Month: December 2009

Secret Service: Actually, no elevated threat level against POTUS.

Via The Weekly Standard and HolyCoast.com comes excellent news:

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, testifying today about the state dinner security breach, refuted stories that President Obama has received more threats than previous presidents.

“The threats are not up,” Sullivan said, adding that they receive about the same amount of threats against Obama as they did for presidents Clinton and Bush.

Except of course for those people on the Left who can’t function without a belief in the utter villainy in their political enemies. In that case, the news that the current President is nothing special when it comes to being threatened is probably depressing the living life out of those folks. Check out the TPM link above for some examples, in fact: they’re busy telling themselves stories about how the President really is more at risk, really, uh-huh, no fooling…

Moe Lane

PS: Of course I’m being contemptuous towards people who need the Right to be devils. Why aren’t you just as contemptuous? It’s one of the more annoying fetishes out there.

Crossposted to RedState.

Whatever happened to Neel Kashkari?

Who is Neel Kashkari? The TARP bailout guy for Bush and Obama. Yeah, that guy. Although he was just the public face of that particular… event. Anyway, he’s got a WaPo profile:

“Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air,” Kashkari recalls, wheeling toward the hex nuts and the bolts. “It was a political calculus. I said, ‘We don’t know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?’ ‘No way,’ Hank shook his head. I said, ‘Okay, what about 700 billion?’ We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”

He’s currently living in a shack in the Sierra Nevada mountains; the stress apparently snapped him like a rubber band. I don’t know whether to be sympathetic, or use him as a Horrible Example of Why You Need To Stay Out Of Dizzy City. Possibly both.

Moe Lane

Word on the Tweet was wrong: 10% unemployment.

Went down .2% instead of up .2%.  My sarcastic reaction to the folks responsible for this amazing long-term trend in the American economic situation* remains unchanged.

*The below is the good news.

There was little change in wholesale and retail trade employment in November.
Within retail trade, department stores added 8,000 jobs over the month.

The number of jobs in transportation and warehousing, financial activities,
and leisure and hospitality showed little change over the month.

Employment in professional and business services rose by 86,000 in November.
Temporary help services accounted for the majority of the increase, adding
52,000 jobs. Since July, temporary help services employment has risen by
117,000.

Health care employment continued to rise in November (21,000), with not-
able gains in home health care services (7,000) and hospitals (7,000). The
health care industry has added 613,000 jobs since the recession began in
December 2007.

Feeling good yet?

Word on the Tweet: November unemployment 10.4%.

[UPDATE]: Word on the Tweet was wrong. A mere 10%.

If true: wonderful. Simply wonderful. And at precisely what unemployment rate do we have to reach before the current ruling party starts to admit that they’ve been mucking up economic policy since January 2007? 11%? 12%? 15%? 36.567%? Things are starting to get a little stretched out here.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Not Quote of the Day, Deceiver.com edition.

Because I’ve already done Quote of the Day.  Still, on the news that Cubslayer Gore has apparently decided to cut back his Copenhagen appearances in this brave, post-Climategate New World, Deceiver.com notes:

How great would it be if Al Gore skipped Copenhagen altogether? If I were him right now, I’d be laying in bed with my laptop and pint after pint of Chunky Monkey, watching the Google search results for “Climategate” skyrocket, weeping and whispering, “Why? Why, Gaia, why?” Hey wait, that’s what I’m doing right now.

Mind you, this assumes that Gore has a working sense of shame.  Given the way that he keeps insisting on killing polar bears with his brazenly profligate energy use, that’s doubtful.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Apple ready to *make* you pay attention to ads.

Heeeeeeere’s the situation:

In an application filed last year and made public last month by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics.

[snip]

Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message.

…and heeeeeeere’s the problem:

It’s amazing how many of these vendors fail to understand Chekhov’s first law of narrative: “A gun on the mantelpiece in act one is bound to go off by act three.” That is, if you design a device that is intended to attack its user — by shutting her out of her own files and processes against her wishes and without her consent — someone will figure out how to use that device to attack its user.

Well, one of the problems. The other major one is that forcing people to maintain constant awareness of what their computer is doing is a very stupid idea.  Particularly if you’re producing for a niche customer base in the first place.  You know how people hate pop-up ads?  This is worse.  Particularly if the company does something really dumb, like integrate this kind of technology into their new iPods.  Fastest way to lose dominance of that particular market that I can think of.

Moe Lane

Honduran Congress rejects Zelaya reinstatement.

Can this be done, now?

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, 02 December, 2009 – With a vote of 111 in favor and 14 against, the National Congress of Honduras today overwhelmingly rejected the restitution of Mr. José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the presidency of the Republic. Also, Congress passed a motion supporting the succession leading to the constitutional presidency of Mr. Roberto Micheletti Bain. Members in turn strongly and affirmatively expressed of the permanence of President Micheletti in office until January 2010, confirming Decree 141-2009, with 111 votes for and 14 against. The president-elect of the Republic, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo will take office on January 27, when the new President of Congress will place the presidential sash.

Via Fausta.

Look, it’s over, all right?  The deposed President of Honduras tried to Chavez his way into keeping power.  His own political party, in conjunction with the military and judiciary, removed him from office.  We jumped the gun on condemning the action, and have been regretting it ever since.  They have had a legitimate election where the opposition party won.  The current government is loudly declaring how ecstatic they are over the idea of handing power over to the winners of that election.  And now their legislature has declared that they are not going to put Zelaya back in power – and a position from which to do mischief – until January.

So let’s just make an example of some scapegoat from the State Department and Move. On.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Quote of the Day, James Taranto edition.

In this respect, at least, the country would be better off if Obama really did have brilliant oratorical skills.

– Taranto, in discussing the President’s West Point speech (H/T: Instapundit).

Truth of the matter is, while the President is great at inspiring people who want to be inspired, he’s not that good at persuading people who don’t want to be, or who are going to be in opposition to what he wants them to do.  This would be less of a problem for the man if he weren’t a fairly typical bicoastal, Ivy League-educated academic who has been operating in one or another gentle bubble of privilege since the age of ten*.  Said bubbles do in fact teach many valuable life lessons.  Learning to handle fundamental disagreement on core issues is typically not one of them.

Ach, well, it’s not like I need the man to succeed (or fail!) to feel good about myself.

Moe Lane

*Although I do give him props for working in a Baskin Robbins while in high school.  Admittedly, if he’s held a real job since then, it’s news to me.

Crossposted to RedState.