Vodkapundit

I Can Hear Something Now

Stephen Green — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:32:37 +0000

Motorola’s Droid — the latest in a long line of “iPhone killers” — is now available for almost half off from Dell. This, just weeks after it was introduced.

Is Motorola desperate for market share, or to move units, or both?

Required Reading

Stephen Green — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:42:51 +0000

Spend some time talking health care reform with David Broder, that conduit of conventional wisdom:

Here, for example, is what Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group of budget watchdogs, told me: “The Senate bill is better than the House version, but there’s not much reform in this bill. As of now, it’s basically a big entitlement expansion, plus tax increases.”

Here’s another expert, Maya MacGuineas, the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “While this bill does a better job than the House version at reducing the deficit and controlling costs, it still doesn’t do enough. Given the political system’s aversion to tax increases and spending cuts, I worry about what the final bill will look like.”

These are nonpartisan sources, but Republican budget experts such as former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin amplify the point with specific examples and biting language. Holtz-Eakin cites a long list of Democratic-sponsored “budget gimmicks” that made it possible for the CBO to estimate that Reid’s bill would reduce federal deficits by $130 billion by 2019.

Perhaps the biggest of those maneuvers was Reid’s decision to postpone the start of subsidies to help the uninsured buy policies from mid-2013 to January 2014 — long after taxes and fees levied by the bill would have begun.

Even with that change, there is plenty in the CBO report to suggest that the promised budget savings may not materialize. If you read deep enough, you will find that under the Senate bill, “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period” — not decline. The gross increase would be almost $1 trillion — $848 billion, to be exact, mainly to subsidize the uninsured. The net increase would be $160 billion.

But this depends on two big gambles. Will future Congresses actually impose the assumed $420 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs? They never have.

When you’ve lost Broder, you’ve lost Washington.

VodkaPundit Regrets the Error

Stephen Green — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:07:03 +0000

As it turns out, as cheap whores go, Mary Landrieu is three times more expensive than first thought. But I’d still put on at least two condoms before getting into a voting booth with her name in it.

Read this classic line:

“I will correct something. It’s not $100 million, it’s $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it,” Landrieu told reporters after her floor speech.

That’s our political class in action — their votes are for sale and they’re goddamn proud of it.

Hang your head in shame, America.

Must-See Radio

Stephen Green — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:50:40 +0000

Is it possible for a lone blogger to host a radio show with his lungs and head stuffed full of what appears to be pimento loaf? Yes! On this week’s big, big PJM Political:

Bill Whittle interviews Charles Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense for Detainee Affairs, now with the Heritage Foundation. They’ll be discussing Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in New York City.

Roger L. Simon and fellow Motion Picture Academy member Lionel Chetwynd make sense of the byzantine process of how a film gets nominated for an Academy Award.

Dr. Helen Smith interviews Jessica Custer of the Network of Enlightened Women, on their efforts to bring increased intellectual diversity to America’s universities.
Glenn Reynolds interviews the members of the Smart Set, on how the Internet is changing how music is distributed and opening new opportunities for entrepreneurial musicians.

Produced by Ed Driscoll, who, as always, has pirated the Sirius/XM Radio signal and made it available for your downloading or streaming pleasure.

The Week in Blogs — The Links!

Stephen Green — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:25:20 +0000

It’s time once again to look back at The Week in Blogs on PJTV, and here are the matching links:

Wild, wild life.

Road to nowhere.

Walk it down.

Memories can’t wait.

Found a job.

Pulled up.

This must be the place.

Life during wartime.

And she was.

Don’t worry about the government.

Plus, a special mystery theme!

The Next War

Stephen Green — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:00:51 +0000

Michael Totten takes into account Hezbollah’s new longer-range rockets:

If Israel’s nuclear power plant comes under fire, if Tel Aviv skyscrapers explode from missile attacks, if Hezbollah manages to turn all of Israel into a kill zone where there is no place to run, Israelis will panic like they haven’t since the 1973 Yom Kippur War when it briefly appeared the Egyptian army might overrun the whole country. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere in Lebanon while Israelis are actively fending off that kind of assault. No country can afford to be restrained while fighting for its survival.

