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Wednesday, August 22, 2007
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Megan McArdle: "The morality of health care finance."
"2008 pres"
6:30:23 PM 
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George Packer (via the New Yorker): "In the middle of a crisis even more dangerous than Vietnam, President George W. Bush sits isolated in the White House, surrounded by a dwindling band of advisers, and continues to talk about winning in Iraq. His supporters in Congress and the media seize every short-term success, in Washington or Iraq, to flog their opponents as defeatists and lay the groundwork for a stab-in-the-back narrative. His critics in Congress and the media clamor for him to admit defeat and begin an immediate withdrawal. Over the course of 2007, the two sides haven't begun to negotiate the possibility of a compromise; instead, they are driving each other to increasingly bitter resistance. The national tragedy in Iraq is taking place against a political culture personified by the departed Karl Rove: tactically brilliant, strategically blind, polarized into highly partisan bases and orthodoxies endlessly repeated through the mass media. You don't often hear it mentioned, but this might be one of the most important differences between Vietnam and Iraq."
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link.
Iraq the Model: "This was said about the Palestinians, I believe, though it seems to apply just as well to our political class but with a difference. There are some opportunities our leaders never seem to miss: the ones that make things worse."
Captain's Quarters: "Earlier today, the Italian news service AKI reported that the presumed leader of the largest insurgency in Iraq will start cooperating with the Iraqi government. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the highest-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's government, reportedly pledged to work with Iraqi and American forces to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq."
"2008 pres"
6:26:00 PM
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From the Bill Richardson Weblog, "The Governor will announce the creation of a new grassroots Latino outreach program at a press conference tomorrow at 12 noon, PST, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The program, which originated in Las Vegas, Nevada, will be the first grassroots Latino outreach effort unveiled by a 2008 presidential candidate. It is a quintessential example of grassroots politics, with the aim to involve a large number of families in the political process. Latinos currently comprise around 14% of the US population, making them the largest ethnic minority group in our country. The Governor, a Latino himself, is well aware of the Latino community's increasing importance in American society."
Eyeon08.com: "The argument for Mitt Romney being the frontrunner is building. His successes in the early states are remarkable. However, he does have a problem. Is he actually electable in a general? A Rasmussen poll suggests that the answer is a clear no."
The Right's Field: "Soren Dayton observes that Mike Huckabee seems to have flip-flopped on immigration. Whereas at one time Huckabee endorsed comprehensive immigration reform and said that opposition to such reform was 'driven by just sheer racism,' now he has indicated that he would abolish a core American principle: birthright citizenship.
Political Wire: "The AP reports that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano will use her executive authority to move the state's primary forward three weeks to February 5. With the change, Arizona becomes the 20th state to hold its primary on the date."
"2008 pres"
6:20:05 PM
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From The Cherry Creek News, "Like the cable and broadcast revolutions, the Internet revolution is redistributing the news audience in ways that has and will continue to benefit some news outlets, while harming others, according to a research report released today by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government...The biggest gains in audience occurred among the non-traditional news providers. The sites of search engines, service providers, aggregators, and bloggers grew faster on average than the sites of traditional news providers, whether print, broadcast, or cable. The sites of Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN, along with sites such as newsvine.com, topix.net, digg.com and reddit.com, saw large increases in traffic during the past year."
6:17:01 PM
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Jay Rosen (via the LA Times): "Blowback! That's what you're in for when a great American newspaper runs a Sunday opinion piece as irretrievably lame as "Blogs: All the noise that fits" by Michael Skube (Aug. 19). Skube is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning author who teaches journalism at Elon University in North Carolina."
Professor Rosen's piece mentions several instances where blogs have broken stories, some eventually picked up by traditional media outlets. Read the whole thing. Here's our post from Monday as the story was breaking.
Thanks to Ed Cone (who is mentioned in the article) for the link.
6:00:34 PM
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Howard Dean will be in Denver today for a rally for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, according to The Denver Post. From the article:
When the Democratic Party's Howard Dean hosts a celebration today at the Pepsi Center to kick off the year-out countdown to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he'll be able to point to several mileposts already crossed. The party moved the leadership for its Democratic National Convention Committee into town last month. The city's host committee continues an aggressive, though challenged, fundraising effort, and numerous subcommittees are at work planning everything from coordinating the 10,000 volunteers to beginning the hard work of dealing with protesters. Dean will be joined by Mayor John Hickenlooper and Gov. Bill Ritter at a 12:30 p.m. rally in the grand entrance to what will serve as the convention hall, where the Democrats will anoint their nominee...
Keeping the traffic moving could be difficult if the expected thousands of protesters have their way. One of the main groups organizing protests - Re-Create 68 - has been in talks all summer with the mayor's office, the Denver Police Department and federal officials. The group is asking for changes to several sections in current city law regarding protests. Some of those changes, if enacted, would almost certainly tie up rush-hour traffic during the convention. The city's current parade permit prohibits marches from 6 to 9 a.m. and again from 4 to 7 p.m. Because those are the times that delegates would be heading to the Pepsi Center, and when the convention would be taking place, Re-Create 68's attorneys are arguing they should have the right to protest then. "What better time to protest," said Glenn Spagnuolo, a top organizer for Re-Create 68. "We should be allowed to be there." City officials say they are working with protesters to try to make the process as democratic as possible, given the constraints of running a city and keeping the peace. To that end, the mayor's office is reviewing a raft of Re-Create 68's requests but Tuesday couldn't comment further.
Officials with the U.S. Secret Service, the lead security agency, are coming at the end of the month to begin planning efforts it will coordinate with Denver police and the FBI, said Secret Service spokeswoman Kim Bruce. Meanwhile, an appropriations bill seeking the $50 million in federal funds meant to cover local and state police and emergency response remains in Congress.
More coverage from The Rocky Mountain News. From the article, "Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will speak at the rally. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper also will appear...Wednesday's rally will be held at 12:30 p.m. at the west entrance to the Pepsi Center. Refreshments and entertainment will be provided."
"2008 pres"
6:55:25 AM
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Here's a long, very detailed, article from CO2 Science that looks at studies of stream flow using tree rings and sediment grain size to determine whether warming is having an effect. From the article:
Climate alarmists claim CO2-induced global warming will adversely impact earth's water resources by inducing large changes in global streamflow characteristics. As a result, many scientists are examining long-term proxy streamflow records in an attempt to determine how temperature changes of the 20th century may or may not have impacted this aspect of the planet's hydrologic cycle. We here review some of their findings that pertain to North America, seeking to discover if there have been any 20th-century changes in streamflow regimes in this part of the world that might reasonably be expected to have been caused by 20th-century changes in atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentration, which latter changes the world's climate alarmists typically characterize as having been unprecedented (or nearly so) over thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years, respectively...
In summing up the gist of what was learned by the studies described in this Summary, it can be said they provide no support at all for the climate-alarmist contention that CO2-induced global warming will lead to the occurrence of more severe and longer-lasting droughts and floods throughout North America. These climatic phenomena clearly possess the potential to occur on their own without any help from the "twin evils" of the radical environmentalist movement. And occur again they likely will, if the past is truly prologue to the future, even though hydrologic variability appears to have been somewhat muted throughout the 20th century compared to previous centuries, in contradiction of what climate alarmists typically contend should be the case.
"2008 pres"
6:44:09 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 1:19:47 PM.
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