Blog Ipsa Loquitur

Krauthammer insists Obama’s a genius for convincing Congressional Republicans to spend a massive amount of money to stimulate the economy via tax cuts:

If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years. Two-thirds of that is above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts but includes such urgent national necessities as windmill subsidies.

This is an interesting article, but it’s premised on the idea that Congressional Republicans actually want to balance the budget, and don’t just pretend they do in order to win votes. If the GOP is actually focused on balancing the budget, then yes, Obama’s a genius for tricking them into accidentally spending $700 billion on tax cuts. Or, more likely, the GOP is capable of doing third-grade arithmetic. What follows from that premise is an exercise in fourth-grade logic left up to the reader.

Famed hacker magazine 2600 published a press release condemning the DDoS attacks on Visa.com, Mastercard.com, and other sites that are perceived to have acted unfairly to Wikileaks:

The assault on Wikileaks must not be overshadowed by the recent denial of service attacks and these certainly must not be allowed to be associated with the hacker community. This will play right into the hands of those who wish to paint us all as threats and clamp down on freedom of speech and impose all kinds of new restrictions on the Internet, not to mention the fact that the exact same types of attacks can be used on “us” as well as “them.” (Interestingly, it was only a week ago that “hackers” were blamed for denial of service attacks on Wikileaks itself. That tactic was ineffectual then as well.)

Maybe I see everything that happens on the internet through net neutrality-colored glasses, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, Efforts To Ban Sharia Law in Courts Spreading:

According to this story in the USA Today, the movement to keep the Koran out of the courts isn’t limited to the Sooner state.

At least seven states, including Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah, have proposed similar laws. Tennessee and Louisiana have enacted versions of the law banning use of foreign law under certain circumstances. Former U.S. speaker Newt Gingrich would like to see Congress adopt a similar [sic] for the federal courts.

Seriously, why don’t we have some sort of Constitutional provision prohibiting the government from respecting an establishment of religion? You’d think one or more of the Founding Fathers would have intended there to be some sort of metaphorical (and I’m just pulling this off the top of my head here) wall between church and state.

Jonathan Coulton’s song “Shop Vac” has received the “typographical music video” treatment.  Actually, that doesn’t do the video justice.  Spend the next three minutes watching this.  It’s catchy, I promise.

This Jarrett Heather guy has a history of making awesome things from JoCo’s music, apparently.

(via Shop Vac on Vimeo)

According to The New Yorker, the trading aspect of Wall Street is almost completely socially worthless, and only serves to make bankers rich… for a bit:

In September, [The Epicurean Dealmaker] and I met at a diner near my office. … Our conversation started out with some banter about the rivalry between bankers and traders at many Wall Street firms. As the traders came out on top in recent years, TED recalled, “they would say, ‘You guys are the real parasites, going to expensive lunches and doing deals on the back of our trading operations.’ ”He professed to be unaffected by this ribbing, but he said, “In my experience, the proprietary traders are always the clowns who make twenty million dollars a year until they lose a hundred million.”

I hadn’t heard of TED before, but I plan to start reading. On an empty stomach, though, guys. This finance stuff will make your soul hurt.

When I check my readership statistics, I like to see what search terms people are using to find my site. One day last month, these were the only three visitors who were referred from a search engine:

Yes, the deadly martial art of jujitsu, also known as “wearing pajamas and letting another man lie on top of you” is legal in New York.

I have no idea how far down the Google search results you’d have to scroll to find “BarelyLegally.com” from “Berly Leagly.”

As for the “Almost Legal” guy: something tells me he was a little disappointed when he got here. That’s leftover from the old blog name of Almost Legally. Good thing I changed the name to something much less easily confused for porn, right?