October 6, 2011 — Steven Hayward

The New Hockey Stick?

Featured image Everyone who follows the climate change controversy even casually will know about the “hockey stick” controversy.  Well, Nature magazine this week offers a new graph of interest: the rising trend of retractions of scientific research papers (see blow).  Lo and behold, it looks like a hockey stick!  (Heh.) The Nature story notes: [B]ehind at least half of them lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or »
October 6, 2011 — Steven Hayward

The Eternal Cluelessness of the Romney Mind

Featured imageMitt Romney has been looking steady and solid in recent weeks, especially compared to the rest of the field, which has stumbled (Perry’s debate performances) or bumbled (Bachman’s overkill of the vaccine issue).  This is, as I mentioned a few weeks back, to be expected of a first tier candidate on his second run for the office.  He’s seen big league pitching before, and is now comfortable at the plate, »
October 6, 2011 — Scott Johnson

This day in baseball history

Featured imageA long-time reader is following the 1961 World Series. He files this dispatch: On October 6, 1961, the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds prepared for Game 3 of a World Series that was tied at one game apiece. Many observers had expected a cake walk for the Yankees. They had, after all, won more than 67 percent of their regular season games, compared to 60 percent for the »
October 6, 2011 — Scott Johnson

A stray thought on Steve Jobs

Featured imageI learned from reading the Wall Street Journal obituary on Steve Jobs that he had been given up for adoption at birth. I didn’t know that. Jobs’s biological parents were not married at the time of his birth in 1955, though they subsequently married and divorced. According to one online profile of Jobs’s birth mother (Joanne Schieble Simpson), financial circumstances played a role in her giving her son up for »
October 5, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Steve Jobs, RIP

Featured imageThe Apple home page right now is exactly what you came to expect: clean, simple, neat—the minimalist style that made the Apple story and Apple products so compelling.  I’ve lost count of the number of Apples I’ve had, though I still have an original 1984 first-generation Mac that is signed in the inside of the case.  (And in fact I bought yet another one just this week; one of those »
October 5, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Desperate Democratic Demagoguery

Featured imageHarry Reid announced today that Senate Democrats are rewriting President Obama’s so-called jobs bill. They are replacing Obama’s revenue measures with a 5% surtax on taxable incomes exceeding $1 million. Hey, that’ll create a lot of jobs! Even the New York Times (!) can’t swallow it: Indeed, the Democratic proposal seems much more about politics than policy. Put aside for a moment that upper-income taxpayers are already paying far more »
October 5, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Suzymania: Two tix to first caller (We have a winner)

Featured imageWhen I learned that country star Suzy Bogguss would be performing at the State Theatre in beautiful downtown Zumbrota, Minnesota, this coming Friday evening, I immediately bought tickets. Zumbrota is only 50 miles south of the Twin Cities, the drive is pleasant, and Suzy is touring in support of The American Folk Songbook, her new recording. When Suzy previewed “Shenandoah” and a couple of other songs from the recording in »
October 5, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Zombies on Wall Street

Featured imageThe prominent author Edward Jay Epstein is a man of many interests, a few of which are represented in his new ebook, The Money Demons: True Fables of Wall Street. Ed has drawn from the book to explain “why businessmen wear black hats in the movies nowadays.” He writes: It is hardly surprising that pop culture protesters in zombie-masks are now intent on occupying Wall Street. For the past decade, »
October 4, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Nice Bank You Have Here…

Featured image…a shame if anything should happen to it! The Democrats took gangster government to a new level today with attacks on Bank of America by Dick Durbin and President Obama. The attacks arise out of the Durbin Amendment to Dodd-Frank, which, as we wrote here, directed the Fed to fix the fees which banks can charge for debit card transactions. The rate set by the Fed is inadequate and will »
October 4, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Bloomberg Whiffs, Part 2

Featured imageI wrote here and here about Bloomberg Markets’ hit piece on Koch Industries. Yesterday’s post focused on Bloomberg’s false claim that a European Koch subsidiary illegally sold products in Iran. This post will deal with the second major theme of Bloomberg’s article, an incident in 2008 in which Koch learned that a French subsidiary had made improper payments to officials and others in support of sales. Bloomberg begins its piece »
October 5, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Is CBS News Covering Up Fast and Furious for White House?

Featured imageUntil now, some of the best reporting on Fast and Furious has come from Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News. As we noted yesterday, Attkisson told Laura Ingraham that her reporting has earned the White House’s anger: Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you? Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed »
October 5, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Solyndra II, and More Green Jobs Failure

Featured imageEmails released by a Congressional committee show, almost unbelievably, that the Obama administration was poised to lend Solyndra another $469 million loan during the summer of 2010, even as auditors “warned the company was in danger of closing due to its rapidly mounting debts and expenses.” Analysts in the Office of Management and Budget greeted the proposal for a second loan with gallows humor. One wrote in an email: Possible »
October 5, 2011 — Steven Hayward

More Carbon Offset Epic Fail: From Farce to Homicide

Featured imageLast week I posted here a notice about a Nature magazine article exposing how the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM)—a prototype for a global cap and trade system for greenhouse gases—was “basically a farce.”  This week brings news that CDM activities have graduated from farce to homicide.  From a European report: The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in »
October 4, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Reporters: How Reasonable Can They Get?

Featured imageThis almost made me laugh out loud: via Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard, reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, who is covering the Fast and Furious scandal, is being screamed at by the White House because she isn’t helping to cover it up. Attkisson was interviewed on Laura Ingraham’s radio show: Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you? Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at »
October 4, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Justice Stevens: Good Riddance

Featured imageI think it was George Will who noted back in the 1980s that Republican presidents have been especially incompetent at appointing Supreme Court justices, such as William Brennan, Earl Warren, Harry Blackmun, and David Souter, but John Paul Stevens (appointed by Gerald Ford) is clearly in the running for the bottom rung of the ladder. His retirement was a thing much to be welcomed, even if it meant being replaced »