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When Will Microsoft Word Stop Making Obama Into Osama?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2009 Comment (6)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
By the way, when is Microsoft Word going to stop offering autocorrecting for Barack and Obama? They're pretty commonly in use these days. The number one choice for Barack is Barrack and the number one choice for Obama is—get this—Osama. Or am I just using a too-old version of Word?
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Minnesota Voters Are Split on Whether to Redo the Coleman-Franken Senate Election
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (24)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
According to Scott Rasmussen, Minnesota voters tend to believe Al Franken will be elected to the Senate, but are split evenly on whether there should be a rerun election.
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Detroit's Racial Intolerance: John Conyers' Wife Banishes White Witnesses
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (18)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, presides over a hearing where white witnesses are advised to leave the room. Congressman Conyers joined the Judiciary Committee in 1965, when the Chairman was Emanuel Celler and the ranking was Republican William McCulloch, co-sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What would they have thought of this? As a nation, we have become more tolerant and inclusive in the years since 1965. Detroit, alas, seems to have moved in the opposite direction.
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Obama's Dangerous Appointment to the National Intelligence Council
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Good column by Rich Lowry on the execrable Chas Freeman appointment to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Lowry aptly notes, "Freeman was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative diplomatic posting in the world because the ambassadors usually end up in the employ of the Saudis after leaving public service." Usually, but not always. It's worth taking a moment to remember the late Hume Horan, who served as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia but afterwards avoided lucrative employment by the Saudis and was recalled at the insistence of King Fahd. Here is a remembrance published by the Middle East Policy Council, together with some of Horan's writings. Here is another from the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs. Here is his obituary in the Washington Post. By all accounts, a remarkable man. And a reminder to those of us inclined to disparage the Foreign Service, that it contains some remarkable people.
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Obama's Radical Scheme Puts Country At Risk While Financial System Collapses
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (16)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Obama's radicalism is the theme of Stuart Taylor, mild-mannered centrist. Great quote: "The house is burning down. This is no time to water the grass." Charles Krauthammer makes the same point at greater length:
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The Upscale Party: Obama's Budget Gives Republicans a Shot With Wealthy Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook March 5, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In National Review Online Ramesh Ponnuru and Reihan Salam take issue with me very politely (they call me a "distinguished political journalist") on whether the Republicans should go upscale or downscale. I say (tentatively) upscale, they say (with intelligent qualifications) downscale. It's a thoughtful article, and one worth pondering for a long time. Let me indicate where I agree and disagree.
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Giving Hope and Change A Historical Context
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (6)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Democratic party veteran and wise man Ted Van Dyk provides some useful historic context about the Obama budget, and urges caution as well. His memoir Heroes, Hacks and Fools is well worth reading; I've blogged about it before (can't find link).
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Colleges Shouldn't Replace Military History With Women's Studies, Crocheting
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's a fascinating disconnect between the history that literate people want to read and the history that academics (by no means all of them literate) want to teach. One example is the replacement of scholars of the colonial and founding period by those into more fashionable pursuits. Another is the replacement of military historians—whose subject matter is of such great interest to literate readers—with academics into women's studies, or crocheting or the like.
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Corporations Are Already Gaming the Carbon Cap-and-Trade System
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This article on the problems in Europe's carbon cap-and-trade system is instructive. Carbon prices have slumped because of decreased economic demand. Obama budget $643 billion in cap-and-trade revenues, but there is no assurance that the money will be coming in. And like progressive taxes, carbon revenues tend to be volatile and ultra-responsive to the economic cycle, which is to say they slump sharply just when government needs revenue for countercyclical spending programs. Note also that Europe's original system was poorly designed. There's a reason for that. It's hard to design a cap-and-trade system that will be fair and work. And potential market participants are going to work very hard to set terms and conditions which will allow them to game the system to maximum advantage. Corporations in this country are already busy doing this.
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The Worst Intersections in the United States Are in New York, Chicago and LA
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
What are America's 100 worst intersections? Tyler Cowen at www.marginalrevolution.com points me here. Almost all of them—87 out of 100—are in the extended New York, Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Exceptions: San Francisco CA (nos. 2, 46, 49, 58, 64), New Haven CT (nos. 22, 51), Honolulu HI (no. 55), Austin TX (nos. 71, 74, 87, 92), Dallas TX (no. 93). After consulting my road atlas and my memory I find, with grim satisfaction, that I have driven through, around, under or over every single one of these 100 intersections. I note with special pleasure no. 100, which is the I-405 exit onto La Tijera Boulevard, a great exit for getting your rental car back to the lot in time for your plane out of LAX. I remember one time leaving the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard just east of La Cienaga, and barreling down La Cienaga, then to 405 and La Tijera, and getting to the rental car lot in just 23 minutes, in time to make my morning flight out of LAX. How many weeks (months?) of my life did I give up in that adrenalin rush to get to the airport in time?
