Month: February 2010

  • Is The BIll Dead?

    A whiff of corruption: Kent Conrad says no, of course you can’t pass Obamacare through reconciliation. And it has to go through his committee, so… I’ve said for a while liberal wonks like Jonathon Cohn were underestimating the collegial tradition in the Senate, and sure enough it turns out they aren’t going to change all…

  • “He’s got Boris Karloff eyes” (But is that fair?)

    While the last thing I want to do is leap to the defense of President Obama, I thought I should make a simple observation about the Boris Karloff comparison that has been floating around. Rush Limbaugh seems to have started it with this remark: Obama was sitting there and his lips were pursed. There as…

  • A relativist view of emergency sucking

    I don’t mean to be a bore about these things, but I try to be fair, and not long ago I wrote a long post complaining about “two dishonest words that especially offend me,” because of their inherently argumentative nature as well as their tendency to distort perceptions of reality. Anyway, because I used the…

  • Can’t they just let the show go on?

    The hysteria over the killing of a trainer by a killer whale has now reached a media crescendo — replete with psychoanalysis of the animal’s motives, often in the context of a narrative that sees man as the oppressor. This is causing some people with knowledge about animals to roll their eyes and remark the…

  • A mainstream meme that cannot speak its name

    Dr. Helen links a video which ought to be seen by anyone who doesn’t believe misandry exists… Let me pause right there to note an unexpected irony which proves one of the points made by the video. As I typed the first sentence of this post, the word “misandry” was flagged in red, even though…

  • Sustainable

    Any method for doing anything that cannot be sustained for 100 billion years minimum is unsustainable. Nothing is sustainable in the long term. So why not just focus on getting by with an eye towards future requirements? And let me add that the things people were doing 200 years ago were unsustainable. And 200 years…

  • When regulators are in bed with those they regulate, woe to the unregulated!

    Quite foolishly in my view, Senator John McCain has introduced new legislation that would give broad new powers to the FDA to regulate the vitamin and dietary supplement industry — right on down to your corner store. Steven Joyal looks into why McCain would do such a thing, and concludes it’s because of baseball: Most…

  • MMM MMM JOOK!

    I have been feeling under the weather lately, and as I had some leftover rice in a ziplock bag, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and see how well my rice cooker performs at making jook. Also called congee, it is renowned throughout Asia as the ideal sick person’s food, as well…

  • power imbalances and root causes

    Via Ann Althouse, I just learned about a vicious attack by a killer whale: The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to the theme park after receiving a call that an employee had been attacked and injured in the “killer whale tank.” The woman who was killed was a 40-year-old senior trainer at the…

  • cleaning up unwholesome advertising — for the children!

    From José Guardia, I learned about a new anti-smoking campaign in France, which obviously hopes to shock young people into not smoking by means of disturbing images. The slogan is this: “To smoke is to be a slave of tobacco” I agree with José that the message is powerful. All the more so because of…

  • Do I have to hate people who don’t exist?

    I had a disturbing thought earlier when Veeshir left a comment pointing out that a commenter (who calls himself “Steve”) appeared to be soliciting links. I remembered that in an earlier post, the same commenter had solicited a link from another blogger, even though that blogger had not even left a comment. So I did…

  • Time For A Redo

    Fox News is reporting that there is to be a redo of climate data. At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists, representatives of Britain’s weather office quietly proposed that the world’s climatologists start all over again to produce a new trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and…

  • Better to give than attack

    One of the things I learned during my brief experience in sales years ago was never to attack a competing product. Not, that is, if you want to sell your product. I was skeptical, so at one point I actually tried what I was warned not to do, and sure enough, the guy started defending…

  • Almost pointless, but not completely pointless!

    I first heard about Twitter back in 2007 — back when I attempted to “live-blog” the September 2007 Republican debate at Morgan State University, and I believe it was Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association who told me about the new phenomenon. I’m all for communication, but at the time it didn’t make much…

  • If massive surveillance does not stop Money Laundering, why do we have it?

    Via Glenn Reynolds, I just watched “The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws” — a very disturbing video about money laundering. The facts and figures are appalling. As Dan Mitchell of the CATO Institute shows, over 18 million “suspicious transactions” are monitored annually, yet this yields only 900 or so actual money-laundering convictions. Not only are…

  • Beware, the dark forces of Saxonomics!

    This morning I was treated to a marvelous new conspiracy theory, which is being promoted by Spain’s socialist government: “Spain Blames Economic Crisis on ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Conspiracy.” I try to be thorough and fair-minded about these things, so I thought that the best place to start would be by taking a look at some actual Anglo-Saxons.…

  • One good drink deservesz aniother, ruhyight?

    I really don’t understand how Stephen Green managed to drunk-blog this morning’s Tiger Woods apologia, but he did. There is not enough alcohol in the world to get me through such a thing. But alcohol is a funny, perhaps cosmic, thing. After drinking a few glasses of wine, I remembered Stephen’s bravery, and I thought…

  • “They have no right to tell me what to do.”

    As Allahpundit noted in his post about CPAC booing the speaker who condemned the gay conservative group, there was another issue that caused tension. Gambling. The tensions didn’t end [with the gay issue]. Along the back wall 2004 World Poker Champion Greg Raymer stood waiting for a talk radio interview. “Focus on the Family considers…

  • Words that suck

    I realize that I should have called this post “Words that cause confusion,” except blog posts are supposed to have eye-catching titles, aren’t they? Anyway, a couple of things I read today reminded me of two dishonest words that especially offend me, because of their inherently argumentative nature as well as their tendency to distort…

  • DBTH

    Does it seem strange to anyone else that after months and months of falling poll numbers mostly because of negative public reaction to Obamacare, Obama now wants a summit to focus more attention on… Obamacare? It’s like he wants his party out of power as quickly as possible. You’d almost think we elected someone with…