URLs du Jour

2022-10-21

  • Baby, it's cold outside. Inside too, unfortunately. Ben Lieberman sounds the alarm: Biden Regulators Target Gas Furnaces.

    The Biden administration is not known for its light-handed regulatory touch, and so we should not be surprised that its efforts have included unhelpful initiatives targeting nearly every major household appliance. Perhaps worst of all for homeowners are the proposed regulations for new natural-gas furnaces.

    Specifically, the Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed stringent new energy-efficiency standards for these furnaces — so stringent that conventional non-condensing furnaces would effectively be outlawed in favor of condensing versions. The big difference between the two is that a condensing furnace has a second heat exchanger that takes some of the heat that otherwise would have gone out with the exhaust and utilizes it, making for a more efficient system. Sounds great — except that doing so can make it harder to vent the exhaust. Depending on a home’s configuration, the switch to a condensing furnace may entail thousands of dollars in additional installation costs on top of a purchase price that is hundreds of dollars higher than a comparable non-condensing model. Older and space-constrained homes would be the hardest hit, thus the proposed rule may disproportionately burden low-income homeowners.

    So far it's just a proposal, but it won't be talked about in those campaign ads that claim Democrats are doing stuff to "lower costs for Americans".


  • Who the hell is "we"? John Daniel Davidson has a modest proposal about political self-labelling: We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives.

    Why? Because the conservative project has largely failed, and it is time for a new approach. Conservatives have long defined their politics in terms of what they wish to conserve or preserve — individual rights, family values, religious freedom, and so on. Conservatives, we are told, want to preserve the rich traditions and civilizational achievements of the past, pass them on to the next generation, and defend them from the left. In America, conservatives and classical liberals alike rightly believe an ascendent [sic] left wants to dismantle our constitutional system and transform America into a woke dystopia. The task of conservatives, going back many decades now, has been to stop them.

    In an earlier era, this made sense. There was much to conserve. But any honest appraisal of our situation today renders such a definition absurd. After all, what have conservatives succeeded in conserving? In just my lifetime, they have lost much: marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years, the First Amendment, any semblance of control over our borders, a fundamental distinction between men and women, and, especially of late, the basic rule of law.

    Well, that's a downer. "We lost, so let's change our label?"

    Oh, but there's more. Davidson's also advocating changing tactics:

    The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

    I think Davidson's specific proposals are odious, unworkable, or likely to be incredibly unpopular. And hence (fortunately, in my view) completely unlikely to be implemented. The "we" in his headline is an impossibly small faction of illiberal crackpots.

    But click over and see what you think.


  • More foolishness at the University Near Here. Damien Fisher tells us about the Durham doin's: UNH Celebrates 'Sextober,' Silences Pro-Life Students.

    University of New Hampshire students are getting a crash course in all things sex this month, from vulva appreciation seminars, instructions on how to come out with an LGBTQI+ identity, sexual device giveaways, to classes on yoga to increase pleasure.

    But it suppresses information about nearby pregnancy crisis centers where women can turn for help if needed.

    While intense Sextober festivities, put on by the state school’s Health & Wellness Center, focus on teaching college students how to enjoy having sex, it does not include any basic information on how to handle the natural result.

    From that link:

    October is all about SEX. That's why we call it Sextober!

    Sextober is brought to you by Health & Wellness in collaboration with various UNH departments and programs.

    All events are free and open to all identities. Plus, keep an eye out for our Sex & Pleasure Kits, which we'll be giving out all month!

    "Open to all identities." That is a sentence that makes sense to some folks in 2022.


  • If it weren't for double standards, they'd have no standards at all. Kat Rosenfield assays The Resistance Media's double standards.

    It’s hard to say exactly when unbridled, gossipy speculation about the health of our political candidates became an accepted part of the American media landscape. It might have been November 2015, when Vanity Fair published an article entitled “Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In!“. Or perhaps it was a month later, when Buzzfeed lampooned the doctor’s letter that declared Trump physically fit for office, juxtaposing its content with unflattering photographs that suggested he was anything but. (“Trump has lost 15 pounds over the past 12 months and his cardiovascular status is excellent,” was quoted directly above a repulsive photo of the future president cramming what looks like a massive piece of chicken satay into his mouth.)

    Certainly, this norm was well-established by the following year. In October 2016, the Washington Post published an article mocking Donald Trump’s weight and asking a panel of “experts” to guess how fat he was. “Even more important than Donald Trump’s weight is how unhealthy he looks,” said cardiologist Dean Ornish. “Unhealthy complexion, puffy, pasty skin, sweating a lot.”

    This type of coverage certainly violates the spirit if not the letter of medical ethics, which discourages doctors from performing armchair diagnoses of people they don’t treat. But the Left’s defence was that it was part of a vital truth-telling exercise. The press should have an adversarial relationship with those who seek the privilege of governing us! They should ask tough, even invasive, questions about a candidate’s fitness for office! The health of our aspiring leaders is a matter of public concern, after all, especially when it comes to retaining the necessary faculties to do the job. But especially, and more importantly, when the aspiring leader is that guy. And so, the resistance media was born, and went on to thrive during Trump’s presidency.

    Ms. Rosenfield goes on to contrast the disparate treatment the media afford to (specifically) John Fetterman.


Last Modified 2023-04-24 5:40 AM EDT