Zee Links and Minifeatures: January 2009 Archives

Bill Gates: School Reform That Works

These successes and failures have underscored the need to aim high and embrace change in America's schools. Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80 percent of our students graduate from high school fully ready to attend college by 2025. This goal will probably be more difficult to achieve than anything else the foundation works on, because change comes so slowly and is so hard to measure. . . . If one school's students do better than another school's, how do you determine the exact cause? But the difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve. And as the successes show, some schools are making real progress.

Sane, intelligent commentary on the state of our schools, and getting from where we are to where we need to be. Read the whole thing.

The Biggest Con -- Ever

He means that quite literally, and I agree. $825 Billion that won't accomplish anything positive, just wasted. Or worse, spent subsidizing things of negative value.

But please, let's stop calling this a "stimulus" plan. How does another $650 million for digital TV coupons (why don't we just buy a million new high-definition televisions and hand them out?) spur economic growth? What does $600 million for government vehicles do other than allow bureaucrats to do nothing more efficiently?

Here's one thing of negative value it's paying for: $5.2 billion to ACORN, which committed massive voter fraud in Obama's favor. ACORN is not in danger of going bankrupt, and they don't provide economic benefit anyway. Precisely what is the difference between this and any other political payoff with the public treasury? Do we really want to encourage voter fraud like this?

It�s not the first time ACORN has been entangled in a bailout controversy. In September, House Republicans objected that the original $700 billion bailout package included $100 million for ACORN � a tiny fraction of the sums for ACORN now being considered in the stimulus package.

The European Social Welfare State Bill

Only about 1/7th of the outlays occur in the current fiscal year. Substantially more of the outlays occur in 2012 or later than occur in 2009. How is this stimulus spending?

The celestial choirs of bailouts

More press in the tank for Obama: GOP defies Obama overtures

This is not what I would call an overture: From Republican leader Mike Pence "But know that there has been no negotiation [with us] on this bill - we had absolutely no say."

It isn't bipartisan when you don't bother to ask the other side for input. President Bush was far more bipartisan than this, even when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. His folks always asked the Democrats what they wanted on a given piece of legislation, and always compromised - even when they shouldn't have.

(The original version headline said "Analysis: GOP defying Obama overtures of bipartisanship")

Hollow victory: Republicans deliver slap in the face to Barack Obama

Might it be because he was only willing to listen - he wasn't willing to actually, you know, do anything to compromise with them?

Problem was, he wanted only to listen and did not want to act on what Republicans said. When he was asked if he would re-structure the package to include more tax cuts, he reportedly responded: "Feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part."

Listening is good. But it you're not willing to act upon what you listen to, it's ultimately pointless. And I say good for the House Republicans in that every single one of them voted against this massive compilation of pork (along with 11 Democrats). It may be years too late, but it's a start.

Obama's Blank Screen Deception

President Barack Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous.

He's saying what I've been saying for almost a year now - that Obama started winning because he was careful not to get specific, projecting a blank public persona onto which people could project their own desires.

(I'm already seeing proposals for a Republican slogan for 2012 (and for that matter, 2010): "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!")

Questions to ask Leon Panetta before he's confirmed as head of the CIA

Sure it's okay to advocate and expedite the pardon for political cash of a fugitive from justice. At least if you're a Democrat, it'll get you the slot for US Attorney General. Senate panel OKs Holder as attorney general

Obama can say he's looking to have an ethical administration all he wants. So far, his actual actions are pointing in the opposite direction. When it comes to a test of words versus actions, there isn't a whole lot of question as to which is more indicative.

Don't like what a newspaper reports? Don't like the conclusions in someone's book? Sue them

This is nothing new. But each and every one of these nitwits needs to get slapped down hard. Free speech and debate is what makes this country work.

Late last year, we--publisher and author--were named in a defamation suit brought in a state court in Dallas by H. Walker Royall. Royall is a wealthy man who, having volunteered to be the developer in a municipal construction project that involved eminent domain, does not care to have his actions scrutinized by the Fourth Estate

Rangel Rule proposed.

Since it seems to work for Democratic politicians, why not the rest of us?

