THE MAN OF THE YEAR is a woman.

In the only survey that counts. Congratulations, Sarah.

“ALL THE SOARING CADENCES in the world, all the self-referencing, and all the whining and blame-gaming sadly cannot put the shattered Humpty-dumpty view of a once comfortable world back together again.”

UNHEALTHY ARROGANCE: Thomas Sowell on ObamaCare.

“What is ‘historic’ [about ObamaCare] is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.... [T]his is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.”

If it passes, it will be a bitter legacy.

THE SYSTEM WORKED, except for that part when it failed.

Which is why Americans cannot afford to be complacent.

FROM JUDICIAL WATCH: Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2009.

From the entry on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but applicable to them all: “At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them.”

The “ten most wanted” in alphabetical order:

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Senator John Ensign (R-NV)
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner
Attorney General Eric Holder
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) - a “two-fer”
President Barack Obama (D-US)
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven - a “many-fer”
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) would be on my list, but I suppose mere venality isn’t sufficient to make the top ten.

Read the complete “indictment” here.

IMAGINE THAT. Liberals aren’t quite so liberal when it’s their money being spent.

Via Instapundit.

GREEN GOES BROWN. "AltaRock Energy is abandoning its major geothermal demonstration project at The Geysers, north of San Francisco.... Earlier in the fall TRU Energy, a subsidiary of CLP in Hong Kong, announced it was writing off its whole investment in Solar Systems' 154-megawatt solar project in Mildura, Australia."

What? Green energy may cause earthquakes? Or be uneconomical? Heaven forfend ....

MARK STEYN on Obama's treatment of terrorism as a crime rather than an act of war: "This would be a big enough gamble in the best of circumstances. Up against the broader background ... it makes disaster inevitable."

WHY ARE WE SO BAD at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?

Detecting the guilty requires judgment; punishing the innocent does not.

SCRAPPLEFACE: “In the wake of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, President Obama, in a news conference from the Pacific White House in Hawaii, on Monday cautioned Americans to avoid ‘lashing out against folks in puffy underpants.’" ... ‘Our future as a nation depends on how we react to this incident,’ the president said. ‘If we start profiling people based on the mere appearance of their slacks, a lot of incontinent adults as well as infants and toddlers will be swept up in the discriminatory backlash....’”

Read it all.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: Nanny of the Year

SOME LESSONS to take home. Since the government can’t - or won’t - learn, we must.

THE LAST REFUGE from scoundrels:

Texas ... grew by almost half a million and accounted for 18 percent of the nation's total population growth. [It] had above-average immigrant growth, but domestic in-migration was nearly twice as high.

There may be lessons for public policy here. Texas over the decades has had low taxes (and no state income tax), low public spending and regulations that encourage job growth. It didn't have much of a housing bubble or a housing price bust.

Under Govs. George W. Bush and Rick Perry, it has placed tight limits on tort lawsuits, and has seen an influx of both corporate headquarters and medical doctors.

As a soon-to-be Texan again, I’m not sure I’m pleased with this development.

GOVERNMENT WORKERS OPTIMISTIC; private sector workers not. Of course. With the Democrats in power, the opportunities for government 'controllers' are endless.

ON NEWSPAPERS and spectator sports: “The news story ... was written like it was a sporting event. There were a few facts and then there were reactions from Democrats and Republicans as if their contests were what mattered.”

Yep. What I want from newspapers are the facts. I can supply the opinions myself.

Link via Instapundit.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on his expectations for 2010. I’m not that optimistic.

DAVE BARRY’S 2009: ”Washington, rejecting ‘business as usual’, finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.”

Read it all.

Link via Instapundit.

HMM .... From the Fox News website this afternoon.

Best Virtual Breadcrumbs for the Lost Traveler: Bushnell BackTrack Handheld GPS.

Couple Stuck in Oregon Snow for 3 Days After GPS Leads Them Astray.

I KNEW CONGRESS was full of clowns ...



... so this must be a sign of an advanced civilization.

SO TELL US how you really feel.

What I’d really like to know is David Michael Green’s solutions to the problems he’s listed.

Link via Instapundit.

OBAMISM DEFINED: "Votes are bought with hundred-million-dollar earmarks; the attorney general predicates judicial action on the political ramifications of indicting or not indicting; federal bureaucracies are devoted to the new Caesar rather than the letter of the law.”

SO DRUNKENNESS IS A REQUIREMENT FOR CIVILIZATION? “A secure supply of alcohol appears to have been part of the human community’s basic requirements much earlier than was long believed.”

MARK STEYN on ObamaCare: “[W]hat matters is to get something, anything across the river, and then burn the bridge behind you.”

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

"I’LL BET ... American students have better self-esteem. They come from an educational process that values self-esteem; the other students from one that values performance. Both have produced as designed."

Yes.

AIRLINE PASSENGERS - 1, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - 0. And our government’s response, once again, is to further punish the innocent.

