ALMOST A FOOT and still counting.







It's going to be a long day.

THE WHITE HOUSE unveiled its $3.8 trillion dollar budget - with $1.6 trillion in red ink. Michelle Malkin quotes OMB Director Peter Orzag: "The Budget lays out a plan to put the country back on a sustainable fiscal path."

Uh, huh. And I'm the King of England.

Here are the budget projections. And here's what infuriates me. The black dashed line is a 5.63% inflation rate trend line: government over the last ten years has grown at something exceeding 5.6% and is projected to continue at that rate for the forseeable future.



The solid white line is the average annual U.S. inflation rate for the last ten years (2.57%) projected to the year 2020.

The federal government has been growing over 3% faster than inflation for the last 10 years and is projected to continue to do so for the forseeable future!

Incredible.

And the deficit? Well, the good news is that - if you believe Orzag's rosy projections - it won't be over a trillion dollars beyond 2012 ....


Is it any wonder that the Tea Party movement is growing so spectacularly?

[UPDATED - scroll down] THE STORM OF THE CENTURY? At least, that's the way it sounds if one pays too much attention to the news programs. The first flakes fell in Manassas at 9:26 am; it's been snowing steadily - and fairly lightly - ever since.

That's a yardstick on the back deck. Calibrated, it will read 1" more than the actual snow depth.

Looking out from the garage, there has been no measurable snow - at least when this picture was taken. I've been out dressing the edges a bit to give me the maximum amount of room to move snow when the time comes ... the snow blade on the lawn tractor will handle about 8 inches, so clearing the drive will be a not once, not twice, but thrice effort and I'll need as much width as possible to push the snow aside and make way for the car.

The snow is beginning to stick at 11:30.
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[UPDATES]

Saturday, 6:30 am: A bit over 11 inches this morning; still snowing. It's going to be difficult, but the lawn tractor may be able to handle the depth. We'll find out later this morning.

8:30 pm: Local television is still predicting a 30" snowfall, but as of 8 pm my measuring stick shows only about 5" (stick depth minus 1 inch).



2:00 pm: FOX is reporting that Washington DC should expect a 30" snowfall, winds, power lines down, etc. - but the driveway is still clear and the snow on the back deck is melting.

CONSERVATIVES need not apply. The Department of Justice is seeking qualified mentally retarded lawyers.

OH, THANKS. Social Security tipping over into the red. And my wife and I are (were?) planning to start Social Security in 2011.

SURELY YOU JEST: “The Securities and Exchange Commission is demanding that publicly traded U.S. companies disclose their risks from man-made global warming to shareholders.”

Unfortunately, no.

Please take the stupid pills off the government’s prescription drug formulary ....

WE CAN’T BE SURE what would have happened to the economy without TARP and the stimulus package. But we can be fairly certain that a lot of Obama donors would have had nothing to give in the next election cycle.

Read it all.

TOYOTA RECALL: It’s not about the car.

So let’s set the record straight about how a perfectly normal Toyota, or any other car, truck, or SUV, can accelerate wildly “out of control” with an even reasonably competent driver behind the wheel. Can’t happen. Period. End of story.

But ...

Before the ink dried on breathless press reports, plaintiff lawyers were working overtime to empty Toyota’s colossal corporate coffers. When you combine our culture of victimization, the vilification of corporations, and a big payoff, the result is inevitable.

It's about power. I blame the Obama administration.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: Gonorrhea Lectim.

“OBAMISM” would almost be worth it if:

John Edwards sells his "two Americas" mansion. Al Gore gives his energy-guzzling estate over to poor environmental activists. Warren Buffet forsakes the esoteric deductions that gave him an 18 percent income-tax rate and happily starts paying 60 percent of his income as his "fair share." Bill and Melinda Gates hold back $20 billion or so from the foundation and give it to a broke treasury desperately in need of estate-tax revenue.

Never happen, though.

INSTAPUNDIT ASKS “Why does time fly when you get older?”

That’s easy. When you’re young, there’s an infinite number of tomorrows ahead. At 65, the number of tomorrows is decidedly limited.

DON'T ASK DON'T TELL: gays in the military. A thoughtful post on a number of serious issues that will confront the military if gays are to openly serve.

Gays can already serve in the U.S. military; repealing DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] isn’t about allowing them to. It’s about endorsing their sexual orientation in military operations and culture. The course of hands-off neutrality is not an option in these realms; their unique character is to require affirmative policy. Civilians should start by understanding this. The quiescent tolerance they think of in relation to their own lives must translate, in the military, into endorsement and administration of an explicit position. These matters are hard for most people to discuss without emotion, and the tendency of both sides is to focus on what offends them. But it’s essential to understand that no form of offense felt by either side makes the administrative consequences of repealing DADT go away. They are inevitable.

Linked from here.

I DOUBT THAT my Dodge Dakota will look this good in 2078.

Link via Instapundit.

THE DAILY OUTRAGE: The National Science Foundation gave Oklahoma State University researchers $1.1 million in stimulus grants to examine the "larger sociopolitical factors that shape grandparenthood" in Alaska.

The Washington Examiner’s Daily Outrage is more than you ever want to know about Washington’s “pork policy.”


Read it every day.

BOEHNER: No difference in beliefs between GOP and tea partiers.

Bull.

Commenter Mike G. nails it: ”Boehner is wrong and I refuse to donate to the GOP in general but do support conservative minded candidates regardless of party. In one sense he is right in that there are more GOP'ers that qualify for my support than do Dems but it is not blind alligience [sic] on my part.”

If the GOP persists in believing this myth, it will go down to defeat in 2010.

[G]AY CHIMPS ”eat their young.”

Umm. Gay? ... Offspring?

I must be missing something.

I’M COOL with giving them Apple Computer and McDonalds - but we keep the Statue of Liberty.

FROM MY EMAIL: “Toyota has expanded its product concerns to now include the brakes on the Prius. But look at it this way – it may be a bummer to read a bunch of smug bumper stickers in traffic, but it least it means that the Prius is in front of you.”

Heh.

MORE THOUGHTS ON HEALTH CARE

A Canadian minister, a strong advocate of single-payer healthcare, opts for heart surgery in the United States: “State-controlled access for thee, instant access for me.”

And a health care lesson from Obama’s space policy: “If human spaceflight—a technically challenging endeavor—need not involve NASA, then just maybe health care need not involve the meddling feds either.”

RAHM EMANUEL apologizes to the developmentally disabled for calling them liberal.

Heh.

INVENTED TRUTH and projection bias: I forgot I was white.

The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

Link from the Washington Times.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: “Nice car company ya got there, be a shame if anything happened to it."

Michael Barone orginally coined the phrase “gangster government” to describe the Obama administration’s threats last spring against Chrysler creditors who had the temerity to insist that bankruptcy laws be followed.

Now Toyota seems to be in the administration’s crosshairs.

THE FAT LADY sings for Keith Olbermann.

How this meglomaniac misogynist has survived on television for as long as he has is beyond me.

HEALTH CARE REFORM: Collectivism isn’t the answer, health savings accounts are.

RAND SIMBERG on the future of NASA: "NASA’s job is not to send a man to Mars, but to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to do so."

Simberg is correct in calling for NASA to be a technology and systems facilitator rather than developer, but the transition should have begun years ago. I worry that the abrupt cancellation of Constellation - and a minimum decade-long hiatus from manned space - will do nothing but accelerate the loss of interest and institutional experience in human space flight.

X-PRIZE Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis is more optimistic. Former astronaut Tom Jones has a different view. I hope Peter Diamandis is right, but I suspect that Dr. Jones' view is the more realistic.

CAN [CALIFORNIA] DEMOCRATS LEARN?

The California Senate, inspired by the blarney in Washington about how giving away health care would save money, has passed a bill creating a single-payer system in the state. They may not have noticed, but their state was recently issuing IOUs instead of checks and is begging for a federal bailout before they have to legalize something else to tax.

No, but other states might.

GET OUT THE YARDSTICK: a minimum of one to two feet of snow is predicted for mid-day tomorrow through Saturday.

And another storm is in the works for Tuesday.

According to the weather folks, this year has the potential to be the worst on record for the metro Washington DC region.

WHEN WE GET SICK we will be passive recipients of the kindness of strangers — like Barney Frank and Harry Reid. And Nurse Ratched.

Ugh.

DESPITE HIS ROOTS, Obama struggles to show he's connected to middle class.

I can roll up my sleeves and be just like you.

How ... cute.

WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST Richard Cohen has a momentary lapse into sanity: “It is now apparent that there are some bad people there who should be detained way past the time they are eligible for AARP membership. It's true that the world does not like Guantanamo, but then it's also true that the world is not an al-Qaeda target."

THE OBAMARANG: "On almost every key issue, what Obama says he will do, and what he says is true, is a clear guide to what he will not do, and what is not true."

Read it all.

SARAH PALIN chides Rahm Emmanuel for his “f---ing retarded” remark in a recent White House strategy session.

Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, on the one hand I dislike seeing Palin playing the hypersensitive “I’m offended because ...” card. Yet on the other, I wonder how the Democrats like it when the spike heel is on the other foot?

More: “Palin wants Rahm fired for calling liberals 'retarded'? Really? Isn't truth a legitimate defense anymore?”

SEARCHING FOR alien life on earth.

I’d suggest looking in the White House ....

”DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Secretary Ray LaHood told lawmakers Wednesday that Toyota owners should stop driving cars affected by the recall ....”

And do what - take the truck instead? These guys are so dumb they couldn’t buy a clue.

And God knows we’ve given them enough money.

HOW OBAMA could save his presidency.

Instapundit’s right: it’ll never happen.

MICHAEL BARONE: Who is Obama trying to impress?

The answer seems to be left-wing intellectuals, academics, voters -- "the educated class," in David Brooks's term -- who decried George W. Bush's policies as reeking of fascism and dictatorship. We are making policies to please those who hang out in law school faculty lounges.

That’s being cruel to lawyers.

MALLARD FILLMORE accurately describes the Tea Party movement.

HYPOTHESIS: the most monumentally stupid ideas come from the ranks of the intelligensia.

I suggest the reason may be that the intelligensia are so smart that they know there is no need to check their hypotheses against real data. The rest of us are not so sanguine; we "trust but verify."

THE ARTS SUFFER in a bad economy.

But not in an Obama economy.

AND THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL


is an oncoming train.

NUCLEAR POWER: think small.

Hyperion-style reactors can’t melt down, and are designed to be buried in small plots. Why not use that easy portability to distribute your power plants all over the place? Put a couple near your city’s main hospital, a couple more in your industrial zone, with single units scattered around the suburbs and residential cores, and you’ve got a redundant system that’s far less susceptible to, say, blackouts during bad weather, as opposed to running power across hundreds of miles of transmission lines.

It's an obvious solution; it's a correct solution; and it's in the back yard. For that reason alone, it'll never happen.

Unfortunately.

A BRAILLE TEST for taxi drivers. What’s next? Braille speed limit signs?

I SAW David Axlerod on television arguing that the government has “created or saved” millions of jobs by injecting the stimulus funds into the economy. Maybe, but where did/will those stimulus funds come from?

Uh, the economy? How many jobs were lost/will not be created when that money was/will be removed from the economy?

I have to say that the pharmaceutical company that is supplying the Obama administration with stupid pills must be raking in the cash.

[Update & bump to top] Thomas Sowell explains the economy.

OVERREACTION: Atheists outraged over a stamp honoring Mother Teresa.

Some ego reduction surgery is called for ....

SOME THOUGHTS ON HAITI (from my email):

I just returned from Haiti .....

Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact.... There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnal house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompetent or outright anti American.

USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.... Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.... Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it ... and wouldn't release a drop of it to the rescuers.

I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. " You don't know what your president wants! The military isn't in charge here we are!"

Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action.... Haiti doesn't need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That's not just my opinion , that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. "The French run the UN treat us the same as when we were a colony, at least Papa Doc ran the country."

Pretty rough. I can't vouch for the email's authenticity, but it is consistent with what I've seen and heard before about the UN and other international "development" agencies.

