Thursday, August 28, 2008
Linkage and other short notes
I have accumulated a few items of interest to brighten your Thursday morn:
What do the Democratic National Committee and Enron have in common? Their logo!
Jeffrey Rosen argues that in the case of both the Bork and the Thomas hearings, Joe Biden actually did what he could to diminish the partisanship and personal attacks. I have always thought that Rosen was a pretty sober fellow for a liberal MSMer, so I'll go with this story until I hear a good refutation of it.
In case you had not noticed, the Obama campaign is going after National Review's Stanley Kurtz absolutely hammer and tongs for his dogged pursuit of the connections between Barack Obama and unapologetic Weatherman Bill Ayers. The left wants you to believe that there is a "smear" at work, but Kurtz has been nothing but judicious in his work so far. Dig it!
On the one hand, Arctic sea ice is bottoming out for the year, and there is around a half million more square kilometers of it than at this time last year, dire predictions notwithstanding. On the other hand, it is still at the second-lowest level recorded by satellites, which have been around since 1979. On the third hand, aggregate global sea ice was above the "baseline" level as recently as this spring because there is extra in the southern hemisphere.
Increasingly, atmospheric scientists do not believe that the decline in the snowpack in the Cascades is the result of anthropogenic global warming.
Most people are excited to hear Barack Obama tonight. The better opportunity for explosive blogospheric controversy, however, lies in Al Gore's speech.
An MIT study says that the United States could cut gasoline consumption by 35-50% by 2035. I would like to see more cuts and faster, but to do that we will have to create powerful incentives for investment and plow the roads in front of the entrepreneurs.
If this is not a sign that our team is winning in Iraq, I do not know what would be: Iraq is calling on companies to submit designs to build a giant Ferris wheel in Baghdad — the latest in a string of lavish proposals painting the capital as a leisure friendly city.
The Ferris wheel, dubbed the Baghdad Eye, will soar more than 650 feet over the city and feature air-conditioned compartments that would each carry up to 30 passengers, Baghdad municipal spokesman Adel al-Ardawi said Wednesday.
Dubai on the Tigris! Note, by the way, that if constructed the Baghdad Eye would be half again as tall as the London Eye, which is one huge ferris wheel.
We will return to our regular programming when we get around to it.
1 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Thu Aug 28, 11:48:00 PM:
Jeffrey Rosen: I give a third party less credence on this point than I give Judge Thomas, who was the focus of Biden's knives during the hearings. I notice that the article claims that Biden made great effort to focus on Thomas's supposed "radical views on property rights and limitations on federal power." (as in we have them, and federal power should be limited) A quick review of the record starting at Biden's first questions shows him wasting no time distorting Thomas's record to fit his preconceived notions.
Obama and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Obama goofed up bigtime here, if they had just ignored Kurtz, the MSM would have cast him as a nut and ignored him. Now we all wonder what is so important in those files.
Arctic sea ice: Unfair! Who do you expect me to believe, the lunatic ravings of Arctic scientists or the common sense words of NPR who told me yesterday that the ice was almost gone and at the lowest level in history?
Giant Iraq Ferris wheel: Neat idea, once the roads, rails, pipelines, electrical transmission lines, generators, hospitals, water systems and public health system are brought up to civilized standards. Plus it would be a giant mortar magnet if built now. Maybe in a few years.