Maybe, just maybe, the government should consider empowering its greatest asset rather than restricting it.

It could be called an army of Davids.

“WHAT A GOOD THING Democrats are the party of logic and reason. [Otherwise] they might tell their critics to ‘Shut the f--k up.’"

A LESSON FOR LIBERALS: “The free market is a harsh mistress, but a fair one. Big Government, on the other hand, is always for sale to the powerful.”

But liberals won’t – can’t – learn. Liberalism is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting that this time, the outcome will be different.

OBAMA: NOT ONE DIME in new taxes. No, more like a thousand dimes.

A PREDICTION. The 2010 mid-term elections will be the worst on record for voter registration fraud, vote manipulation, and voter intimidation.

TOO MUCH competition from Congress.

DON SURBER has the worst pun of the day. The comments are good, too.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a rain day makes. Yesterday before the rain started, there was still over a foot of snow on the ground. Today, the front along the drainage swale is just water.



The roof is nearly clear, as is the driveway.



But from the street, it's still a picture-perfect winter day in the fog.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!






Christmas morning at home.

YOU’RE WELCOME. And “Thank you!” Instapundit for the recognition.

SARAH PALIN takes on ObamaCare.

She took on a corrupt mayor of Wasilla.
And won.
She took on a corrupt governor of Alaska.
And won.
Now she takes on a corrupt Speaker of the House, a corrupt Senate Majority Leader and as corrupt president.
My money is on Sarah Palin.

Her post is here.

THANK HEAVEN FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS; otherwise, our citizens might be able to figure this out.

IS ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING a dead issue? Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo, thinks it may be. According to him, cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth's ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate.

"My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century," Lu said. "Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming.

And we’ve already paid the CFC (Freon) tax ....

Link via Instapundit.

THE AUTHORITARIAN PROPAGANDA (AP) wire service "reports" that skepticism is the bane of science.

Once, not so long ago, the planet's prevailing voices were those of the experts--the people who, right or wrong, had years of training to back up what they said. Then came the Internet, and everything changed.... As the amplification of human opinion becomes more democratic, is the suspicion of the expert and the intellectual--a long-held trope in American society--going globally viral?

Or – just perhaps – the suspicion is justified?

PROOF THAT ZOMBIES EXIST: “We must not buy federally-mandated insurance, if this cheesy counterfeit of reform is all we can buy. No single payer, no sale. No public option, no sale. No Medicare buy-in, no sale. I am one of the self-insured, albeit by choice, and I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of health-care reform.”

That’s Countdown’s Keith Olbermann on ObamaCare without a public option. His argument makes no sense whatever.

I hate to insult zombies, but Olberman is the perfect example of a completely mindless human being.

DON’T SAY YOU WEREN’T WARNED: If you like your health plan, you will NOT be able to keep it.

BUYER’S REMORSE: American unions at odds over health care bill, saying provision that would impose an 'excise tax' on insurance companies will end up hitting the middle class hard.

WARD MOORE was ahead of his time. By 32 years, to be precise.

It finally happened. The medical establishment has taken over the civilized world. Orwell’s Big Brother is a doctor, and there is a prescription for everyone ... usually thanatization or ‘modification.’ The all-powerful high court of Medics will decide. The primitive operations and drugs of an earlier culture have been replaced by more sophisticated methods and controls.

The population at large, described as Patients, willingly observe the codes of behavior set by the ruling Medics. It is a strange and cold world, still evolving from the devastation of ancient bacteria aerosols. All that is visible, from architecture to transportation, has been newly created by the Medical technologists. The minds and bodies of the citizens are on ‘hold.’ Nothing must encroach on the Public Health. Every facet of life has been measured and made safe.

The synopsis of Caduceus Wild, a 1978 novel by Ward Moore and Robert Bradford.

Change “medical establishment” to “government healthcare bureaucracy”, make a few other minor wording changes, and you’ve got ObamaCare.

TEXANS: you gotta love ‘em.

A CONCLUSION from last week’s "Red Alert" rally on Capitol Hill. Jim Geraghty reports:

The Tea Party crowd began this process disliking the health-care bill, but what's really driving their current fury over it is the degree to which a majority in both houses of Congress have refused to listen to the skeptics or engage those who think it's a bad idea.

Every step of the process, the leaders of the majority have engaged in the worst possible responses — avoiding meetings with skeptical voters, clinging to talking points in the face of counterarguments, attacking the motives of the critics, demonizing them as extremists, un-American, etc. If they had treated the concerns that the plan will only expand bureaucracy and increase costs with respect from the beginning, the debate would be quite different today.

Note the congresional leadership’s attitude of anointment: “We are the leaders; our job is to lead. Your job is to follow along - not question our leadership.”

“SOMETIMES THERE’S NOTHING MORE AMUSING than hardcore liberals realizing they've been had.”

"We are in a sense being punished for our own charity," [NY Gov. David] Paterson said Monday.

