$20 Per Gallon Would Really, Really Suck
Andrew Sullivan gushes over Chris Steiner's concept of $20 per gallon gasoline. $20 a gallon is about the only thing that could unleash the genius of the market in energy innovation. And nothing else will really do anything to abate climate change. Bring it on! Now, it's quite conceivable that the forced innovation would indeed make our lives better in ways that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 2, 2009 19:08
Pulling Out: Debating Middle East Disengagement (Neg. Rebuttal)
Since this is my last entry in the debate, I'd like to thank Bernard Finel for what I think has been an excellent, interesting, and informative debate. I've accomplished what I set out to do when I was moved to propose this debate: I've established that complete disengagement with the Middle East (the resolution of the debate) would ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 22, 2008 13:52
Pulling Out: Debating Middle East Disengagement (Aff. Cross)
Question 1 (Finel): You write: “I believe the evidence speaks clearly: the increased U. S. engagement in the region has overall been a stabilizing force.” What is the precise benefit to the United States of this increased stability? Are American interests in the region more or less secure today as a result? Or is this purely ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 18, 2008 11:21
Pulling Out: Debating Middle East Disengagement (Neg. Cross)
Question 1: What evidence do you have that reducing our “footprint” and “fingerprint” will result in a reduction of radicalism in the Middle East? BERNARD FINEL: Obviously, it is impossible to prove a hypothetical, so there is no direct evidence to support my contention that reducing our visibility will reduce radicalism. Indeed, I don't think it is likely ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 16, 2008 13:12
The Future of Suburbia
A colloquium on the Freakonomics blog asking, "What Is the Future of Suburbia?" generated insights from a wide range of experts, a few of whom have apparently been reading too much science fiction or over-indulging in recreational drugs. James Kunstler, for example, opines that, There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 13, 2008 08:37
More Good News For Solar
This morning, Glenn Reynolds linked to this bit of news from Popular Science regarding a discovery that could lead to greater efficiencies in solar cells: MIT engineers have recently helped up the feasibility of widespread solar power by developing a new “solar concentrator.” The concentrator, which is a flat glass panel spread across a large area, gathers light at the edges ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 16, 2008 09:59
Congressional Approval at Record Low, Republicans More Likely than Democrats to Approve
President Bush isn't alone in being unpopular: Congress is down to 14 percent approval, the lowest in the history of the Gallup poll. While the approval numbers are the worst ever, there is a silver lining: "The 75% currently disapproving of Congress is just shy of the record-high 78% in March 1992" Lydia Saad calls these numbers "extraordinary." Approval ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 16, 2008 09:07
Clean Air Causing Global Warming?
It seems that the leading man-made cause of global warming is environmentalism; specifically, efforts to improve air quality by reducing pollution, New Scientist reports. Since 1980, average air temperatures in Europe have risen 1 °C: much more than expected from greenhouse-gas warming alone. Christian Ruckstuhl of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland and colleagues took aerosol concentrations from ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 11, 2008 16:46
Gas Stations Charging More for Credit Card Users?
Some gas stations are secretly charging credit card users more, ABC News reports. (Video here.) Many Americans have taken up a new hobby -- hunting for the gas station with the lowest prices. But the hunt has gotten exponentially harder as the price of oil has skyrocketed and the posted price may not even be advertised, especially if the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 10, 2008 13:22
By Any Other Name…
Jonah Goldberg has sparked a minor blogospheric furor for a recent column in which he castigated Barack Obama, John McCain, and others for promoting a compulsory national service program, which he compared to slavery. There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 8, 2008 13:26
Why Rush Limbaugh is So Popular
Ezra Klein believes a recent NYT Magazine profile of Rush Limbaugh is a "puff piece." He lists, for example, Rush's "presidential platform" as published: 1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax. 3. Privatize Social Security. 4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education. 5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 8, 2008 09:03
Obama’s ‘Sweetheart’ Home Loan
The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today's Washington Post, "Obama Got Discount on Home Loan." Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2008 15:15
Wars and Wartime Presidents
Fareed Zakaria contends that, President Bush's attempts to brand himself as a "war president," the United States isn't really at war. America (and before it, Britain) has felt it was "at war" when the conflict threatened the country's basic security—not merely its interests or its allies abroad. This is the common-sense way in which we define a wartime leader, and by ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2008 12:27
Iranian Nukes Breakthrough? (Updated)
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his gang of mullahs are said to be "seriously considering" the latest EU 5+1 proposals on resolving the international standoff on the Iranian nuclear program and are telling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pipe down. Warren Strobel: Iran's senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six world powers to resolve the dispute over ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2008 07:12
Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Blogs
Some Obama supporters are apparently taking advantage of Google's terms of service to silence anti-Obama blogs, Simon Owens of Bloggasm reports. The company automatically shuts down sites upon receipt of TOS violation claims until they're able to do a human audit, a rather slow process with given little priority on the free BlogSpot service. After some digging it became apparent ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2008 12:30
