If there ever were a time that we needed effective Republican leadership, it would be in this Porkulus bill effort. Even the “pared down” seven hundred billion dollars ($700,000,000,000) is a ridiculous amount of money, and will pave the way for a try at a tax hike, so it’s been essential that we Republicans step back and force the Democrats alone to own that bill.
Represenative Eric Cantor therefore deserves our praise and congratulations on the results of the Porkulus bill in the House. Not once, but twice, did he as Whip help ensure that the bill passed the House without a single Republican vote. That’s unity, and that kind of unity doesn’t happen without at least some effort.
Eric Cantor had to step up. Congratulations on that effort. Of course, the whip can only do so much without the Leader there with him, so congratulations to John Boehner for drawing the line on the Porkulus. This is the kind of effective party we need to be if we want to win in 2010.
Some guy named Caleb Howe contacted Facebook about their temporary pulling of ads for NoStimulus.com. Their answer:
As part of our efforts to remove other ads with misleading offers related to the stimulus package, we erroneously removed the ad in question. We have since restored that ad and expressed our regret to the advertiser for the error. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Part of Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share their opinions, and we encourage users to start vibrant debates on important issues. Already with the stimulus package, we have seen users create Facebook Groups and lead discussions on all sides of the issue.
That’s a lot of words not to say anything? What efforts? And how did the error happen? My guess: They saw a bunch of scams, and some lazy staffer blocked too many ads, just going through the motions of his job without paying enough attention to what he was doing.
As RedState commenter JLenardDetroit points out, 11 Democrats have voted against the Porkulus, but only 3 Republicans have voted for its passage. Therefore, it is opposition to the bill that is the more bipartisan side.
During his Presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously promised direct diplomacy with Iran, going as far as to say he will meet Iranian leaders without preconditions of any kind. Even as Iranian-funded and -armed forces in Iraq were bombing civilians and shooting at American troops, he promised to meet with their leaders. We’re not at war with Eurasia, and absolutely should not start one.
As he told NPR:
Oh, we have to deal with the role of Iran. The question is whether we deal with Iran through saber-rattling, or whether we deal with Iran by direct diplomatic engagement. The key for us is to engage in the sort of direct talks that we engaged in, by the way, when Iran cooperated with us in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It’s that sort of direct engagement that this president has been unwilling to do, but under an Obama administration would be, I think a top priority.
It’s all just words, of course, because the statements made by Secretary Clinton make it clear that Obama sees no chance of success for this plan against Iran’s nuclear program.
See for yourself. That is the only logical conclusion to come from statements made by Clinton today, on the US plan to build missile defense projects in eastern Europe:
“If we are able to see a change in behavior on the part of the Iranians with respect to what we believe to be their pursuit of nuclear weapons … then … we will reconsider where we stand,” Clinton said at a news conference with visiting Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.
“But we are a long, long way from seeing such evidence of any behavior change,” Clinton said, stressing the deterrent effect from a missile shield.
Talk isn’t going to work, so we need to keep on “saber rattling,” just like President Bush.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Hope and Change! Now give money to Organizing for America before Eurasia wins the war, because we’ve been at war with Eurasia for a long time, and always will be.
So the Lakers have traded Vladimir Radmanovic to the Bobcats for Adam Morrison. Amusingly enough, Morrison is the second Jordan flop that the Lakers have traded for.
Of course, Kwame Brown flopped with the Lakers as much as he did with the Wizards, too, so here’s hoping Morrison bucks the trend. Or he can be traded for another Pau Gasol-quality player as Brown was, heh.
After having my attention drawn to a video featuing Lou Zocchi (part 2 here), I bought some of his dice. 3d6 in clear sapphire, 5d6 in clear ruby (you can tell I hope to play some GURPS sometime). They’re attractive (I’d been looking for sharp-edged dice that don’t cost a bundle and aren’t dotted) and he makes the case for them being better dice.
So, I recommend Gamescience dice. I got them in the mail yesterday and I like them. I inked them with a fine tip Sharpie pen (not a marker) and they seem nice. They’re light; they feel lighter than most dice I’ve ever had. But they’re pretty and the should generate reasonably random numbers.
