Looking on the bright side

Whenever the cloud of revolution appears on the horizon, the New York Times famously sees only the silver lining. All those kindle "agrarian reformers" of the past, who turned into murderous thugs! The Gray Lady is at it again, as in this story by Scott Shane:

For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.

Of course that's true as far as it goes. But Mr. Shane goes on to a rather breathtaking either/or:

Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance? Or will it find a way to exploit the chaos produced by political upheaval and the disappointment that will inevitably follow hopes now raised so high?

Shrivel to irrelevance? Well, one can only hope. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Chums

How sweet it is! The thugs are falling left and right. Here in happier times (for them, if not for their peole) were (left to right) Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, and Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Two down and two to go! (Why is it that western media insist on giving these men the deferential title of "president"?) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On burning food for fuel

Wow. Look who's having second thoughts about the crime of turning corn into automobile fuel:

Former President Clinton added his voice to those with concerns about U.S. corn usage for ethanol production. In a major speech this morning to USDA’s Outlook Forum, Clinton warned that competition for food stock could impact food prices and spark food riots in developing countries.

Of course the prices have already risen, and the riots are already taking place. But it's nice to see some sanity returning to the question of fueling our automobiles with food that might otherwise have fed the world. Already, one-third of the U.S. corn crop goes straight into American fuel pumps. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Two Congressmen in one

"What the hell is going on? There's always some degree of tension in politics; everybody knows the last couple of years there's been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. . . . If nothing else good comes out of this [Tucson shooting], I'm hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things." -- Massachusetts Representative Michael Capuano, January 9

"I'm proud to be here with [union] people who understand that it's more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and [sic] awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary." -- Massachusetts Representative Michael Capuano, February 21

A lot depends on whose civility is being gored, doesn't it? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Governor Walker in the crosshairs

Um, where are the calls for civility from President Obama and the New York Times? (The placard reads: Don't Retreat / Reload.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Memo to Athens: take note of Madison WI

 

Europeans, together with American bien pensants, like to think that the U.S. is crass and violence prone, but note how much more sophisticated are Wisconsin's teachers and other public employees, as compared to their colleagues in Athens, London, and other European capitals. Instead of smashing windows and lighting fires, the public servants in Wisconsin simply mob their government and bring it to a halt. What's more, they get paid for it! Fox News (who else?) has calculated that the teachers alone have been paid more than $6,000,000 for their supposed sick days--and that's just in Milwaukee and Madison!

"We are all caught in a much larger battle," opines Wisconsin's "teacher of the year." How right she is. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

$3 billion here, $3 billion there!

The blowtorch above is the Pratt & Whitney engine for the USAF's new F-35 multi-role fighter--and as of this week, its only engine. Budget-cutting Republicans joined Obama-supporting Democrats to kill a rival engine project from General Electric, saving an estimated $3 billion over the life of the project.

Speaking of budget cuts, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Corp, and their affiliated stations are engaged in a full-court press to defeat an attempt to cut their budget. (Note the annoying fact that to the extend that they are taxpayer-subsidized, it is the taxpayer who's paying for this lobbying effort.) Hey guys, they're crying--it's only half a cent a day per American! But if you can't cut the small stuff, how are you ever going to cut the big stuff? After all, $3 billion here and $3 billion there--pretty soon it adds up to real money. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Can't give this war away

Nathan Webster accompanied American troops in Iraq over three years, 2007-2009. Now he's building a book of his photojournalism and inviting us to be a part of it. You can learn more at Kickstart.com. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Japan as Number 3

Do you remember the fright headlines and books of the 1990s predicting that Japan was going to supplant America as the world's most powerful economy? The iconic title was Japan as Number One. (It's not selling very well these days.)

Well, it's now official: China has supplanted Japan as the world's second economy, which means that Japan became Number 3 before it ever made Number 1. It should make us cautious about projecting the present into the future. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Goodbye, Mr. Mubarak!

Isn't it a weird situation when we celebrate the fact that a dictator has been replaced by the army? "Mubarak is gone. Oh wonderful, the military is taking over!" Good luck with that, Egypt. I hope your generals treat you  better than Burma's have done over the past sixty years. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Posted without comment

From the Jackson Hole News & Guide:

Sheriff’s deputies arrested pioneer backcountry skier Roland Fleck on Saturday at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and ski patrollers tobogganed him off the mountain in handcuffs after he refused to stop skiing uphill.

Fleck, 78, a longtime Jackson doctor, fitness buff and one of the original investors in Teton Village, was arrested on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass, interference with an officer, unsafe skiing and theft of services. His extrication from the mountain came after up to seven ski patrollers spend 3.5 hours trying to stop him, reports said.

Roland Fleck has always been a big supporter of the ski area but believes he has a right to ski uphill, Dan Fleck, an attorney with The Spence Law Firm who is representing his father, said.
“He was within his rights to access the forest, and he was skiing safely,” Dan Fleck said.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Um, he did what?

It's hard to be a Republican! Because New York Congressman Christopher Lee sent this buff photo (the one on the right, that would be) to a woman he met on Craig's List, he has now resigned from office. “Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?” the woman asked, and Mr Craig obliged. Crikey, wouldn't you, if you could suck in your gut and flex your muscles like that? Certainly he looks better stripped to the waist than he does on the job (left). Plus he can use his smartphone to send photos! Seems to me that we need more people like Mr Lee in Congress, not fewer. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

States too big to fail

First it was the banks: Citibank is too big to fail, so the federal government bailed it out. Then it was the automobile companies: General Motors is too big to fail, etc. And now it is the turn of the states. Michigan, for example, owes the federal government $3.7 billion it borrowed to pay unemployment benefits, and under current law must shortly start paying interest on this money. Meanwhile, unemployment taxes in the state would be ramped up. Does this sound like a very sensible system? The companies who hire people, and who lay them off when it's convenient, pay small percentage of those salaries into a fund to pay those benefits? And if the state's fund needs to borrow the money nevertheless, then it must pay interest on that borrowing? Sounds about right to me, but not to the Obama administration, which is also betting that it can carry the new Republican Congress along for another bailout of the improvident. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

R U ready for Uni?

The New York Times has discovered that (gasp!) Most New York Graduates Are Not College-Ready. It seems that in 2009 only 23 percent of the city's high-school seniors graduated with the skills needed to cope with university-level work. (At that, NYC does better than most metro areas in the state.) "That is well under half the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working." The obvious solution to this state of affairs is to further dumb down the standards at the city's universities, and I am sure that that improvement is already in train.

But doesn't it occur to the journos at the NYT that perhaps only a minority of high-school graduates can really benefit from higher education? There is, after all, an upper limit on the number of great minds that can be employed in journalism. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Meanwhile, back at TSA ...

Hosni Mubarak gets all the headlines, but mass unrest has affected an even more stubborn dictator, the Washington Bureaucrat. Yes, the Don't Touch My Junk rebellion has caused the geeks at TSA to go back to their computer screens and redesign the body scanners recently deployed at some airports. (I haven't encountered one yet, though I did see a monolingual video explaining the process at the United security line in Boston. The sole language was Spanish.) This year's scanners, says Rupert Murdoch's new online The Daily, are much more discreet than the multi-million-dollar ones we bought last year.

BTW, as the children say, if you want to check out Mr Murdoch's new venture, you can do so at this extra-legal website, The Daily Indexed. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The snow had begun in the gloaming ...

... and busily all the night / Had been heaping field and highway / With a silence deep and white -- and this is the view out our bedroom window:

That line on the lower right is eighteen inches of snow on our very steep porch roof. We have lived here 28 years, and I've never before seen such an effect. And there's another storm promised for Saturday, and another after that on Tuesday. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford (one can only  hope for blue skies!)

More of that dreaded hate speech

The New York Times has been one of the leading proponents that "hate speech" from conservatives caused a nutter in Arizona to shoot some people, including a liberal congresswoman. Especially fingered in this fantasy have been Glen Beck, whose position in life I'm not entirely sure about, and of course Sarah Palin, who put certain congressmen "in the crosshairs" during the 2010 election. So it is interesting to read this in the NYT:

Is Michele Bachmann the new Sarah Palin?

And do we really need a new Sarah Palin? Shouldn’t the first one be made to go away before we start considering replacements?

Um, how do Gail Collins and the ever-so-sensitive editors of the NYT plan to make Ms Palin go away? Not with the flick of a limp hand, I don't think. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford