Comcast Works to Close the Internet

by PerlStalker | 9:05 pm, November 30, 2010

This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say I support Net Neutrality. Comcast issued an ultimatum to enterprise and wholesale Internet provider Level 3. The message: “Pay up.” Here’s part of Level 3′s press release on the matter.

“On November …

Bennet, Udall Vote for Earmark Ban

by PerlStalker | 8:41 pm, November 30, 2010

Credit where credit is due. Both Colorado Senators, Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, voted in favor of banning earmarks. Unfortunately, the measure failed 39-56.

Ending earmarks is not about the money. Earmarks are a pretty small portion of the budget….

Citizens’ Budget Links

by Jon Caldara | 2:02 pm, November 30, 2010

The report provides an overview of the structure, timing and size of the State budget. We speak to how the problems originated and how things have gone wrong in recent years. The Citizens’ Budget includes legislative, constitutional, and policy recommendations to close the looming state budget gap – without raising taxes – and move Colorado [...]

2010 Edublog Award Nominations

by Eddie | 12:42 pm, November 30, 2010

Last year I told you that all I wanted for Christmas was to be nominated for an Edublog Award. Ok, so it wasn’t really ALL I wanted for Christmas, but that’s beside the point.
Well, the 2010 Edublog Awards competition is up and running, and I am proud to say that someone DID nominate me! [...]

More Wikileaks thoughts

by Rossputin | 8:51 am, November 30, 2010

It is possible, as this article suggests, that the danger from the WikiLeaks release of a quarter million State Department cables is overstated, or even that some positive outcomes from the release could occur.

But don’t let this chatter fool you.

While the occasional unexpected push on some foreign leader or ambassador might cause a little extra bending to the will of the US, and while those rare occasions, if they occur, may be played up by a media still desperate to support the Obama administration, the damage from these leaks remains enormous and long-lasting.

Despite the US statements that they’ve changed document security procedures, foreign diplomats and leaders are going to be very hesitant to speak to American diplomats.  Perhaps more important is the likely damage to US intelligence efforts based on contact with foreign intelligence services.

But by far the biggest impact, so far, of the WikiLeaks dump is on the situation with Iran – which is not to say I or anyone else knows yet just what that impact is.  The problem with the release of cables, especially those showing many Arab leaders pushing the US to deal with Iran, including by military action, is that it adds massive volatility to the situation.  Sure, it’s possible that the reaction within Iranian leadership (despite the public assertions by Iranian President Ahmadinejad that the WikiLeaks release was actually planned by the US) is to fear a US military attack and be persuaded to engage in sincere debate about their nuclear program.

But the odds of that particular outcome are low compared to the odds that it will cause the leadership to redouble their efforts to build nuclear weapons and allow them to use the information to strengthen their own political support within the Iranian borders.

The situation that WikiLeaks put the world in as it relates to Iran reminds me of being forced to bet on a coin flip where if you guess wrong you lose much more than you’d ever willingly bet on a coin flip.

I agree with Fox News commentator KT McFarland who said the following this morning: “I think the president needs to come out, firmly, today, shut WikiLeaks down, charge Assange with espionage, charge Sergeant Manning with treason and execute him if found guilty.”

ObamaCare and Colorado Medicaid Spending: Should Colorado Drop Out?

by Linda Gorman | 7:00 am, November 30, 2010

If the recent federal health care legislation remains as it currently exists, citizens and states might be better off exiting Medicaid and letting the federal government pay for health insurance for eligible Colorado citizens.

Burning Medicaid at Both Ends

by PerlStalker | 11:57 pm, November 29, 2010

Here’s a couple of fun posts tackling the problem of Medicaid spending from two different directions.

The first comes from the Heritage Foundation as they talk about the Ryan-Rivlin proposal to reign in spending on Medicare and Medicaid. You can read…

How Medicare vouchers could bypass health care rationing

by Brian Schwartz | 9:00 pm, November 29, 2010

The debate over which medical treatments Medicare would cover would vanish if instead of running a monopolistic health plan for seniors, government subsidized seniors’ purchase of the insurance plan of their choice.

Atlas Shrugged Video

by Ari Armstrong | 6:58 pm, November 29, 2010

I submitted a video for the Atlas Shrugged Video Contest. The deadline is December 8!UPDATE: You can VOTE for my video every day until December 22!While clearly the best video of the set is Lemonaid, my video is the most substantive in terms of discuss…

BlueCarp’s webcam video November 29, 2010.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 4:49 pm, November 29, 2010

BlueCarp

Some Dems Defect to GOP

by Mr. Bob | 3:49 pm, November 29, 2010

#teaparty #tcot #gop #demsocialist710 KNUS News/Talk News ArticleMr. Bob is a contributing author at the People’s Press Collective. Your source for Colorado Politics.

What the Original Constitution Said and Meant

by Jon Caldara | 2:48 pm, November 29, 2010

Leslie Nielsen, RIP

by Rossputin | 8:19 am, November 29, 2010

If there’s one thing an entertainer should probably do, it’s entertain.  And if any actor brought more entertainment and fun to the big and small screens in recent decades more than Leslie Nielsen did, I can’t think of him (or her).

According to IMBD’s note on Nielsen’s life, “Nielsen was born on February 11, 1926 in Regina in the Saskatchewan province of Canada. He was the son of a Canadian Mounted policeman and went on to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force before becoming a radio announcer and DJ.”

Nielen is best known for his parts in slapstick spoofs like “Airplane” and “Naked Gun” (along with the related “Police Squad” TV series), but his career was far longer than that – even if he didn’t receive great critical acclaim earlier in life.   His first parts on television were in 1950, and as far as I can tell his first starring movie appearance was in “Ransom!” in 1956.

Still, for me, it’s “Airplane” which I’ll always picture when I think of Nielsen, not least his repeated entrances into the cockpit of the plane (even after it’s crash-landed) saying to Ted and Elaine “I just want to tell you both ‘good luck’. We’re all counting on you.”  Nobody could deliver a funny like with a straight face like Leslie Nielsen.

So while I’m not in the habit of missing actors when they’re gone, Leslie Nielsen will indeed be missed.

WikiLeaks document dump: Where’s the line between freedom of the press and an act of war?

by Rossputin | 8:02 am, November 29, 2010

WikiLeaks, the site run by accused rapist Julian Assange, has, depsite a massive Denial of Service attack on its main site, posted tens of thousands of US State Department cables on a sub-site at http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/.

These cables appear to include criticisms and insults of friends and enemies alike and there is in my view little good that can come from them and little justification for their having been made public.

A 22-year old military intelligence analyst faces court martial for turning the documents over to WikiLeaks.

I can’t help but wonder whether the penalty for a military man handing classified documents over for publication should be extremely severe.  If it can be shown that anybody (who is not an enemy of the US) loses his life because of these documents, I think the leaker and Assange should be charged with manslaughter.

The UK Telegraph’s headline from the leaks: “WikiLeaks sparks worldwide diplomatic crisis.” And the article includes this news, which is not necessarily surprising but incredibly dangerous to have been made public: “(The) King of Saudi Arabia urged the USA to attack Iran, destroy its nuclear programme and “cut off the head of the snake”, according to diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle-blowing site.”

 

As John Hayward notes at Human Events:

The effect of the WikiLeaks vandalism is to destabilize the governments on the other end of these diplomatic cables.  The American government may suffer a degree of embarrassment, and a pinch of spice may be added to domestic political debates… but in some of these foreign nations, the information published by WikiLeaks could cause serious, even violent, unrest.  This works to the advantage of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who gain their strength by radicalizing uneasy populations.

Apparently, Hillary Clinton has been on a huge damage-control mission over the last several days, soothing bruised egos and inflamed tempers in advance.  And who can blame her?  But how much can she really do among the leaders of Pakistan or Afghanistan who are in tenuous positions to begin with, are skeptical about the US to begin with, and whose domestic enemies have now been handed powerful ammunition with which to attack those regimes?

I’m a First Amendment absolutist, but my view is that the actions of Wikileaks and the leaker are not journalism, the leaks serve no public purpose, and government does have the right to keep some secrets if the release of those secrets risks American lives.  As Justice Jackson noted, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.  To the extent that a premature death might occur, I can’t help but hope that it’s Assange’s.

 

Next Meetup Dec. 6 with Scott Gessler

by redrocks | 7:10 pm, November 28, 2010

Scott Gessler – Up On The Roof!

“Best of the Bar”

NOTE: NO NOVEMBER 29TH MEETUP – NEXT MEETUP DATE IS THE 6TH

Come help us celebrate Secretary of State-elect Scott Gessler’s victory! Besides being a champion for liberty causes and an [...]

Colorado Supreme Court ruling produces plaintiff windfall

by CTBC Director | 4:11 pm, November 28, 2010

Last week’s Colorado Supreme Court ruling in the Volunteers of America v. Gardenswartz case created a windfall win for personal injury trial lawyers (the “ambulance-chaser” set) and incidentally, some of the clients they represent, in collecting damage reimbursements above and beyond amounts actually paid.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority” (yes, Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey wrote [...]

Colorado copyrighting the statutes?

by John West | 11:58 am, November 28, 2010

Colorado needs to stick to the “writing the laws” business and get out of the copyrighting business.

Backbone Radio, Nov 28, 2010: International turmoil abounds

by Rossputin | 8:40 am, November 28, 2010

Audio archives for this show:

Segment 1 – Intro, News of the Week
Segment 2 – WikiLeaks, China, Korea
Segment 3 – Ross Kaminsky, the PIIGS and the Euro
Segment 4 – Ross Kaminsky, North Korea, financial markets
Segment 5 – More on North Korea and China
Segment 6 – Immigration and domestic terrorism

Please join Christopher Sanders as he sits in for Ross Kaminsky for this week’s edition of Backbone Radio, with a distinctly international flavor – even on apparently domestic American issues.

Topics for this week’s Backbone Radio:

The big news of the day is the WikiLeaks release of thousands of classified documents, apparently primarily cables sent between various US diplomatic missions.  The cables are likely to anger friends and rattle enemies and lead one to wonder where the boundary is between freedom of the press and an act of war.

Is the Weakness of our President pushing the Korean Peninsula to war? America’s history is full of responding to North Korean provocation with conciliation. Who can blame them for thinking it won’t be different this time? Will our own Dear Leader cave to the demands of the Kim Jung Il and his petulant son Kim Jung Un? Or will he stand up for American interests and our Allies in the region and not let the totalitarians win?

Is the Euro on the Verge of Collapse? Can Germany bail out yet another profligate spender (or three)? Is it possible to save the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain)? What does it mean for the world economy if the Euro collapses?

And in the US:A 19-year old Somali-born immigrant was arrested on Friday as he tried to use a cell phone to detonate what he thought was a bomb (but which was actually a fake bomb made by FBI agents).  In an affidavit, Mohamed Osman Mohamud (no, that incredibly stereotypical name for enemies of America was not made up by me), described his motivation “I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave dead or injured.”

There’s even an international note to one of this week’s stories about our own government: Is the Hispanic Caucus sending a message to Barak Obama? Was the smack to Presidents mouth an accident? Could it be that some Democrats are angry with the Anointed One? Was Rey Decerega, director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute the messenger for an angry voter base?

These topics and much more are on tap for this Sunday’s edition of Backbone Radio. We may not have all the answers but with your calls and my arguments it will make for entertaining and informative radio. So plan on joining the conversation from 5 to 8 Sunday night on 710 KNUS.

Please join in by listening to (and calling in to) this week’s Backbone Radio program from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs.

If you’re not in range of the radio waves, you should be able to listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

We hope you’ll actively participate in the conversation by calling the studio at 303 696 1971.