Sentencing AIDS victims to die in the name of politics

Ill. gov unanimously convicted, tossed from office

Proving that even in Illinois, politicians will do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities. Had the publicity not been so bright, perhaps they could have gotten away with sweeping it under the rug or just waiting until the outrage went away. But the media and comedians made it so that none of them could afford the repercussions of a voting for acquittal, or not voting to remove him.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

Obama is sounding an awful lot like Bush. At least in some contexts.

Even John Stewart has noticed.

The Return of Carterism?

Among the first duties of the Obama presidency, all agree, is the restoration of America's standing in the world. Poll after poll has shown how unpopular America is overseas, from London to Damascus to Beijing. Nor is there much disagreement as to the reason. As Fareed Zakaria puts it in The Post-American World, the reason is the "arrogance" displayed by the Bush administration--an arrogance that has blinded Americans to the fact that they can no longer push other nations around at will, and that their country now inhabits a multi-polar world.

Read the whole thing

All in all, to listen to Bush's myriad critics, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had it just about right in assailing "the arrogant course of [an] administration which hates criticism and prefers unilateral decisions."

Translation: he wouldn't give despots what they wanted: the ability to enslave their people even further and expand their influence so they could enslave other people.

Do we really want these detainees on American soil?

Those policies, however, were always preferable to bringing detainees here. Under current law, once a detainee sets foot in the United States, it's possible that he eventually could be walking the streets. Obama's executive order commits to closing Guantanamo in one year and, in addition to calling for the continuation of efforts to repatriate detainees, directs administration consideration of the possibility of bringing some detainees to the United States. Because most of those detainees who could safely be sent to other countries were dispersed long ago, the new administration will be hard pressed to find appropriate countries to take the roughly 245 who remain. That means a ticket to Kansas, or perhaps, as Representative Jack Murtha suggested, Pennsylvania.

Or they could be found innocent by civilian juries who don't understand the international law of war. I know I don't - which separates me from 99.9% of the "close Guantanamo!" and 100% of the ACLU lawyers who have been trying to win this one by attrition. Civilian judges who have no idea and no willingness to learn the relevant treaties. And then we end up with truly dangerous people released to strike again, possibly from within the country.

Is there anyone willing to bet me $10 that none of these people will join our enemies once again? That none of them attack civilian targets here within the United States?

Thus far, of the detainees released, a minimum of 61 (out of about 450) have been confirmed as once again fighting American troops, and those are the ones we thought were more or less safe to release. It's like if we repatriated the Afrika Corps to Germany just before D-Day. There is a reason enemy combatants are held until there is no longer a danger they will re-join the fight. If you want an example as to why, look up how many Japanese soldiers were still fighting World War II ten years after the surrender was signed, and the cost in lives to finally end it (some were still out there in the 1980s). Then consider that the Japanese lived by the code of bushido, as opposed to what most of the Guantanamo detainees fight by. Consider not just the danger to our military, but also to our civilians. Our previous president wanted to close the detention center at Guantanamo - but thus far, nobody has yet come up with a better idea.

It's not reality, it's Scrappleface:

Pelosi: Cutting Poor Babies Accelerates Economic Growth

"Poor people are a luxury we just can't afford,' said Rep. Pelosi, "They cost us a lot of money to maintain; what with food stamps, housing and health care. So if we can rapidly reduce the number of poor people through contraception and abortion, that's a net gain for federal and state budgets, and a fast track to economic recovery. Every poor baby prevented is like money in the bank."

But all good humor has a core of truth. "Nice" people might not want to talk about it in public, but it is there.

Michael Barone: Democrats' Support of Teacher Unions Has Worked Against Inner City Kids

Whitman notes that the kind of people who run these schools tend to be politically liberal, the sort of people who enthusiastically back Barack Obama. Yet Obama and the Democrats have to a large extent supported the teacher-union, education-school model of education which has so dismally failed inner city children and which the people who have created the schools Whitman and Mathews describe have profoundly rejected. The teachers unions and education schools have done a great job of feeding money into the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party has generally done a great job of feeding money back to the unions and their members. But they have done much less for the kids.

Victor Davis Hanson: Unreal Expectations? President Obama Asked for Them

For nearly three months since the election, we have been warned by President Obama, his staff and the media not to burden him with unreal expectations that no mere mortal could meet.