“Of course that charity comes with other people's money. The left is always charitable with your money. Their own? Uh, not so much.”

Realization always comes late ....

SANTA CLAUS promotes child obesity. A study by [Melbourne, Australia] Monash University public health “expert” Dr. Nathan Grills found Santa could be promoting obesity and speeding — and damaging millions of lives.

Please tell me that universities aren’t breeding grounds for stupidity ....

[Update & bump] It was only a joke, he said. Uh-huh. Sure.

IF OBAMACARE PASSES, I (hope I) can take some small solace in knowing that the Democrats who brought this abomination to fruition will get screwed as well.

“THE ECONOMY IS SO BAD that I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.”

Can we pre-decline the Congress? The Administration?

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN FEAR: A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

IT’S NOT A DEATH PANEL; it’s a “Life Panel”.

AGREE WITH ME OR ELSE you’re one of “the birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups ...”

Guess the good Senator’s political affiliation.

WHY THE ‘ANGRY MOB’ IS ANGRY:

Our anger comes not simply because we are poor sports. We are not racists who abhor the idea of "a black man in the White House," because in truth, we have wanted to see that bridge crossed for years. We are not "just angry people" -- quite the contrary, which underscores the point. Conservatives are not usually angry, nor are we protesters. That we show up to a protest at all is a huge statement itself and expressive enough of our anger. When we do protest, we don't vandalize local merchants, topple cars and set them on fire, or require the police to control us or cart us off to jail. We're not violent people -- but we are human, and we do get angry. We're just regular folks who prefer to not protest or make a stink about anything. We just want to live our lives in peace. What lights our fire is any threat to that peace and the freedom that provides it.

Read it all.

Link from Instapundit.

UTTERLY TASTELESS AND JUVENILE Congressman seeks prison term for critic. This is the idiot who argued the Republican’s health care plan was to “die quickly.”

His (justifiably) angry critic’s website is here.

24 HOUR BUG? Let’s hope it lasts a bit longer.

BILL MOYERS: “Aren't you saying that in order to save the Democratic President and the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012 you have to have a really rotten health insurance bill?”

Uh, yes.

Linked from Best of the Web.

“AMONG THE INTELLIGENTSIA, there have always been many who are ready to jump on virtually any bandwagon that will take them to the promised land, where the wise and noble few -- like themselves -- can take the rest of us poor dummies in hand and tell us how we had better change the way we live our lives.”

Read it all.

PAYOLA and more payola. If they weren’t the government, they’d be headed for jail.

A THOUGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Polar bears are just grizzly bears in white suits.

DON’T STEAL FROM YOUR NEIGHBORS; steal from the big-box stores that employ your neighbors.

GOOD GRIEF: ”[W]hen your unsuspecting tot logs on and hops a virtual train to the North Pole…you should know that he or she will be informed — by Santa Claus — that Christmas may be canceled this year due to Global Warming.”

Words fail.

Linked from Instapundit.

THERE WILL BE NO DEATH PANELS. “[T]he Independent Institute cites data from the American Medical Association's National Health Insurer Report Card that indicate Medicare denies claims at twice the rate of private insurance companies.”

Nothing to see here. Nope. Nothing. Move along now.

GREENER THAN THOU? Sarah Palin responds to California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger: “[W]hat I didn’t do was hamstring Alaska’s job creators with burdensome regulations so that I could act “greener than thou” when talking to reporters.”

I don’t think Palin’s perfect on the environment, but I too am getting sick of the global warmists’ “holier-than-thou” attitude toward anyone the least bit skeptical of their environmental posturing.

TIME FOR SARAH to grapple. OK, so I understand the concept:

Palin must learn how to convey to her audience that she comprehends and can grapple with the depth and nature of presidential-level problems. This is the fundamental weakness to which most ... criticisms of her are tethered.

Translated, she must become smoother, more “nuanced” to quiet the frayed nerves of the “sophisticated” coastal elites of both parties who despise her. I understand that.

But ...

Frankly, I want those very same sophisticated coastal elites of both parties to understand – and feel – the contempt I have for them.

A NEW LOW in the Rasmussen Obama Approval Index.

Hmm. ObamaCare is getting passed ... shouldn’t his approval be skyrocketing?

NOT ONLY was it a heckuva lot more than $15, it was my money.

[Update via Instapundit]: "Cash for cloture". Follow the links.

YOU DON'T SAY: "The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state."

DRUNK PILOT steals airplane; takes off.

Actually, he's a skilled acrobatic pilot at an air show. Many years ago, I saw a similar routine by another pilot flying a stock Piper Cub. What he was able to do while never getting more than 50 above the runway was amazing.

SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA) sold her vote for $300M. How much did Sen. Nelson (D-NE) sell his vote for?

God help us all - Congress won't.

ONLY FIVE MINUTES before these photos were taken, you could see the asphalt.



