The Blog of Record

Obama’s homeland security and intelligence priorities for next year are outlined here.

There’s a new study indicating that states where people buy the most online pornography tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption.

This probably means that godless liberals simply surf free porn sites.

(Via the Orange County Register.)

By dumbing down the conservative brand and failing to stand up to Republican excesses like George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”:

There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. Ideas must be marketed, and right-wing talk radio captures a big and useful market segment. However, if there is no thoughtful, rigorous presentation of conservative ideas, then conservatism by default becomes the raucous parochialism of Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and company. That loses us a market segment at least as useful, if perhaps not as big.

Conservatives have never had, and never should have, a problem with elitism. Why have we allowed carny barkers to run away with the Right?

Plus, why reinstating the Fairness Doctrine may not be necessary to kill conservative talk radio:

Obama is known to have strong feelings about “localism,” the FCC rule that requires radio and TV stations to serve the interests of their local communities as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses. “Local community” invariably turns out in practice to mean leftist agitator and race-guilt shakedown organizations—the kind of environment in which Obama learned his practical politics. Localism will likely be the key to unlock the door through which conservative talk radio will be expelled with a presidential boot in the rear.

(Via the Orange County Register.)

Update: Victor Davis Hanson: “All these highbrow conservative attacks on Limbaugh keep missing the point.”

Maritime shipping’s hefty contribution to air pollution:

Globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate matter pollutants into the air as the total amount released by the world’s cars, according to a new study.

And the pollution doesn’t just take place far out in the sea where it harms no one:

“Since more than 70 percent of shipping traffic takes place within 250 miles of the coastline, this is a significant health concern for coastal communities.”

Programmable, mutating, shape-shifting matter:

An Arizona physician has created a membership-based healthcare program called the No Insurance Club. An annual fee of $480 for an individual covers 12 physician visits, and a family of any size can get a $680 membership good for up to 16 visits per year. Lots of free services, discounted medication, prescriptions costing $2-$4. Look s like a good solution for people without health insurance.

Dr. Paul Kedrosky cites this extremely pessimistic prognosis for the recession made by a big-time investor.

Even with so many people wild about Obama, there’s not much public enthusiasm about the already-big government becoming bigger still: Comparing polling views on bank nationalization now and back in the Depression.

Don Boudreaux sees this as cause for hope that Obama won’t be able to harm the economy as much as the New Deal did.

“This is not your father’s protest movement. This is your forefathers’ protest. Act worthy of yourself.”

Across the country, the “Tea Party” movement is spreading. Anti-stimulus protests in Arizona, Washington State, Kansas, Georgia, and elsewhere are popping up, and of course CNBC’s Rick Santelli has become an instant folk hero after calling for a Chicago Tea Party. But if we’re going to compare our actions to those brave Bostonians of 1773, we should really take a look at what their protest meant, and what happened afterwards. To simply compare ourselves to those men and women, without truly understanding what they did, at the least cheapens our shared history and could lead to consusion over the motives of this new “Tea Party” movement.

In short, the Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance and insurrection that set in motion a chain of events that led to armed rebellion against Parliament and the King. I wonder, do we really mean to compare ourselves to the men and women who, even at that early date, were ready to sacrifice their all for the cause of liberty?

It seems that what we’re actually seeing now is a relatively low-key and sedate protest in relation to the audacious and incredible increase in government power. Frankly, the patriots who took part in the Boston Tea Party would probably call us cowards for not responding in a more full-throated manner.

I’m not objecting to the protests. Far from it in fact. I’ll be at the protest in Washington, D.C. But I am not expecting anything other than street theater, or the political equivalent of clearing our throat rather than the yelling our politicians deserve to hear. I won’t compare it to the Boston Tea Party, because there is no comparison. To claim otherwise is to both cheapen the actual protest by 200 Bostonians and their thousands of supporters, and to inflate the magnitude of our current actions.

I wonder, what are we expecting to achieve from these protests? Are we content to merely register our disapproval, or are we seeking to change what Congress and our president have done? If it is the former, I’m sure the politicians will note our objection, and wait for us to quiet down. If it is the latter, I fear our current protests are too scatter-shot to do any real good.

What is the target of our protest? Are we protesting the President and Congress for an act already passed, or are we petitioning our state and local governments to refuse to accept the stimulus money?

What do we do if these protests do not result in the change in policies we are asking for? What happens next?

Make no mistake, once a movement like this has begun, it will, sooner or later, have to answer these difficult questions or risk failure. Now is the seed-time of liberty, and the steps we take and the words we use will either be recalled triumphantly by our grandchildren, or seen as a sad charade conducted by children who could not muster the strength and conviction of their ancestors.

Read it all for an interesting look at the original Boston Tea Party. (Via The D.C. Examiner.)

