Faulty Design Rather than Insufficient Taxes?

Faulty Design Led to Minnesota Bridge Collapse, Inquiry Finds - New York Times

“This is not a bridge-inspection thing,” said one investigator, “It’s calculating loads and looking at designs.” The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the investigators’ findings before the announcement Tuesday.

Wow, I'm shocked and surprised, the bridge fell due to a design error in 1967 rather than "Government on the cheap" by evil Republicans. I suppose that we can expect apologies from Amy Klobochar who thought it fell because of "Bush and Iraq". Would that be a "lie" in that from a Democrat POV if what you think is the cause doesn't prove true it means you lied? I mean, I don't think that anyone even told her that her insight into Iraq causing the bridge to fall was a "slam dunk".

How about Nick Coleman, he is just a media guy, surely HE will apologize? He thought it fell because of "insufficient taxes" and "wing-nuts in coonskin caps". You see, the thing about liberals is that they are HELPFUL, they say things that point the way to "a better world", they are pretty much immune to doing any "partisan sniping".

We poor scientific and engineering types are forced to deal in measures like gusset plate thickness, shear strength and load factors. Simple boring stuff hardly worth the notice of the kinds of genius of Nick and Amy. We bow in awe of the kind of brilliance that can immediately see the benefits of pointing at "Iraq" or "low taxes" as proximate causes for a bridge falling. I'm sure in some metaphysical sense they are "right" -- on the same plane as the CBS Bush National Guard memos. "Truth" is so much more "fluid" when it crosses a liberals lips.

It is clear our country will really move forward with more insightful leadership like that.

Letters to NYT Editor on Bill Kristol

Power Line: Letters to the public editor

700 to 1 Times readers taking the time to write a letter against having ONE only somewhat conservative voice on the NYT editorial staff? How pure has the left really gotten?

The points here are very well taken. "liberal" in this country of course has meant the OPPOSITE of "liberal" since FDR. It means "fundamentalist anti", where "anti" is pretty much business, religion, family, actual freedom of speech, values, etc. It isn't surprising that readers steeped in hearing only one view and having it labeled "the truth" would find it odd that there actually exists a diversity of ideas.

Power Line: Minnesota's angry humorist strikes again

Power Line: Minnesota's angry humorist strikes again:

Good old Garrison, his neighbors are so bad and he is so good. The idea of "Private Property" or just "obeying zoning laws" isn't enough for royalty like him, he must be consulted. I imagine that when you are processing as much air from temperate to HOT, you need a lot of it, so any "blocking" could be fatal.

Good thing he isn't my neighbor, I don't think I'd be rushing back from many vacations to try to placate an ego of that massive size.

Now who is it that thinks that it is only Corporate CEOs and Athletes that have outsized egos? The condition is very human, and we ALL fall into that case from time to time, the only issue is one of recognition (and visibility).

Hillary Responsible for Success in Iraq?

Power Line: Suspending disbelief...to take credit

The following from a soldier back from Iraq that seems to question if Hillary ought to be able to take credit for 2007 progress in Iraq. I wonder why the MSM doesn't find the assertion that progress in Iraq is due to promises of future policies to be questionable? Oh, that's right, it is HILLARY making them. The progress certainly CAN'T be due to BUSH policies and the efforts of American servicemen on the ground!

Must be nice to be a Democrat that can predict that the Surge will be a failure, call the war "already lost", and call our General in charge a liar-only to go ahead and take credit for success!

Having just gotten back from Iraq about a month ago, I'm stunned to see Hillary Clinton taking credit for the progress (political and otherwise) going on in Iraq. While she was jetting around the country, raising money for her personal political ambitions, I was riding around the streets of Iraq, fighting terrorists and raising the hopes of people I don't even know. For Clinton to suggest that her promises of future policies had more effect on the improvements in Iraq than even ONE of our soldiers is disgraceful and insulting. I will not allow her to take credit for the results of our hard work, especially when she opposed the policy to give us the help we needed ( i.e., the surge).

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Empowered Bald Guy

Somebody sent me an IM at work to inform me that we now had a "Diversity Group" for MEN! I guess we are now at least nearly as important as Women, Blacks, Gays, Americans, Indians, Hispanics, Chinese, People from Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Deaf People, Blind People, etc.

They wanted to know if I felt "empowered".

I responded that "I'm only going to feel empowered when somebody loses their job for making a bald joke".

Were I serious, that would be what I call "sick".

The Joy of the Pack

Everything you really need to understand about life can be explained by either being a Christian or a Packer fan. Being a Packer fan is a more select group and there are less people to talk to about "The Way", so I'll fill you in there.