About 7 inches of snow have been cleared from the top of the driveway. The lawn tractor's snow blade can handle only about 10 inches,so it looks like tomorrow's going to be some hard physical labor.

I was hoping for a break at about 8 inches of snow ....

[Update] The back porch ruler now reads almost 11 inches.

[Update; 1:30 pm] The ruler is now buried; time to switch to a yardstick.

[Update; 6:00 pm] The yardstick now reads 16 inches; it's still snowing.

A NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: please shut up!

I know it's snowing outside; it does that in the winter. I also know how to deal with it, and I can do without your silly advice and fatuous "look at me braving the danger to show you what you can see looking out the window" commentary.

A SNOWY VIEW from our window:



Almost 7 inches at 8:30 am; another 10-12 inches expected before it's over tomorrow morning.

It's going to be a long day.

A MOST AMAZING Remote Controlled [RC] model airplane -- click here to see it fly.

This perfectly scaled model of the SR-71 "Blackbird" built by a German RC enthusiast is one nifty toy.

Enjoy.

HONK TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING

And the cars to which these horns are attached don’t emit CO2?

I know it’s foreign to them, but perhaps these folks could at least try thinking?

Via Tim Blair.

OH, MY. SARAH PALIN IS HETEROSEXUAL: “The failed Vice Presidential nominee took time off from shilling her book to vacation with her son Trig, daughter Piper and opposite sex spouse Todd, in President Barack Obama's birth state of Hawaii on Tuesday.”

Don’t you think the fact that she’s given birth to five children might be a clue?

ANOTHER EXAMPLE of political correctness run amuck:

An eight year old elementary school student in Taunton was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick figure picture of Jesus on the cross.

The second grader at Maxham Elementary school was told by this teacher that the drawing was violent. This was after the class was asked to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas....

The school denied that the student was suspended: “School officials did not specify any action they took, but said they followed ‘well-established protocol,’ including reviewing the child's records and consulting with school psychologists.”

At the moment, this appears to be a "he said, she said" case. But given school tendencies toward "zero tolerance", the way to bet is against the school.

BLOWING MY OWN HORN: why systems engineers are really, really important.

One major problem with most invocations of the precautionary principle is that people tend to apply it to whatever danger they want to prevent, but largely ignore it in considering the potential dangers created by the policies they advocate.

It’s called risk assessment.

Link from Instapundit.

BLAME A BILLIONAIRE: “In 1998, when the Clinton White House found itself in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, one of its key defense strategies was to attack the conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife as the dark power behind the allegations against the president.... Now it's the Obama White House that is in trouble.... And now, as in the Clinton years, White House surrogates are looking for a billionaire to blame.”

But the Left’s billionaires are - of course - pristine and without sin. Read the whole thing.

AND THE WALLS came tumbling down.

Well, we can hope.

SOMETHING LIGHTER: A new Claris poll tells us that one of the most popular members of President Obama's team is White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, approved by 50 percent and disapproved by 33 percent. Many of those approving say they have fond memories of Gibbs coaching the Redskins and managing his racing team, while others credit him for leading a well-run NCIS team.

AND YOU THOUGHT OBAMACARE would only cost a trillion dollars or so .... Uh, no. It makes HillaryCare look cheap by comparison:

This weekend, the Congressional Budget Office released “a very strange memo” titled, “Budgetary Treatment of Proposals to Regulate Medical Loss Ratios.” You wouldn’t know it from the title, but that little memo is the smoking gun that shows how congressional Democrats have very carefully hidden more than half the cost of their health care bills.

The whole article is here.

Link via Megan McArdle.

STILL WHINING AFTER ALL THIS TIME: “The president's still whining about the problems he inherited when he took office and he's still blaming Republicans. And the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace.”

Um, Mr. Obama? It’s your administration now. You’re responsible.

MAKING MONEY ON CAP’N TRADE: “The EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) may have been the deciding factor in the closure of the Corus Redcar steel-making plant – reported last week , giving the company a windfall bonus of up to £1.2 billion from the plant closure – on top of other savings.”

It’s a clever scam - and perfectly legal. The company can effectively double it’s “cap’n trade” income by closing its steel plant in England, "offshoring" production to India and bringing that steel plant’s emissions down from over twice the EU level to the level currently produced by the steel plant in England. The details are here.

Sweet.

Linked from the Wall Street Journal (scroll down).

UH-OH. RUSSIANS CONFIRM confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming.

Raining on the environmentalists' parade.

MARINES PINNED DOWN BY A SNIPER. U.S. Marines, pinned down by a sniper on top of a building decided that they'd had enough. They marked his location with a smoke grenade and called for close air support.



The aircraft was an F-16 from the 192nd Fighter Wing of the Virginia Air National guard.

F-16 ... $21 Million
Smoke grenade ... $1.16
Camcorder from Best Buy ... $249.99
Audio track on this clip ... Priceless

LANGUAGE WARNING: Rough language -- not for youngsters.

CONGRESSMAN DROPS EFFORT to award Tiger Woods the Congressional Gold Medal.

I can’t understand why: the decoration is awarded to an individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity, and national interest of the United States.

Hasn’t Tiger been doing just that - one woman at a time?

[Update] Tiger Woods named "Athlete of the Decade" by the Associated Press. Well, yes, if you consider sex a sport.

THE VALUE OF LIFE: the “quality-adjusted life year.”

In a paper entitled “Cost-Effectiveness and Disability Discrimination,” the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School, Dan Brock, argues “prioritizing health care resources by their relative cost-effectiveness can result in lower priority for the treatment of disabled persons than otherwise similar non-disabled persons.” He says that type of system not only “implies that disabled persons’ lives are of lesser value than those of non-disabled persons,” but it also “conflicts with equality of opportunity; it conflicts with fairness, which requires ignoring (some/most) differential impacts of treatment; it wrongly gives lower priority to disabled persons for equally effective treatment; it conflicts with giving all persons an equal chance to reach their full potential; and, it is in conflict with giving priority to the worse off.”

Coming soon to a clinic near you.

FROM A WEEK AGO: “Democrats would allow older Americans starting at age 55 to buy into Medicare, the popular program for the aged.”

Medicare is not “a popular program for the aged,” it’s the only game in town. And I’m not looking forward to playing.

Thankfully, Senator Lieberman killed it.

OOPS! Another of those pesky unintended consequences.

MILWAUKEE – Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don’t burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.

This is a minor violation of the “Three Laws of Unintended Consequences.”

If you want to consider what a major violation would look like, you need only consider the probable outcome if ObamaCare passes ....

”THE STRONGEST ARGUMENT for a government of limited powers is that you should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

TEENS SMOKING FEWER CIGARETTES; they’re switching to marijuana. I’m sure this will be hailed as a great success.

A BIT OF HUMOR: the bagpiper's tale.

HEH. ”There’s that new color of transparency I keep hearing about. What’s it called, opaque?”

AND I WAS TOLD the Tea Partiers were violent goons.

I FEEL BAD - so there must be something wrong with you.

RACE MATTERS - to the left.

DRAMATIC PLUNGE. President Obama's approval index dropped like the proverbial rock over the weekend, from a negative12 on Friday to a negative 19 today.


Is it Copenhagen? Or the fact that Congress is closing in on an Obamacare bill? Or just a statistical outlier?

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree and think 25 to life would be appropriate.
****
America needs Obamacare like Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
****
Q: Have you heard about McDonalds new Obama Value Meal?
A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.
****
Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
****
Q: What's the difference between Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers and threats to society. The other is for housing prisoners.
****
Q: What's the difference between Obama and his dog, Bo?
A: Bo has papers.
****

PRESENT COMPANY EXCEPTED, OF COURSE: "’The whole world needs to adopt China's one-child policy,’ writes Canadian journalist Diane Francis, mother of two.”

Thinking is clearly foreign to the Politically Correct.

WHY PUBLIC EDUCATION SHOULD BE STARVED: A branch of the University of Minnesota may require all education students at the school to understand and accept that they are either privileged or oppressed and that they be well-versed in issues like "white privilege," "institutional racism” and the "myth of meritocracy in the United States."

AL GORE TALKS about global warming:

[T]he sooner we switch away from carbon-based fuel and start relying on renewable energy sources available in the United States, the sooner we will grow our economy by creating the millions of new jobs that will come from retrofitting homes and businesses, building smart grids, renewable energy systems and planting trees and all the rest. We need to create a lot of jobs that can't be outsourced.

Well, I’ll give Al some credit - the jobs in italics can’t be outsourced. But money spent essentially repairing broken windows is money not spend growing the economy.

MAYBE FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS should oversee school lunch programs. I’m sure the kids would prefer McDonalds on Monday, KFC on Tuesday, etc.

Score another point for free enterprise; the government’s still at zero.

Instapundit says not to worry, though, the government will still do ”a bangup job on healthcare.”

GARLIC MILK: fighting global warming.

EVEN THE WASHINGTON POST recognizes single-payer healthcare when they see it.

My only surprise is that they are capable of admitting it.

THE ARROGANCE OF OBAMACARE:

It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.

That's the kind of government arrogance that has to be smacked down hard, and that alone is reason to demand that your senator reject this vicious bill in its entirety.

Read it all.

Via Hot Air.

MIXED MESSAGES: First it was coffee, then it was beer. Now we find that coffee increases drunkeness.

Hmm. Maybe the correct message is that drunkenness decreases a man’s risk of prostate cancer ....

DON’T LET THE CLIMATE DOUBTERS FOOL YOU:

In April, 1994 -- long after scientists had clearly demonstrated the addictive quality and devastating health impacts of cigarette smoking -- seven chief executives of major tobacco companies denied the evidence, swearing under oath that nicotine was not addictive.

