I agree with Adam Keiper and Yuval Levin that Michele Bachmann jumped the shark with her ignorant comments about Gardasil. I usually don’t care that much about Democrat whining about Republicans being “anti-science,” particularly when they are themselves, and in much more politically destructive ways, but she has to be held to account for this nonsense.
Desperation
Who are you going to believe, Attackwatch, or your lying eyes?
[Update a while later]
Here’s the commercial for it. Hilarious.
[Update]
More from the Hawk:
“I actually sympathize with #AttackWatch. They remind me of the time I got my head wedged in a bowling ball return chute.”
[Update mid morning]
The Hill has a story on it.
[Afternoon update]
Well, that didn’t take long. Go get your Attack Watch tee shirt.
The Fake War
…on unemployment. Even Robert Reich thinks the president isn’t serious:
Reich is still confused, though:
If the president was never really serious about getting Republican votes in the first place–if his jobs bill and the tax increase on the wealthy were always going to be part of his 2012 election year pitch–why didn’t he make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?
Let’s accept for the sake of argument the creationist premise that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent government can create all the jobs it wants simply by borrowing and spending enough money. Let’s also assume Reich’s premise that “enough,” in this case, is some figure considerably in excess of $447 billion.
Why didn’t Obama ask for enough? That seems obvious. If the answer is “no,” and the point of asking the question is to elicit a negative response, then the practical difference between what you get if you ask for $447 billion and, say, $5 trillion is not $4.553 trillion but zero. If Obama is asking for the money only for appearance’ sake, as Reich concedes he is, then it’s more important that $447 billion appears more reasonable than $5 trillion.
Either way, Megan McArdle wishes “that Obama hadn’t wasted my Thursday evening, and that of 31 million other Americans, listening to a jobs plan that was only designed to produce one job–a second term for Barack Obama.” Most of those viewers–those of us who write about this stuff for a living being obvious exceptions–didn’t actually have to watch the speech, so we’re not able to work up much sympathy for those who didn’t have the good sense to change the channel or go out and live a little.
But let’s take this by the numbers. Obama’s speech lasted about 42 minutes. Multiply that by 31 million viewers and, say, $20 an hour, and you end up with the man-hour equivalent of about $434 million. It’s a shameful waste, but much less of one than if Stimulus Jr. actually became law.
No danger of that, fortunately. The neo-Keynesians have finally completely destroyed whatever credibility they ever had.
“Strategic Misrepresentation”
I have some thoughts on cost overruns on federal transportation projects, including space transportation, over at Open Market.
SSH Problems
OK, so I’ve upgraded my laptop to Fedora 15, and want to restore the backup, but I can’t ssh into it. Here’s what happens:
[simberg@linux-host ~]$ ping 192.168.0.105
PING 192.168.0.105 (192.168.0.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.250 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.243 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.225 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.261 ms
^C
— 192.168.0.105 ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.225/0.244/0.261/0.023 ms
[simberg@linux-host ~]$ ssh 192.168.0.105
ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.105 port 22: No route to host
[simberg@linux-host ~]$
So I can ping it, but it won’t connect. I’ve installed opensshd on the laptop, I’ve enabled it, and the firewall has port 22 open. I can also ssh into it from a terminal on the machine (e.g., ssh localhost or ssh 192.168.0.105), but not from another computer on the network. Any ideas?
Ethernet Bleg
So I’m backing up my laptop in preparation for an upgrade from Fedora 13 to 15, and I notice that the data transfer speed is only about half a meg per second. Here is the output of ‘ethtool eth0’:
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Link partner advertised pause frame use: No
Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: pumbg
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
drv probe ifdown ifup
Link detected: yes
Any ideas what the problem is?
The Coming Ugliness In Egypt
…is it the end game? This will be a horrific human catastrophe, the result of decades of malgovernment. If the generals abandon their peace treaty and pick a fight with Israel, it should take the opportunity to expand its territory and buy more border security.
The Invasion
…of the earbud people.
I do have to wonder about someone who seems afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. Of course, I don’t wear them because they hurt my ears.
Paul Krugman
The Twilight Zone
The Keynesian one: