Obama Is a Hands-On Guy

Here's an interesting piece on Barack Obama's nonverbal communication style.

HT: Will Wilkinson

Eight Isn't Enough

The California woman who gave birth to octuplets has six other children and a history of financial problems.

Our Pain Is Washington's Gain

Joel Kotkin explains how national crises are good for the political class.

Radley Balko shows how the counties surrounding D.C. are some of the wealthiest in the nation.

I think I've mentioned before that some of the local poobahs have been reading Richard Florida's work on how cities thrive. Kotkin has been Florida's sharpest critic, and I hope they also read his work as well.

A Couple of Chuckles Here

Ron sent these links:

World's Strongest Granny

She's 72.

Interns Attack Fabulous Ones' Fathers

The gentlemen in this clip really are Stan Lane and Steve Keirn's fathers. Keirn pere was an Air Force pilot and the only man to be a POW in both World War II and the Vietnam War.

Is Obama the New Hoover

David Henderson points to four things Herbert Hoover did that made the Great Depression worse. He notes that Barack Obama is already doing one of these things.

Virginia Postrel points to a second item on Henderson's list that Obama is copying.

Bush, You Magnificent Bastard! Obama Read Your Book

Jesse Walker tells us that supporters of Barack Obama's stimulus plan copied their gameplan from George W. Bush's push to go to war with Iraq.

Why the War on Terror Will Continue

Daniel Larison gets it just right when he says:

Like its open-ended, ill-defined and misguided cousins, the drug war and the war on poverty, the “war on terror” is a rhetorical frame and set of policies that may not be very good at achieving the objectives for which it was created, but it is very valuable as an ongoing, never-ending pretext for concentrating additional power in the federal government and as a justification for preserving and expanding bureaucratic territory and budgets. If these “wars” were judged on whether they met their stated objectives in a reasonable amount of time in an affordable way, not only the phrases but most of the policies related to them would have been eliminated long ago. Whatever their initial ideal purpose and whatever the intentions of their creators, these “wars” become self-perpetuating rackets whose preservation becomes the priority of all those institutions and interest groups with a stake in the policies in question.

There's much more at the post. Yeah, the so-called libertarians and small government conservatives who backed George W. Bush have a lot to answer for.