Buy a House and Separate

Al and Tip­per Gore are sep­a­rat­ing. It was just a cou­ple of weeks ago that Al and Tip­per pur­chased anoth­er home.

I would almost bet (I have a bit of per­son­al expe­ri­ence here) that there is a cor­re­la­tion between buy­ing a house (or seri­ous­ly look­ing to buy) and a sub­se­quent sep­a­ra­tion, divorce, or breakup. Don’t some cou­ples actu­al­ly have chil­dren to “save” the mar­riage? Maybe some buy a house.

I wish the Gores all the best.

This Might Put an End to People Leaning on Walls

It seems that Archi­tect Gin­ger Krieg Dosier has devel­oped a way to grow “bricks by com­bin­ing sand, bac­te­ria, cal­ci­um chlo­ride and urea, all easy-to-come-by mate­ri­als.”

Accord­ing to the link, urine has also been found to be a good source of hydro­gen (the bat­tery fuel is not so use­ful it seems).

Soon plumbers will be mak­ing lots of mon­ey retro­fitting bath­rooms to save the urine!!

Immigration

I have been a bit slow get­ting my two cents worth in on this, but here it is.

A year ago we real­ly missed our chance to solve the ille­gal immi­gra­tion prob­lem when we did what we could to pre­vent a depres­sion. A sol­id 1930’s type depres­sion would have sent all those ille­gals home!

We missed that chance.

There is noth­ing that we can do to pre­vent ille­gal immi­grants from enter­ing this coun­try. If we walled off the entire bor­der, there is a whole lot of coastline.

Ille­gal immi­gra­tion will slow when the economies to the south of us become first world economies. What can we do to help? Decrim­i­nal­ize drugs (includ­ing legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na). Cor­rup­tion is a big obsta­cle between Mex­i­co and a first world econ­o­my. Cor­rup­tion is fueled by mon­ey. The drug trade sup­plies a lot of that money.

Mex­i­co is in the grip of gang vio­lence fueled by drugs which I am sure is not all that healthy for the economy.

Also, did you notice that when Ari­zona res­i­dents talk about why they like the new law aimed at ille­gals, it sounds like their prob­lem has more to do with drugs than with immigrants?

I Guess I’ll Have to Take You’re Word For It

Gary D’Am­a­to, writ­ing the Golf Beat blog at the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal Sen­tinel, posts about a Sports Illus­trat­ed sur­vey of PGA golfers. At the end he deals with the golfer­’s politics:

When it came to polit­i­cal ques­tions, the Tour showed its Repub­li­can lean­ings. Only 17% said they approved of the job Barack Oba­ma was doing and only 16% said the health-care reform bill was good for the U.S.

Gee, who would have guessed?

I like the first comment:

Repub­li­can leanings…?/??? Maybe there just a lit­tle more intel­li­gent than the aver­age shmuck.

Whose Fault?

This is three weeks old, but you get what you pay for.

Jeb Golinkin, on Frum­Fo­rum, post­ed on the sub­ject of the race for Oba­ma’s for­mer Sen­ate seat in Illi­nois. He is mak­ing the case for why the Repub­li­can Kirk might well beat the Demo­c­rat Giannoulias.

Gian­nou­lias has the prob­lem of

his ties to cor­rupt Illi­nois pol­i­tics as usu­al (Bla­go, Tony Rezko, the fact that his biggest fundrais­er was recent­ly arrested….etc.)…It also helps that Gian­nou­lias can’t stop find­ing his way into the news for all the wrong rea­sons. His fam­i­ly bank is on the brink of col­lapse and has loaned a clean $20 mil­lion to con­vict­ed felons.

Kirk has advantages:

Kirk is an estab­lished mod­er­ate. He vot­ed for cap and trade, a vote which prob­a­bly hor­ri­fies many read­ers but might actu­al­ly play in his favor by demon­strat­ing that he is will­ing to go out on a limb, buck his par­ty, and sup­port a pres­i­dent who still remains pop­u­lar in Illi­nois. Kirk also has impec­ca­ble nation­al secu­ri­ty cre­den­tials (for years, he has been lead­ing the push in Con­gress for sanc­tions on Iran). Fur­ther­more, his eco­nom­ic posi­tions will appeal to vot­ers eager to get their jobs back and see the econ­o­my mov­ing again.

And then there is:

the fact that Rod Blago­je­vich, with whom Gian­nou­lias has worked, is going to be on the front page of every Illi­nois paper as his tri­al unfolds.

So, Kirk is a mod­er­ate with a lib­er­al vote on the record sup­port­ing Oba­ma and Gian­nou­lias is tarred with corruption.

Cou­ple that analy­sis with the fact that the Pres­i­den­t’s par­ty always los­es seats in the mid-term election.

But you can bet your boots that if Kirk wins, there will be plen­ty of spin on the right that this race is just anoth­er exam­ple of the fail­ure of Oba­ma and the elec­torate’s rejec­tion of him.

Actually, I Had The Same Thought Myself

Ezra Klein cites Lim­baugh­’s com­ments on the sunken oil drilling plat­form.

Rush is won­der­ing about the tim­ing of the event and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sab­o­tage by envi­ro-extrem­ists. Ezra says “Is there lit­er­al­ly noth­ing this man can say that will con­vince Repub­li­cans to dis­avow him?”

I will be shocked and appalled if that event was the result of delib­er­a­tive sab­o­tage, but I would con­sid­er the author­i­ties to be remiss in their job if such a pos­si­bil­i­ty is not at least in the back of their minds while inves­ti­gat­ing the event.

Accord­ing­ly, I can not fault Rush for say­ing what he said.

An Adult? Really?

A cou­ple of coun­ties over from me, three boys recent­ly killed the old­est boy’s step­dad. The old­est boy is 15 years old, the oth­er two are 12. The sto­ry is that the 15 year old and one of the 12 year olds sat in the room wait­ing with their guns and shot the step­dad when he entered the room. I am not sure what the role of the oth­er 12 year old is.

The judge has ruled that the two shoot­ers should be tried as adults.

I have nev­er under­stood this. We set up a sys­tem so that we treat juve­niles dif­fer­ent­ly than we treat adults. Pre­sum­ably we do this because we rec­og­nize that chil­dren are sim­ply not adults.

But let the crime be seri­ous enough and we for­get all about such fine distinctions.

Per­son­al­ly, I think it is wrong that either child is charged as an adult, but I accept that there are prob­a­bly argu­ments to be made for deal­ing with the 15 year old as an adult.

I can­not fath­om an argu­ment for treat­ing a 12 year old as an adult.

The first result:  hous­ing the kids in the adult jail.

Credit Where Credit Is Due, Please

I thought that it was cus­tom­ary to pro­vide a link to a web­site when it is being men­tioned in anoth­er website.

All too often we find a sur­feit of opin­ion, absent doc­u­ment­ed ratio­nal­iza­tion, and a pauci­ty of infor­ma­tion. This leads to much pos­tur­ing in order to main­tain one’s “brand”…It’s pos­si­ble that the the­o­ret­i­cal infin­i­ty of cyber­space encour­ages throw­ing what­ev­er is lying around into the void. It achieves noth­ing. It is sim­ply wast­ing time by peo­ple who have time to waste.

If that is not a ref­er­ence to My Time To Waste, well, I do not know what is.

:)

Hat tip to Alt­house.

Financial Regulation

I do not pre­tend to under­stand the ins and outs of big banks and deriv­a­tives and what not. My guess is that more reg­u­la­tion is needed.

On the oth­er hand, even more impor­tant than reg­u­la­tion is lead­er­ship that will stand tall and address prob­lems before they become disasters.

It was obvi­ous there was a tech bub­ble at the time. Peo­ple made mil­lions sell­ing com­pa­nies with lit­tle more than an idea.

It was obvi­ous there was a hous­ing bub­ble at the time. Peo­ple were mak­ing thou­sands of dol­lars flip­ping hous­es. Often with­out doing any­thing to the house oth­er than hold­ing on to it for a few months.

Bub­bles pop and dam­age the economy.

When the next bub­ble appears, what will be need­ed is a leader who will take action to gen­tly let the bub­ble down, not reg­u­la­tions designed to pre­vent the last breakdown.

More Hoosier Pride

I came across this in Sun­day’s Jour­nal Gazette. It seems Indi­ana Gov­er­nor Mitch Daniels, fre­quent­ly men­tioned as a pos­si­ble 2012 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, took a bite out of his shoe. A recent cer­e­mo­ni­al bill signing

was punc­tu­at­ed by tears and emo­tion as fam­i­ly and friends of an Ohio woman who was killed in Allen Coun­ty gath­ered to watch Daniels sign a bill spurred by her case.

After ini­tial­ly behav­ing appro­pri­ate­ly for the occa­sion and sign­ing the bill, Daniels says to the Ohioans:

Any­time you all want to move to Indi­ana, low­er your tax­es, you’re welcome.

More com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism I guess.