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Scott Rasmussen has interesting NY 23rd analysis.
… the New York 23rd Congressional District race will end up being between a Conservative Party candidate and a Democrat. In many ways, that pairing reflects the reality of national match-ups more than the typical partisan competition. There are more conservatives than Democrats in America, and there are more Democrats than Republicans.
One reason for this is that while Republican voters overwhelmingly consider themselves conservative, only 56% of conservative voters consider themselves to be Republicans. In other words, nearly half of all conservatives nationwide reject the Republican Party label. …
Mark Steyn updates us on the current strategies of militant environmentalists.
I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will in?uence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”
Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level. But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.” …
…“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You ?oat a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you. …
… At their Monday night poker game in hell, I’ll bet Stalin, Hitler and Mao are kicking themselves: “ ‘It’s about leaving a better planet to our children?’ Why didn’t I think of that?” This is Two-Ply Totalitarianism—no jackboots, no goose steps, just soft and gentle all the way. Nevertheless, occasionally the mask drops and the totalitarian underpinnings become explicit. Take Elizabeth May’s latest promotional poster: “Your parents f*cked up the planet. It’s time to do something about it. Live Green. Vote Green.” As Saskatchewan blogger Kate McMillan pointed out, the tactic of “convincing youth to reject their parents in favour of The Party” is a time-honoured tradition.
The problem, alas, is that, for the moment, there’s still more than one party. But why? Last year, David Suzuki suggested that denialist politicians should be thrown in jail. And only last month the New York Times’s Great Thinker Thomas Friedman channelled his inner Walter Duranty and decided that democracy has f*cked up the planet. Why, in Beijing, where they don’t have that disadvantage, they banned the environmentally destructive plastic bag! In one day! Just like that! “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” wrote Friedman. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically dif?cult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”
Forward to where? …
The Washington Examiner editorialists comment on the bogus stimulus job numbers and the wasted money.
…Featherbedding occurs when paychecks are issued for nonexistent employees and the money goes directly into union coffers. Thousands of the jobs Obama officials say were saved or created by the stimulus program are no more real than those invisible positions invented by unions to bulk up their treasuries. We know this to be the case because as Obama’s chief economist, Christina Romer, admitted several weeks ago, “It’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is, right, because you don’t know what the economy would have done without [the economic stimulus program].”
Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved all these jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren’t getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created. Instead of taking all that time required to write the 1,588-page stimulus bill, Congress could have passed a one-pager saying the first 650,000 jobless persons to report for work at the White House will receive a voucher worth $230,000 redeemable at the university, community college or trade school of their choice. That would have been enough for a degree plus a hefty down payment on a mortgage.
Actually, taxpayers would be better off with such a deal, too, compared with the reality of the Obama stimulus program. Among the top 10 stimulus contracts awarded, there is the one for nearly $339 million that allegedly created or saved 41.19 jobs, or about $8.3 million per position. It was even worse with the $258 million contract to Brookhaven Science Associates in New York, where 25 jobs were saved or created, at a cost of $10.3 million per position. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the ranking House minority member of the Joint Economic Committee, said it best: “What we know for certain is that 2.7 million payroll jobs have been lost since the Obama stimulus was signed into law, hundreds of thousands of more jobs are being lost each month, and America is so deep in debt, China and France are lecturing us to get our financial house in order.”
The IBD editors also criticize the phony results from the ineffective stimulus program.
…As we have noted, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer told Congress on Oct. 22: “Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009. By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth.”
In other words, stimulus is dead. This moment of honesty makes it tough for White House officials to pretend the best is yet to come. And if they can’t show real results, they can’t make a case for a second stimulus — as the White House and Congress want. …
…The problem, again, is that none of these numbers is real. No one has gone out and counted actual jobs. It’s all made up. In a scathing critique, the nonpartisan Americans for Tax Reform wrote:
“The data will show that the bulk of the jobs ‘saved/created’ are government jobs, mostly jobs in the unproductive sector of the economy furthering no economic growth, and preventing necessary streamlining of an already bloated bureaucracy.”
Precisely. So don’t be fooled. No jobs are being generated by the stimulus, but a lot are being lost — along with the wealth of an entire generation. What a waste.
Caroline Baum, in Bloomberg.com, states the fundamental flaw behind the stimulus.
…When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other people’s money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services.
But the government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation. Oops.
“Government job creation is an oxymoron,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.
That’s why “jobs created or saved” is such pure fiction. It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay. …
Jennifer Rubin says the government is merely demonstrating that it is not fit for any serious duty.
…Aside from the taxes, fees, mandates, regulations, and anti-tort-reform provisions, the major failing of the Democrats’ health-care approach is that it asks us to give immense authority to a government that has not earned the trust of the people nor demonstrated its competency in dealing with far less complex issues. How’s this: when they can tell us with precision which jobs were created and which saved, what the baseline for counting was, which are private and which are public sector, and whether those include jobs lost from defense-spending cuts (e.g., the elimination of the F-22), then we can talk about giving them some more responsibility for health care.
The Economist reviews the book Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King, written by Brad Matsen. Jacques, we hardly knew ye.
THIRTY years ago Jacques-Yves Cousteau … was reckoned to be one of the ten most recognised men in the world. This biography, uncritical but revealing, shows how that happened. Nominally a captain in the French navy, Cousteau spent most of his working life pioneering a new form of celebrity, that of the TV explorer. With his ship, the converted minesweeper Calypso, and a crew of divers with attractive French accents and film-star looks, he patrolled the more photogenic corners of the oceans and documented these exploits in books and television programmes that turned him into a global godfather of undersea adventure.
The secret of this success, explains Brad Matsen, the author of many books and articles about the sea, was nothing to do with the science of oceanography or indeed the science of anything. It was to do with television. In “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau”, the documentary series that ran from 1968 and was shown all over the world …, he hit on the thing of which every TV producer dreams: a near-perfect small-screen formula. …
…So what is Cousteau’s legacy? If you consult the index of “A History of Oceanography”, a scholarly account published at the very height of his fame, you will find no entries at all under his name. His real contribution was to stoke the popular imagination with images of life beneath the surface of the seas, as seen by men in well-tailored diving gear.
In Slate.com, Farhad Manjoo tells us how to stay charged up.
Our daily struggle with batteries has spawned a cottage industry of advice about their proper care and feeding. …
…To clear up these annoyances and conflicting theories, I called up Isidor Buchmann, the CEO of Cadex Electronics, a Canadian company that makes battery-testing equipment. Buchman also runs Battery University, a very helpful Web site for battery enthusiasts and engineers. I asked Buchmann how we can make sure that our batteries last a long time. …
… Here are some of Buchmann’s tips:
Laptops: The typical lifespan of a lithium-ion laptop battery is about 18 months to 2 years, Buchmann says, but yours will last much longer if you don’t punish it too much. The main stresses include undercharging, overcharging, and one that few of us consider: heat. Temperatures inside a laptop can reach more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hell for a battery.
Ideally, Buchmann says, you should try to keep your battery charged from 20 percent to 80 percent. Keep in mind that these are guidelines for ideal use—it’s generally inconvenient to unplug your machine before it goes all the way to 100. But even if you’re not on constant guard, be mindful of charging your machine constantly, well past when you know it’s full. You also should be conscious of letting your battery run all the way to zero.
Try to keep your laptop as cool as possible. The best technique here is to charge up your battery when the computer is turned off. When your laptop is turned on and plugged in, you should pull the battery out of your computer. Yes, pull it out. “I know that’s inconvenient,” Buchmann says, “but keeping your laptop plugged in when the battery’s fully charged—that combination is bad for your battery.” …