First of all, you have to believe in the relevance of historical fact and tradition. Bears fans are the only other football fans that come close to understanding this, although it is a common thing in baseball. If one wasn't there "at the creation", then the world of the NFL has much less meaning. We share a bond with Bears fans that Vikings fans will never know. History has meaning.

Of equal importance is the reality of faith, hope and devotion. How dark those years in the wilderness of 70's and the 80's were, but for the vast majority of Packer Fans the faith never wavered. We of course suffered the constant attacks from Viking fans, and yes of course the Bears fans as well. Even though the Bears have been around a long time so at least understand the context, one has to remember that Lucifer has been around a long time as well. Longevity and goodness are not the same thing.

Packer fans are known as "The Faithful" for good reason. We know we will always be Packer fans, independent of the yearly results. Being a fan of the Pack involves transcendence. It means you have accepted a higher calling, the calling that the NFL has chose to honor for all time by naming the Super Bowl Trophy as "The Lombardi Trophy". While it is always gratifying to have the validity of transcendence recognized, the bottom line is that it's meaning exists beyond mere earthly recognition.

We know that our ultimate reward is on that Frozen Tundra in the sky where St Vincent presides over perpetual winning seasons, but games like Sunday provide those glimpses of paradise that are great blessings on the walk of faith. Much like life, there are those moments when you are down 14-0, but with faith, hope and devotion, those moments can become 42-20 victories in the pure white of sacred Lambeau snow. Such is the joy of being a Packer Fan.

Will we win Sunday? Unlike Vikings fans of the Atlanta NFC Championship era, we will not be counting on it until the results are written in the book of NFL history, but as always, we are optimistic. A Super Bowl as underdogs against the mighty Patriots would be the fitting end to a storybook season for the Old Pro Favre and his young team. Green Bay is the youngest team in the NFL, and without Favre they would be so young they wouldn't be allowed to play.

We will remain thankful for each and every contest added to the storehouse of memories that are what it means to be part of the heritage of Green Bay Greatness. Some are wins and some are losses, but all involve the Packers, so they are memories to be cherished.

Democrat's Fairy Tale

The Democrats’ Fairy Tale - New York Times

Yesterday, on “Meet the Press,” Hillary Clinton claimed that the Iraqis are changing their ways in part because of the Democratic candidates’ “commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009.” So the Democratic Party, having proclaimed that the war is lost and having sought to withdraw U.S. troops, deserves credit for any progress that may have been achieved in Iraq.

That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W.
Bush. The horror!

Yup, Everything good is due to Democrats and everything bad is due to Republicans. One wouldn't really mind Democrats thinking that, it is the MSM thinking it that gets a bit dreary. The other line from this that bears repeating is:

Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?

No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge— let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq. When asked recently whether she stood behind her “willing suspension of disbelief” insult to General Petraeus, Clinton said, “That’s right.”

To believe anything that ever slithers out of one of the Clinton's mouths is to be committed to at at best ignorance and likely much worse. To take Hillary's word over Petraeus is overtly choosing evil in the face of good.

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Prey?

Imagine how long this would take if you were listening to an assilant work their way up to your bedroom. Imagine how long it would take if you were unarmed.

We Just Want to Lose!

I always wonder if there are any circumstances under which the Democrats would actually hope for success for America. No, probably not. In the unlikely event they ever wanted to take a shot at truth, the "We Just Want to Lose" motto could be a great slogan!

Power Line: Political Progress in Iraq

Political Progress in Iraq

The Democrats' party line is the "surge" in Iraq has failed despite the best efforts of our troops, because the surge has not been followed by the political progress called for in Congress's "benchmarks." Yesterday, one of the benchmarks was achieved as Iraq's Parliament voted to reinstate the ability of former Baathists to serve in government jobs.

Much more progress remains to be made. Still, perhaps one can look forward to the day when the Democrats, out of ammo, unveil a new slogan: "We just want to lose!"

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America's Bull Run

America's Bull Run - US News and World Report

America's Bull Run
Can we keep it going?
By James Pethokoukis
Posted January 4, 2008

What an amazing run. For a quarter century, from late 1982 through 2007, Americans enjoyed a financial and economic boom that was as powerful as it was unexpected. During that generational span, the economy more than doubled in size—rising from $5.2 trillion to $11.7 trillion, adjusted for inflation—as the stock market generated an incredible 2,300 percent total return. Downturns have been blessedly brief. Consider this: Since 1982, the economy has suffered two recessions, in 1990-91 and in 2001, for a total of 16 months. In the previous 25 years, the economy suffered six economic downturns for a painful total of 67 months.

It WAS "unexpected" to the MSM and most Americans, but of course both the economy and the demise of the USSR were EXPECTED to one "simple minded" Ronald Reagan. Maybe Reagan wasn't quite as "out of touch" as all those brilliant lefties in the MSM think.

Wouldn't it be amazing if just a few Americans tried to understand what was different from 1982 on, and WHY we had such an unprecedented run? In 1989 the Japanese Nikkei finished just shy of 39K, and today it sits at around 15k. In the late '80s LOTS of pundits, including Lee Iaccoca, talked of the "foolishness of the Reagan administration", and how the Japanese were buying our country and were going to "take us over". Wouldn't it seem worth understanding why the supposedly brilliant were very wrong and the supposedly foolish were very right?

So what do we do to keep doing what we have done for the last 25 years? Actually it is pretty simple:

1. Keep Competition High - No trade barriers, more deregulation.
   
2. Keep Inflation Low - When prices rise, raise interest faster.
3. Keep Taxes Low - The Reagan tax cuts ignited the growth in '82 and they and every tax cut since have MORE than paid for themselves with growth in the economy. Of course the government has always figured out how to spend even MORE than that growth, but that is hardly the fault of the growing economy for that. Try to harvest that growth with higher taxes, and every indication is that the growth will stop.

So US News covers this. How many of the sheep in the country even think that the economy is GOOD? Not many, all most can talk about is "change". There is no guarnentee inherent in "change" that it will make things better, in fact, unless those doing the changes are VERY clear about what it is that they are doing and WHY, the odds are that the change will be highly negative.

We are hurtling down the road in the economy that Reagan built, and we are likely to hand it over to folks that don't understand anything about what it takes to continue at anything like the current growth we have.

iPhone Article

How The iPhone Blew up The Cell Industry is a good article in Wired about the iPhone development and business change. Since I have one in my pocket, it may be more interesting to me. I remember a time when in order to buy the latest and greatest PC it was $5K or better of more expensive dollars.

No longer. Where the iPhone is built makes very little difference, the design, deals and profit end up with Apple and AT&T. Japan thought that manufacturing excellence was the way to a perpetually growing economyin the '70s and '80s. Their stock market peaked at 39K in the late 80's and it hovers around 15K now. If we would have listened to guys like Lee Iaccoca and most Democrats in the '80s, we could be sitting at 50% of our 89 market highs as well.

The need for continual innovation to provide growth ought to be plain. This article shows a concrete example. The "growth economy" of tomorrow is not going to be the same as the growth economy of today, and the way to predict that economy isn't by listening to government bureaucrats, MSM reporters, or even ivory tower professors. "The way" is the way of creative destruction, and it involves a lot of experiment, failure, and plain old luck. There better be millions of people taking part in that, not any supposedly super brilliant central planners. If they WERE super brilliant, they would realize they weren't as smart as millions of people.

Voting Irregularities in New Hampshire

This link on supposed Diebold voting irregularities. in New Hampshire showed up on a techie net clipping service this AM. I was noticing that the MSM seemed quite incurious about potential irregularities in NH, even though the "polls were very wrong" problem was much larger than the often reported case in '04 where the polls said that Kerry would win. The same thing happened in NH with both the polls right before the election and with the exit polls. Naturally though from an MSM POV it can't be "fraud", because by definition, there is no such thing as a "Bad Democrat" -- it takes a victory by a Republican to arouse suspicion.

While I don't tend to buy into this allegation either, it is interesting that a PRIMARY is especially ripe for voter fraud. Lots of Government employees run the polling places, and they are overwhelmingly Democrat. Easier to pull of fraud if you don't have someone that is likely to be suspicious of your actions looking over your shoulder.

Wireless Power

Click on the Blog link to go off to see a Blog from CES on wireless power. The idea would be that if your whole home (or some rooms) had wireless power, you would not have to remember to plug in your devices anymore, they would "just charge". If it was common enough in public places where you use your devices or commonly are (office, coffee shops, car, airport, etc) then you might be able to forget about charging all together!

The Best Available

Well, McCain has won New Hampshire for the Republicans, so I may have to change my mind on a guy that I never thought I would. He just got in a good line; "We are the makers of history, not it's victims" ... followed up with "we will never surrender, they will" He is right on the shape of the foe we face, that is something way more than I think any other candidate in the race has.

