Friday, February 28, 2014

DAMS HELP MORE: NASA helping California deal with drought.
'LIBERTARIAN PARANOIA': Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.
FOURTEEN YEARS worth of reasons why the GOP grassroots scoff at Washington Republicans.
Republicans who lack the will or principles to fight on major issues will still use Obama’s obstructionism as the baseline for excuses not to advocate bold initiatives. Whether it’s a debt ceiling or a budget bill, they will fear brinkmanship with Obama as much as they do now.
The Red State post is here.
RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE, Obama declares Happy Hour. It makes you wonder what he would have done on 9/11/2001.
THE FIRST HUMAN to die on another planet may be alive today.
LAND OF INEQUALITY: California's flight of the middle class.
An analysis conducted last year by the Hoover Institution’s Carson Bruno revealed that the group making up the largest share of the California diaspora is the middle class. These are not titans of industry looking to maximize profits in Texas or Florida; these are everyday citizens who’ve found themselves priced out of what was once called the California dream.
Read it all.
THE OUTER LIMITS: Shut up, they explained.

But it's no longer "shut up, they explained". It's now "Shut up, we explain."
FAA RISKS losing drone war.
“Most people want to comply with the FAA rules,” said Ted Ellett, a former FAA general counsel who is now a partner specializing in aviation at the law firm Hogan Lovells. “But the more the FAA acts like a big daddy, behemoth government agency that is imposing excessive restrictions, the more the feeling of ‘I’m an American, they can’t tell me what to do’ kicks in. And that’s a real danger for the FAA.”
This applies, I think, to much of Obama's liberal agenda, especially ObamaCare. I expect such massive passive civil disobedience that the ruling class will have to surrender.

Americans won't -- can't -- be controlled.
VIA INSTAPUNDIT: The Honest University Commercial. Funny, but it does remind that honesty appears to be making somewhat of a comeback. Recently I received a mailing from one of those 'we buy your house for cash' outfits that was surprisingly honest. They wrote - upfront, not in the fine print - that they would not pay you market value for your home; discount would be their return for the risk of repairs and reselling it at market prices.
TWEET OF THE DAY: "You call what I just did walking into a wall. I call it looking for walls I can pass through and marking that one off the list." From @goldengateblond via the Instapundit twitter feed.
IT'S TIME to move on from blaming the Bush administration.
FRANCE. I RECOMMEND FRANCE: Angry homophobe Alec Baldwin vows to leave New York.
DEMOCRATS introduce bill to ‘protect children’ from electronic cigarettes.

Well, they promote abortion to protect them from birth....
BREAKING NEWS! Wet streets cause rain! And climate change causes weather (or is it weather causes climate change; I can never remember).

Almost every time I read -- or see on television -- a story of which I am professionally knowledgeable, it is wrong in some important detail.
DRIVING FREEDOM: Automobile 'black boxes' still lack consumer protection. Not particularly well-written, unfortunately, but from someone acknowledged to be knowledgeable about vehicular data recorders.

One thing stands out, both with this post and this earlier Gingrich post on healthcare: who owns the data? I stand with Gingrich: we need to adopt the principle that you own your data, to be shared at your discretion or formal court order.
INTERESTING: CRS-3 Falcon 9 first stage to sport legs and attempt a soft splashdown.

Way back in the 1950's I was a big fan of the Tom Corbett Space Cadet science fiction juveniles, where 'spaceships' routinely took off and landed vertically, much in the way a car parks in a parking lot today. From a purely rocket perspective, it's looking like we're approaching the 50's.
DOESN'T THIS remind you of ObamaCare?
YES, BUT DOES IT HAVE GOVERNMENT-APPROVED BACKUP LIGHTS? Curiosity rover now able to drive backward.
I USED to take employee performance evaluations seriously until I discovered Wally is right.
NEWT GINGRICH: Corruption at the Veteran's Administration. We should expect no less from ObamaCare.
5G SERVICE on your 4G phone?