And this has to do with doubting global warming how?

The public and policymakers should not be confused by a few private e-mails that are being selectively publicized and, in any case, remain irrelevant to the broad body of diverse evidence on climate change. Selected language in the messages has been interpreted by some to suggest unethical actions such as data manipulation or suppression.

Aha! ... the link. But in “Cigarette-Gate” it was the scientists who outed the evil chief executives; it “Climate-Gate” wasn’t it the scientists who were themselves cooking the books?

Doubters insist that the earth is not warming. This is in stark contrast to the consensus of 18 of the world's most respected scientific organizations, who strongly stated in an Oct. 21 letter to the U.S. Senate that human-induced climate change is real.

The 18 “most respected scientific organizations” don’t include the IEEE and AIAA, both of which I am a member.

[D]oubters try to leverage any remaining points of scientific uncertainty about the details of warming trends to cast doubt on the overall conclusions shared by traditionally cautious, decidedly non-radical science organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which represents an estimated 10 million individual scientists through 262 affiliated societies.

I just checked the web site of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, of which author Alan I. Leshner is the CEO. As best as I can tell, the only requirement for Professional Membership is an email address, credit card, and $146.

EVEN THE WASHINGTON POST recognizes single-payer when they see it.

My only surprise is that they are capable of admitting it.

CASH FOR CAULKERS: President Obama proposed a new program Tuesday that would reimburse homeowners for energy-efficient appliances and insulation, up to $12,000.

Let’s see: New insulated windows? (check!) New insulated doors? (check!) New refrigerator? (check!) New kitchen stove? (check!) High efficiency air conditioner? (check!) Solar hot water heater? (check!) Wind turbine? (check!)

When can I pick up my check?

THE INHERITED DEFICIT FALLACY: Read it all, but there are two points worth repeating.

ONE: Congress controls spending. The Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and the White House in 2009, so the deficits in 2008 ($400 billion), 2009 ($1.8 trillion), 2010 ($1.4 trillion), 2011 ($900 billion (estimated)), etc., weren’t inherited.

TWO: When you’re $1.8 trillion in debt, more borrowing is not an option. Cutting the size and cost of government is.

MEMO TO CONGRESS: When you lose Instapundit, you’ve lost America. “This [ObamaCare] bill stinks. Kill it dead, and bury it at the crossroads with a stake through its heart.”

HOW TO MAKE A ROBOT OPEN THE DOOR: When I taught introductory programming back in the Dark Ages (late 1960's), opening the door was always my first class lecture.

How time flies ....

OBAMA’S ECONOMY: the new Obama dollar.


Scanned from the December 8th Washington Times editorial page.

THE FIRST SIGN OF CORRUPTION in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. – Georges Bernanos

I have always wondered how intellectually serious liberals can reconcile this with their desire to increase the power of the State.

I suspect the answer lies in the belief that this new crop of statists will be honest, unlike all the generations before them. This is a dangerous delusion.

Read it all.

ADVICE TO THE MEDIA: “[G]ive up your jobs and go into prostitution. It’s definitely a more honorable profession than yours.”

JIM GERAGHTY at NRO takes note of the obvious: ”[A]dministration officials are arguing that the nation's 15.4 million unemployed need an extension of jobless benefits.”

“Actually, what they really need are jobs.”

SNOW JOBS: Thomas Sowell explains economics to the Obama administration.

[Update] Jon Stewart has another suggestion.

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: “The Stupak Amendment [to ObamaCare] discriminates against women by taking away health coverage they already have — and tells women who participate in the new health insurance exchange that they can’t even use their own funds to buy a policy that includes abortion coverage.”

Um, Barbara, by that argument, if I were a single male, wouldn’t my current health insurance discriminate against me by mandating, for example, coverage for mammograms? And childbirth?

[Update] Boxer tries again: If ObamaCare covers Viagra, why shouldn’t it cover abortion? Um, well, because Viagra helps create life while abortion destroys it?

And to be perfectly clear, I don’t think health insurance ought to cover Viagra either, along with a plethora of other medical procedures.

MORE CANADIAN HEALTHCARE from Reason TV.




Via Instapundit.

AND PALIN HATRED is in full bloom.

Link via Hot Air.

SARAH PALIN is coming to town. Stanley Fish reviews Going Rogue.

FROM THE RADIO: men who drink 5 or more cups of coffee daily have a significantly reduced likelihood of prostate cancer.

If this is true, I'll be okay until at least the age of 127.

[Update] Now it's beer.

HUMANS will be marrying robots within 50 years ....

Frankly, in 50 years I doubt robots will be that stupid.

HEALTH CARE and gun control. Gun lobbyists are concerned that Obamacare will raise health care insurance premiums for gun owners. Other organizations that lobby for potentially “risky” activities (such as sport parachuting, scuba diving, motorcycling, etc.) are split as to whether or not they think Obamacare could affect them.

