IT’S THE ARROGANCE, STUPID. Why did Newsweek fail? "For the same reason any species goes extinct; the environment changed and it couldn’t adapt."

“It’s value lies, or used to lie, in being ‘something informed people read’.”

I think that’s almost correct. I had the misfortune of perusing a recent Newsweek at the doctor’s office last week (there was nothing else to read). It was a morass of liberal arrogance weakly disguised as “news.” A waste of time now that I can get my news elsewhere.

TERROR ATTACKS raise tension between the Obama administration and the GOP.

Far from seeing failure, Gibbs saw reason for celebration. Shahzad was found quickly, he pointed out, with federal, state and local authorities working together. "So in many ways, we want to celebrate the success of, rightly so, of what law enforcement was able to do," Gibbs said.

Tell that to Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "These guys continue to be in denial," Hoekstra says of the White House. "We're just a couple of smart people away from having 300, 400, 500 Americans killed. We have to express our appreciation to the FBI and the New York Police Department for capturing this guy, but our focus should be on how he got to Times Square and almost blew up an SUV loaded with explosives. That's not success in my book. Success would have been identifying this guy and making sure he didn't get to Times Square."

There have been 4 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since the Obama administration began; one success and three failures. The one success was by a U.S.-trained terrorist: Maj. Nadal Hasan. The three failures were due to terrorist incompetence, not Homeland Security competence.

OBAMA SHOULD TAKE SYSTEMS APPROACH TO CLEAN ENERGY. Alex Pavlak in the IEEE Spectrum:

The Obama administration is developing a clean energy system as if it were a science project. The focus is on technology and ideas, not systems and strategic goals. The emphasis is on near term solutions with no effort made to envision what the whole system should look like 40 years from now. There are no phases, no disciplined reviews, no milestones. The hope seems to be that somebody will invent something great, solving all our problems in the blink of an eye.

No sh*t, Sherlock. Now on to systems engineering process:

[A]s with any long-term program, engineers incorporate risks and uncertainties into the engineering development plan. A clear purpose, the strategic goal, is what simplifies classic engineering development plans. Every approach is continuously tested against its ability to achieve the goal. Further, the suite of strategic scenarios is simplified by separating engineering from policy, ignoring legacy system constraints, and basing plans on technology as we know it today, rather than hoping for grand innovations.

Pavlak is marketing for energy development, particularly nuclear power, so his bias is evident in the article. But his thoughts on development process are correct, and should be adopted much more widely in the public policy domain.

LEFT IS CERTAIN OF TEA PARTY MOTIVES, FINDS TERRORISTS INSCRUTABLE: “For while liberals claim not to know the motives of Muslim terrorists, they are always certain of conservatives' motives: racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON the flag incident at Live Oak High School in California:

I learned from this episode only that Cinco de Mayo is the moral equivalent for many of our citizens to the Fourth of July, that no one in authority at an American high school understands the U.S. Constitution, that students wearing American flags were at one point to be suspended, and those ditching class in mass were not; that reconciliation is defined by each group putting their own respective flags next to each other and then blaming the press for this national embarrassment; and that in our parochial and isolated culture of central and coastal California, no one seems to imagine that elsewhere Americans are not all unhinged, but in fact see us as the deranged.

Deranged. Yes, indeed.

SO NOW IT’S ETHICAL TO BE A BULLY. “If freedom of expression is faced with the threat of illegal violence, freedom should be curtailed.”

So now it's ethical to give into violent mobs.

The Tea Party has gotten beaten up for the past year for embodying a threat of violence that doesn't actually exist.

The lesson we are getting is that maybe it should. After all, if you want something, the ethical thing is to threaten somone who disagrees with you.

And afterwards:‎

Kathleen Sullivan, a school board trustee, said Live Oak experienced problems on Cinco de Mayo last year. She said some students had complained to the principal and vice principal that they had felt intimidated by students waving American flags.

I have to wonder what would have happened if the American students had complained that they felt intimidated by students waving Mexican flags. Perhaps it’s time to find out.

A DUTY TO DIE, Thomas Sowell writes:

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have "a duty to die," rather than become a burden to others.... Apparently you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about "a duty to die."