The same author has an article on the same topic today at Pajamas Media.

Click the picture to enlarge.

Washington, D.C., circa 1916. Lewis Martin, age 100; Martha Elizabeth Banks, age 104; Amy Ware, age 103; Rev. Simon P. Drew, born free. Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, 921 N Street N.W.

Source: Shorpy. Shorpy’s comments are interesting, as always.

Keeping it in the family:

Have I mentioned lately that my alderman is the daughter of the previous alderman, my mayor is the son of a previous mayor, the president of the county board is the son of the previous president, and, until recently, the governor of my state was the son of a powerful Chicago alderman?

No wonder the Europeans don’t want Turkey in the EU:

Via David Copperfield, whose reader from Germany comments:

Kind of thing we get nearly every day here.

There seems to be a general MO among Turks that:

1) Because it is allowed in Turkey, and they are Turks, they should also be allowed to do it here.
2) They can get away with anything if they have enough people to scream and shout at the [top] of their voice at the booking officer.
3) that ALL laws were made for their PERSONAL convienience, and do not apply to them.
4) although they have lived here 2 and 3 generations NONE of them speak German when talked to by the Police.

All the Middle Easteners are the same, and more and more the East Europeans appear to be contracting the desease as well.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment situation summary for January:

Since the recession began in December 2007, 3.6 million jobs have been
lost, with about half of the decrease occurring in the last 3 months.

That’s the months after the election – November, December and January. Businesses have been cutting jobs to be better prepared for the change that has come to America – such as tax increases.

(Via Thoughts Online.)

Preferably children, before their global-warming footprint goes out of hand. Children like Bakouma Kpatekatola from Togo, who was 14 when he died of malaria last year:

Bakouma was one of approximately one million people who died of malaria last year. Almost all of them were like him: poor, young, and African. And almost all of those deaths could have been prevented  through vaccines, insecticide-treated netting, and (gasp) DDT spraying. Empirical research supports the indoor residual spraying (IRS) of DDT as not only safe, but the most economical and effective method for malaria prevention. For example, a 1996 DDT ban in South Africa, pushed by environmental groups, led to a malaria epidemic with over 60,000 cases reported in 2000. After DDT spraying resumed in 2001, infections dropped 80% in one year. Facing a mounting death toll across Africa the World Heath Organization and USAID have recently lent support to IRS using DDT, but its adoption continues to be opposed by environmental extremists relying on shoddy science and fearmongering.

Read the rest. Bakouma was a child Iowahawk’s family sponsored for several years.

(Via The Virginian.)

From Thoughts Online:

Bad news…. getting news that your property is assessed lower than it was last year. Even though you don’t plan on selling your house any time soon, it is still a bummer to see that the value has dropped all the way back to 2007 levels.

Good news… realizing that this means your property tax is going to go down. Lower assessment = lower property taxes. And even though it will take some time for the mortgage processor to make their adjustments, there should be a nice reduction in coming months.

Bad news… finding out Fairfax County plans on raising the tax rate by, just coincidentally, the exact percentage that your property dropped in value, resulting in absolutely no savings or other silver lining from your property going down in value.

Worse news… realizing that when property values recover, say by the 12.5% that they just dropped, that Fairfax County has no intent of rolling back the rate hikes… leaving you in a position of paying even more in property taxes than you did when the property was previously assessed at that level.

Check out this set of photos of New York life I found on American Digest.

Stewart Baker found this:

Criminals in Italy are increasingly making phone calls over the internet in order to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts. Police officers in Milan say organised crime, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings are turning to Skype and other systems of VoIP in order to frustrate investigators. Skype’s encryption system is a secret which the company refuses to share with the authorities. Investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps in recent years. Customs and tax police in Milan have highlighted the Skype issue. They overheard a suspected cocaine trafficker telling an accomplice to switch to Skype in order to get details of a 2kg drug consignment.

The Japanese seem unimpressed by Apple’s wonder-phone:

There are no official statistics available as how well the iPhone sells after Apple started offering it in the Japanese market in July last year. Now Softbank Mobile, one of Asia’s biggest tech companies and the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in Japan, thinks sales need a boost and decided to give away the hardware basically for free [JP].

Following a price cut in August last year, SoftBank will launch a special iPhone campaign on Friday that runs through the end of May. New subscribers signing up for a two-year contract will be able to get a 8GB iPhone for free (the old price in Japan was $235). The The 16GB model will be discounted to $118 from $350.

Men have plans; women have The List.

Does he think Web sites are accessed by calling a number? The previous administration got plenty of ridicule for things like this:

I like how he acts in this situation, though. His first words (other than how embarrassed he is) after he’s asked the question are addressed to someone to his right: “Do you know the Web site number?” Then he proceeds to stall for time by repeating how embarrassed he is until he gets an answer from that person.