The single player is a frustration fest, but the multiplayer is fun. Especially when I win. Heh.
It helps that I only knew a few courses, but the computer keeps picking my course. It’s crazy.
Google is readying for what is possibly their most bandwidth-intensive Internet service yet: The Google Drive is reported to be a planned service to let people store all their data on Google’s servers, but access it all like a disk drive from their own home computers.
Services like Youtube and Picasa already transfer large amounts of data, but the GDrive conceivably would mean the continuous, two-way transfer of gigabytes of data, rivaling Bittorrent in the strain that an ordinary user might routinely put on an Internet connection. Clearly, any plans ISPs have to make their users pay for what bandwidth they use would put a crimp into this plan.
Enter the Google’s ever more cozy relationship with the Obama Administration. After leaving “Miserable Failure” as a search term that leads to President Bush for about four years, Google took less than four weeks to disarm the “Googlebomb” now that it’s aimed at President Obama.
Is there any serious question that this change in speed was motivated by a desire to curry favor with the new President on “Net Neturality,” or specifically plans that Google promotes that would prohibit ISPs from charging customers for what they use? I think not.
Via RS’s sister site Human Events, it turns out that Speaker Pelosi’s office is working hard to react to yesterday’s strong, principled, and unanimous opposition to the Obama/Pelosi/Reid debt bill. The only problem is, knowledge of political history seems pretty limited in Pelosi’s circles, which is pretty bad since she was in office when the relevant events happened!
In other words, she’s wrong, and she’s not even predicting the kind of events that I think she wants to predict here.
Quoting the leaked Pelosi memo that Human Events uncovered:
This is not the first time the Republicans in the House have unanimously voted against a needed economic package. The last time, in 1993, when Democrats voted for tough action to clean up after Republican economic mess, not a single Republican voted for the legislation that produced record surpluses and a balanced budget.
Where to begin, where to begin? First of all, in the period from 1993 to 1997, government spending growth was held below 2%, and in fact went down in 1993, according to figures from the Heritage Foundation. That, combined with 4-7% growth in tax receipts annually, is what balanced the budget. The debt bill rejected by Republicans yesterday increases spending by unimaginable amounts, figures beyond any ordinary American’s reckoning.
Secondly, the deficit dropped by 22% and 21% in 1994 and 1995, the two years of spending controlled by Democrats in the Congress and President Clinton. Deficit reduction only accelerated when Republicans took over. The deficit went down by 36% and 80% in 1996 and 1997, and then finally we endured a surplus of taxation in 1998. Republicans got the job done, not Democrats. The difference? We cut some taxes and we truly held the line on spending. No midnight basketball. No multi-billion dollar giveaways.
Thirdly, what happened after President Clinton’s tax hike that we opposed? Did the American people side with us, or with Democrats? If Speaker Pelosi wants a re-run of 1994, I’m all for it. So let’s keep up the fight, House Republicans!
President Obama wants to delay the long-announced, long-planned, long-desired-by-first-responders transition from analog to digital television broadcasts. By replacing the old, large-bandwidth-consuming NTSC standard with the new, sharper, narrow-bandwidth ATSC, we create lots of room in the radio spectrum for other broadcasts, including those by firefighters, police, and other public safety workers.
However Obama wants to delay it for a few months, claiming that people aren’t ready. This despite the fact that anyone with cable or satellite is unaffected, vouchers for free set-top boxes have been around for months, and every broadcast station has been warning about the transition. The President thinks we’re idiots, it seems.
No matter, the Senate agreed and passed a bill implementing his wishes unanimously. On it went to the House for another easy pass? Not so fast. Democrats got confident and tried to do a quick-and-easy passage according to the suspension of the rules procedure. That procedure bypasses the normal process but requires a supermajority vote.
The Obama delay bill did not get that supermajority vote. It got a majority, but to pass notwithstanding the rules it needed significant Republican support. 258-168 was the final vote, but 290 were needed for passage.
Let’s cheer the House Republican Caucus for a job well done. He won. He doesn’t need us, remember?