Posted by aog16:27 on 04 February 2010 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Actually, [New York City Mayor] Bloomberg asked for the trial to be moved because KSM wants to be able to smoke in the courtroom. You can only push Mike Bloomberg so far.

— Barry Dauphin

Posted by aog10:21 on 04 February 2010 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Instapundit notes a key point about economic intervention by a government — that same government is also responsible for putatively objective and disinterested regulation of the economic activity.

Of course, it’s very convenient for GM, etc. that Toyota had a problem right about now. As reader Hugh Myers writes: “Has it occurred to anyone that as owner of GM the US Government’s rather enthusiastic pursuit of Toyota regarding supposed product defects involves the government in a conflict of interest?”

This is not a problem specific to the Obama Administration but is a fundamental flaw for any government intervention. Of course, this Administration has a way of making bad things worse with people like Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Now, if the Administration wants to claim that this isn’t malicious but just a result of a Biden class idiot, I am quite prepared to believe them.

No wonder the current state of the American Street is fear.

Posted by aog10:08 on 04 February 2010 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

One thing I find bizarre in the discussions of the current health care nationalization effort is the view, not just among the Democratic Party leadership, that if legislation is passed

• It can be explained to the American Street
• The American Street will like what it once all the goodies are explained to them.

Leaving aside the idea that you have a problem if you are trying to pass legislation that is so vague and indeterminate that you can’t explain what it is until it is passed, the elephant in the room seems to me that this completely ignores the fact that the payments start immediately but the benefits don’t kick in until 2014 or later. What exactly would be explained after passage, “Your taxes are going right now up but in just 4 years you’ll get some good stuff unless Congress changes things. But don’t worry about that, Congress will be ‘fixing’ all the problems before then.”? That despite the deficit of trust that our current Administration has so unexpectedly incurred.

Posted by aog16:22 on 03 February 2010 Comments (12) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Kaus Files notes that one of the interesting aspects of the entire John Edwards saga is how complicit Old Media was in helping him out. He quotes an article from Gawker

This is why, says our source, who is close to Hunter, major media organizations could not stand up the affair story despite well-intentioned efforts. “They [staffers] would do anything to stop it coming out — they lied, they bullied, they called reporters’ editors and bad-mouthed them, they exchanged access.”

So, should we read this as Old Media bias in willing to be so easily intimidated, or that GOP aides are simply not as ruthless and vicious as Democratic Party ones?

Posted by aog16:14 on 03 February 2010 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Tim Blair is mocking Charles Johnson yet again. It’s not that the mockery wears false, as it is well earned by Johnson’s fervent occupation of the crazy zone. But as with Sarah Palin, not letting go indicates that the target still matters. When Johnson lost it, I just quietly delinked him from my weblogs and moved on. Active responses by those he attacked and betrayed, I understand. But it’s a dead parrot, move on to things that matter.

Posted by aog13:53 on 02 February 2010 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

As I catch up on things, I want to mock President Obama’s spending freeze because you just can’t do too much of that. Let us be careful to note that not only is it a pointless exercise, not only is it something Obama himself mocked when he was on the campaign trail, but it’s also stupid politically because it won’t mollify his opponents nor impress the moderates, while it has managed to enrage his only remaining partisans. How much more reality dysfunction could he exhibit?

Posted by aog13:38 on 02 February 2010 Comments (4) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Inspired by Skipper’s belief in self documenting code I thought I might start dropping in some little tidbits I generate as I go about my code slinging day.

Today’s little gem is this —

bool
Clause::visit(visitor const& v, int depth) {
    return ! (! _d || ! v(depth, *this) || ! this->visit_children(v, depth));
}

The Clause class is a unit in an expression. The visit method takes a function object v and invokes it on the clause and every nested clause (as long as the function object returns true), an implementation of the standard visitor pattern. I have split this method in to two, visit and visit_children because in some cases I do want to visit on the children of a clause and not the clause itself. The _d is a member variable of the class (I use the leading ‘_’ as my typographic indicator for member variables) which holds the actual data in the class. I would argue that even if you know all of this, and you are familiar with C++, the purpose of this code is not immediately obvious. I would say a short comment about the thought processes that lead to this code would be appreciated by anyone else trying to figure it out.

