Marc Danziger notes that, despite the anointment of The One, we’re still at war, and the troops can still use our support. If you can spare the money in these tough times, here’s his store.
Couldn’t Happen Too Soon
The robocall auto warranty scammers have been busted. I don’t even know what the scam is, because I never answer when they call, but I hear the message. They tell me that they recently sent me a letter about my auto warranty, and I know it’s a lie, because I don’t currently own a car.
The Problem With Ahmedinejad
He’s a right winger. But he’s not as bad as Sarah Palin, because at least he likes to spread the wealth around, like the president.
It’s astounding (or should be) that Yglesias actually gets paid for such lunacy.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems relevant, somehow: the left’s romance with Islamism.
[Another quick update]
Obama and the media misinterpret the Middle Eastern elections:
Thomas Friedman at the New York Times quoted Paul Salem, the starry-eyed analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “People in this region have become so jaded,” Salem explained. “And then here came this man [Obama], who came to them with respect, speaking these deep values about their identity and dignity … and this person indicated that this little prison that people are living in here was not the whole world. That change was possible.”
These misperceptions about Lebanon recall an old Arab proverb: “When shooting an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.” Leg-tingling about the president aside, Hezbollah lost the election in Lebanon for several reasons; chief not among them was Obama’s amoral speechifying in Egypt.
But the leg tingling continues.
[Wednesday morning update]
More thoughts from Lileks:
Note how “cultural conservative” becomes conceptually elongated, so “right-wingers” who may, for example, not wish to redefine marriage become bunkmates with someone who denies the existence of homosexuals, and whose regime hangs them from lampposts. Well, we know the right-wingers here would, if they could, right? It’s only the possibility of bad PR that keeps Dick Cheney from setting his daughter on fire. As for demagogic nationalism, one suspects that Yglesias finds demagogy in anyone who talks about love of country and the great things America has done without landing with both feet on a big wet BUT, and then goes on read the syllabus from a Howard Zinn course.
I didn’t love America any less in the Clinton years than I did in the Bush years, or vice versa; I don’t conflate my opinions about transitory leaders with my opinion about the nation’s role in history and its exceptional, if occasionally improvised, conflicted, and compromised struggle to do the right thing. I mean, go back in history and find another one of us. (Note: small ethnically coherent Nordic states that can’t project power six feet over the border really don’t count.) But unqualified love of country unnerves some people, as though the lack of qualifications means you don’t recognize qualifying factors. Me, I think they’re obvious; we’re made of humans, after all, and every house we build has beams of crooked timber. But I don’t recall a lot of FDR speeches laying out a litany of American sins in order to bolster the case for why America should fight Hitler, despite all those troubling similarities. After all, we lynched Jews, too, ergo we must face our own demons as well as those abroad. And so on.
It’s interesting how he mentions Ahmadinejad’s demogogy, his “language of class resentment, painting his more pragmatic and reformist opponents as decadent elites out of touch with ordinary people,” and his populist use of oil revenues, and Sarah Palin comes to mind instead of Chavez – who, after all, called Ahamdi to tender a warm congrats. I swear, it’s the heels. They just make some men feel so small. In any case, when she gives a speech at the UN and later describes how she felt herself enveloped in a godly glow, give me a call.
It’s interesting that when it comes to fascism and communism, leftists can see only the difference, but when it comes to “conservatives,” they can see only similarities (and often imagined similarities).
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Yglesias has a tingle up his leg: “Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style.”
A Conversation With Senator Coburn
A man after my heart:
While many have been critical of the stimulus because the it hasn’t been spent quickly enough to have the intended economic effect, Coburn urges caution. “The key point I would make is that speed isn’t near as important as accuracy,” Coburn said regarding preventing future stimulus waste. “I think we’ve had way too much speed and not enough accuracy in terms of where we’re spending the money. I understand the rush to get it out to stem the tide of the recession, but this is a five-year bill anyway.”
Finally, Coburn is adamant that the feedback from taxpayers is such that federal spending priorities need to be watched closely. “The mood in the country is ‘You’re spending money on things you don’t need. Stop it. You’re overstepping the bounds of the federal government. Stop it. You’re borrowing our children into the poorhouse. Stop it,'” he said.
Yes. Stop it.
Including health-care deform.
And it would sure be nice to get a conversation going about the proper role of the federal government.
A Reason To Have Voted For McCain
He says scrap the health-care bill. While his idea of taking away employer deductibility and giving individuals a tax credit wasn’t an ideal solution, it would be a hell of a lot better than what Obama wants to do. A key element of any useful reform is to level the tax playing field between individual and employer-provided plans, and get more people to shop for themselves, instead of making it part of an employment package.
Laughing Chimps
I don’t know how anyone can see something like this (combined with the closeness of the DNA) and think that we’re not related.
Forget The Missile Gap
We should be worried about the space toilet gap:
The menu of the Russian crew has over 300 dishes…
…It just so happens that the consistency of fecal matter turns out to be rather thick against the background of such a diet.
The menu of US astronauts is nutritious as well, but it looks more like a diet ration and presumably consists of exotic fruit, vegetables, sea food and low-fat meat. That is why, their waste is much softer. Engineers took account of these peculiarities when designing the sewage system for the ISS. It just so happens that the solid Russian waste ruined the US toilets in space.
The astronauts were sick and tired of toilet breakdowns and unpleasant odors. NASA was eventually forced to order a toilet system from Russia. US tax payers paid $19 million for the space toilet. The new construction was installed in the US department of the ISS.
Russia designs best space toilets in the world.
Assuming it’s true, I prefer the robust Russian solution myself. This is really a critical issue for deep space missions. The food can’t just be nutritious, it has to taste good and have enough variety to maintain crew morale over a period of months. I wonder how tough it would be to eat the NASA rations for years?
Post-Industrial Bikers
Gordon Young lives in San Francisco, but like me, he’s a native of Flint, and runs the Flint Expatriates blog. He’s visiting his home town on vacation this week, and has taken some nice, even inspiring photos. Like him, I got around a lot of the town by bicycle in my childhood, and this brings back memories. I was an Eastside kid, too.
Also, some cloud shots of downtown.
Sotomayer And Property Rights
Since Sotomayor has made no more than a handful of important constitutional rulings in her judicial career, the fact that she got three of them badly wrong must be given great weight in assessing her nomination.
It’s hardly surprising that a president who has so little interest in property rights would nominate a judge with that predisposition.
The Agenda
The agenda for tomorrow’s first meeting of the Augustine commission has been posted. Clark Lindsey has it over at Space Transport News. I found this interesting:
3:30 pm – Alternative Architectures
DIRECT
Shuttle Side-mount Options
I understand that they have limited time for this first meeting, but I hope those aren’t the only alternatives they consider.
[Update a few minutes later]
The “alternate architectures” described above are alternate launch architectures. They need to broaden their thinking to alternate exploration architectures.