Clipmarks | merrie's clips

Mark Steyn: Grandma Got Over At The Press Club

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:39:41 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: as the real deal.

With less impressionable types, such as voters, Senator Obama is having a tougher time. The Philly speech is emblematic of his most pressing problem: the gap — indeed, full-sized canyon — that’s opening up between the rhetorical magic and the reality. That’s
the difference between a simulacrum and a genuinely great speech. The gaseous platitudes of hope and change and unity no longer seem to fit the choices of Obama’s adult life. Oddly enough, the shrewdest appraisal of the Senator’s speechifying “magic” came from Jeremiah Wright himself. “He’s a politician,” said the Reverend. “He says what he has to say as a politician… He does what politicians do.”

The notion that the Amazing Obama might be just another politician doing what politicians do seems to have affronted the senator more than any of the stuff about America being no different from al-Qaeda and the government inventing AIDs to kill black people.

Clip Source: article.nationalreview.com

Four score and seven years ago… No, wait, my mistake. Two score and seven or eight days ago, Barack Obama gave the greatest speech since the Gettysburg Address, or FDR’s First Inaugural, or JFK’s religion speech, or (if like Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books, you find those comparisons drearily obvious) Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech of 1860. And, of course, the Senator’s speech does share one quality with Cooper Union, Gettysburg, the FDR Inaugural, Henry V at Agincourt, Socrates’s Apology, etc: It’s history. He said, apropos the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, that “I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” But last week he did disown him. So, great-speech-wise, it’s a bit like Churchill promising to fight them on the beaches and never surrender, and then surrendering a month and a half later, and on a beach he decided not to fight on.

It was never a great speech. It was a simulacrum of a great speech written to flatter gullible pundits into hailing it

Tags: obama, philadelphia speech, uniter

A PICTORIAL EXPLANATION OF HIGH GASOLINE PRICES

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:06:02 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Real Energy Independence You Can Do The Math

Clip Source: astuteblogger.blogspot.com

Tags: gasoline, prices, exploration, development

Why Oprah Winfrey Left Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Church

Mon, 05 May 2008 03:32:33 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Of course, Hamas does the same thing, and for the same reason - to cultivate an air of legitimacy while raising a crop of hatred.

How admirable that concern for her money-making ambition led Oprah to leave Wright's hateful pulpit. How sad that Obama didn't recognize the danger to his political ambition.

What a tragedy that neither Oprah nor Barack could recognize the destructive, bitter hatefulness that permeates this so-called house of God. Or just didn't care beyond appearances.

Why Oprah Left Wright's Church

Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons. Winfrey cited her fatigue with organized religion and a desire to be involved with a more inclusive ministry.

Clip Source: mypetjawa.mu.nu

According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America's favorite daytime talk-show host. "Oprah is a businesswoman, first and foremost," said one longtime friend

"She's always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn't be smart. She's been around black churches all her life, so Reverend Wright's anger-filled message didn't surprise her. But it just wasn't what she was looking for in a church." Oprah's decision to distance herself came as a surprise to Wright, who told Christianity Today in 2002 that when he would "run into her socially … she would say, 'Here's my pastor!'

Obama joined the church partially to discover his racial identity, which was not a consideration for Oprah, who was "secure in her blackness." Both Obama and Winfrey were impressed with the church's outreach programs for the poor.

Tags: tucc, oprah winfrey, barack obama, rev wright

Congress Considers Cellulose Ethanol

Sun, 04 May 2008 23:15:35 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: In the Cato-at-Liberty blog post "Wishful Thinking on Cellulosic Ethanol," Indur Goklany, author of the Cato book The Improving State of the World, writes: "If cellulosic ethanol proves to be as profitable as its backers hope, farmers will divert even more land and water to producing the cellulose instead of food. All this means we'll be more or less back to where we were. Food will once again be competing with fuel. And land and water will be diverted from the rest of nature to meet the human demand for fuel.

Clip Source: www.cato.org

"America's love affair with corn-based ethanol is cooling -- at least in Washington," The Christian Science Monitor reports. "Some legislators blame the rising use of corn as a biofuel as a key factor behind high food prices. Others want to freeze the federal mandate on biofuels production at current levels, reversing legislation passed just a few months ago that increases it through 2022. Still others are pushing to shift tax incentives away from corn-based to cellulose-based ethanol in the nearly completed farm bill."

"Does this mean that biomass -- and farmers -- should play no role in helping us meet our energy needs? Not necessarily. If farmers can profitably grow fuel rather than food through their own efforts, so be it. But we shouldn't favor growing one over the other either through subsidies or indirectly through government mandates for so-called renewable fuels."

Tags: ethanol, congress, food v fuel, tax incentives, corn, cellulose

The Skycar Will Be Operated Completely By Computer And Guided By GPS

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:32:42 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The four-seat Skycar is powered by eight rotary engines that are housed inside four metal housings, called nacelles, on the side of the vehicle. There are two engines in each nacelle so that if one of the engines in one of the nacelle fails, the other engine can sustain flight. The engines lift the craft with 720 horsepower, and then thrust the craft forward. The Wankel engine replaces pistons of a conventional engine with a single triangular rotor spinning inside an oval-shaped chamber, which creates compression and expansion as the rotor turns. There are three combustion chambers in the Wankel, with a crankshaft between them.

