(tied) Lonely Conservative and That Mr. G Guy (15)
Da Tech Guy (8)
Little Miss Attila (7)
(tied) Maggie’s Notebook, Pirate’s Cove, and POWIP (6)
Republican Redefined (5)
Thanks to all for linking, and especially to those Blogspot bloggers who made the extra effort to mail in their linkagery. You, too, can be numbered among the worthy! Send an e-mail to Wombat-socho with “FMJRA” or “Shameless Blogwhoring” in the subject line by April 16 and be included in next week’s roundup!
I suppose he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for this sort of behavior:
I’m generally in the ‘fan’ column where Crowder is concerned. Furthermore, I shouldn’t get too judgmental before understanding the context. And I’ve taken any number of affectionate swipes at Stacy McCain here in the blog. Keeps the place lively.
Yet general denigrations of manhood are clearly in the Bridge Too Far category. This sort of attack is usually delivered by a beta male in a vain attempt to impress some radical feminist. Typically, the beta male hopes that cowering in the whipped puppy fashion will excite some maternal instinct within my two dimensional radical feminist stereotype, and that she will clutch him to her radical bosom.
I’ve met Crowder, and I wouldn’t accuse him of being a beta male at all. Which makes this behavior all the more curious.
Mashable has a nifty graphic showing major space vehicles over the last 50 years.
It was 50 years ago when people first flew in space. Here’s an infographic that shows you the spacecraft humans have flown to reach that great void over the past half-century.
With just two flights of the space shuttle left, what’s next? You can see Richard Branson‘s SpaceShipOne in the infographic, giving us a look forward at what’s waiting in the wings — vessels that might find a different financial route to space, relying on private funding rather than governmental largess.
All is not lost, though, for the U.S. manned space program. Even though NASA‘s Ares launch vehicles and their associated Constellation program were canceled because of budget constraints, NASA selected SpaceX and its Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft for the space agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.
Space is one of the areas where having the federal government scoop up cash from everyone makes some sense. It’s important from a national defense standpoint, which is a proper federal task. It also drives technical innovation, for example, integrated circuits. This is the law of unintended consequences playing out in a good way.
I was born in the year that Niel Armstrong put the first human print on the moon. I hope that the Apollo program does not prove to have been the peak of U.S. space endeavor. However, the federal government has looked down to the individual on the ground, through social programs, rather than up. Sure, they’ve secured votes now, at the expense of the frontier above.
A big chunk of the national come-to-Beavis meeting over the next 18 months will have to focus on what level of government owns what tasks. Why Planned Parenthood is a federal task eludes me. If they screwed up and left me in charge, PP would be an individual state task, and those resources would go to NASA.
Icelandic banks like Icesave were wrecked in the 2008 economic fracas. The Dutch and the Brits had dropped $5 billion into Icesave, which also died. So the British and Dutch governments bailed out their citizens, and then tried to get the government of Iceland to cut a deal with the governments to repay them.
And now, for a stunning second time:
Voters in Iceland have rejected a government-approved deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands $5 billion for their citizens’ deposits in the failed online bank Icesave, referendum results showed Sunday.
The result complicates Iceland’s recovery from its 2008 economic collapse.
With about 90 percent of the votes counted, the “no” side had 59.1 percent of the votes and the “yes” side 40.9 percent.
It’s as if people somehow resent having their ruling class overlords tell them to accept a haircut. Bankers have run amok, hurting individual citizens, and now we have governments playing musical chairs as they try to find a group of slow-moving citizens to target with the pain.
One thing the British could do is use the HMS Ark Royal, which has been decommissioned but apparently not yet sold, to put pressure on Iceland. Just give it enough maintenance and fuel to be seaworthy, and start having it buzz Icelandic fishing fleets at speed, until the Icelanders relent and pay up the money. Make it the most polite form of extortion ever. “Sorry, but we fear we must pester you until you pony up.”
Seriously, I would like to know why countries can’t support more and smaller banks and spread risk across more institutions. In the US case, across the other 49 states beside North Dakota that lack a state bank. Then, when the fertilizer hits the air circulator, which it will, the state can manage the problem at a lower level. A bad bank can be let die. Sell the thing off. Purge the banker pool of fools. Don’t just let everything fail upward, or internationally. Make the bankers take the haircut, and quit throwing innocent taxpayers under the bus.
The game of musical risk chairs will be helped by stopping the music sooner, rather than later.
Ajdabiyah had been the launch point for insurgents during a week-long fight for the oil port of Brega further west and its fall would be a serious loss.
To say that Gaddafi’s capture of Ajdabiya “would be a serious loss” is an understatement: Losing the town would be a disaster for the rebels, who have already been forced to retreat more than 200 miles eastward since March 28, when their advance threatened Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. As the Associated Press says, if the rebels lose Ajdabiya, “the way is open for a siege of Benghazi.”
What I cannot understand is how Qaddafi’s troops were able to advance from Brega — across 50 miles of open highway in the desert — if NATO’s air forces were on the job. While it is reported that NATO jets knocked out several of Qaddafi’s tanks near Ajdabiya, a vigilant air patrol would have destroyed anything moving up the coast out of Brega. Yet now we have reports of Qaddafi’s artillery pounding Ajdabiya?
NATO has screwed the pooch. Here’s an al-Jazeera video report:
Like I said, look at the map: Two weeks ago, on March 27, the rebels were advancing in a major offensive, pushing west to capture the oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf, with Gaddafi’s troops reported abandoning artillery and fleeing in civilian vehicles. By March 28, the rebels were “jubilant” as they advanced toward Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown. By March 29, however, the rebels retreated in a “panicked scramble,” with fighting reported in Bin Jawwad and artillery fire audible in Ras Lanuf. By March 30, Gaddafi’s forces had retaken Brega “forcing rebel fighters into a chaotic retreat.”
It was last Sunday, April 3, that we saw the video of Geraldo Rivera under fire as rebels were fighting to re-take Brega. Now, a week later, the Gaddafi troops are reportedly closing in on Ajdabiya, where the rebels are trying desperately to hold onto their forward base. From Bin Jawwad to Brega is about 115 miles, and Gaddafi’s forces advanced that far in less than two days. After 10 days of fighting around Brega, Gaddafi’s forces have now apparently pushed another 50 miles to Ajdabiya.
It’s only 100 miles from Ajdabiya to the rebel capital at Benghazi, and they’ve already been pushed back more than 200 miles in two weeks. If another one of those “panicked scramble”/”chaotic retreat” scenarios develops for the rebels, Gaddafi could retake Benghazi within a week.
UPDATE: Mark Steyn checks in on Libya: “You remember, it was in all the papers for a couple of days. So I guess things have gone quiet because it’s all wrapped up now?” Or not, as Professor Reynolds observes: “War seldom rewards half measures.”
There was just now a Fox New report from Benghazi that seemed strangely optimistic, but I’m checking other reports online now and it looks like a rebel collapse may be underway at Ajdabiya.
The assault was more determined and organized than the ambushes and exchanges of rocket and artillery fire of recent days. Barrage after barrage of incoming fire thudded and exploded within the city, and loyalist troops advanced behind it. . . .
Many of the rebels fled once again, streaming north up toward Benghazi, the rebel capital, their horns blaring. One rebel fighter shouted at vehicles as they passed: “Qaddafi’s forces are coming! Go! Go! Go!” . . .
As the gun battle raged, the main rebel force rallied about 10 miles north of Ajdabiya.
Still checking reports of today’s fighting. Remember that there may be a gap of several hours between the time something happens in Libya and the time reporters there can get it on the Web. It’s not like they can just pop into a Starbucks, open their laptops and live-blog the war.
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military forces appeared to falter on Sunday in a second day of assault against the rebel city of Ajdabiya, as opposition fighters aided by heavy NATO airstrikes retook positions through much of the city.
Occasional skirmishes between small units within the city on Sunday morning appeared to be dying out. And other than an apparent mortar attack against a rebel checkpoint, the loyalists’ artillery and rocket batteries were mostly silent by the afternoon . . .
It was a sharp turnabout from the fighting on Saturday, when heavy artillery barrages sent rebel forces running several times through the day and caused heavy damage here. [Qaddafi’s] forces were able to infiltrate the city, fighting gun battles in the city center against local rebels who had stayed to defend their homes. But by Sunday, that threat appeared to have passed. . . .
By 4 p.m., a long rebel column of pickup trucks passed through the city’s main street, firing their weapons in the air in celebration.
The rebels’ gains were at least in part because of heavy NATO airstrikes throughout the morning and afternoon outside Ajdabiya . . .
OK, 4 p.m. Libya time was three hours ago (it’s now 1 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. in Libya), and the fact that Chivers was still able to file stories under an Ajdabiya dateline suggests that Qaddafi’s troops have been pushed back.
Muammar Gaddafi’s forces continued to fight their way toward Benghazi . . . Rebel defences around Ajdabiya appeared to be failing as Gaddafi’s soldiers broke into the heart of the strategic town, 90 miles from Benghazi, and engaged in running street battles after again outmanoeuvring the revolutionaries. . . . Shelling around the southern entrance to Ajdabiya continued, with loud explosions heard and thick black smoke rising over parts of the town.
Much of Ajdabiya was deserted after civilians fled amid the prospect of Gaddafi’s troops taking the town for the second time in as many weeks. . . . “Gaddafi’s military is in the town,” said Saleh Mufta, a 25-year-old who was a science student before becoming an armed rebel.
“There’s been a lot of shooting. Gaddafi has copied our techniques. He is not using so many tanks now after the air strikes. His men are in pickups. They move very fast. We don’t know where they are. They just pop up.” . . .
Asked what he thought the government army’s intent was, Mufta said: “They don’t want Ajdabiya. They want the road to Benghazi. They want Benghazi.”
Nato faces humiliation if Gaddafi’s army is able to force its way through Ajdabiya again to threaten Benghazi . . .
Other than a line of artillery about 15 miles from the city, rebel defences around Benghazi are little in evidence.
Comparing these two accounts, from Chivers and McGreal, you see how hard it is to tell what the military situation is now.
Saleh Mufta’s explanation that the Qaddafi troops are traveling in pickup trucks, and just “pop up” to attack the rebels, explains a lot of the confusion. In the span of an hour, a pickup truck carrying five or six men with AK-47s and mortars could easily move 30 or 40 miles cross-country in the desert. Mufta’s assertion that truckloads of these light forces are attempting to cut off the road from Ajdabiya to Benghazi explains why the rebels are so prone to panic: Without proper communications, the rebels currently fighting in Ajdabiya might get cut off by an attack on the Benghazi road many miles to the east. And they wouldn’t know they were cut off until it was already too late to retreat.
UPDATE V: Here is a CBS/Washington Post video report (you’ll have to watch a 30-second commercial):
The BBC reporter is Orla Guerin, who has one of those Gaelic-inflected accents that Americans seldom hear except on NPR programs about Irish folk music.
UPDATE VII: Ed Morrissey says, “It doesn’t take a Sir Bernard Law Montgomery to read the map. Ajdabiya is the key to Benghazi and Tobruk. . . . How badly is it going? Gaddafi felt sanguine enough to make a public appearance, making sure that the media noted today’s date on the school’s whiteboard.”
Diplomats are now trying to negotiate a ceasefire in Libya, which suggests that “kinetic military action” has become a synonym for “getting our butts kicked by Qaddafi.”
There is good reason to think that Boehner will be a much more formidable opponent for Obama than Gingrich was for Clinton.
So why were Reid and Obama so eager to celebrate Boehner’s compromise with his conservative members? The Democrats believe it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost. But they’re sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later.
Yeah, don’t let the ocular sprinkler system fool you: Boehner would not have made it where he is without some savvy. Even Princess Pelosi has her low animal cunning.
Look at the tell: “it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost“. Hey, Ezra: Socialism is an utter, abject, systemic, historical failure. Utopia is simply not for sale at any price. If your ideas are fundamentally baked, then no amount of botox and makeup are going to bring more than a transient, superficial appearance of success. If you want to avoid losing, focus the fundamentals of winning. Crikey.
“. . .opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile.”
So we’ve paused in the drinking long enough to feel the first pang of the hangover to come. Now, we can reach for more tequila, or commence hydrating. “Claiming political victory now” is reaching for the former. And it’s not about “further policy defeats later“, Ezra: we’re talking about managing economic calamity. You seem stuck in theater mode, where it’s all about costumes, lighting, and dialogue. There is no spinning reality, Klein. Economic gravity is bringing the social welfare state crashing down, in the U.S. and in Europe.
The chief application of your writing seems to be a tool for rube identification. None of the people who have a clue, e.g. Sowell and Hanson, take you seriously. But keep paying attention. With age and sobriety, a clue may find you.
It makes sense to scale food to some hand unit of measure. Who wants to fret calories and grams and whatnot?
Via the Weekday Vegetarian, which I swear my wife shared with me in the Google Reader, as I would never be caught with my masculinity so impaired as to subscribe directly, we have:
Ms. Meyer took three restaurant meals and analyzed them, and then determined how many bacon slices she would have had to eat to arrive at the same caloric count and amount of fat. Bear in mind that the average person requires about 2000 calories a day and should limit their saturated fat to 16 grams per day.
A Chicago deep dish pizza came in at 770 calories with 18 grams of fat. She could have eaten 18 strips of bacon for the same amount. A plate of ribs had a whopping 1750 calories with 29 grams of fat. That’s almost all of your caloric allotment for the entire day, and almost twice the amount of saturated fat you should have. You would get the same amount with 26 slices of bacon. A chicken and shrimp carbonara from The Olive Garden clocked in at 1440 calories with a shocking 38 grams of saturated fat. You’d have to eat 35 slices of bacon to accomplish that, but of course, you never would. It’s like figuring out how much sugar you are ingesting when you drink a regular soda. You’d never sit down and eat the equivalent amount of sugar out of a bowl.
That’s still a lot of detail. However, the entire discussion has been broken down to a simple chart by the excellent xkcd:
Also: bacon cologne, for when you haven’t time to fry up a pound and just wear it for her.
