The bloom is off the rose:
I have to say that I liked these, too.
The Meaning Of Glamour
An essay by Virginia Postrel. I’m pretty indifferent and immune to glamour and charisma, which is one of the reasons I saw through Obama right away, but many otherwise smart people obviously aren’t, so glamour is more important than many think.
Space Access Schedule
Henry Vanderbilt has released it, and Clark Lindsey has posted it. It’s only two weeks away.
‘m scheduled to be on two panels. But you should attend anyway. It’s going to be a very interesting year for it.
Who Can Blame Them?
The Treasury department sees slim demand for five-year debt.
The socialists may be about to run out of other peoples’ money. Or at least they (and sadly, we) will have to pay a lot more for it.
And as a Californian, this is cheery news:
“Compared to California, I’d rather bet on Iraq,’’ Daher said. “Iraq is a country where there are still bombs going off and people getting murdered, but they are less indebted than the United States. California is likely to have more demands on its resources, and there is no miracle where California is going to have more revenue coming out of the sky. Iraq has prospects for tremendously higher revenues, if they can manage to get their act halfway together, which they seem to be doing.’’
Of course, they don’t have a dysfunctional government.
Greece
…and California. There is only one solution: to cut spending:
That is why, together with Mike Pence and John Campbell, I have offered H.J. Res 79, a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would limit spending to one fifth of the economy — our historical spending average since World War II. The limit could only be waived by a declaration of war or by a two-thirds congressional vote.
I hate to put an arbitrary percentage like that in the Constitution, but we have to do something to do get this under control. But it would have to include entitlements, too. There can no longer be such a thing as “non-discretionary” spending.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bruce Bartlett thinks it’s an awful idea, for many reasons (including the one I mentioned). I think that Pence and Hensarling are going to have to go back to the drawing board.
Fusion Paths
…less traveled. I think that if we ever do see practical fusion, it will be from one of the alternate approaches, not the big-budget conventional wisdom. Sort of like practical spaceflight.
Three Reasons
Health-care deform won’t cut the deficit by one thin dime:
And here’s more from Chris Edwards:
And they’re doing such a bang-up job with TARP:
Barofsky’s report said it is possible the program only benefits half of the three or four million homeowners originally envisioned. Among other data, the program measures trial modifications, a metric Barofsky faulted for being, “essentially meaningless.” The number of permanent modifications could wind up being a small share of the millions of foreclosures filed in this year and during the past two years.
So let’s put them in charge of our health!
Poor Jim Hansen
It’s such onerous duty to be honest.
Well, I can see how it would be, for him. But not to worry, he’ll get a lot more money with the new Obama NASA budget.
No One Should Have Been Surprised
…at this administration’s betrayal of our only real ally in the Middle East:
Once it was thought to be unprincipled guilt-by-association for pro-Israeli, anti-Obama groups to question candidate Obama’s dubious associations; after all, Reverend Wright, Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power, et al. were all on record as hostile to the Jewish state. Few likewise seemed to take note when a key Obama campaign foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in September 2009 suggested that the U.S. might, and perhaps should, shoot down Israeli planes over Iraq on their way to Iran: e.g., “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.” Then there was the nomination of Charles Freeman. And of course the present outreach to the two most terrorist-friendly regimes in the Middle East, theocratic Iran and authoritarian Syria. Someone from Mars might conclude that the United States has spent far more effort in courting Ahmadinejad and Assad than Netayanhau.
Each of these steps — and there are others — in isolation can be contextualized, but in aggregate they paint a pretty clear picture that for this administration the benefits of supporting Israel are far outweighed by the downside.
It seems like the only regime that this White House wants changed is the one in Jerusalem.
[Update mid morning]
Obama’s dangerous “diplomacy.”
A New Personal Best
…for Joe Biden. I agree with him. It is a big f’ing deal, in the same way that Hitler was (as Time deemed him) a great man.