To make the Skycar safe and available to the general public, it will be completely controlled by computers using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, which Moller calls a fly-by-wire system. In case of an accident, the vehicle will release a parachute and airbags, internally and externally, to cushion the impact of the crash.

Clip Source: travel.howstuffworks.com

Paul Moller has spent 40 years and millions of dollars developing his Skycar. He is now very close to developing the first mass-marketed flying car. In 1965, he demonstrated his first attempt, the XM-2, which hovered off the ground but didn't go anywhere. In 1989, Moller unveiled the M200X, which has now flown 200 flights and can go as high as 50 feet (15.24 meters).

Moller's latest design, the Skycar M400, is designed to take off and land vertically, like a Harrier Jet, in small spaces. It can reach speeds of 400 mph (644 kph), but will cruise at around 350 mph (563 kph), and it has a range of 900 miles (1449 km). Gasoline, diesel, alcohol, kerosene and propane can be used to fuel the Skycar, and its fuel mileage will be comparable to that of a medium-sized car, getting 20 miles (32.2 km) to the gallon. The initial cost of a Skycar will be about $1 million, but once it begins to be mass produced that price could come down to as low as $60,000.

Tags: skycar, 720 hp, wankel engine, gps, parachute, internal and external airbags

Is Bernanke Worse Than Greenspan?

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:41:01 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: "right" interest rate, which is a fool's errand. When he'd pick a rate that was too wrong, we'd wind up with a misallocation of capital, and he would come back and try to rescue it with more easy money. There's lots of evidence of his willingness to cut rates but reticence to take back those cuts. The consequence was an epic stock bubble. When that burst, it took 13 rate cuts and three tax cuts to get us going again [and produced] a bigger housing bubble that's more dangerous.

So how do you square criticism of Greenspan with unprecedented economic growth during his tenure?
You have to weigh the gains with the fallout. If you're taking steroids and do really well, but three years later you get cancer, was it worth it? That's why in the stock mania, I said it would lead to problems, and people laughed at me before the Nasdaq dropped 70 percent.
It's the same in the housing bubble. If we are a year from now mired in the worst recession of the last 30 to 40 years, will it have........

Clip Source: www.usnews.com

Alan Greenspan was dubbed history's greatest Federal Reserve chairman upon his retirement in 2006, but the housing bust is prompting renewed criticism of his laissez-faire brand of monetary policy. Hedge fund manager William Fleckenstein is among the loudest critics. Fleckenstein is the author of Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve. He views Greenspan's legacy as a litany of too-low-for-too-long interest rates that created the dot-com and housing bubbles. And he doesn't think current Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is much of an improvement. Fleckenstein spoke with U.S. News. Excerpts:

Do you blame Alan Greenspan for the current housing and credit crisis?

Yes. The madness of crowds plays a role in every bubble. The people aren't blameless. But when you give somebody the power to print an unlimited amount of credit, [you expect] they will be cautious as to catastrophic negative ramifications.

In Greenspan's case, his whole legacy is one of attempting to pick the

Tags: bernanke, greenspan, federal reserve chairman, interest rates, dot-com and houseing bubbles

Illegal Aliens Demand Their 'Rights' And 'Reforms'

Sun, 04 May 2008 06:10:42 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: People come into this country illegally, and then "demand" citizenship and an end to enforcing the laws that are on the books to stop illegal activity?

The whole use of the phrase "immigrated to" has been completely twisted by the liberal press. Immigrants are people who come to this country legally and work to become part of the American fabric. They are not people who sneak across the border, use fake Social Security cards, and wave signs of their home countries during marches.

A researcher for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. ''You never know when you're going to be stopped by Border Patrol and now the police",said Veranes.

Why are people surprised when a person who comes to this country illegally is deported? The outrage! I'm sure jewelry thieves don't take to the streets and start demanding their rights. How dare the authorities take those diamond rings from them?

Clip Source: www.gopusa.com

I had the misfortune of reading the AP story on the May Day marches by thousands of illegal aliens who are demanding their "rights." Not only is the notion of lawbreakers taking to the streets to demand legal benefits completely outrageous, but the way the "news" story is worded is insane. When people break the law, there should be consequences. We should not close down streets in order for them to "show unity." What is going on here?!?! If you go by the AP's story, it's like there is no such thing as an "illegal" alien.

Of course, the AP refers to this person as an "undocumented factory worker." Give me a break! Undocumented? You mean the employer was having a bad day and lost Mr. Molina's paperwork? The person is an ILLEGAL ALIEN, and is not only being allowed to stay in the country, but is being interviewed about it.

Immigration laws must be enforced. America welcomes more legal immigrants than any other country in the entire world. We need to continue to do it the right way!

Tags: may day marches, illegal aliens, legal benefits