser. Several others were at least equally as bad. . . . But this seems certain: Obamanomics took flight in 2009 as a purist Keynesian experiment in economic management from high above. The ultimate Dreamliner for Democrats. Now, two-and-a-half-year later, it’s begun its sputtering descent.”
MATT WELCH AND NICK GILLESPIE: Obama Has Outdone Bush On The Drug War. “Obama has been awful. . . . He’s a bum.”
EVEN THE LEFTIES ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT Obama’s War On Whistleblowers.
FASTER, PLEASE: Drug Reverses ‘Accelerated Aging’ in Human Cells. “The discovery has implications for the treatment of several diseases—as well as normal aging in healthy people.”
CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS IN BRITAIN: “Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has said a householder who knifes a burglar will not have committed a criminal offence under plans to clarify the law on self-defence in England.”
That’s good, but they’ve got a long way to go to catch up with evolving standards of human rights.
“IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MATH:” How Old Is Malia Obama? Don’t Ask Her Dad. “But hey, it’s not like he said something arguably inaccurate about Paul Revere or any of the other Founding Fathers. (Or even John Wayne!) Family man Barack Obama simply doesn’t know how old his own daughter is. He’ll definitely get it right when she turns 18, though, because he’ll be reminded every time he plays golf.”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Obama Doesn’t Understand The Family Budget.
Meanwhile Megan McArdle predicts a Washington Monument / Starve Grandma approach on the debt ceiling:
Matt is thinking like a wonk, not a politician. What Obama should do is the exact opposite of this sensible advice: he should make preparations to shut down the machines that write Social Security checks and army paychecks, lamenting that he has no choice because the US is contractually obligated to pay its other bills. The GOP is betting that Democrats will take the blame for this. I think that is a very bad bet.
This is why schools and other government agencies facing budget cuts tend to immediately slash something high-profile and politically popular. That’s how you get them to reverse the budget cuts. I’m sure most of us in the private sector can recount situations where this has worked in corporations as well.
The GOP should go for a short-term debt ceiling tied to new cuts — and they should include language that will prevent this approach if the debt ceiling is hit next time. How will the Dems oppose “protect Grandma” language?
CHINA IS INTERESTED in Canada’s oil. “Our self-destructive dithering on the XL Pipeline could have even worse consequences than we thought.”
CONN CARROLL: Bipartisan Study Confirms: Default In Geithner’s Hands. “The Bipartisan Policy Center released a Debt Ceiling Analysis today showing that even if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, the federal government would still have enough incoming revenue to pay: all interest on Treasury securities (thus avoiding default), all Social Security obligations, all Medicare and Medicaid obligations, all Defense contractor bills, all Veterans payments, and all active duty troops, and still have almost $7 billion left over for other items. . . . Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner does not have to decide whether or not he wants to default on our debt until August 15th. That is the day that the Treasury is obligated to pay $29 billion in interest on previously issued debt.”
Whatever decision Geithner makes, I feel sure that it will be political.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: “The stumbling pattern of the aging athlete is reminiscent of the vacillation and weakness of today’s American leadership.” Plus this: “Right now American leadership is running scared. We have a president who thinks that bold words can ease our national decline, which has become as evident to the world as the hitch in Derek Jeter’s swing. We will know that this administration is intent on reversing the decline when the word ‘deregulation’ passes approvingly from its lips. Until that time, we should expect to see housing, labor, and financial markets remain in the doldrums.”
AT AMAZON, bestselling automotive safety products.
As we’ve discussed here before, a lot of people recommend the LifeHammer.
ECONOMIC NEWS: Mr. President: Hold up a mirror; you have met the enemy and it is you! “I watched President Obama today make a scathing speech in which he was alternatively cynical, deprecating, preachy and downright demagogical. . . . Mr. President, you need to admit you don’t know how to fix America, and what you thought would work, didn’t, isn’t working and won’t work. You were wrong, and still are. Mr. President, you need to stop going to fund raisers to reach $1 billion you can spend on your reelection campaign and do your job. You need to retire your golf clubs and roll up your sleeves and live up to some of that soaring rhetoric that got you into this job—you know, the one you have learned you were woefully underprepared to do.”