April 28, 2009
— Open Blog Your grab-bag of non-topic topics (or whatever else is on your addled minds):
Item #1: Amsterdam city officials have started putting up signs alerting park-goers when they’re about to enter areas well-known to be frequented by gays cruising for sex and having a bit of the old “in/out in/out” on the spot. (the article is originally from AFP, but the one linked here is to Australian Broadcasting Corporation.)
”A park near Amsterdam has unveiled information signs pointing out spots where officials say gay men are known to have sex, so visitors are not taken by surprise. The signs "clearly indicate what is happening in each zone; also those where gay men are known to practice 'cruising'," municipal spokeswoman Manon Koffijberg said.”
More from the municipal spokeswoman:
”The sexual activities of cruisers, she said, kept mostly to the bushes in the park, and the new signs sought to ensure that they stayed there.”"Things are arranged so that each group can relax in their own area without intruding on each other."
Sounds a lot like fascism to me; leafy concentration camps and ghettos, I’d say. Separate zones indeed. (oh, and we learn a new Dutch word in the article: “gedoog.” Be sure to impress your friends by using it often.)
Item #2: Meanwhile, in Seattle, the former head of UN gang to plead guilty. I immediately started doing the “Snoopy Dance” over this fabulous news. It’s about time they took this man and the rest of his criminal gang out of circulation and let 'em cool their heels at the Graybar Hotel for a few years.. Maybe they can condemn and demolish that international crack house they worked out of in Manhattan. Er…or maybe not. (article is from The Seattle Times.)
Item #3: Finally, CNN has an article about a couple of astronomers in Colorado whoÂ’ve created a virtual description of what you might encounter if you were sucked into a black hole. (the scientists arenÂ’t actually astronomers, but rather an astrophysict and a physicist, but why quibble.)
”Dare to fall into a black hole and you would get vaporized in what is probably the most violent place in the universe. But the journey would yield some amazing sights, though you might need three eyes for the best view of what's going on, new research suggests.”“Hamilton and Gavin Polhemus, a physics teacher in Fort Collins, Colorado, set out to visualize what an "infaller" might see if he or she were swallowed by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The results are described in a recent paper and shown in a simulation that took more than 100,000 lines of computer code to create.”
What they describe in their paper and animated simulation is pretty trippy. The vid is pretty short and embedded in the main article but hereÂ’s a direct link to it anyway. The scientists are also attempting to prove or disprove the commonly held theory that the last thing you might hear before spiraling in for good is "Me sucky-sucky. Me love you long time." So far research on that has been inconclusive.
TonightÂ’s overnight thread is sponsored by: the Tarsier.
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06:28 PM
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— Gabriel Malor The president was skewered by Republican columnist Jamie Kirchick in today's L.A. Times. It has all the right people squealing and it's definitely worth a read:
At a stop on his grand global apology tour this spring, President Obama was asked by a reporter in France if he believed in "American exceptionalism." This is the notion that our history as the world's oldest democracy, our immigrant founding and our devotion to liberty endow the United States with a unique, providential role in world affairs.Rather than endorse the proposition -- as every president in recent memory has done one way or another -- Obama offered a strange response: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
This is impossible. If all countries are "exceptional," then none are, and to claim otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning. Besides, American exceptionalism is demonstrable -- Cuban journalists, Chinese political dissidents, Eastern Europeans once again living in the shadow of a belligerent Russia and, yes, even some Brits and Greeks look toward the U.S. and nowhere else to defend freedom.
It gets better from there; click over and read the whole thing.
Posted by: Gabriel Malor at
03:44 PM
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— Dave in Texas Sebelius confirmed for HHS.
"It is essential for the health of the nation that President Obama has in place, and the nation has in place, a strong secretary of HHS to make sure our federal efforts on this potential pandemic are able to coordinate," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
I feel better already.
Interesting to see the NYT reinforce a point I offered in the comments a day or so ago, that federal funding for influenza preparedness didn't start with Obama's budget proposal, even though the piece is fluffed with how precisely the Obama administration is handling this just so, not like Bush screwed up Katrina, not overreacting, not underreacting, no, it's PERFECT.
Other public health experts also endorsed the administration’s response to the outbreak that emerged from Mexico. They gave much of the credit to President Bush, whose administration did extensive planning for such an emergency.“We’re seeing a payoff of the original investment made in pandemic preparedness by the Bush administration,” said Jeffrey W. Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health. The term pandemic refers to a widespread outbreak of an infectious disease.
