Please Don’t Panic: I’m happy that Homeland Security had gotten rid of the confusing color coded terrorism alert system. It was always a bit of a farce. The new big idea is to send a mass text message to those who are in harm’s way.
A new national alert system is set to begin in New York City that will alert the public to emergencies via cell phones. It’s called the Personal Localized Alert Network or PLAN. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.
Ah yes, I can see it now. Can you just image the chaos if the government sends a mass text to everyone riding the subway in New York? It would be a huge panic scene. I’m very interested to see how this works. Right now it seems like a good way to start a stampede. Why not just send a mass text to the entire nation that says “FIRE! RUN LIKE HELL!!” This clip below from Seinfeld is how I imagine the system working
Allies? It’s bad enough that Pakistan has nukes and that the nation is full of Islamic fundamentalists. Now they’re thinking about cooperating with the Chinese on the downed helicopter we left after the Osama Bin Laden raid. Apparently the United States’ helicopters are equipped with some kind of anti-detection technology. Obviously China is interested in getting their hands on the technology.
I’m confused as to what the United States policy is on Pakistan. They didn’t help us find Osama Bin Laden after 10 years and we had to invade their nation to take him out without authorization. The U.S. was afraid that someone in the Pakistan government would tip Osama before we got there. It’s been a bad PR week for Pakistan. Handing over this helicopter to the Chinese isn’t going to help things.
RomneyCare/ObamaCare 2012: Mitt Romney is set to give a speech tomorrow on the issue of health care. Romney hasn’t backed down from the health care reform he passed in Massachusetts while he was governor. Going into 2012 this is a huge problem for Romney because RomneyCare looks a lot like ObamaCare. Plus, RomneyCare is having all kind of problems in Massachusetts (shocking).
It doesn’t appear as though Romney is going to back away from his legislative failure. In other words, his candidacy is dead on arrival. President Obama’s most significant legislative achievement is a dismal failure and a dramatic overreach by the federal government. If it’s not overturned by the courts voters are going to going to have it abolished. I’m not sure how Romney can dance around this problem.
Religion of Peace News: Mark Steyn over at The Corner points out the absurdity of the mainstream press when it comes to covering crimes by Islamic extremists.
A 28-year old Yemeni man boards a flight to San Francisco in Chicago, and shortly before landing charges the cockpit while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Authorities say they “do not yet have a motive.”
By the way, this is from the evil FOX News network. It should be pointed out that when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was tragically shot a few months ago the press had no problem attaching Sarah Palin to the story. When Jared Lee Loughner started shooting he didn’t yell “you betcha” or “for Palin.” Over the last twenty years the list of attacks that started with “Allahu Akbar!” are too numerous to mention, but the press can’t speculate on a motive unless it’s Sarah Palin.
Send in the SWAT team.
If you didn’t know any better you might believe there’s an epidemic of Fat Kid Syndrome, or put in politically correct terms: childhood obesity! Many on the left are clamoring for government intervention. As I’ve posted before, the city of San Francisco had gone as far as banning Happy Meals in order to squash the gluttony. The War on Fat is upon us! Who better than the bloated, corrupt, debt burdened state to take care of the problem!
Progressives are unable to “cut the fat” when it comes to government spending, but damn the torpedoes on the fat kids eating cheeseburgers. Before anyone complains that I’m unconcerned about fat kids, it should be noted that nowhere has government intervention reduced obesity. Well, I take that back. I’m pretty sure prisons reduce obesity. Prisons outside the United States I mean. Even the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have gained weight. Oh, and let’s not forget one of the greatest wars on fat ever: the collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was awesome. Millions starved to death! Yeah for big government! But I digress… Julie Gunlock wrote on The Corner today about the obesity issue.
This year, Ohio State University released a major study on childhood obesity. The study revealed that only three activities help reduce childhood obesity: eating dinner at home with your family, watching less television, and getting enough sleep at night. These are all basic parental responsibilities.
Gunlock also points out that according to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity rates for children haven’t budged in over ten years. What?!?! How can this be possible in a world full of Happy Meals? There is a great deal of of hyperbole about the long term health effects of obesity.
More recent research on obesity has found only a very slight (and statistically insignificant) increase in mortality among mildly obese people, and that in fact it is underweight individuals who have a higher rate of death than those in the “healthy” weight category. [emphasis added]
I guess being too skinny is a bigger problem. Now that’s a problem the federal government can solve immediately. The State cannot force people to be good parents. My parents made me go to sleep at a regular time every night, the heartless fascists. I wasn’t allowed to eat fast food very often and we didn’t drink gallons of soft drinks, Kool-aid or whiskey. In other words, they cared.
