Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Wednesday morning brink-of-vacation tab dump
I've been busy again, an excuse that runs thin I'm sure. And I now need reading glasses. And the dog ate my blog fodder. And, no, I do not know quite what to make of the McChrystal situation, except that I agree that President Obama has to fire him or he might as well put on a dress and swish around, and maybe also that we will massively screw up the Special Operations Command if we hold them to the same standards of choreographed politesse that seem otherwise to be required in today's public square. We need a few rough men who will do great violence in the night. Such people are rarely pretty in print (or prints, but not my point). Anyway, read the link -- Barack Obama screwed up plenty starting with his catastrophic West Point speech last year which "demoralized his own side while elating the enemy and encouraging Afghan friends and neutrals to scramble to make their accommodations while they could." That (and other atrocities) explains McChrystal's rage and frustration, but does not excuse his insubordination.
That said, good point here.
The rich are not a class, but an ever-changing roster. Most millionaires are only such for a year. Puts populist-bashing of the "rich" in a different light. Check out the other information about social mobility, too.
News you can use: More Reading Glasses single people are sexually active, and fully a third of middle aged singles say they will sleep with another person after one date. Idiotically, if not surprisingly, condoms are not nearly so popular as sex.
Seattle greenyness: Compostable meat trays. What will they think of next?
San Francisco innovates yet again: San Francisco board passes cell phone emission law. If you retail a cell-phone in San Francisco, you have to disclose the amount of radiation that the phone puts out. Even though there is no evidence that any individual person in that city would know what that information would mean for their own safety.
I've been saying the same thing for a long time:
The chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama's closest ally in the business community, accused the president and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday of creating an "increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation."...
"In our judgment, we have reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore," Seidenberg said in a lunchtime speech to the Economic Club of Washington. "By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses."
Not being Barack Obama's "closest ally in the business community," I did not wait so long to speak truth to power. Look, we have a lot of debt to pay off. To do that, we and our posterity will have to save vastly more money or inflate our currency. Either way, we will have to destroy our own standard of living unless we can get substantially more real economic growth. That will not happen until federal, state, and local governments stop threatening massive new regulation and transforming new taxes. It is as simple as that.
Lawyers who write nastygrams to bloggers have fools for clients.
Jeff Bezos gave a wonderful address to Princeton's graduating class of 2010: "It's harder to be kind than clever," and the differences between gifts and choices. And some questions we should all ask ourselves. Wise words to that very gifted crowd.
This will surprise nobody other than liberals: In the past forty years, public school employment has risen ten times faster than public school enrollment. Even if the quality of education in our public monopoly schools had improved -- does anybody really think that it has? -- this would be a staggering collapse in productivity. What other American endeavor has performed so poorly? Do you really want to feed this incompetence with more money?
The Washington Post, in its news pages, sees an important change in South Carolina. Lede:
The Republican Party stepped away from its long and uncomfortable history of racial and ethnic politics in South Carolina on Tuesday, nominating an Indian American woman for governor and an African American man for the House.
You tell me what that means.
More tabs at Maggie's. Only they call them links, which is more accurate but less cool.
TTYL.
BONUS LINK: Another reminder that the generation that fought World War II is passing from Middle Earth.
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Jun 23, 09:35:00 AM:
"This will surprise nobody other than liberals: In the past forty years, public school employment has risen ten times faster than public school enrollment."
More union members mean more political clout which means more money which hires more union members. Somewhere in there they TALK about the children, but if they cared as much as they say they do, they would work harder to let families keep more of their money.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 09:50:00 AM:
"The Republican Party stepped away from its long and uncomfortable history of racial and ethnic politics in South Carolina on Tuesday, nominating an Indian American woman for governor and an African American man for the House."
What does that mean? Easy. It is a warning that a black Republican congressman will not be allowed to join the black racist Congressional Black Caucus nor participate in it's graft or corruption.
By 
Noumenon, at
Wed Jun 23, 11:06:00 AM:
Most millionaires are only such for a year.
"Millionaire" does not mean "person who makes $1 million a year," so that sound bite is propaganda and a lie.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 11:08:00 AM:
Long time commenter Brian Schmidt would most likely be interested to know that Tim Scott, the African American who won the Republican Party nomination for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, beat out Paul Thurmond, Strom Thurmond’s son.
IIRC, Brian has no commented on this blog after being called out on welshing on his bet with Gary Rosen regarding whether Republicans or Democrats are more anti-Semitic. Helen Thomas, who said she was as liberal as they come, was but the icing on the cake. The loser of the bet was to contribute $50 to a charity.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 12:49:00 PM:
Interesting that in light of this " BONUS LINK: Another reminder that the generation that fought World War II is passing from Middle Earth." there is a link at Breirbart's site of recently rescued movie film taken in Honolulu on VJ day. I hope that there are those among us whom can guide us out of catastrophe as well as the grestest generation made their way out of their catastrophes.
By MTF, at
Wed Jun 23, 02:19:00 PM:
We were quickly approaching the moment when Gen. McChrystal was going to need to be replaced anyway, so his misbegoten profile in RS was a timely, though unfortunate, excuse. Bringing Petraeus back is a huge surprise. We only have one General? No one else in the Pentagon can manage this thing?
By Georg Felis, at
Wed Jun 23, 02:40:00 PM:
Summary: McChrystal made Obama look bad. He’s toast. Doesn’t matter if he can walk on water and turn bullets with his steely glare, under the bus he goes with the rest. There will now be a brief period where everything that has gone wrong with Iraq and Afghanistan will be blamed on him, his name will be dragged thru the dirt, criminal charges will be vaguely waved about, corruption will be implied, various other Alinskys etc… If he’s half as bright as it appears, his book is already 9/10th written, and multi-million dollar bids for it will come rolling in, the advance to be paid before Jan 1, when the tax rates go up.
By Don Cox, at
Thu Jun 24, 06:07:00 AM:
"public school employment has risen ten times faster than public school enrollment."
Number of teachers, or number of administrators?
By , at
Fri Jun 25, 04:44:00 PM:
"...have to disclose the amount of radiation that the phone puts out."
This sounds useful actually. I could compare the values to figure out which phone is likely to have the best signal. Not exactly the result they intended, but that's liberals for ya. Unintended consequences are the rule not the exception.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Jun 26, 08:41:00 PM:
"...condoms are not nearly so popular as sex."
well, it would be even more stupid if they were more popular than sex.
