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Jennifer Rubin posts on the president’s disappearing act.
There are certainly different styles of leadership. But President Obama is suffering the results of poor choices (passing a huge new entitlement on a party-line vote) and of what can only be described as a lack of courage.
Brit Hume says it as well as anyone: “When the issues are difficult and the options unappetizing he tends simply to go away.”
Obama practically disappeared from the scene (no calls to Cabinet officials, no convening in the Situation Room) on the night of the Benghazi, Libya, attack. He seems more concerned on the NSA flap with distancing himself from conservatives whom he loathes (“I am not Dick Cheney”) and in Syria on protecting his self-image (he ends wars, doesn’t start them) than in taking the heat from Democrats. When coverage is not glowing, he becomes cranky with the media (as does his spokesman). He is most at ease campaigning before a crowd (whether it is an election or not) when he can accuse opponents of ill-will and flail away at straw men with no interruption. …
Turns out Israel has green weenie frauds too. Caroline Glick tells us about an electric car company with the hubris to call itself – Better Place. Then she writes about oil discovered in Israel.
… To summarize, the government gave Better Place a massive tax break. Investors poured $840 million into the company. The media showered the company in fabulous free PR.
And in four years, it only managed to sell 900 cars.
That tells you something about economics.
The iron rule of supply and demand is foolproof.
If the price is too high, people won’t buy your product. And if the ticket price of being the pioneers in a risky market, of having to go out of your way to get to the battery swap stations, and of swapping your battery three to four times more often than you have to fill up your gas tank is the same as the price of a normal car, then no one will want to be a pioneer. And no one did.
Indeed, according to Channel 2, more than a hundred of the 900 owners of Better Place cars worked for the company. And the majority of the other owners purchased the electric car as a second or third car. …
USA Today with an OpEd providing another example of why you don’t want to start a business in this country.
As a mother of three who has struggled to stick to a family budget, I know the frustration parents feel as they watch children grow out of brand new clothes seemingly overnight. That’s why in 1997, I started a kids’ clothing consignment business, a little like the ones that are everywhere now but also a little different.
What started as a small family business operating out of our home has grown to 22 states. Now, though, it might all turn out to be illegal, thanks to the bureaucratic thinking of the Department of Labor.
Help a mother out
The business model that parents thought was an innovation, but that Labor sees as a menace, is simple but effective. You might have heard of it: cooperation.
We rent a large space for a few days, say an unused department store. Parents with clothes and children’s items to sell sign up online, enter their items into a computerized tracking system and choose their sale price. Then they bring the clothes and other items to the sale location, label them with preprinted price tags and display the clothes. Parents keep 70%; we keep 30%. It is easier than a garage sale, makes more money for parents, and shoppers efficiently find good deals.
A big part of our success are the hundreds of parents — both consignors and shoppers — who voluntarily work brief shifts to help set up before the sale starts. In exchange, these parents get to shop first with more choices and better merchandise.
In January, though, the Department of Labor noticed all this cooperation going on. Months later, investigators concluded that volunteers are “employees” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
This means paying the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, filling out IRS paperwork and complying with who-knows-what other rules. And all for a pop-up business that lasts days. …
City Journal article notes the changes to women’s magazines.
Some of the most venerable brands in your grocery store sit not on the shelf but on the checkout line, where magazines like Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Redbook have been reflecting women’s lives for decades. From one month to the next, little seems to vary; the celebrity interviews and fashion spreads blend into one another, creating the impression of a seamless, unchanging world.
Yet if you compare the women’s magazines of today with their counterparts of 50 years ago, you’ll find it impossible to miss how dramatically different they are—and how daily life has transformed along with them. For example, in 1963, Good Housekeeping could report that 40 percent of its readers were in the workforce; by 2010, roughly 75 percent of women aged 25 to 54 were. In 1963, the average age of first marriage for women hovered around 20.5; by 2012, it had risen to 26.6. Clearly, women’s lives have changed enormously. But a historical journey through the checkout racks suggests that they haven’t always changed in the ways you’d think.
Start with something that hasn’t changed: American women’s obsession with their figures. The January 1963 Redbook featured a cover line on a 10-DAY DIET TO HELP YOU RECOVER FROM THE HOLIDAYS; the February 2013 issue cajoles readers to “get to your best weight ever” and promises “the plan and the push you need.” The April 1963 Ladies’ Home Journal pledged ideas on how to “dine well on 300 calories”; the February 2013 issue offers a more cheerful take on weight control: “Yay! Retire your fat pants forever.” One shudders to think of the pounds lost and gained over five decades of readership.
Given current obesity rates, the readers of women’s magazines were probably thinner in 1963. But their magazines weren’t. Flip through the weighty 50-year-old issues, and you’ll soon feel, literally, a massive cultural shift in what women expect from their periodicals. In 1963, consuming a magazine could take days. Early that year, Good Housekeeping serialized Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the French Revolution, The Glass-Blowers, cramming much of it into a mere three issues. In May, GH ran a large portion of Edmund Fuller’s novel The Corridor, a feat that required stretching the magazine to 274 text-heavy pages. Redbook’s March 1963 issue featured Hortense Calisher’s novel Textures of Life and five short stories, a level of fiction ambition that even The New Yorker rarely attempts now. There is verse, too. At one point, a dense page of du Maurier’s text makes room for Catherine MacChesney’s “From the Window,” letting Good Housekeeping readers experience poetry and prose at the same time. Marion Lineaweaver’s ode to the coming spring in LHJ (“The wind is milk / So perfectly fresh, cool / Smooth on the tongue”) was one of six poems in the March 1963 issue alone. …
MS Magazine writer, and anti-gun activist, decides to carry a gun for a month.
My hands are shaking; my adrenaline is surging.
No, it’s not from the latte I just inhaled or because this is the first time in two years I’ve been in a Starbucks since declaring a boycott on its open-carry gun policy.
What’s got me jittery this morning is the 9mm Glock that’s holstered on my hip. Me, lead gun policy protester at the 2010 Starbuck’s shareholder meeting. Me, a board member of the Brady Campaign. Me, the author of a book about the impact of gun violence, Beyond the Bullet.
Yes, I bought a handgun and will carry it everywhere I go over the next 30 days. I have four rules: Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.
Why? Following the Newtown massacre in December, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, told the country, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I wondered what would it be like to be that good guy with a gun? What would it be like to get that gun, live with that gun, be out and about with that gun. Finally, what happens when you don’t want that gun any more?
I decided to find out. …