I disagree with him completely on campaign finance and I find him to sometimes be a primping prima donna, BUT, when one stares into the abyss of Obama and Hillary, even a thin reed looks pretty good.

McCain and Lieberman with a huge Democrat majority in both houses of Congress? Maybe there is a chance and the depth of defeat for America that would be assured with Hillary or Obama can be yet averted.

Hope. Something that is very hard for some of us to resist.

Remember Gary Hart and Vince Foster

Powerline has a good post on poor Hillary here.
It is pretty funny to see Slick talking about media bias in Obama's favor. Is he right? Sure, the MSM loves Obama big time and they haven't said a thing critical about him. Of course the front-running Dem is pretty much always the love of the MSM, it is just that it looks different to Slick when he isn't in that roll for a change.

I think folks need to remember Gary Hart. Does anyone really think that there is any limit to what the Clintons will do to gain power? Osama Obama has no doubt been fully probed by the Clinton machine and is due to have his insides displayed for all to see. Of course maybe he is clean, but what difference would that make? There weren't any smoking gun Bush National Guard memos either, but that didn't prevent CBS from making them up out of thin air. If it hadn't been for some Bloggers and talk radio, they would have gotten away with it too. Only the unimaginative or the naive think you actually have to do anything wrong to be "convicted" in the court of public opinion when you have the MSM and folks like the Clinton's out there.

Sex, drugs, theft, cheating of one sort or another, felony crime, etc-real or created, it really makes no difference. The MSM will be willing to let the Clinton's stick the knife in covertly, and Bloggers on the left have no interest in truth or standards, only gaining power. We still don't know exactly who ran the DWI op on Bush 3 days before the election in 2K, and of course THAT wasn't a "dirty trick" anyway because the target was a Republican. Nope, only Republican's do "dirty tricks"-or "Willie Horton" or "Swift Boating". Those Dems run a really clean show!

How many times has Bush been accused of taking military action for political gain? It is so common that it hardly bears repeating. How times have changed from the days when Slick did the obvious "wag the dog" attacks on the aspirin factory and camel butts when the "stain" surfaced and then the attack on Saddam that delayed the impeachment hearings. Naturally, we only got REAMS of ink about how "partisanship stops at the waters edge", and how it would be a cynically evil day for American politics if anyone thought that Slick had ANY thoughts of "wagging the dog". Sure, nobody should ever think ill of old Wandering Willie, but there is NO PROBLEM in claiming "lies, political calculation, blood for oil, etc" every other day against Bush. The slight difference is what it means for the sheep to think there is an "unbiased media". I wonder what it was that suddenly made politics NOT "stop at the waters edge", and for it NOT to be "horribly cynical" to make horrible accusations about a President as common as the weather? Well, last I checked, Bush is a Republican.

Can I prove that Billy C used the US military for political purposes? Of course not, but William of Occam long ago thought that simple explanations were best. Can anyone prove that Bush did Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 or whatever for "political purposes"? No, of course not, or successful impeachment proceedings would be under way. The Dems are in power in both houses and Republicans mostly still have some allegiance to truth. They (as would I) join completely in the impeachment of Bush if ANY of the miliatry actions were launched for political purposes. In fact, in my book, there is no greater crime possible than for a Commander In Chief to put soldiers sworn to defend their country in harms way for personal political gain.

I argue that the circumstances for Slick taking military action TWICE in the manner he did when he did CRY OUT for an investigation and understanding of why he took those actions at those specific points. How much arm chair psychology have we had to listen to about the relation between Bush and his Dad relative to Iraq, but how little have he had to listen to on children of alcoholics (Billy C) pushing limits beyond the pale to "prove that they can control it all". Clinton all but slapped us in the face with the OBVIOUS explanation for why he took the actions he took when he took them, but the sheep refused to note the obvious, and the Republicans refused to do the investigation those actions required. So, now we will never know, but the Clinton's are still on the loose. I maintain that we ought to be very strongly suspicious that the Clinton's have no moral limit on actions they will take to get what they want.

"No limit" means just what it says. During the Clinton years the right wing "Back Helicopter" conspiracy folks ran wild over Foster, Ron Brown, the secret service plane crashing outside Jackson Hole and a HOST of other theories where the Clintons' may have killed one or more people. Of course, the MSM was always as incurious about that as they are about who leaked the DWI stuff 3 days before the 2k election, why Joe Wilson (Plame) didn't have an NDA that prevented him from writing magazine articles, or the facts of the Juanita Brodderick rape charge against Willy C..

I think the secret service is well advised to step up security on Obama, and while they do it they ought to remember that Hill-Billy have some understanding of their operational profile.