But why then consciously borrow from Abraham Lincoln's speeches? And why re-create Lincoln's historic train ride to his inauguration especially by flying back from Washington to Illinois to then return to D.C. by slow-moving railcar? Lincoln took the train because it was the only feasible way to get to Washington in 1861, not to copy the grand arrival of some earlier American savior.

I admire Abraham Lincoln quite a lot. But the President who led us through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation is the same President who suspended habeas corpus in the entire United States, instituted the first draft, caused the biggest riots in US History, used federal troops to put those riots down with grievous casualties, instituted (unconstitutionally!) the first income tax, and unconstitutionally dismembered the state of Virginia. It is to be noted that even the Emancipation Proclamation was arguably a violation of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. My point is this: While Lincoln's achievements were worth the constitutional price we paid, that price would have been too much for any lesser achievement, and Mr. Obama has already demonstrated that he's no Lincoln.

(Mr. Lincoln was very unpopular near the end of the Civil War. Had he lived to the end of his second term, he might well have been impeached himself - as Andrew Johnson was, mostly for continuing Lincoln's policies towards the South - and it might have taken until the 1960s to rehabilitate Lincoln's reputation. Sound like any recent president to you?)

If this doesn't ruin your whole day, I don't know what would: Good news: Iran to be nuke-capable this year, says think tank

I laughed when Drudge put the siren up for this, not because the news is predictable but because the think tank that issued the report actually has been predicting it for years. How slow has this slow-motion trainwreck been? May 2006: IISS pronounces Iranian nukes "inevitable." January 2007: IISS warns that Iran could have the bomb in two years. May 2007: IISS describes how Iran's built its own nuclear black market, one which, if the Times of London is to be believed, is now suddenly running low on yellowcake. Too late, alas:

Amazing how two years is up in only two years. Congratulations to all those who wanted to tie President Bush's hands; we now have a nuclear Iran.

Obama nominee got Constitutional issue wrong in testimony

Boy did he. By his thinking, if sex is legal, the government should pay to provide it for any citizen that wants it (and it's amazing how many want their sex from supermodels...), and require all citizens to engage in it. If porn is legal, the government should pay for that, too.

Obama post partisan? Not so much. It took him less than a week to attack a political opponent personally - something that "horrible partisan" George W. Bush didn't do no matter how personally they attacked him.

Data point two: Wizbang

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the [$825 billion stimulus] proposal, the president shot back: "I won," according to aides briefed on the meeting.

"I will trump you on that.

Can you imagine the hullabulloo that would have resulted had George W. Bush ever said something like that?

Sorry, Mr. President. Things haven't worked that way in Washington for eight years. Democrats, of superior values and virtues we are told, fought tooth and nail to destroy every one of President Bush's policy proposals that did not come pre-approved by the DNC. Republicans have every right to embody the values and virtues of Democrats and fight tooth and nail to stop Barack Obama's dangerously large and ill-conceived debt-funded government give-away.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, remember?

Datapoint: For eight years, Democrats fight George W. Bush tooth and nail, no matter how much he tried to work with them, and despite the fact that he won election - twice. Datapoint: As soon as President Obama is inaugurated, Democrats want all dissent from his policies to stop.

Not even George Washington expected that. He included his smartest, strongest political opposition (Thomas Jefferson) in his cabinet - and listened to him. No, the presidents who wanted to stomp out all political opposition were the ones like LBJ and Richard Nixon. Great antecedents there. Even while I lamented their irrationality, I was supporting the Democrats right to disagree - and I will lament the irrationality of Republican opposition every bit as much (assuming it happens, which I am certain it will)

But then I'm a libertarian. It's not exactly difficult for me to find things I disagree with both major parties about.

Via Instapundit, 10 Reasons to Whack Obama's Stimulus Plan

Here's number 11: false report turns out to be pretty close

From what I can observe of the "stimulus bill" it appears to be an attempt to create another permanent constituency dependent upon government aid. Guess which party such constituencies favor at the polls? Motive - Opportunity - Method. It may not be good enough for a conviction, but it's good enough to establish reason to investigate. Unfortunately, the press that was so rabid about its "watchdog role" with regards to President Bush (and before him, Presidents Reagan and Bush pere, although not President Clinton, for some reason) is declining to fulfill that role with President Obama. Do you notice any trends there? Any correlations?

