Dymphna’s Anemic Packet o’ News May 15th

Today is St. Dymphna’s feast day, for those of you who keep track of matters ecclesiastical.

No tipsters today. Actually, there were tipsters and stories, but…well to make it short, I went tripping gaily down the front steps today to plant some flowers. Emphasis is on tripping. Nothing serious enough for a doctor visit but I bruised my ribs, put a few gashes and contusions in the usual places - elbows and knees and shin. Also landed on my carpal tunnel-afflicted wrist.

It hurts to sit here, so I couldn’t extract the news tips. The ones below I had hanging around before my trip.

Let’s see if I can still type when I get up tomorrow.

[Note to Kepi Blanc: I landed on that shoulder but it didn’t dislocate so no need to describe again how you fix those things on the battlefield]


In the Soviet of Washington, D.C. it’s against the law to park in your own driveway.

File under “you can’t make this umm…stuff, that’s it “stuff” up. As in “stuff and nonsense”.

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The Snafus Have Just Begun

Dead People Get Stimulus Checks

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Maggie Simpson as Howard Roarke in the Simpson version of “The Fountainhead”

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From TARP to Obama to Command-and-Control

Larry Kudlow is a rara avis: a genial economist, given to flights of optimism (that often turned out to be true). But he’s not flying anymore. The boy has moved to the slough of despond.

If he is not happy, it does not bode well for any of us…’ceptin’ maybe our Messiah.
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In Politics of School Reform, Transparency Doesn’t Equal Accountability

Remember we were talking about lousy schools? Well, this is written by the blogger, Eduwonk. We used to be on The Watcher of Weasels together.:

"Transparency is powerful and President Obama has rightly made it a pillar of his administration’s approach to policymaking. But transparency also offers the seductive promise of an easy way out for policymakers. It can trap proponents of various policy proposals in an intellectual cul de sac because it becomes easy to see information as sufficient to drive reform rather than just as a predicate for change. The risk is especially potent when proponents are convinced of the obviousness of the changes they seek.

We’ve seen this repeatedly with federal education policy. The Bush administration assumed the federal No Child Left Behind law would produce a tidal wave of student and school performance data that would swamp opposition to school improvement efforts. Seven years later the political resistance to education reform is as potent as ever and former Bush aides now acknowledge placing too much faith in the power of information...[...]

[this is an excellent essay. Click the link]

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Sweden wants to force ISPs to save user data

Internet service providers (ISPs) in Sweden will be forced to store customer data for at least six months starting in 2010, according to a new proposal from the government […]

hmmm. The Swedes are so polite, I guess this will be a done deal next year. Now if they told our radical libertarian ISP provider to do this, he’d have his pitchfork out. I’ll have to send him this bit o’ news. My guess is he’ll say “over my dead body, dude.” Or words to that effect.

'Scuse me, y'all. I gotta go rummage for some pain pills...