SAVE THE CANADIANS - don't adopt Obamacare.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY goes hard left. It would be interesting to see a similar set of statistics for the Republican party.

BACK TO THE WHEREVER: This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera, or teen-age tantrum.

Read the whole thing.

DON’T LET THE TEA PARTIERS WIN. This explains why the Democrats are going to lose large in 2010.

A new poll names Fox News Channel as the most trusted news outlet. Sarah Palin has 1.2 million fans on Facebook and is the $100,000 headliner at the national tea party convention. If we don't fight back, and stand up for America, then their version of America will get the upper hand.

We cannot let that happen.

The Democrat leadership is cutting off the nose to spite the face by doubling down on the Obama agenda. It’s incredible that they cannot recognize that it’s their own party members who are deserting the Democrat party.

SURE, YOU CAN keep your current health insurance. Quoting the President:

[W]e said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]

Nothing to see here. Move along, now. Just move along.

Instapundit has more.

RETRACTO the correction alpaca has been busy. And the media isn't looking very good.

CHRIS MATTHEWS" "Obama's taken us beyond black and white in our politics."


Progressives like Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC aren’t racist - they aren’t smart enough.

WHERE CLIMATE CHANGE WENT WRONG: "Healthy science is not a list of orthodox beliefs, but more like an endless, running debating club.... You could tell that global warming was in trouble the moment that James Hansen, NASA’s chief climate astrologer and enforcer of The Faith, said that 'climate deniers' should be put in jail."

HAIRLESS POTTER: coming to an office near you.

TEN TWEETS TO OBAMA: Add your own - 140 characters or less.

OBAMA’s EGO: His political career may have come back down to earth, but his view of himself sure hasn't.

IT IS TIME to rethink our opinion on President Obama: "He has done more to discredit big government in one year than we could do in an entire decade."

THE NEW RACISM: cultural incompetence.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER columnist Gregory Kane on "culturally relevant" education. "They [black boys] are not seeing themselves in the curriculum, and they do not see where it is relevant outside of school and therefore do not see it as an investment in their future."

As a former black boy myself -- one who managed to learn how to read, write and master enough math to get me through algebra and calculus -- I feel compelled to slash through this web of nonsense.

When I was a lad I did not have to "see" myself in the curriculum. The only picture I needed to see was my mother's foot being placed firmly up my derriere if I didn't bring home good grades from school. You'd be amazed at how "relevant" that made everything my teachers taught me.

In other words, the geography I learned in eighth grade, the history and the science: all were relevant outside of school because my mother said they were. And her vote was the only one that counted.

Start talking about "culturally relevant teaching strands," and you may end up teaching students absolute nonsense.

It doesn't matter if you "see yourself" in the subject taught; it does matter that you master it.

OBAMA TO end NASA's Constellation program.

In his new budget, President Obama plans to eliminate the space program's manned moon missions. When the president releases his budget on Monday, a White House official confirmed on Thursday there will be a big hole where funding for NASA's Constellation program used to be.

From the comments at Michelle Malkin's web site: "For the love of God, would someone please point out the hypocracy [sic] of trying to create jobs on one hand, while killing the space program with the other?"

PRO-LIFE, PRO-CHOICE: At a rally in San Francisco, pro-life outnumbers pro-choice 500 to one.

OBAMA TRANSLATOR. Ben Shapiro deciphers Obama-speak.

“Hope and change”: Socialism at home, surrender abroad.
“False choice”: A very real choice Obama wants to pretend doesn’t exist.
“Let me be clear”: Let me lie to you.
“Make no mistake”: See “let me be clear.”
“This isn’t about me”: This is completely about me.
“Failed policies of the past”: Don’t blame me! Blame Bush!

There are more here.

[Added] Here's one I suggest:

"A failure to communicate": You’re not listening.

THE CREDIBILITY GAP: Sarah Palin on Obama’s State of the Union.

Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.

We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.

Read it all.

I ALSO THINK that the people governing us have become objectively dumber over the last 50 years or so.

Of course. A larger and larger percentage of that governing class have been edjumakated at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, ....

MSNBC'S CHRIS MATTHEWS: "He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."



Jon Stewart responds: