In “Bonddad” Stewart’s roundup of the first quarter GDP numbers at 538, this chart stood out:
Amidst some decent news about economic growth, state spending is way down. Even though stimulus is evil socialism, it looks like another round targeting states would have been a good idea, as some DFHs have been saying all along.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
If Only Our Hands Weren’t Tied
Being the last friend on earth of a country the size of Houston puts us in an impossible position, all because Obama wasn’t nice enough to Bibi Netanyahu:
If there were no cracks in the relationship with Jerusalem, Obama could join in the criticism, while quietly working to restrain the UN Security Council from a lynch-mob-style response, and without casting doubt on the willingness of the U.S. to defend the Jewish state from a growing multitude of enemies.
But Obama has not handled Netanyahu well. So the White House’s cautious initial response to the incident — even as Israel was being beaten up by its closest friends in Europe — reflected a deeper dilemma about how much more tension an already strained alliance can bear.
That’s Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post. We may see some sane commentary in other papers after our hardworking journalists come back from vacation, but until then, Haaretz is doing a pretty good job of taking its own government to task, with headlines like Seven idiots in the cabinet.
Hope and Change
I wonder what’s different about British politics that allows them to back down from a nationwide identity card scheme, yet we’re still larding on ever more useless bits of intrusive security theater.
Presumably, the next time there’s a terrorist attack in Britain, the media will play woulda-coulda-shoulda to show how an identity card could have stopped it. For some reason, the spectre of those kinds of recriminations didn’t stop the new coalition government, and I’d be interested in knowing why.
Hysteria vs Reality
While the DC press corps and Peggy Noonan are crying like teenage girls about Daddy’s inability to make everything all better, let’s not forget that the policy Obama announced at his latest conference was sane, reasonable and right. Here’s oil industry analyst Dan Pickering:
On Thursday, President Obama called a halt to all deepwater drilling that is currently ongoing. While it might sound like blasphemy coming from a Texan with his livelihood tied to the oil / financial industry, the Obama decision is actually understandable. Can we blame the politicians for being cautious? There are 30+ rigs in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico performing some sort of well operation (drilling, workovers, completions, etc). Can the government really say with certainty that the current regulations and oversight will keep something bad from happening there? Probably not…as it didn’t stop the accident at the Macondo blowout. And therefore, is it worth the risk to let those 30 rigs continue drilling?
So as odd as it seems, the political and practical answers actually line up here. Stop, look, listen, evaluate, assess….and then set the new rules and guidelines on a timely basis. New standards by the end of 2010 is a reasonable timeline for something so serious and complex. For the 50,000+ workers actively involved in offshore oil production, a few months of slowdown is more than worth it if we can emerge with an industry that is safer (both for humans and the environment) and trusted again by the American public.
Some will probably take this as ironclad proof that Obama didn’t go far enough, but I think Pickering has it about right.
First They Came For My Burner
Following the lead of privacy trailblazer Mexico, we’re going to start recording the ID of everyone who buys a prepaid cell phone. I’m sure you can guess the reason why:
“This proposal is overdue because for years, terrorists, drug kingpins and gang members have stayed one step ahead of the law by using prepaid phones that are hard to trace,” Schumer said.
The firecracker non-bomber used a prepaid cell phone to call a Craiglist seller to buy his Nissan Pathfinder. Ergo, prepaid cell phones are bad. If he had used a pay phone, we’d be installing security cameras in every booth. If he had used two tin cans with a string, we’d be regulating the sales of baked beans and butcher’s twine.
I realize this is merely a proposal, but is there any doubt that it will pass in an election year when the secret passphrase (“terrorism”) is used? We’re just lucky that Schumer didn’t decide to ban Craigslist, Nissan Pathfinders or gas barbeque grills.
Security Rag
For some reason, going through airport security always reminds me of this song.
Also, too, I’ve always wondered why the MacGyver/Lex Luthor alchemists who hate us for our freedom are capable of creating a mix of exotic explosives in an airplane potty, but they could never do anything with a laptop battery, which contains heavy cylindrical objects connected with wire.
Love’s Labor Lost
I’ve been reading James Berardinelli’s movie reviews since he began posting them on Usenet in the early 90’s He started one of the first Internet movie review sites, Reelviews, later that decade. For almost 20 years, he’s been working a staggering pace: he’s cranked out over 7,000 reviews while holding down his day job as an engineer.
James married a few years ago, and he recently posted about the impending birth of a new baby. He acknowledges that his output is going to diminish, which is great for his kid, but bad for those of us who rely on his articulate, unpretentious and insightful take on film.
James’ site embodies all the promise and hope of the Internet as a technology. It’s a true labor of love, which pays his hosting bill if he’s lucky. As Roger Ebert recently noted, there are a lot of good critics writing on the Internet today, but few of them can match James’ quality, quantity and consistency.