Being saturated with missiles isn’t quite the same thing as being overrun by tanks — but would be on less disastrous for the Israeli economy, and perhaps almost as effective at getting Jews to simply quit living in Israel.

Global Warmening Update

Stephen Green — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:50:43 +0000

Now I’m the first to admit to not having a clue what’s going on. Our eight-year drought seems to have ended a couple years back, we’re enjoying mild summers, October was freezing… and November is warm. Go figure.

But is anthropogenic global warming worse than junk science? Is it fraud science? 62 megabytes of hacked emails and other files would indicate…

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

And…

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

And…

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

Well this isn’t looking very good.

What makes me most skeptical, however, isn’t the emails — it’s the proposed solutions to the “crisis.”

Here’s what I mean.

The nature of the crisis changes as needed. It’s getting too hot, it’s getting too cold, free markets are for meanies, TV is too dirty, there are only so many radio stations, this one guy got more stuff than this other guy…

But the solution always remains the same: Give the government more power to tax and regulate and control.

No thanks. Get out. Take a flying leap at your own bottom.

If I don’t like the weather, I’ll adjust the damn thermostat, mmkay?

We’ll Go Back to Mincing Words After This Important Insult

Stephen Green — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:19:14 +0000

Trillion dollar payoffs, trillions more in debt, trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see… and yet Mary Landrieu gets bought off for a lousy hundred mill?

That thing I said last week about political whores? They’re bad enough. But Landrieu’s a cheap one.

(Cough, Cough)

Stephen Green — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:57:21 +0000

I was looking for the perfect metaphor for the President’s recent east Asia tour, but this was the best I could come up with.

It’s That Time Again

Stephen Green — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:07:19 +0000

I’ve been taking a sick day — but I saturated my skull with enough steam (and Dayquil) to get through taping this week’s Hair of the Dog. On the big show:

Obama — will he or won’t he commit to Afghanistan?

KSM — will he or won’t he face a kangaroo court?

Giuliani — will he or won’t he run for governor?

Plus, deadly hover ninjas!

Yes, really.

Who’d a Thunk It?

Stephen Green — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:04:54 +0000

GM lied, the stimulus died.

Must-See Radio

Stephen Green — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:32:15 +0000

PJM Political is on the air — from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Week in Blogs — The Links!

Stephen Green — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:24:31 +0000

As seen on PJTV, here are this week’s picks:

Stomach churning reactions.

Good question.

Cheap, even for a Congressman.

Signed, Let Down on the Left.

They don’t call’em czars for nothin’.

Uh…

There is a doctor in the ~~house~~ senate.

Not if it’s a prank call.

“Uh…” again, times infinity.

Find out what it all means on PJTV.

Improving It Worse

Stephen Green — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:08:14 +0000

Why does she look at me when she says, “Star Wars sex meme?”

Seriously, Melissa Clouthier’s complaints about the recent “improvements” to Twitter are spot-on. Let me be my own filter, mkay?

It Could Be Worse; It Could Be Snowing

Stephen Green — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:27:57 +0000

So the forceful decision in our War of Necessity is… Afghanistanization. Or something. Anyway, policy reviews going on since, supposedly, February, have resulted in this:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Obama still is close to announcing his revamped war strategy, most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

The president raised questions at a war council meeting on Wednesday, however, that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking.

Throwing out all the Pentagon recommendations doesn’t bother me, to be quite frank. President Bush did exactly that in September, 2001. Bush’s JCS presented him with what the Pentagon typically comes up with — a big, slow build-up, followed by a great big invasion. The whole thing would have taken six-12 months, by my reckoning — and that’s under ideal circumstances. Instead, Bush told them all to try again.