How Modern Law Makes Us Powerless

Americans don't feel free to reach inside themselves and make a difference. The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes We Can" but "No You Can't." Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

You cannot remove the ability to do evil without also removing the power to make a positive difference. A small number of determined people is the only method that has ever changed the world for the better - but entropy assures us that it will get worse. Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty, and we have decided as a society that the price is just too high, so we're going to deny anybody the opportunity to improve things.

1) Law sets boundaries that proscribe what we must do or can't do -- you must not steal, you must pay taxes.

2) Those same legal boundaries protect an open field of free choice in all other matters.

The forgotten idea is the second component -- that law must affirmatively define an area free from legal interference. Law must provide "frontiers, not artificially drawn," as philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it, "within which men should be inviolable."

For instance, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Feel Like a Chump?

If not, you will. Soon.

Security Theater

Much scarier than anything Stephen King ever dreamed up.

Congratulations, President Obama.

Hilda was home sick sick Tuesday with the flu, and I had it as well. Since it is a special day that happens only once every four years, I suggested we watch the Inauguration, and we sat and watched the last fifteen minutes or so of the leadup, plus the Inaugural and Obama's Inaugural Address.

Now we get into actual deeds and actions, not just talk. I don't believe Obama will be good for the country. But I also hope I'm wrong, and I will not hesitate to agree with him any more than I hesitated to disagree with President Bush.

Leave the New Deal in the History Books

As a short-term matter, the moves of the Fed and other central banks have been correct, but in the long term a return to growth will depend on dynamic job creation by American business -- not the U.S. government. Under a two-year plan designed to create three million to four million jobs, Mr. Obama's plan would have the federal government begin distributing funds for public-works projects carried out by the states. With government already spending 20% of GDP, federal government, not private enterprise, will become the growth industry.

The effect of these policies, like FDR's, will be to lengthen the pain.

Seduced by the Saint

President Obama entered the history books our children will read. His presidency bookends an era that began with segregation between blacks and whites and ended when he became the 44th American president and the first black man in the White House. No one can take that away from him. Nor can anyone doubt his charisma or political skills.

However, the inauguration is just a moment in history. While Obama's toastmaster skills are exceptional, his performance as President is an entirely different and more uncertain matter. Yet if the liberal media's performance to date is any guide, predetermined judgments in favour of Obama will infect coverage of his presidency.

Someone who is still fooling himself as regards the Palestinian goals:

Arabs in the Middle East should learn the lessons of Martin Luther King.

What the vast majority of Arabs have been slow to realize, however, is the profound connection that exists between the history of the struggle that opened the way for Obama to become president, and the future of their own fight for freedom and dignity, and not only in the face of Israeli occupation, but under the tyrannies of so many Arab dictators. We talk about remembering Martin Luther King because of the power of his vision, of his language, of his morality and of his faith. But mainly we remember him because he adopted a strategy of nonviolent confrontation with an insidious and pervasive system of repression--and broke it--and broke through it. We remember him because his way worked.

What we know about the Middle East today is that wars no longer end in victories, and the process of peace never delivers more than the process itself. A new approach has to be found, and the leaders of the governments in the region don't seem up to the task. The most promising is nonviolent resistance: mass protests, boycotts, refusal to obey unjust laws.

He's right in a way. If the Palestinians were willing to accept the same sort of goals Martin Luther King was after, that would work. Actually, there wouldn't be a lot of work to be done.

The problem with this suggestion is that the Palestinians want to actually kill all the Jews. Israeli laws are pretty darned good on the subject of not discriminating (much better than French or German or just about anywhere else outside the US and Canada). Non-Jewish Israelis are found in all walks of life, including the Israeli army (where they volunteer, rather than being drafted like the Jewish population). All they have to do is stop killing Israelis, and Israel accepts them (e.g. the Druze, among others)

But Hamas (and to a lesser extent Fatah) still want to kill all the Jews or drive them out, i.e. conquest and ethnic cleansing. I am unaware of any historical precedent for accomplishing this sort of goal non-violently. Even if the Israelis went willingly to the slaughter, killing them would still be an act of violence.

Seven reasons for healthy skepticism

Top Ten Disturbing Aspects of Obama's Choice of Treasury Secretary

I wish it were a David Letterman routine.