Silly ... or serious? I lean toward the latter, simply because the multi-thousand page behemoth before Congress is long on control and short on freedom.

THE PROBLEM IS PRODUCTIVITY: Americans are too damned productive.

Read it and weep.

STEVEN DEN BESTE describes the world of Obama: Government by Wishful Thinking.

An excerpt:

It explains his economic policy. Teleologists [wishful thinkers] inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free health care to everyone without wrecking the economy; it’s just how things really should be, so that’s how it will be. Where will the money come from? That’s the kind of question that materialists ask; teleologists don’t concern themselves with such (sic) trivial. It’ll happen somehow, because it’s obviously how it should turn out. To say we shouldn’t do it is to be heartless, uncaring — and those things are more important than mundane claims that it won’t work. If you just believe, it will work.

Read it all.

NOTE: Den Beste is a former engineer who posted at his website USS Clueless. What a loss when he quit posting regularly.

SOME MISTAKES ARE SO BIG that “only smart people are tempted to make them. One [such] is the faith ... that bigger government is better government.”

“Of course, the kind of people who are apt to push for government-imposed solutions are those who are also apt to believe they will be the ones imposing decisions, not the ones who have to live with [them].”

Read it all.

BIG FOOT: from Bret Baier’s Political Grapevine:

Organizers say the climate change summit in Copenhagen will create 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, as thousands of delegates, officials and world leaders descend on the city.

The London Daily Telegraph reports the director of one of the city's biggest limousine companies says more than 1,200 vehicles will be used for the conference with some being driven hundreds of miles from neighboring countries.

The director puts the total number of electric cars or hybrids included in that total at just five because of high taxes on those vehicles in Denmark. The airport expects up to 140 private jets during the busiest days with some planes needing to drop off passengers and then park in nearby countries because of a lack of space in Copenhagen.

Heh.

THE DEVILS DICTIONARY: A skeptics guide to Copenhagen.


I particularly liked “E” for environmentalists, who believe that all life, except yours, is sacred.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: "The eligibility age for state-subsidized breast cancer screening has been raised from 40 to 50 by the California Health and Human Services Agency.... Advocates for low-income women ... say the cuts put a two-tier system in place that is based on money rather than medical standards.”

But don't worry--ObamaCare will reduce the number of tiers to one, so that rich women won't be able to get tested either.

Link from Best of the Web (scroll down).

PRESIDENT OBAMA ”is expected to announce Tuesday that he wants Congress to redirect a certain portion of leftover Wall Street bailout funds toward job creation measures ...”

Give the money back to the American taxpayers? Heaven forfend!

THE EPA DECLARED greenhouse gases a danger to public health in a move that could pave the way for future regulation.

2010 can’t come soon enough.

WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO BE TAXED: "[N]owhere does the Constitution grant us the right not to be taxed. Nor does it grant us the right to harm others with impunity. No one is permitted to steal our cars or vandalize our homes.... Taxes on harmful activities would be justified quite apart from any need to balance government budgets.”

Therefore, the Constitution must infer an obligation to be taxed? Uh, huh, for “harmful activities”.

English translation: taxes on the bad things you do are good; taxes on the good things I do are bad.

The New York Times editorial is nuts.

Via The Corner at NRO.

THE GRAVY TRAIN is coming to an end. And I’m not on board yet.

LAST FRIDAY the Democrats voted to slash $400 billion in fraud, waste, and inefficiency from Medicare by defeating the McCain amendment.

Unfortunately, it won’t be fraud, waste, and inefficiency that the Democrats will rid Medicare of ....

A FOX IN NPR’S HENHOUSE: Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias.

Liasson declined.

IT’S NOT MY FAULT: ”The two Northwest pilots who overflew their destination by more than 100 miles have filed documents with the federal government that blame air traffic control and the aircraft's design.”

What part of “Pilot in Command” don’t they understand?

CLIMATEGATE: Popular Mechanics has a
good discussion of what the East Anglia e-mails do and don’t tell us about global warming, until page 4, when Dr. Kelemen suddenly joins the alarmists seeing dragons everywhere.

There may in fact be dragons, but the cost of the cure is so high that it’s wise to first scope out the range of the disease.

CARLEY FIORINA on health care:




Devastating. Fiorina is the former CEO at Hewlett-Packard and now a Republican candidate to unseat Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010. Fiorina on the race: “I have to say that after chemotherapy, Barbara Boxer just isn't that scary anymore.”

Link via Hot Air.

TO SAVE THE PLANET, stop going green. “Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change.” [English translation: My arguments are so weak as to be totally pathetic, so I have to demand the government pass laws to force you to ‘do right.’]

A bit of prententious moral preening by Mike (from the solar panels on my roof to the Prius in my driveway to my low-carbon-footprint vegetarian diet) Tidwell. If Mr. Tidwell, who is the executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, is a college graduate, he ought to demand his money back.

More: Ann Althouse smacks Tidwell around.

