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Twitter

Recent Tweets, 9.25 to 10.1

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Diamondbacks batting coach Baylor faints at Miller Park bit.ly/puJc1o

Just ten months on: Walker’s chief of staff to head campaign for expected recall attempt http://bit.ly/nQWN6F

Brewers-Diamondbacks Twitter war – bit.ly/r1ozQQ #BeatAZ

The worst political class in America: Wisconsin Assembly meets for jobs special session & immediately adjourns bit.ly/mTtmqz

Journal Sentinel joins call to end Milwaukee’s anti-consumer taxi cartel: Lift the cap on permits – bit.ly/pxpzd4

Past political policy is prologue not because it must be, but because nature & environment ask no more of officials

That’s quite a ‘lapse in judgment’ Elections Board: Waukesha County clerk violated state law, but not on purpose bit.ly/rgSdC7

How can a state paper not cover this story up & down? Walker says he was unaware of aide’s immunity deal – bit.ly/pRPAml

Incredible: Gov. Walker says he was unaware of his own press secretary’s immunity deal – bit.ly/pRPAml

“You know what your problem is? You used up all your damn luck getting here” Strauss on Jimmy Carter FREE WHITEWATER bit.ly/nsazY5

On WTDY: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel‘s Dan Bice on the John Doe Corruption Probe bit.ly/mZRzta

Inauspicious lede: Has Tommy Thompson become the Brett Favre of Wisconsin politics? bit.ly/nh5eM8

Yes: From a financial standpoint, Greece is toast – chicagotribune.com trib.in/ruN0kv

Foreign Affairs

About those two U.S.-born terrorists killed in an American drone strike

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For those Al Qaeda members killed, I’ve not the slightest sympathy. One would prefer fewer entanglements abroad, but that preference doesn’t alter the clear right of Americans to defend themselves, and exact retributive justice against those who have committed themselves to war with this republic.

The president was right to order the dispatch of Bin Laden, and he has been right to continue America’s legitimately defensive and wholly justified war against Al Qaeda.

Via Fox News.

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Hardy cat with two faces lives twelve years (and counting)

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We all know cats have nine lives, but … two faces?

Meet Frank and Louie, a rare cat known as a Janus who has earned a place in the 2012 Guinness World Records book as the oldest-living two-faced feline.

Luckily for Frank and Louie’s owner, who according to media reports lives in Worcester, Mass., the cat has only one stomach and one brain, so he doesn’t require extra food to fill two bellies and has no split personality issues. He eats with just one of two mouths and does not have to worry about his three eyes making life confusing. Only two of them — one on each face — work, while the middle one just stares ahead, giving Frank and Louie perfect vision despite the somewhat cyclops-like appearance.

But love is blind, and Frank and Louie’s owner loves him — or them — so much that she may have contributed to the cat’s unusually long life.

See, Meow meow. Two-faced cat wins place in record book.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.30

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Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-six.

These are particularly difficult times for Whitewater, for Wisconsin, and all America. Yet, for it all, Americans are an ambitious, resilient people. Ambitious in ways admirable and encouraging. Consider Project T.B.A.C., in which Las Vegas students designed an

“aircraft” launched by using trash bags on August 24th 2011. The project was designed and created by Manuja Gunaratne – a high school senior. The aircraft was launched in the Las Vegas valley area and managed to capture stunning pictures of the Earth.

Various similar projects have been done previously using weather balloons; however, Project T.B.A.C varies since it utilized trash bags to capture images of the Earth. Even though it did not reach an altitude as much as a weather balloon, it managed to capture images of the Earth from a high altitude.

The project consisted of three major components: trash bags, payload, and a parachute. The payload consisted of a GPS tracking device and a digital camera to take images of the journey. After planning the project thoroughly, I chose August 24th because that day was very warm and clear with light winds. T.B.A.C managed to stay in flight for approximately 3 hours and captured roughly 2000 pictures using a 3 second interval.

The project has its own website, with photos, videos, maps, and a discussion of the endeavor. If you have occasional doubts about our future – natural in hard times – think again: we’re more than able to overcome these times, and even now can accomplish amazing feats. Just ask Manuja Gunaratne.

Launch

Journey

Recovery

Economy

The Mortgage Meltdown, Robo-Signing, and Foreclosures

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Over at Freedom Watch, Judge Napolitano and his panel discuss an expanding robo-signing scandal (along with the separate topic of the IMF’s insatiable need for more money).

I’ve written often about the recession, but seldom about the mortgage meltdown.

Like many lay people, I thought that the recession would be deep, and that recovery would be slow. There was nothing special in seeing as much. Like other libertarians, I’ve doubted that the kind of remedies on offer near the end of the Bush and into the Obama Administrations would be of much value. Again, that’s a common view.

What some people did see early, however, and that I came to see only later, is that the Great Recession has been of a more serious degree precisely because has been of a different kind. As a financial downturn, it has been more like the Great Depression than subsequent declines since then. It never would have occurred to me that so many homes would be at risk, with so many homeowners being underwater. They’re not underwater, of course, merely because of robo-signing. Some homeowners are at greater risk, however, because of that practice.

(There’s a relationship between faster foreclosures through robo-signing and prices in the housing market, but foreclosure practices are hardly the only influence on home prices.)

A man who’s already ill (sometimes blamelessly, other times culpably by his own lack of a proper diet, for example) can bear only so many new maladies.

In defense of traditional lenders, I’ll note that many have never been part of robo-signing, and are often unfairly demonized. As the embedded clip ably describes, this has been a controversial practice not merely of some private lenders, but of government entities, too.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.29

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Good morning.

It’s a day of scattered thunderstorms and a high of sixty-seven ahead for Whitewater.

The Wisconsin Historical Society notes that on this day in 1957,

1957 – Packers Dedicate New Stadium

On this date the Green Bay Packers dedicated City Stadium, now known as Lambeau Field, and defeated the Chicago Bears, 21-17. In the capacity crowd of 32,132 was Vice president Richard Nixon. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Free Markets, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

Institute for Justice takes on the Milwaukee Taxi Cartel

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Here’s a question, in times of struggling businesses and high unemployment, that should concern everyone: What to do about oppressive regulations and crony capitalism in Milwaukee?

The IJ describes what’s at issue:

Should the city of Milwaukee be allowed to outlaw competition in the taxi market, causing permits to rise in price from $85 to a staggering $150,000?

That is the question to be answered by a major lawsuit filed today by the Institute for Justice (IJ) – national public interest law firm – and three Milwaukee taxi drivers: Ghaleb Ibrahim, Jatinder Cheema and Amitpal Singh….

‘In the classic story of entrepreneurship, someone starts a taxi business in order to save up enough money to buy a house,’ said IJ Staff Attorney Anthony Sanders, lead counsel in today’s lawsuit. ‘In Milwaukee, you need to save up enough money to buy a house just to start a taxi business.’

In 1991, the city of Milwaukee prohibited any new entrepreneurs from entering the taxi market. The city council imposed a hard cap of 321 taxis for the entire city, and made it so that the only way to get a taxi permit was to purchase one from an existing permit holder.

As a result, today the city has just one taxi for every 1,850 residents (compared to 1 in 90 for Washington DC and 1 in 480 for Denver) and taxi permits have risen in price from $85 to $150,000 – more than the average cost of a house in Milwaukee.

An Institute for Justice study, entitled Unhappy Days for Milwaukee Entrepreneurs, reveals that the Milwaukee’s taxi law is effectively a scheme to benefit a small group of entrenched businesses at the expense of entrepreneurs, who lose out on opportunities, and at the expense of consumers, who face poor service and long wait times.

How bad is it? This bad:

One taxi owner, Milwaukee County Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo, owns almost half the city’s taxi permits. His brother Mike runs one of the city’s biggest taxicab companies, American United.

Should you be surprised, really?

For more about the lawsuit, see www.ij.org/MKETaxis.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.28

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Good morning.

It’s a day of showers with a high temperature in the mid-sixties for Whitewater.

On this day in 1925, Wisconsin native

Seymour R. Cray was born in Chippewa Falls. Cray received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He established himself in the field of large-scale computer design through his work for Engineering Associates, Remington Rand, UNIVAC, and Control Data Corporation. In 1957, Cray built the first computer to use radio transistors instead of vacuum tubes. This allowed for the miniaturization of components which enhanced the performance of desktop computers.

In the 1960s, he designed the world’s first supercomputer at Control Data. In 1972 he founded Cray Research in his hometown of Chippewa Falls where he established the standard for supercomputers with CRAY-1 (1976) and CRAY-2 (1985). He resigned from the company in 1981 to devote himself to computer design in the areas of vector register technology and cooling systems. Cray died in a automobile accident on October 5, 1996. [Source: MIT and Cray Company]

Via Wisconsin Historical Society.



Cray-2

History, Politics

Bob Strauss on Jimmy Carter

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Not long after Jimmy Carter was elected, things began to go sour for his administration. Just about everything, including opposition from both Republicans and sometimes even the Democratic majority in Congress, bedeviled him.

Carter called longtime Democratic politician Bob Strauss into the Oval Office, after the Bert Lance scandal broke. Carter found the change in fortune puzzling, after a successful election campaign the year before.

Strauss told Carter: “You know what your problem is? You used up all your damn luck getting here.”

Yes.