Reversed Thinking of Corporate Control and Government Power

by PerlStalker | 5:03 pm, November 27, 2010

Over the years, I’ve heard a number of people on the Left claim that they support big government because they don’t like the amount of control corporations have on them or the country. I got to thinking about that the other day and started looking at h…

ID or Not ID? That is the Question

by PerlStalker | 4:00 pm, November 27, 2010

Jazz Shaw has a post over at Hot Air talking about the issues surrounding requiring ID when a person votes.

Jazz makes several good points, especially when it comes to the cost of the IDs. However, it amazes me that, in a age where there are companie…

Small businesses frozen, and infuriated, by Washington

by Kelly Maher | 12:01 pm, November 26, 2010

Listen to a woman who runs a home-and-garden shop, facing the crush of federal regulation. “I think we are all waiting, a lot of us, in small business to make a move or to make changes – or to hire new people – until we know a lot of the effects of what’s been done on the economy,” says Barb Werner, owner of Black Eyed Susan in Vienna, Va.

Libertarians, conservatives, progressives, free markets and the "greater good."

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 11:11 am, November 26, 2010

A. Libertarians believe in free markets.B. Conservatives believe in free markets. Except in labor. Foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to take jobs away from Americans. If an American company wants to hire a foreigner, who is willing and able to do a job j…

BlueCarp’s webcam video November 26, 2010.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 10:16 am, November 26, 2010

BlueCarp

Yes, Virginia, there is intelligence

by Rossputin | 7:45 am, November 26, 2010

One of the key assumptions in the Algore and IPCC hysteria over “climate change” – but one that’s never talked about by them – is that people are idiots.  It’s the only explanation for the IPCC’s claim that they have high confidence that warmer temperatures will cause many thousands or millions of humans to die.

However, if people were that stupid, we’d have been extinct long ago, not least because the climate has been through far more dramatic changes over the course of human history than we’re experiencing now or likely to experience soon.

Six months ago, I noted a paper which showed that the mortality rate for malaria in most of Africa had declined dramatically even though the IPCC claims that climate change will cause a huge increase in malaria deaths.  The authors noted human adaptation (mostly mosquito nets, but also anti-malarial drugs) dwarfed any possible increase in the number of malaria-carrying mosquitos.   In fact, I had an e-mail conversation with one of the paper’s primary authors and he’s actually a believer in the existence of man-made climate change (and was quite unwilling to examine his premises). Yet still, he concluded that the effects on man-made barriers to malaria were at least 100 times greater than any temperature-related change to endemicity have been or will be.

We now have another paper, this one focusing on temperature related deaths in England and Wales, which shows that people are not stupid.  The paper, entitled “Causes for the recent changes in cold and heat related mortality in England and Wales” has three authors, two of whom work for the alarmist Met Centre in England so they can hardly be considered climate “skeptics”.

The paper (written in 2009 but just published in a peer-reviewed journal) studied heat- and cold-related deaths among people over 50 years old in England and Wales from 1976-2005.  This is, in my view, a rather short time frame given a temperature change of only 0.47°C degree/decade, but the results are nevertheless dramatic:

“Cold related mortality has decreased at a rate of 85 deaths per million population per year during 1976-2005, while heat related mortality has increased after 1976, but with a two orders of magnitude smaller trend.”  In particular, because humans adapt to new conditions, the increased deaths from warmer temperatures during the summer amounted to fewer than 1 person per million whereas the decreased deaths in the winter (more due to adaptation than temperature changes) were about 85 people per million.

In other words, people are not stupid.

And there’s no reason to assume they will suddenly become suicidally stupid if the climate changes (for warmer or colder) around us.

In my view, the biggest risk for humans is an over-reliance on government to somehow adapt for us rather than people doing what they’ve historically done which is to do what needs doing because they’ll die or at least suffer if they don’t.

Unfortunately, at least in America, we have a president who is firmly entrenched in the Progressive tradition of assuming that his countrymen are moronic sheep to be led to some green pasture.  Everything about President Obama and the Progressive philosophy of government is based on the idea that a few technocratic elitists can make better decisions for us than we can for ourselves.  It’s behind everything from Obamacare to cap-and-trade to bailout fever (something George W. Bush also fell victom to.)

But it’s bulls**t.  We are mostly not morons and mostly not sheep.  We know, and always have known, better than government what we need to do when our environment changes around us.  And to the extent that we don’t know, we cooperate with friends, neighbors, or companies who offer solutions, to reach the best and most affordable answers.

The only thing surprising about the paper from England and the paper about malaria is that we don’t see more such work.  Well, it’s not really surprising: after all, what scientist can cry out for grant money if he’s claiming that we don’t really have a huge problem and that the ingenuity of humans is better-suited to tackling our problems than the so-called wisdom of a few “experts”?

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

by Ben DeGrow | 9:28 am, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving to my faithful few readers and anyone else who stumbles across this posting. A few links commended to you, followed by a couple important passages. First, the links: Michelle Malkin gives thanks for American ingenuity Al Maurer explores lessons of capitalism in the origins of Thanksgiving Many of us can echo Rossputin’s expression [...]

Happy Thanksgiving

by Rossputin | 7:39 am, November 25, 2010

On this Thanksgiving day, I’m thankful for my family, for being mostly healthy, and for living in the greatest country in the world while hoping to help return it to a place of more freedom rather than less, more self-determination rather than more Nanny-Statism, more understanding of our Founding documents rather than more claims of various new “rights” by one group or another, and more appreciation of the costs, both economic and otherwise, that governments impose on our lives.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Tell a Teacher About Their Refund

by Jon Caldara | 1:21 pm, November 24, 2010

Thousands of Colorado teachers are eligible for refunds as much as $63 each if they act before a December 15 deadline. Members of the Colorado Education Association (CEA) who don’t want any of their automatically-collected dues funds spent on political action may request a $39 Every Member Option refund from CEA and, in some cases, [...]

Value-Added Teacher Evaluation Makes Sense: Just Look at Baseball

by Eddie | 12:04 pm, November 24, 2010

Thanksgiving is football season, so I thought it would be a perfect time to highlight the intersection of education reform and… baseball. Yes, that’s right. Writing on the Education Next blog, Harvard professor Paul Peterson brought my attention to a great new consensus report from the Brookings Institution on the role of value-added in teacher [...]

The Original Constitution: a Discussion

by Jon Caldara | 8:13 am, November 24, 2010

Dust off your copy of the U.S. Constitution for this week’s Devil’s Advocate as I am joined by the Independence Institute’s Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence Rob Natelson for a discussion of his new book, “The Original Constitution: What It Really Said and Meant.” That’s Friday, November 26 at 8:30 PM on Colorado [...]

The election is almost over

by Rossputin | 8:08 am, November 24, 2010

On Monday and Tuesday, three of the last five as-yet undecided Congressional races were finalized, with Republicans knocking off Democrat incumbents in two of them.

In New York, freshman Democrat Don Maffei lost to a Republican challenger.  As the LA Times noted, “22 of the chamber’s 26 first-term Democrats have lost their seats.”

In Texas, 14-term Democrat Solomon Ortiz lost while in California, 3-term Democrat Jim Costa squeaked out a victory.

Two races, also in NY and California, remain undecided with an apparent Democrat edge in both.

Again, quoting from the LA Times:  “Still, the Republicans’ wins so far have given them more seats in the House – 242 – than the party has held since 1948.”

—————-

I’d also note (and I’m not writing about it in greater detail here because I plan an article for a national publication on it), that on Tuesday the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee released the minutes from its November 3rd meeting.  The new projections for economic growth and unemployment for 2011 and 2012 are shocking for their decrease in the former and increaes for the latter, with important political implications if the new dire forecasts prove correct (much less if they prove overly optimistic.)

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