The JCS responded with a new, “small footprint” plan, that ended Taliban rule in just six weeks. A good leader knows when to tell his subordinates that they’re effing clueless. So don’t fret too much if Obama doesn’t necessarily like the taste of whatever swill the Pentagon is dishing out. The Pentagon has acres of no-good plans, and when the stuff hits the fan, you can guess which plans get pulled off the shelf first.

Then again — Bush did all this in a few days. Obama’s been at it since August. Well, March, actually. And he decided on a new direction back in 2008. Or maybe ‘07. As Jules Crittenden describes the process towards developing a system for reaching a decision to give the matter some considered consideration:

In fairness, even if the president did declare back in 2008 this war was a vital national security interest, and he did signal last spring he was on board with counterinsurgency, and even if he did appoint Gen. Stanley McChrystal to get the job done in May, the general’s recommendations only arrived in August, and the president didn’t look at them until, what, late September, and he’s been really busy this whole time letting Congress bollix his health-care initiative, throwing Eastern Europe under the bus and flying to Copenhagen, that kind of thing, so he’s only been able to squeeze in seven high-level national security meetings, or is it eight? Is it so unreasonable to ask for new options on top of the new options that he asked for on top of the new options that McChrystal gave him? Meanwhile, China’s ass wants kissing and then we’re into the holidays…

Now, I was told back in 2008 by a very smart retired Army guy — who went to work at a pretty high level for the Obama campaign — that four combat brigades were exactly what we needed in Afghanistan, and that that’s exactly what his candidate was promising to send over there. OK, great — mission accomplished. Except that maybe they aren’t enough. Or maybe they’re too much. It all depends on what the definition of “mission” is.

Which, after 18 months of campaigning on the issue and nine months of being the damn CINC, you’d think Obama would know what he wants to do over there. Honestly, the only thing that he ought to still be thinking about is how best to achieve his goals — if we were still living back in March.

But already it’s half past November. And it’s looking more and more like this time we’re really going to see that harsh Afghan winter.

Three of Three

Stephen Green — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:29:50 +0000

Third and final Trifecta segment for this week. It’s Bill Whittle’s turn to sit in the Paul Lynde Memorial Square — and he has Scott Ott and me look at two American presidents, and how they treat (and are treated by) the soldiers under their command.

A Man Can Dream

Stephen Green — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:35:13 +0000

While I haven’t actually watched the Lou Dobbs resignation video, I’m pretty sure he begins by saying, “Why, if it hadn’t been for those darn kids…”

Here’s to hoping that Pat Buchanan takes the cue and does likewise. Maybe the two of them could get a nice little cottage together on Key West.

Two of Three

Stephen Green — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:07:45 +0000

It’s Scott Ott’s turn to host Trifecta today. He, Bill Whittle and I take an unflinching look at the MSM’s excuse-mongering for Ft Hood killer Nidal Malik Hasan.

It’ll make your blood boil. It did ours when we taped it.

To-Do List 11/11/09

Stephen Green — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:29:21 +0000

• Find a Vet.

• Shake their hand.

• Tell’em “thanks.”

My Lesbian Man-Crush

Stephen Green — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:37:08 +0000

Camille Paglia on Nancy Pelosi:

Whether or not her bill survives in the Senate is immaterial: Pelosi’s hard-won, trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton has ever achieved.

As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to begin?

And that’s coming from a fairly left-leaning liberal who basically agrees that there ought to be a lot more government interference with health care. Meanwhile, here’s what that other august intellect, Bill Clinton, had to say on the matter:

“The point I want to make is: Just pass the bill, even if it’s not exactly what you want,” Clinton told Democrats. “When you try and fail, the other guys write history.”

Go on and betray your conscience. Go on and pass bad legislation. Go on and do potentially irreparable harm to the country. Because if you don’t, somewhere, a Republican might look good.

Oh, horrors, indeed.

There are statesmen, there are politicians, and then there are cheap whores who would sell out their country for a vote.

And here I always thought Clinton was just a politician.