Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets | Washington Examiner
In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.
But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."
Signs that even the mainstream media may start viewing this as Obama's War. They have to position themselves to actually be supporters (or at least not detractors) of it now don't they?
The there's this:
So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 -- more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.
Appeals court dismisses Dan Rather's suit vs. CBS - Yahoo! News
A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former TV newsman Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS Corp in which Rather claimed he was made a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush's military record.
Alternate headline: Court Rules Media Can't Just Make Stuff Up (at least all of the time)
WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines Paint Staff Into Virtual Corner; Full Text of Guidelines | paidContent
MSM Behind the times. Again.
$35 Billion Slated for Local Housing - WSJ.com
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is close to committing as much as $35 billion to help beleaguered state and local housing agencies continue to provide mortgages to low- and moderate-income families, according to administration officials.
The move would further cement the government's role in propping up the housing market even as some lawmakers push to curb spending at a time of rising debt.
The effort, which could be announced as early as this week, is aimed at relieving pressure on government-operated housing finance agencies, which have been struggling to find funding amid the downturn. These agencies, or HFAs, are a small part of the housing market but are critical to many first-time and low-income home buyers, who can get lower-rate mortgages through an HFA than they could through a private-sector lender. Rates are typically 0.5 to one percentage point lower than commercial lenders.
In case there was any doubt that the current administrations IQ hovers safely in the two digit range, this is it.
One thing that is as inevitable as night follows day is that when the government subsidizes something, that thing gets more expensive, requiring larger subsidies, ad infinitum*.
The best way to have affordable housing, is to let housing prices return to rational levels, which in spite of the "housing collapse" they still have not. The Journal over the weekend described a rather fancy 20s era house (built by an auto industry exec) that recently sold for $10,000**. Now that's a reasonable price, and the house, once restored a bit, will certainly be worth more. Only problem is that it is in a part of Detroit that nobody in their right mind wants to live... reasons listed: high taxes combined with high crime and few services... duh! It sold to a church, who plans to do the renovation in hope of reselling the house at a profit. I wish them luck. And who knows, once Detroit and similar cities get over grieving over the loss of industries that they helped drive offshore, maybe there can be some sort of urban renewal that will last beyond the artificial pumping of funds into the area.
* It's tempting to mention health care here, but let's leave that for another time.
** Interestingly, that's about what the house was considered worth when it was built, only then, $10K was considered a fortune.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Businesses Take Another Look at Virtual Desktops - WSJ.com
As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.
Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops -- a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.
Phone Calls Add to Din Over Loans - WSJ.com
The discovery that Countrywide Financial Corp. recorded phone conversations with borrowers in a controversial mortgage program that included public officials -- and that those recordings have been destroyed -- has prompted new congressional calls for more information about the program.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is trying to subpoena the remaining records of Countrywide's VIP loan program. So far, the committee's chairman, New York Democratic Rep. Edolphus Towns, has turned down that request.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Yosi Sergant Gets Hypovehiculated - WSJ.com
The good news for job-seekers is that Sergant's departure appears to have left two positions open at the NEA: director of communications, and new media and special projects adviser. To judge by the phone list, the director of communications oversees a staff of three communications specialists. We have one request: If you get this job, Victoria Hutter will be working for you. Please be kind to her. She has had a rough week and has been doing her best in a job that cannot help but take a toll on one's dignity.
As for the new media and special projects adviser position, we're afraid we still don't have a job description. We do know, however, that this job has somewhat of a troubled history. Our understanding is that the last guy held it for slightly less than one business day.
And more hilarious coverage of the loopy left.
Peter R. Kann: Quality Reporting Doesn’t Come Cheap - WSJ.com
The reason any of this matters has little to do with the plight of newspaper publishers or even with the future of newspapers. The real threat is to the future of news—informative, relevant, reliable news of the wider world around us. And that is disappearing as newspapers, whose reporting staffs still produce most of the news, no longer can afford to do so. As their news budgets and staffs continue to shrink, the key question is what can fill that gap?
Television does not begin to fill it. To the extent broadcast networks ever tried they now have abdicated to so-called cable news channels. These, in turn, now devote most of their resources to covering celebrities, crimes and sundry social trivia and to prime-time programming that pretends to be analysis and informed opinion while mostly offering the spectacle of extremist heads yelling at each other. There are few resources and even less commitment to covering significant news beyond floods and fires.
Health Problems Health Care Can’t Fix - WSJ.com
The real problem, it turns out, is that Americans are accident-prone, health unconscious slobs. Until the mid-1980s, the U.S. had the highest per capita cigarette consumption in the developed world, and the U.S.'s obesity rate today is more than twice that of Canada and ten times that of Japan. These aren't problems of the health care system (i.e. in the diagnosis and treatment of disease). These are problems of behavior. Adjust that data for the higher U.S. incidence of homicide and obesity, and Americans actually have the highest life expectancy in the developed world.
This is the kind of inconvenient truth that the somewhat lax Mr. Moore is accustomed to overlooking. A svelte gym rat like Mr. Obama should know better.
Yosi Sergant Gets Hypovehiculated - WSJ.com
What a difference a presidential election can make. Suddenly the anti-antiterror left is applauding the U.S. government's antiterror efforts. The New York Times has a fascinating quote on the indictment of Najibullah Zazi for allegedly planning bombings in New York:The Zazi case "actually looks like the case the government kept claiming it had but never did," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University law school.
Her center has studied all the prosecutions of terrorism-related crimes since 2001, and she said many had turned out to be "fantasy terrorism cases" where the threat seemed modest or even nonexistent.
This time, she said, "the ingredients here are quite scary," and the government's statements have had none of the bombast and exaggeration that accompanied some previous arrest announcements.
So let's see if we have this straight: For the past eight years, when George W. Bush was turning the world against us and making the terror threat worse, there were no serious terror plots. Now that the world loves us again, suddenly a serious terror threat has materialized. What's wrong with this picture?
Theodore Dalrymple: The British Disease - WSJ.com
After 12 years of ceaseless Brownian motion, British public finances have gone from being comparatively healthy to being catastrophically bad. In order to expand vastly the public sector in which he is a true believer, Mr. Brown has raised taxes by stealth, undertaken government obligations that appear nowhere in the accounts and that will weigh on future generations, and eased credit to encourage asset inflation and give people the illusion of prosperity. For the duration of his time in government, Britain has been like a consumptive patient, with an excess of bogus well-being shortly before expiry. If the world is an opera stage, Britain has been playing Violetta or Mimi in the last act.
Sounds familiar.
John Fund: Congress Needs a 72-Hour Waiting Period - WSJ.com
Although Barack Obama campaigned last year for transparency and openness in government, their idea has languished in committee since June. It has 67 Republican and 31 Democratic co-sponsors—a rare show of bipartisanship. Normally, bills can't be considered for a floor vote until House leadership schedules them. That's why Messrs. Baird and Walden filed a discharge petition to dislodge their bill from committee this week. If a majority of members (218) sign it, their proposal can be voted on over the objections of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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