I will admit that well chosen method names can help but they’re hardly sufficient.

Posted by aog12:28 on 26 January 2010 Comments (17) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

I just had to laugh in a morbid way at reading this on Instapundit”:http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/92450/ about how President Obama’s declaration of a war on banks (another phase of his War on Prosperity) caused the stock market to tank and potentially destabilize a financial system that the Obama Administration has allegedly been trying to restore. Once again, Obama is so disconnected from reality he’s not even delusional.

Posted by aog21:44 on 23 January 2010 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

This isn’t the Democratic Party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.

— John Ratzenberger at a Scott Brown rally

Posted by aog15:39 on 21 January 2010 Comments (5) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Via Just One Minute is this excellent quote from Politico

That persuasive power, and the notion of Obama himself as game-changer, was part of his promise, but foreign policy has turned out to be less susceptible to personality than many had hoped.

No, really? Other nations act based on their self interest rather than how much their leaders personally like our President? Gosh, how unexpected!

Posted by aog12:29 on 21 January 2010 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Via Power and Control we have a report on how NASA tweak climate data to get the politically desired results. Warmenists claimed “it is not possible that all of the primary data sources were corrupt” but we are at what, 3 (NOAA / NCDC in the link, CRU, NASA / GISS) of 4 now? I thought there was one more but it doesn’t come to mind. I think that if the majority of sources are shown to be involved, a “global conspiracy” theory is well past plausible.

Such a conspiracy doesn’t take all that much coordination as the results are clearly known to everyone. It takes only a willingness to bend data to conform the the required political narrative, which is how Soviet science worked while Lysenko was favored. One need merely consider the melting glacier fraud to see this in action. Hypotheses are verified not via replication of results but by agreement with the prevailing fashion.

What is different is that these putative scientists are not bowing down because of the threat of execution or banishment to slave labor camps but for a ticket on a government gravy train or worse, just to be “in fashion”. It’s inevitable, I suppose, because of the golden rule — he who pays the gold makes the rules. When science becomes dependent on government money, it will produce results that are favored by politicians in that government.

Posted by aog10:07 on 21 January 2010 Comments (4) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Instapundit links to some articles complaining of photographic malpractice in the NY Times. The NY Times claims just a process error. Sadly, I have looked at the photos and I believe the NY Times.

The claim is that a picture of an actress was altered to make her look fat. I suppose that’s possible but I can see from just a quick glance that it could every easily have happened just because of a bad crop and how images get displayed in web browsers. It’s the same effect as puting a TV sized movie on a wide screen. That is, if someone said “we need the image to be 640×513 and someone cropped it as 540×513 instead you would get precisely the effect shown in the image comparison. You can verify this by looking at things on the edge of the good image, such as the “G” in “GOLDEN” on the background in the upper left. Or the press pass on the background woman with the umbrella. It’s clear that it’s the entire image that is stretched, not the actress in particular. Moreover, web browsers do that automatically if you put a narrow image in a wide box. That is, the NY Times would not have had to do any widening itself on the image, but need only have posted an incorrectly cropped image.

Looking more closely, I wouldn’t be surprised if the incorrect cropping was done in order to clip that out of focus black line in the lower left of the correct crop. That’s a common motivation for picking the edges of the crop.

So I find the NY Times claim eminently believable.

P.S. Looks to me like a rush on the first one, as the editor clearly did a better job with white balance as well in the second.

Posted by aog07:58 on 21 January 2010 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Something that I have seen mentioned a few places with regard to passing health care nationalization is the option of having the House of Representatives simply pass the Senate version and send it on to the President for signing is — what bill is that, exactly? How could anyone tell if changes were made between passage in the Senate and the vote in the House? Has anyone except the Democratic Party insiders actually seen the legislation? Was it even finished? once you start passing laws first and writing them later, why not go ahead and have the President sign it before writing it? What’s the difference?

Posted by aog16:56 on 20 January 2010 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

So I hear that the New York Times may start charging readers (via Just One Minute comment). The standard objection is that when the NY Times tried doing that with their “premium” columnists, people just stopped reading. But what if that’s the plan? Perhaps the NY Times sees its biggest problem as the erosion of its brand name as the pajama clad radicals repeatedly link to its egregious failures. But what if they couldn’t do that because the targets were behind a subscription wall populated primarily by fellow travelers? The newspaper is already mostly a comfort read, a means for people to justify their pre-existing viewpoints, not a source of actual news. So why not embrace that?

Posted by aog11:16 on 20 January 2010 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

The IRS plan to regulate tax preparers is an excellent example of the kind of magical thinking that what passes for policy by the MAL. A problem is spotted and the proposed solution is some sort of regulation or registration and, like a magical incantation, this will magically make the situation better and have no unintended consequences. Any dissent from this is taken as objecting to fixing the problem frequently accompanied by expansive claims of how the dissenters like having the problem occur or is in league with the putative creaters of the problem. This attempted suppression of dissent is critical to maintaining the MAList viewpoint because like so much of the MAL ideology facts are toxic.

Let us consider this case in particular. As Captain Hate at Just One Minute notes

So the IRS, which isn’t bound by the advice they give taxpayers calling in with questions (at least that used to be the case), is now gonna hold people to “higher standards” who may, in fact, only prepare returns of people that fall into well-defined categories where only a partial expertise is required. I need somebody from the “educated class” to tell me that nothing could possibly go wrong with this.

This regulation depends on the judgement of an organization that is itself dysfunctional at a level that will not be tolerated in anyone else, is legally immune to any consequences of its dysfunctionality, instead putting full responsibility for any wrong answers on the people who asked the question. That is who we will have judging the soundness of other tax preparers? Who can take this seriously?

The obvious motivation is the standard corporatist one, that while it will hurt the big players it will wipe out the small ones. I am also sure that this will be “unexpected” the the rank and file of the MAL who support the regulation, although certainly not to the corporate interests backing it.

What is most depressing is not that so many in the MAL can’t see this in specific cases but that they can’t see this as a valid concern in any case. It just can’t happen. The very concept seems inconceivable.

P.S. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the IRS in this area. The problem isn’t the IRS itself (although it’s not a well run organization) but in Congress. It is Congress that passes tax regulation that IMHO literally surpasses human understanding and then expects taxpayers to understand and the IRS to explain it. I would love to have a “say it or lose it” option where a taxpayer can take a dispute to a Congressman who voted for the tax regulation. If that Congress critter can’t personally explain the regulation, it is stricken and the taxpayer imdenified. If the Congress critter does explain it, that becomes the legally binding interpretation, any court or IRS decision notwithstanding. What if (as is almost certain) the Congress critter spouts off some stupid bordering on insane explanation? That’s fine because now you have a specific person with personal responsibility for the insanity. So when a Congress critter uses this to get out of a tax payment, everyone else gets to do the same! That’s a win.

Heh, thinking about it you could set up a milder version where Congressional tax returns become law. If you can find a cite for a specific position from a Congressional tax return, that supercedes the IRS and judicial opinion. That’s only fair.

Posted by aog11:04 on 20 January 2010 Comments (8) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Let me note, via Hot Air, that the GOP leadership appears to have actually done something intelligent and perceptive in quietly supporting then Senate candidate Scott Brown.

Posted by aog10:03 on 20 January 2010 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Many people are wondering just how obstinate the Democratic Party is going to be in pushing health care nationalization after the Massachusetts election yesterday. Could they really be dumb or ideological enough to push through with whatever it takes to pass legislation?

I think it’s a distinct possibility. I am coming to the conclusion that much of the Democratic Party leadership actually believes that people are just confused about the legislation and that once passed it can be sold to the American Street so that a large majority will rapidly come to love it. This is just another aspect of my earlier point which is that much of our political class, particularly the Democratic Party leadership, has come down with a severe case of reality dysfunction.

Posted by aog23:00 on 17 January 2010 Comments (10) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Via Brothers Judd we have this insight

Democrats across the country are starting to wonder aloud if they misjudged the electorate over the last year, with profound ramifications for the midterm elections this year and, potentially, for Mr. Obama’s presidency.

First off, it’s unclear what would be different if these people had accurately judged the electorate. After all, surely they know by now and yet they continue on despite seeing the waterfall.

But the truth is, they didn’t misjudge the electorate, they misjudged reality. Their policies simply do not work. I think President Obama in particular is working the levers but the machine is not responding as he expects. The result is a panic and flailing button pushing.

Part of it is that I don’t think the leadership of the Democratic Party could envision the underdog vs. corrupt out of touch officials could apply to them in the position of the latter. They can’t be The Man, they fight The Man on behalf of the little people who should darn well be grateful for it. The American Street may not see it that way.

As a final point, someone pointed out that this race demonstrates the end of the deference for female candidates. I am still so old I can remember when then Senatorial candidate Hillary Clinton won a debate because her male opponent was overly aggressive. Now, after the attacks on then Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin that’s all gone. Another example of how the Democratic Party will permanently burn a principle for tactical advantage. I suspect the current situation is in no small part because they’re starting to run out and live on that formerly forrested but now empty plain.

Posted by aog22:52 on 17 January 2010 Comments (28) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

It’s a great name.

But I digress more than usual. A couple of things strike me about this Massachusett[e]s.

The first is the trend of the polls showing Brown continuing to pull ahead in the race. It’s commonly said that it’s actually a negative to have strongly positive poll numbers around because it decreases turnout through complacency. Reading reports from folks on the ground in the state, though, I think this time higher poll numbers for Brown will have the opposite effect, energizing his voters and depressing Coakley’s. I live in hope but not expectation that Brown’s lead will be enough.

Which brings me to my second point which is the wide spread acceptance of the fact that the Democratic Party and/or its allies will cheat enough to tip a close election. It’s not even debated, it’s simply presumed. Some even openly encourage it or admit it has been done to the candidate in past elections. Is there any point at which the Democratic Party’s growing open disdain for democracy will start to cost them among the voters?

Posted by aog22:49 on 17 January 2010 Comments (35) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Big Government is complaining about Media Matters complaining about limited press access for a Tea Party themed convention. Is that far enough inside?

Anyway, Media Matters is a flutter because, since ex-Governor Sarah Palin is a keynote speaker, Fox News will be allowed in but not other major media outlets. I think that’s funny because to me, the perfect answer would be “No major news media is allowed. I mean, weren’t we all told that Fox News is a not a real news organization? So what’s the problem?”.

Posted by aog17:14 on 14 January 2010 Comments (4) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Here is an issue for the 2010 and 2012 elections — the SEC has ruled that the records of the AIG bailout can be closed until 2018. $150 billion handed over to private entities and no member of the public is allowed to know to how and why.

This is how government intervention in the economy ends. Every time it’s a little more blatant, a little more for the private interests that have captured the interventionists appartchiks, until we get here when the regulators join in and the entire crew is able to loot the treasury right out in the open. When people ask me why I object to government intervention that seems like it should work, this is why. This is where it ends up. The only way to avoid it is to not start. At what point can we admit that as bad as doing nothing would have been, it would be as bad as what has and is happening?