But he's a just lucky stupid cowboy, who got rattled by SARS and bird flu, and also hates black people.
From now on, the bug stops over there wherever the buck stops.
Posted by: Dave in Texas at
02:25 PM
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— DrewM This is really getting strange.
Under a debt restructuring plan, the UAW is going to become a 55% stakeholder in Chrysler.
The United Auto Workers unionÂ’s retiree health-care fund will own 55 percent of Chrysler LLC in exchange for cutting in half the automakerÂ’s $10.6 billion cash obligation to the trust, people familiar with the matter said....Instead of contributing $8.8 billion to a retiree health- care trust, Chrysler will give the union trust shares of the company and a promissory note for $4.59 billion that will be paid in installments with 9 percent interest until 2023, one of the people said. This reduces the up-front cash Chrysler would have had to pay under its 2007 contract agreement with the Detroit-based union.
The unionÂ’s equity in Chrysler is valued at $4.2 billion. If it can sell the shares for more, the Treasury would get the difference, one of the people said.
Yesterday GM announced a preliminary restructuring plan that would be similar in that instead of paying into a health care fund would result in the union owning 39% of the company, while the federal government owned 50%. The remaining stock would be owned by bondholders who get the short end of the stick.
There used to be a joke that the organizations formally known as the Big 3 were health insurance companies that made cars on the side. Now it's the truth.
It's amazing that the people who created this mess are going to wind up owning the companies they screwed (Yes, management helped. A lot.).
On the upside, it will be fun to watch the UAW negotiate with itself.
More: "Joshin" in the comments asks a great question...
So does this mean that Ford is going to have to negotiate with their competitors?
The one company that is financing itself is now competing with its workforce and their business partner, which just happens to be the US government. It's a brave new world boys and girls.
Posted by: DrewM at
01:05 PM
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— Ace "To say that it should not be made public knowing that it might scare people it's just confounding," Sen. Charles Schumer said. "It's what gives Washington and government a bad name. It's sheer stupidity."
Posted by: Ace at
12:26 PM
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— Ace He's demanding answers. Of himself, I guess.
Photoshop: The terrifying thrill-ride of the season: Barack Obama starring in Air Force One.
Who Was on the Plane? On Drudge:
Reporters want the manifestÂ… Who was on the plane?
Speculation is that campaign donors were on the flight, enjoying the tour.
Posted by: Ace at
11:04 AM
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— Ace I hope so.
To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation's capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.The disconnect between D.C. Republicans and Republicans throughout the country has been growing for nearly 20 years, but it became more intense and noticeable during the waning years of the Bush administration.
Perhaps the final straw was the $700 billion bank bailout plan pushed through Congress last fall despite strong voter opposition. For all the furor unleashed this spring by congressional Republicans about President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan, the Bush-era bailouts last fall were approved with virtually no advance notice and no guidelines as to how the money would be spent. Looking back, most voters and nearly eight-out-of-10 Republicans now believe the bailouts were a bad idea .
...
The gap between Beltway Republicans and the Republican base is part of a wider gap between the Mainstream and the Political Class. On many issues, the gap between Mainstream Americans and the Political Class is bigger than the gap between Mainstream Republicans and Mainstream Democrats.
But Political Class Democrats control Congress and the White House while their GOP counterparts have little in the way of power and influence to overcome the disconnect with their base. One immediate result of this is that senior senators like Arlen Specter and John McCain now are facing primary challenges. Other challenges may follow. It used to be possible for Republicans in Washington to argue that they needed someone like Specter or McCain to hang on to the majority but no longer.
Look for the Republican Party to sink further into irrelevancy as long as its key players insist on hanging around Congress or K Street for their ideas. The future for the GOP is beyond the Beltway.
But if that's true, we're looking at a 20 year cycle of minorty-party rebuilding. Who knows what America might look like after we've had our time in the wilderness.
Posted by: Ace at
10:53 AM
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— DrewM It's still not panic time but this isn't over.
"Many hundreds" of schoolchildren are sick with suspected cases of swine flu, City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden also said Tuesday.New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says two people are hospitalized with suspected swine flu.
...The public school -- a few blocks from a Roman Catholic high school where a swine flu outbreak began last week -- remained open as Health Department workers carried in boxes of supplies used for nose and throat tests. They did not respond to journalists' questions.
Meanwhile, 2 deaths in LA may be swine flu related.