The First Lady will claim a lot of great headlines with her obesity initiative, but little will be done to combat the real problem. The real problem is parental responsibilty.
I caught this over on The Corner this morning, and it’s just another in an unending stream of examples from the deranged and “tolerant” left. Is it possible that tolerance is a circle where the more “tolerant” you are the more intolerant you become? I don’t know, but there are many more images of “tolerance” over at dig.
One piece of conventional wisdom that started a few years ago is the idea that liberals dominate blogs. A few years ago this was true when the United States was living under the cruel dictatorship of President Bush. Progressives needed a place to post their laments about faux voter fraud, global warming, and the plight of the American homeless. Liberal blogs were a dime a dozen. Back in 2006 there were all kinds of theories as to why liberals were blogging.
One suggested reason is that more liberal blogs have comments and promote individual blogs, participation and more which bring more repeat and continuous traffic. Also, it is possible that progressive/liberal and anti-war blogs are read in countries other than the United States; this may not be as likely for the conservative ones. The other theory is that the party in opposition has more to complain about, strategize about and work on than the party in power. In that case, I will revisit this article if things change in November of 2008.
It seems clear which of the theories above is correct. Now that Obama is in the White House the blogosphere looks a lot different. Conservative blogs are now gaining more traffic. The National Review’s blog, The Corner, is now the second most popular political blog right behind the Cannibal Post (AKA Huffington Post). That’s no small feat considering the amount of money the Queen of Cannibalism spends on her site. Then there are progressives who feel that liberal blogs are superior because they’ve learned “to be reverent.” No, seriously.
Now compare that concept to the writing style of your favorite liberal bloggers. Notice the sense of awe and reverence? The respect they have of language and a turn of phrase to convey the inter-connectedness of life?
None of that exists in the rightwing blogosphere. I’ve read the so-called A-List conservative bloggers and their essays are rife with fear, stereotypes, and embittered presumptions.
This was written by em dash who earlier in her reverent post called the Bush Administration the “crooks, thieves, and miscreants inhabiting the White House.” That type of rhetoric is certainly presumptuous, bitter, and shallow, but I’ll leave it up to someone else to convey the inter-connectedness of life. As far as fear is concerned the left is just as guilty of using fear tactics as the right.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken
Give us your overpopulation, health care sob stories, homeless rediscovery, DDT, and global warming nonsense. How did the President pass his pork filled stimulus bill? Of course, he used scare tactics. For someone like em dash who is high on intellectually superiority it’s amazing how naive she is when comes to simple politics. I guess that’s just another widely accepted stereotype on the left.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the Global Warming paranoia that exists in liberals is the fact that when faced with sound economic reasoning about the issue they lack any actual arguments. I picked this up over on The Corner, it is a hilarious example of how shallow the debate has become. John Baden of the foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment wrote a fantastic column discussing his experience at a climate change conference. For those like myself who have studied this issue extensively, it is a revealing glimpse at the “progressive” idea of productive debate.
Vince noted general scientific agreement that global warming is occurring, in part due to human causes, and that there are uncertainties about the speed and degree of change. He explained that warmer and wetter has different implications for crops and forests than would warmer and dryer — and climate models differ as to which is more likely. He then explained that humans adjust much easier to slow than to rapid change.
Most climate models look out 100 years, but consider the USA in 1906: average income a mere $4000 in today’s dollars, no paved roads, few cars, no modern medicine, short lives. We can’t predict life two or three generations hence. After listing the risks that may accompany global warming he gave this guidance: “There is considerable evidence that a mixture of policy innovations…and markets can address all of these challenges at a relatively low cost compared to the costs of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”
Did this make folks happy? No, for this was largely a tribal gathering where most folks already knew the right answers and these weren’t among them. Here are a few of the responses I heard. “He shouldn’t be on the program.” “I’d like to hit him.” (That from a sponsor.) “What do economists know about climate?” Mature and constructive dialogue indeed.
The good news is that economists have a larger role is developing worldwide policy than concerned uninformed citizens. While it might feel good to join a “save the Earth” group or protest Big Tobacco’s role in Global Warming, it doesn’t amount to much except an exercise in futility. Here’s my question, why don’t these same “progressives” who care so much about the world, protest Islamic fascism?
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