P.S. In looking back on how we got to this particular situation, here’s an interesting take on ex-President Bush’s contribution. It’s a tale of a good man seduced by the destructive memes of the MAL.

Posted by aog16:58 on 13 January 2010 Comments (8) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Maybe it really is a small Ice Age. My inbox is currently being flooded with offers from extremely attractive women in Russia who desire nothing other than to please me while living in the USA. I would love to help them out but SWIPIAW says we can’t afford any right now.

Posted by aog10:52 on 13 January 2010 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Here is a nice but large graphic which illustrates the timeline of the warmenists.

Posted by aog10:10 on 13 January 2010 Comments (38) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Even though the bloom is fading on the cult of Barak Obama, even those who think they’re outside of it are caught up in it. This article in the Wall Street Journal is an archetype and I need to note it before it’s just a historical curiosity. The gist is pondering whether President Obama is a lasting phenomenon or a passing fancy. The fact that the author considers this a serious question is the first clue. A few quotes from the early paragraphs —

no figure has ever so thoroughly pulled toward himself the nation’s political energy

Has any president so engulfed American politics? He is everywhere. He is the first real king of all media. He makes himself the constant conversation, the national siren song. No one can stop listening to him, even if it kills them to hear it.

Nobody says “Barack Obama” anymore. He’s just “Obama.”

Uh, many of us can’t stop not listening to him. I have tried to sit through Obama speeches and have yet to manage to listen all the way through. As for being a single name, that’s clearly unprecedented by the likes of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, … The primary thing which is unprecedented for Obama is his public relations overuse of the word “unprecedented”.

Still, if Obama’s grinding collision with reality cuts down on the number of articles like this we should all be grateful.

Posted by aog08:24 on 13 January 2010 Comments (8) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

This is amusing

My spy passes along word that [Massachusetts AG Martha] Coakley herself fired up the crowd with this inspiring line: “If I don’t win, 2010 is going to be hell for Democrats . . . Every Democrat will have a competitive race.”

Oh noes! Not competitive elections! What is this nation coming to?

This fits in with the analysis from Hot Air

Consider this [Brown making a deal with the devil] and their Palin-baiting to be an official admission that they no longer believe that running on a standard liberal policy agenda can carry them over the finish line even in Massachusetts.

I do not expect Scott Brown to win the special senatorial election. Despite the putative tipping points and bad optics of Coakley fund raising, I just don’t see the registered Democratic Party rank and file in Massachusetts not voting her in to the office. Little to none of this will be reported locally, on the panic at the thought of a member of the GOP being elected to office. Let’s remember what this base has already supported via re-election of the perpetrators — the legislation to change how replacement Senators are selected in 2004, the change back in 2008, the flaunting of that law by the replacement Senator Kirk, and openly admitted delay if Brown wins to get the “correct” vote on health care nationalization. Not to mention that put same sex marriage on the ballot to which the legislators said “as if!”.

That said, Brown has accomplished an immense amount by getting within striking distance. Contra Coakley’s claim, I think it’s too late for her victory to stave off a wave of additional challenges to Democratic Party incumbents. Pace Hot Air if the Democratic Party and its allies have to dump well over a million dollars¹ in to the race in the last week in the deepest blue state of the union there are certainly even better opportunities for challengers elsewhere.

I made my donation to his campaign and I consider it money well spent even if he loses. If he gets within single digits I will consider it a very strong indicator of disintegrating Democratic Party fortunes. On the other hand, an astute political observer points out “The electorate trends Republican when it’s fat, dumb and happy, but turns to the Demcorats when it’s in trouble” and the American Street is certainly not fat, dumb, and happy these days.

P.S. Let us note, as Melissa Clouthier does that despite Brown holding a number of non-hard core conservative positions, he is very popular with the conservative and Tea Party base. This shows that despite claims arising after the NY-23 race the insurgents are able to calibrate their expectations to the local political environment.

¹ $685K + $576K + $288K = $1,549,000.