UPDATE: Napolitano is giving a briefing, stand by for details. Important take away...you can't get Swine Flu from pork products. You may eat bacon. Thank God for small favors.
The Ag Secretary wants to change the name from Swine Flu to H1N1. I get the point in trying to protect exports but um, really?
Napolitano made a good point...there are 35,000/flu season. This isn't a regular in season illness but it's useful context.
Posted by: DrewM at
10:19 AM
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— Ace DrewM. snarked that Frum had emailed to say "the heart of true conservatism is now dead." (Snark, guys.)
But his snark was prescient, because Frum does kinda-sorta say that. A little.
f the Democrats do succeed in pushing through national health insurance, they really should set aside a little extra money to erect a statue to Pat Toomey. They couldn’t have done it without him!Pat Toomey is of course the former president of the Club for Growth who planned to challenge Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican primary. Polls showed Toomey well ahead – not because he is so hugely popular in the state, but because the Pennsylvania GOP has shriveled to a small, ideologically intense core. Toomey now looks likely to gain the nomination he has sought – and then to be crushed by Specter or some other Democrat next November.
The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a “wake-up call.” His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against! For a long time, the loudest and most powerful voices in the conservative world have told us that people like Specter aren’t real Republicans – that they don’t belong in the party. Now he’s gone, and with him the last Republican leverage within any of the elected branches of government.
For years, many in the conservative world have wished for an ideologically purer GOP. Their wish has been granted. Happy?
Ah. Toomey is the bad guy, and Club for Growth too, for, you know, challenging a politician who didn't represent their views.
Frum's position is odd. I don't claim to know exactly what he thinks -- I really don't care, to be honest -- but I know that many of these Obamacans and "moderates" claim the following: We must jettison our angry, ugly social-con monsters in order to focus on what really matters, which is sound economic policy.
But Arlen Specter wasn't merely a social liberal -- he also turned out to be an economic liberal, too. He was indispensable in getting Obama's Spendulus passed. And note that the choice here was not binary, as on immigration, up or down. Almost every Republican wanted a stimulus too, but a "targeted" and "temporary" one, one that didn't grow the federal government years and decades down the road.
If Arlen Specter had voted with Republicans to continue debate, Obama and Nancy Pelosi would have been forced back to the negotiating table to bargain for a more sensible and affordable (and fiscally responsible) stimulus. Which, in turn, would have passed.
Instead Specter cast his vote for full-fledged tax-and-spend budget-busting liberalism. Actually I don't know if liberalism is the right word -- we've seen liberalism in the past, and it's never looked so ruinously irresponsible before. This is some sort of mutated, insane liberalism -- like the Reavers in Firefly. Liberals went all the way to the edge of the 'Verse and went crazy staring into the void.
And now Frum castigates conservatives for daring to challenge Arlen Specter, demanding that a "place of honor" be carved out for such people.
Well, see if you can follow me on this, Davey: If he a social liberal, and he's also a fiscal liberal, and if he opposes conservative judges too, I'm sorry, why are we doing the Democrats' job for them by electing a liberal Democrat as Senator? Shouldn't they carry that burden themselves?
Frum is big on labels. To him it doesn't matter how liberal a senator might be, so long as he is nominally a Republican.
JackM wrote this in an email:
If the GOP had any balls, they would tell everyone else who straddles the line (I'm looking at you Maine gals) to play ball or leave. The
votes don't matter now, so it's a good time to clean house.It will be interesting to see how the Dems treat Specter in terms of honoring his seniority. He may end up as a committee chairman as part of this deal, either now or in 2010, and bump other Dems in good standing out of the way.
I think that's about right. The thing we feared -- and the thing we'd hoped to avoid by following Frumian logic -- has now come to pass. There may have been good arguments for purity vs. pragmatism before, but it seems that decision has been made for us. Purity it is.
Voters have a lot of brand-confusion about what Republicans (and conservatives) stand for. As our product isn't selling right now, perhaps it's time to clear that confusion up and re-enter the market with a strong brand identity.
Links swiped from Hot Air.
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10:07 AM
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Not the Gallup Headline: Larger Majority Feel Such Interrogations Were Justified
— Ace That's not the Gallup headline, but it could have been -- and should have been.
Also not making the cut for the headline: Among those who are following the story closely, 58% oppose investigations, and 61% feel the interrogations were justified. In other words, the more you actually know, the more favorably you view Bush's policies.
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09:42 AM
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