The carbon tax gambit - John Dingell calls for real environmental sacrifice and everybody runs for the hills.

Bad glue

From the Boston Globe: "Fast-drying epoxy used in Big Dig let bolts slip over time"

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board said today that part of a Big Dig tunnel collapsed a year ago because the wrong epoxy was used to secure the ceiling, allowing bolts to slip or "creep" over time.

Honestly, I can't see the justification to using epoxy at all. If you're going to hold up heavy tiles, a bolt is better (risk of shear) but a cross-connection is best (risk of fracture). But epoxy? You're just crossing your fingers it doesn't deteriorate over time.

Check your flux capacitor - Via Cars.com: top 10 movie cars.

Like herding cats who all want to kill each other

With apologies to Bill Kristol and Jules Crittenden, I just don't see how they expect Americans to put up with the war in Iraq with reports like this:

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said.

Six months ago, I said it was time to "sink or swim" in Iraq and that much is still true. With all our economic, military and political power, we can't force Iraq into the 21st century.

Goin' to that big harem in the sky - Psychology Today has a list of "politically incorrect" truths about human nature and at #4 we find "Most suicide bombers are Muslim." The reason? Not enough sex. (HT: Fark)

If you missed "60 Minutes" tonight - Here's the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, discussing "the dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows" that current obligations for entitlement spending will simply bankrupt the country.

The seeds of the 1967 Newark riots

New Jersey's premier newspaper, the Star Ledger, has a special retrospective on the 40th anniversary of the Newark riots that left 26 people dead and caused $10 million in damage. The first part in today's paper looks at the dreadful missteps taken by the city's government to manufacture a pressure cooker of despair, then rage. For example, when Newark failed to annex the suburbs, wealthier residents simply packed up and moved out:

In cities that expanded, the movement of well-to-do residents from the core to the periphery had no impact on the bottom line. Those residents still paid taxes to the city.

In tiny Newark, well-off residents looking to leave center city ended up in places like Montclair and Millburn, taking their checkbooks with them. This left Newark with less money for police and schools. It also created a greater tax burden on those left behind. That caused even more people to leave.

By 1967, Newark believed its property tax rate, $7.75 per $100 of assessed value, was the highest in the nation. If taxed at that rate today, an average home in New Jersey - valued at $350,000 - would owe more than $27,000 a year in property taxes.

Even though Springfield and Bergen was largely populated by rental housing, soaring taxes had an impact. Landlords, fearful that making improvements would increase their tax bills, began neglecting their properties.

Astonishingly, the Federal Housing Authority which was designed to help Americans into home ownership approved only 28 loans in all of Newark in 1936. So there was little hope for a private residence, public housing was a disaster, and apartment buildings were falling apart because landlords didn't want to pay oppressive taxes.

Hey Cousin Brucie!

I'm getting caught up with the news, but I had to put this up first. Two years ago, I bemoaned the fact that legendary oldies radio station WCBS had switched format to something called "Jack." Now it looks like everything old is new again. From NY Times: "WCBS-FM reconsiders, deciding oldies are goodies again"

WCBS had a reliable audience as an oldies station, hovering near the bottom of the Top 10 ranked stations in the New York metropolitan region before the 2005 switch. The Jack format was introduced to attract the younger listeners more prized by advertisers, but WCBS's ratings dropped precipitously after the format change. It lost more than half its audience share, and its ranking fell as low as 22, according to Arbitron. Recently its ratings have improved slightly, but have remained far behind its pre-Jack level.

The station's advertising revenues also dropped. Revenue fell almost 30 percent, to $16.1 million for 2006, from 2005, according to estimates by BIA Financial Network.

Though WCBS is to return to oldies, it will probably be a new variation on the format, with more music from the 1970s and '80s and less from the '50s and '60s, radio analysts said. It is also likely that some personalities from the old station could return.

Well, every "oldies" radio station has pretty much ditched the songs from the Fifties. Even if you're not an oldies fan, why would you ditch a tried-and-true format to crowd the radio waves with yet another Top 40 incarnation? Dumb.

Goin' campin'


Have a good weekend.

Happy Fourth of July - In Congress, July 4th, 1776

And, in a slightly less serious vein: liveblogging the Continental Congress

So that's how Lindsey Lohan keeps getting into bars - Via Slate, a British study found that bartenders accurately guessed that 13-year old boys were underage but weren't so sure about the tweener girls.

Today's least surprising lawsuit - Former employee of the company that makes the "Girls Gone Wild" videos sues for sexual harassment. Who'da thunk it?

Then a million Jr. fans dropped their Budweisers


For a sport loosely associated with the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, this is going to surprise a lot of NASCAR fans: Dale Earnhardt Jr. digs Barry Manilow

10. You got anything that people might consider atypical on your portable music player?

Earnhardt: Surprises? Well, I've always tried to come across as down to earth with everything I've done -- but sometimes things surprise you, like you got a Barry Manilow song on your iPod, or something.

Well, I do. Weekend in New England is one of my favorites. He's awesome. I think a lot of people listen to him that wouldn't admit it.

Oh, brother. In related news, here's Rolling Stone's list of the 20 most annoying songs.

Have a latte - WebMD: "Coffee: the new health food?" (HT: Maggie's Farm)

Robert Mugabe's "deshelfication" plan - Hey, I invented a new word. Officials in Zimbabwe decided that prices were too high at the supermarket so they slashed 'em in half. From the UK Telegraph: "Mugabe's 'inflation police' raid shopkeepers." Now there's no food left in the supermarket and the shopkeepers have no incentive to sell food below cost. This will end well. (HT: Q&O)

Mitigating factors that seem to escape the NY Times editorial board

Here's the WashPost's take on Scooter Libby's commuted prison sentence:

Yet there were mitigating factors in this case. After two years of investigation, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name; he never demonstrated that a crime occurred. Early on, the prosecutor had learned that the primary source of the disclosure to columnist Robert D. Novak was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who was not charged. Mr. Libby's trial provided convincing evidence that the revelation of Ms. Plame's identity was not the result of a conspiracy to punish her husband, administration critic Joseph C. Wilson IV -- the allegation that caused all the partisan furor surrounding the case and that led to Mr. Fitzgerald's appointment.

The WSJ's Opinion Journal wanted a full pardon:

These columns have had cause to defend the Bush Presidency from what we've seen as often meritless or exaggerated partisan attacks, notably over national security and the Iraq war. This, however, will stand as a dark moment in this Administration's history. Joe Wilson's original, false accusation about pre-war intelligence metastasized into the issue of who "outed" his wife, Valerie Plame, as an intelligence officer. As the event unfolded, it fell to Mr. Libby to defend the Administration against Mr. Wilson's original charge, with little public assistance or support from the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell or Stephen Hadley.

I'm uneasy about derailing the judicial process with a Presidential commutation, but certainly this case had facets that were opaque to the knee-jerk Left and the New York Times editorial board. Scooter Libby was convicted for a failure of memory that afflicted witnesses on the case, for a crime that did not exist, to (allegedly) discredit a report that was utterly false.

Extra - Some proper perspective on Presidential pardons from Petsy, uh, Betsy.

More - Excellent rant from Protein Wisdom.

It was Dr. Muhammad - What a surprise. Expat Yank has much more on what he's calling "The Doctors' Plot" and the terrorist attacks in Great Britain. Also, be sure to check out this Q&O post on what motivates the British jihadi.

More - From the mouths of babes: "Not a good doctor at all"

Sooo...what's everybody talking about tonight? - Fox News: "Bush Commutes 'Scooter' Libby's Prison Sentence"

Fifteen billion dollars and one death later

Boston Globe: "Leakage in Big Dig tunnel rises - 3 years after promise, more water getting in"

Almost three years after state managers vowed to close thousands of leaks in the Big Dig tunnels, nearly 2 million gallons of water flow each month through the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel, an 18 percent increase over last year, a Globe analysis shows.

The water is worrisome because it shows that the concerted efforts by the state to plug leaks in the $15 billion project are only marginally effective, at best, and may mean heavy maintenance costs for years to come.

On top of that, lawyers for Milena Del Valle's family are seeking record damages for her unlawful death caused by a falling tunnel ceiling slab. I'm doubtful that an underground tunnel can avoid collapse over time with two million gallons of water flowing through every month. When the tunnel was originally planned (with a $2.6 billion budget) it was estimated that only 36,000 gallons of water would leak through each month. Not so good.

My first NASCAR race

So I made it to New Hampshire for the Lenox Industrial Tools 300 and had a great time. Before the race, we saw Kurt Busch signing autographs at a merchandising trailer and Michael Waltrip zipped by on a golf cart (he wasn't racing.) Seats were excellent, row 39 on turn 4, and all the action in the race happened right below us. Lots of green-flag racing and a dramatic finish with Jeff Gordon and Martin Truex Jr. fighting it out to see who would challenge Denny Hamlin working on two old tires. Hamlin held on to win despite some serious loose-ness on the final sprint.