Yes, it probably does take considerable ‘education’ to overwrite these three simple words: “Duty, Honor, Country.”

Read the whole thing.

DIVERSITY, liberal style.

GEORGIA SENIORS told no open prayer before meals. This has to be a case of a supplier over-exercising a super-abundance of caution, but it clearly illustrates the liberal movement of “freedom of religion” to “freedom from religion.”

UPDATE: it does appear to have been a case of over-anxiety.

NEW NATO IDEA to avoid killing innocent Afghans [5th item].

U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan might soon be eligible for a “courageous restraint” medal awarded for not using force.

The idea is to encourage troops to the central component of the Obama-McChrystal strategy: protect Afghan civilians both from the Taliban and our efforts to defeat the Taliban. In a very direct sense, the plan asks Americans to die for the security of the Afghan population in an effort to establish the trust needed to build a new nation that is less hospitable to radical Islam. It envisions forming a common bond with the indigenous people against the common enemy of the Taliban and doing so on a timetable.

We all remember George C. Scott’s line in Patton: “I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”

Scott did not have to consider the third option of dying for someone else’s country.

The original article is here.

MORE: It looks like the ‘courageous restraint’ medal isn’t getting good reviews.

OVER MY DEAD BODY: Are the Feds trying to nationalize your retirement savings?

At this point, I think the best we can say is this: the federal government is desperate for cash, and the biggest untapped source of wealth is the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars that Americans who are now nearing retirement age have saved over their lifetimes. I don't doubt for an instant that the Obama administration would like to get its hands on this money, which would go a long way toward resolving the current government debt crisis. An obvious way of doing so is to take the money now, in exchange for a promise to pay an "annuity" later. The bottom line is that, given what we know about the Obama administration's rapacious appetite for swallowing up private wealth, anyone who has savings should be vigilant.

And make damned sure your congresscritters know you’re watching.

MOJAVE CROSS STOLEN. The 7-foot-tall metal cross that has stood in California's Mojave Desert for 75 years and withstood a hard-fought battle in the Supreme Court was ripped down and stolen Sunday night.

“I say erect one twice as tall.”

THE WASHINGTON POST’S EZRA KLEIN suggests that the Times Square bomber proves we’re not doing enough about about home foreclosures.

Could it be that Shahzad was planning on blowing something up and fleeing the country and didn’t feel the need to pay his mortgage?

FROM MY EMAIL: OK, let me see if I got this right.

If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you will get 12 years hard labor – or shot.

If you cross the Iranian border illegally, you will be detained indefinitely.

If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you will get shot.

If you cross the Saudi Arabian border illegally, you will be jailed.

If you cross the Chinese border illegally, you may never be heard from again.

If you cross the Venezuelan border illegally, you will be branded a spy and your fate will be sealed.

If you cross the Cuban border illegally, you will be thrown into political prison to rot.

If you cross the U.S. border illegally, you will get:

- a job;
- a driver’s license;
- a social security card;
- welfare;
- food stamps;
-credit cards;
- subsidized rent or a loan to buy a house;
- free education;
- free health care;
- a lobbyist in Washington;
- billions of dollars worth of public documents printed in your language; and
- the right to carry your country’s flag while you protest that you don’t get any respect.

I just wanted to make sure I had a firm grasp on the situation....

JAMES OBERG ON NASA'S NEW STRATEGY.

On 15 April, NASA got its long-awaited marching orders from President Obama. The agency is to send people to Mars using a series of ”stepping-stone” destinations that are themselves of interest: Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and Martian moons. The plan is pretty much exactly what Planetary Society president Wesley T. Huntress Jr. proposed in 2004.

Umm, well, maybe, but I haven’t seen anything to buttress Huntress’ claims that Obama’s program “proposes a more lofty, challenging, and appealing goal to the American public” and “will inspire many more American youngsters to go into science, engineering, and math and to do what has never been done before.”

Nor am I convinced that the ‘president demonstrated that he is fully engaged [with space exploration].”

BOATING ACCIDENT: this is a picture of a man with just seconds to live.


I’ll have to remember this when I get my boat ....