Department of "I do not think it means what you think it means":

Obama Seeks Halt to Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo

In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing Bush administration.

Here I thought the issue was holding people who might not be enemy combatants even though they hadn't done anything, and we were therefore giving them military trials to see if they were combatants or had committed war crimes, and if not, we could let them go. Silly me!

Of course, the 120 day moratorium will only mean that anyone who might actually be innocent will have to wait that much longer to be freed.

This is what we call a "token gesture"

Obama freezes salaries of some White House aides

The pay freeze, first reported by The Associated Press, would hold salaries at their current levels for the roughly 100 White House employees who make over $100,000 a year. "Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington," said the new president, taking office amid startlingly bad economic times that many fear will grow worse.

Let's say these 100 people lose $4000 each as a result of the freeze.

That's $400,000. Drop in the bucket, even by the standards of the White House Budget, let alone the entire Federal Government.

Don't get me wrong - it's a good thing, as far as it goes. But freezing the pay of 100 white collar federal workers who aren't exactly hurting is not going to solve the problem. Given the yearly deficit projection of 1 trillion dollars that's being batted about, he's cut .00004% of the problem. By my calculations, just over 12 seconds of deficit. And I'll bet it took him longer than 12 seconds to freeze those salaries. Heck, his new and counterproductive spending plan will waste more than that every minute of every day for the next four years.

This is not productive problem solving.

Obama's new lobbying rules will not only ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff. Those already hired will be banned from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they once targeted.

Two words in refutation: Secretary (designate) Geithner. Two more: Secretary Clinton. How many more examples do you want? It's great to have these high goals, but actions speak much more loudly, and the actions of the Obama administration are already speaking so loudly I can't hear their words.

Plane crashes in NYC river after bird cuts engines

A US Airways plane crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending 150 on board scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, appears to have hit one or more birds.

Bird strikes are potentially a really big deal. For small planes, even a sparrow can mess up the airfoil of the propellor or possibly break it. Even for big planes, swans and geese and eagles, some of which can go up to forty pounds, are a real issue. Think about the damage your thanksgiving turkey could do to a jet turbine rotating at 20,000 RPM. No matter how tough those blades, they're going to take some damage, and it doesn't take a lot to seed the progressive self-destruction of an engine operating at that speed in short order. Since this airplane lost both of its two engines to bird ingestion (did it hit a flock?), it was going down, and the pilot didn't really have a lot of choices as to where to put it.

There's an urban legend I first heard about 1980:

The US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.

The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass impact, it'll survive a real collision with a bird during flight.

It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they're developing.

They borrowed FAA's chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired.

The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, broke the engineer's chair and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine's cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:

"Thaw the chicken."

Well, the version I originally heard was Boeing doing the loaning and DeHavilland (a British company that Boeing really did try to warn about square windows in the DeHavilland Comet, having gotten the experience from high altitude military aircraft in World War II) doing the requesting, but while the frozen chicken is urban legend, the chicken gun is quite real, and it is a real test that commercial aircraft face (mostly the engines, in reality). Snopes has quite an article that is well worth reading.

(I love the cat embellishment - another urban legend, so far as I am aware:

Just before lunch, the engineers set up the chicken-cannon, loaded a frozen chicken into it, and left for the canteen. The chicken would be just about defrosted by the time they got back to do the test. When they came back, they got behind the protective wall, started the high-speed cameras (to play back in detail what happens), and fired the chicken at the canopy. Normally, it should just bounce off, or make a nasty dent. This time, the canopy was destroyed. Bits everywhere. Having checked the cannon, and looked through the (expensive) wreckage, they decided to view the film, to see if it would provide any clues. It did. During lunch, a cat had climbed into the cannon, lured by the smell of fresh chicken, became part of the test.

PS: Incidents like this one, losing multiple engines at low altitude and slow speed, are why pilots deserve to make the big bucks. Lots of them go an entire career without an incident like this one - but there's 150 survivors who owe their lives to the skill of the pilot who brought the airplane down well enough so that everyone could get off alive. And once it had lost those engines in that situation, it was coming down, with a rapidly narrowing list of options for where and how. There's a reason they practice losing an engine, so much that it has spawned its own jokes. Here's one:

It is time for Santa to have his Biennial flight review. Anyway the CASA inspector arrives and is very impressed with how well Santa has prepared the sleigh, the reins are oiled, the brass is all polished and the reindeer have all had a bath, it really looks a treat. The inspector comments "Santa I am very impressed, if you have prepared for the rest of the flight like you have the sleigh then the check should be a formality" Well Santa is much buoyed by this and after a short preflight he asks the inspector to climb aboard.

As Santa is buckling up and starting his checklist, he looks across and notices for the first time a large bore double barreled shotgun sitting across the CASA inspectors lap. A little perturbed and very much perplexed Santa tries to put it out of his mind and focus on the all important check ride. If he fails then the kiddies will not be getting their presents this year. The checks completed, Santa starts to taxi out for take off and again notices the shotgun. Finally his curiosity gets the better of him....

He turns to the inspector and asks, "Before we take off, I really have to know, what's the shot gun for?" The CASA inspector looks over both shoulders conspiratorially to check no one is looking, leans over and whispers into Santa's ear "Look I really shouldn't be telling you this but... you're going to lose an engine on take-off"

(this is where I got that one so that I didn't have to type it all)

Hawaii takes closely watched digital TV plunge

Hawaii residents lit up special TV help center phone lines Thursday as the state was shutting down all analog broadcast signals, more than a month before the rest of the country is scheduled to make the now-contentious switch.

I'm not certain I'm ready. But I've got cable, so losing broadcast TV, or even all TV (if that happens) for a couple of days while I buy a converter box is no big deal to me, in a major city with load of other options (like broadband internet) and lots of places to buy the converters (plus I think I've watched about two hours of TV total in the last six months). If we go TV-less for a month, that's a price I'm willing to pay - in fact, I'd probably cancel cable TV too, if it weren't so cheap to add basic TV service to the phone and internet package (my wife really likes the old movie channels when I'm not home). Out where there may not be other ways for people to be informed, it might be a major problem, and there might not be any converters in stock anywhere you can get to. If this describes you, get on it. February 17th is just around the corner.

Hawaii was moving to all-digital TV before the Feb. 17 date set for the rest of the nation because of an endangered bird, the Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel. Broadcasters and park rangers want to take down analog transmission towers on the slopes of Maui's Haleakala volcano before the bird's nesting season.

Look out Harry Potter! Yet another illustration of Clarke's Third Law

Science closing in on cloak of invisibility

Researchers at Duke University, who developed a material that can "cloak" an item from detection by microwaves, report that they have expanded the number of wavelengths they can block.

In 2006 the team reported they had developed so-called metamaterials that could deflect microwaves around a three-dimensional object, essentially making it invisible to the waves.

Keep in mind that for all the obvious military and espionage uses, being invisible has its hazards. The other guy can't avoid what he can't see. And if you're flying a Harrier, people for miles around are still going to hear it. Not to mention that in the real world, what's on the inside uses that same light that gets deflected around the bubble to see with, making you invisible but effectively blind.

I can envision work-arounds for the effective blindness issue, as I'm certain pretty much anybody could. But there's a long way to go on the engineering yet.

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama as Bush III

What are we left, then, other than a sort of campaign con? Obama will better articulate the old Bush positions. The hard Left will quiet down about the Patriot Act and Iraq, and cease the anti-American rhetoric, as upbeat diversity rhetoric trumps the old downbeat unilateralism. Michael Moore won't be making any more documentaries about a fascistic President, and Knopf won't be publishing any novels like Checkpoint about a sitting President. I think Obama, with a few low-level appointments, an occasional pep talk at the annual ACLU meeting, or an invite to the editors of the Nation for a chat in the Oval Office, can pretty much count on an inexpensive 10-cents-on-the dollar bought ride from the once vociferous Left.

I think Mr. Davis is kidding himself. Obama's voting record is hard left, and to the extent he tries to change the Bush policies he has criticized most harshly is the extent his administration will fail. It's just that for his appointments, the Democratic party really only has Clinton administration folks with actual federal administrative experience, as it has been almost thirty years since we dumped Jimmy Carter in the biggest no-brainer election we've had since 1932. The appointees will take their talking points and their goals from the man at the top. But Mr. Obama might surprise us, which is why I'm limiting myself to talking about actual actions. Anyone can say they can fly to the moon by flapping their arms. Until they actually do it, or at least actually try, it doesn't make any real difference beyond superficially making them appear to be of limited experience. Unfortunately it appears that approximately 52% of our electorate doesn't understand this.

The Minnesota Recount Was Unconstitutional

Consider the inconsistencies: One county "found" 100 new votes for Mr. Franken, due to an asserted clerical error. Decision? Add them. Ramsey County (St. Paul) ended up with 177 more votes than were recorded election day. Decision? Count them. Hennepin County (Minneapolis, where I voted -- once, to my knowledge) came up with 133 fewer votes than were recorded by the machines. Decision? Go with the machines' tally. All told, the recount in 25 precincts ended up producing more votes than voters who signed in that day.

Then there's Minnesota's (first, so far) state Supreme Court decision, Coleman v. Ritchie, decided by a vote of 3-2 on Dec. 18. (Two justices recused themselves because they were members of the state canvassing board.) While not as bad as Florida's interventions, the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered local boards to count some previously excluded absentee ballots but not others. Astonishingly, the court left the decision as to which votes to count to the two competing campaigns and forbade local election officials to correct errors on their own.

Mr. Franken appears to have successfully stolen an election in the same manner Florida Democrats tried in 2000. The only consistency I can find for ballot counting in Minnesota is "Whichever way is in the Democrat's favor". Ballots with identical issues, excepting only the party the voter apparently meant to vote for, were treated in diametrically opposite manners. Both Hot Air and Powerline have been following the recount, and the more I learn, the more something stinks in Minnesota ballot counting.

History will show that George W Bush was right

The decisions taken by Mr Bush in the immediate aftermath of that ghastly moment will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America's borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the United States, eavesdrop upon terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush after 9/11.

George W. Bush, Winner

This is a man who endured countless savage attacks on himself and those of his administration, and spoke not one bitter word in return. A man who, in stark contrast to his predecessor, cared not a whit about public opinion when it came to our national defense, trusting instead that future historians will do what their current counterparts refuse; to treat him fairly.

So this is the message to our liberal friends in the media: you didn't beat this president, he beat you. You and your allies in Washington failed time and again to take this good man down. Indeed, he was elected and re-elected despite your historic efforts to the contrary.

What will the unhinged left do once Mr. Bush's term has expired? I think they better figure it out pretty quick.

Putin has given us a wake-up call: we're vulnerable to blackmail

It is hard to decide which is more despicable, the virulent untruths issuing from the Kremlin or the readiness of gas-starved European politicians to gang up on Ukraine. Russia's insistence that the gas is there, if Ukraine would only pump it through, is pure KGB-speak.

Tyrants often have their eyes on the implications of this crisis on the next one. Most democracies are interested only in keeping their citizens from voting them out today. This is only one example.

Don't get me wrong. Democracies have strengths that more than match up. But without a statesman such as Churchill, Thatcher, or Reagan, we pretty much muddle along in "minimally painful for right now" mode until we have something we can't ignore, and then we wonder why things got so bad.

Yemeni Security Shoots Protesters in Aden, Five Wounded

Yemen is in the bottom five for poverty globally, largely a result of massive corruption, and child hunger is at a critical level. The following video shows people being shot in the street earlier today and is graphic. This happens at nearly every protest, security forces randomly shooting into the crowd. Here is the link and to follow the embedded version.

I could come up with words like "disgusting" and "tragedy" all month long and not come close to describing the hellhole that is Yemen thanks to the current regime. Thanks to Ms. Novak for shining the Searchlight upon one small corner of the world that is emblematic of so many others.

I really should apologize for an extended case of burn-out. I've been updating a lot more articles than I have writing new ones. Part of that is being busy, which is a good thing as far as it goes. Part of that is that I've been having difficulty with what a gamer like me might call "making my saving throw versus 'I Don't Wanna'". I have very little appetite for rehashing more of the same old thing in an entirely new article when it's so much easier and more efficient to update and re-publish an older one. The facts don't change. The basic computations don't change. Only the market changes, and I don't republish state of the market stuff.

I have entirely new articles I want to write. One that I've been thinking about today starts with a line I got from the military: "Quantity has a quality all its own." The article is created, the bones of an outline are present. The problem is self-motivation to actually flesh it out when I've been working completely hairy weeks and dealing with some stress-inducing individuals. When I'm done with all that, a turn of Stars! and a half hour reading on the couch with Julia before bed sound a lot more appealing than grinding away at the keyboard.

But it appears that the stress level and burn out may be receding. If you want to help them go away, make a comment, say something nice, or ask a question. You could even donate some cash - I've got domain re-registration coming up and it would be nice if this site actually paid for its costs. But I do apologize for the intermission, and I do think it may be ending.

Israel acts because the world won't defend it

The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

The Mideast's Ground Zero

CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel -- and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

Rich people versus politicians

Legalized corruption is widespread, and that's the job of 35,000 Washington, D.C., lobbyists earning millions upon millions of dollars. They represent America's big and small corporations, big and small labor unions, and even foreign corporations and unions. They are not spending billions of dollars in political contributions to encourage and assist the White House and Congress to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. They are spending that money in the expectations of favors that will be bestowed on them at the expense of some other American or group of Americans.

Read the whole thing. This game of trying to get everyone else to pay for my goodies has got to stop. The people who actually end up paying for all of the goodies are taking their toys and going elsewhere. What happens when they're all gone? Or just enough of them? California is starting to wake up to precisely that situation.

Audience Atomization Overcome

That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another-- none of this is in their official job description. You won't find it taught in J-school, either. It's an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their "sphere placement" decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It's like trying to complain to your kid's teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Milky Way grows in stature

Actually, no. It's always been essentially the same size. It's just that we measured again, and we now think it's bigger than we used to.

Of course, that's mostly pointless if we're stuck on one planet in one solar system out near the fringes.

Want to gripe about stolen elections? here's a stolen election

When I checked my traffic on New Year's Day, it appears this site got its 3,000,000th visitor sometime early on December 14th.

Thank you all for stopping by.

Microsoft's Zune players freeze on New Year's Eve

Thousands of Microsoft's Zune media players -- the software company's answer to Apple Inc.'s iPod -- unexpectedly conked out Wednesday and showed users an error message, prompting references to "Y2K for Zunes." The problems appeared when people tried to start up their devices.

Good thing Microsoft doesn't make airplanes. Or hospital equipment.

And if Microsoft made my parachute, I'd think very hard about staying with the airplane that's going down in flames.

Offshoring Is One Sure Thing

In the meantime, someone should ask Gov. Richardson exactly what tech jobs can't be outsourced. Moving skilled U.S. jobs offshore may be a trend that's already taken off, but why should Washington provide the airplanes? Perhaps that should be question No. 1.

I don't want often say this, but Michelle Malkin has this one absolutely correct: Jimmy Carter & Habitat for Humanity built shoddy homes

But now that it's striking a media darling charity, the legal environment that has raised the cost of housing for everyone substantially is suddenly something bad.

These defects are survivable. Given the benefit of a Habitat for Humanity home, I would happily deal with a cracked slab or settling or repair issues.

Those who have the same issues who bought their homes from a for-profit developer have some additional justice on their side - but they should still be required to come up with specific reasons why the developer is liable. If I want to sue my neighbor, I have to convince a jury that neighbor did something specific and actionable to me. But in the case of suing developers or the wealthy in general, the case that gets made is essentially, "They're wealthy and I'm not!"

via Instapundit, Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association says we are facing a Pension Tsunami

Actually, he tells only part of the story of malfeasance. When California and municipal coffers were full with property taxes from the real estate bubble, the correct thing to do would have been to pay down debts and invest for the inevitable crash or at least slowdown. Instead, they not only spent all of the extra on new projects, but committed themselves to continuing to do so for the forseeable future, and borrowed even more money on the assumption that the good times would not only continue unabated, but accelerate. They invested less money than they were supposed to setting aside (per their own actuaries), but in highly speculative fashion which might have made up the shortfall if the good times had somehow continued. And when the inevitable collapse finally arrived, they were left in basically the classic Wile E. Coyote position by their own doing.

The financially prudent thing to do was obvious all along, but fiscal prudence doesn't translate well into buying votes for incumbents. Classic Roman bread and circuses. Look into the real - economic - reasons why the Roman Empire fell apart. If you don't understand now, you will have your eyes opened.

The parallels with US Politics of today are eerie. And the largest differences between the situations aren't working in our favor.