GOING ROGUE OR GOING ROGAINE: Sarah Palin’s got a sharp wit: “She joked that ‘If the election had turned out differently, I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks, and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book, Going Rogaine.'”

NO MEDIA BIAS HERE: The URL speaks for itself:

“latimesblogs.latimes.com/ washington/ 2009/ 11/ not-that-it-matters-politically-because-shes-a-republican-idiot-and-hes-a-democrat-genius but-sarah-palins-poll-numbers-are-c”.

Nope. No bias. Move along now.

2010: OUR TURN

NONE ARE AS BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE. Ann Althouse takes a 2x4 to the New York Times for its Climategate apologia:

Why isn't the NYT on fire trying to figure everything out and helping us readers see into the controversy? The best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view is... Really? That's the best you can do? Just a "sense" of what "prevails" among scientists? Then the best you can do is to be part of the very problem you ought to be studying: The scientists' efforts to create an impression of consensus.

Ouch!

ANOTHER EDITORIAL from the Associated Press disguised as a news story.

CHRISTMAS AXED FROM CLIMATE SUMMIT: Official says religious event has no place at largest-ever U.N. climate conference.

Er, no religion? They appear to be honoring the First Commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me."

[Update] Bruce Bawer notices.

“THE REAL REASON this gifted communicator [Obama] has become so bad at communicating is that he doesn’t really believe a word that he is saying.”

The Left is just now discovering this?

MORE CARBONATED HOT AIR: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

CLIMATEGATE: the best science that politics and activism can manufacture.

STUCK ON STUPID. "For 400 environmental activists, business leaders, and government officials, the Climate Express was the place to be this weekend. Passengers arrived to take a special train called the “Climate Express,” which brought special envoys to the world climate summit in Copenhagen, at a station in Brussels. In a carnival atmosphere, they rocked and rolled on a train through the European countryside from Saturday morning well into the night ..."

Nothing like setting a good example.

Link via Instapundit.

BARACK OBAMA, nearly a year into his term, is still talking about Bush culpability for everything from unemployment to Afghanistan. At what year will it ever stop?

Um, 2012?

Victor Davis Hanson takes on the Obamians yet again. Read the whole thing.

MEDIA BIAS:

Generally speaking, people who launch media careers are “do-gooders,” wanting to inform the people regarding how to make the world and their communities better places. It comes off, mostly, as a liberal bias. Most news people in the United States voted for Al Gore. They support the United Nations. They want to advance the environmental issues of clean water and clean air, and protect our natural areas.

So when global warming came along, they accepted it immediately, without question, as a major environmental challenge that they needed to tell the public about. They felt they needed to help bring about the changes required to solve the problem.

Read it all.

IT’S FEAR that's bringing 15,000 delegates, environmentalists, business lobbyists, scientists, journalists and others to this quiet gray city [Copenhagen] of parks and bicycling commuters.

Wrong. It’s cash.

NO BOWING: Chris Muir on Obama's rules of engagement for Afghanistan.

A MISHMASH OF A STRATEGY: ”To sum up, last Tuesday night the president and commander-in-chief mounted his warhorse and rode off in all directions.”

Read it all.

PROFESSIONAL COURTESY: Danish Prostitutes Offer Free Sex to Climate Conference Delegates.

Also noted by Don Surber.

TAANSTAFL: “[T]here's no such thing as a free lunch, let alone a free enterprise. In this country, you have to make your money the old-fashioned way ... by lobbying Congress to appropriate it ...”

A FEW GOOD SCIENTISTS. Frank J. takes on the global warming deniers:

We tell you people of the imminent dangers from the earth warming, and what do you do? You mock us. You question our motives. People who can’t even convert Fahrenheit to Celsius try and tell us we did the science wrong. Now emails have leaked from the Climate Research Unit that apparently show that scientists were fixing the data and trying to suppress the scientific research of dissenters, and you people demand answers from us. I have one thing to say to that. How dare you!

Read it all.

IT'S SNOWING in Manassas (VA), the earliest I can recall since we moved here in 2000. The Christmas parade in Old Town will be in the snow today.

Why is it that if it's warmer than normal, it's evidence of climate change; if it's colder than normal, it's just weather?

[Update] Some photos.

Last week ...

Today ...


Last week ...

Today ...


Last week ...

This week ...

I JUST HOPE no one teaches him how to curtsey.

JEEZ. Forget Democrat or Republican. The arrogance of our political class is astonishing. It's well past time to throw all the bums out.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: Al Gore has more sense than President Obama - he canceled his appearance in Copenhagen. Obama has not.

MEN PLAN; GOD LAUGHS: It’s been a tough year for the Democrats.

OBAMACARE PRICE “CONTROLS”: There’s much more, but this is the key graf for me: “If you are an individual ... who doesn't want to buy mental health or drug abuse [or other mandated] insurance--sorry! You'll have to pay for them anyway.”

In other words, if all I want is some kind of high-limit hospitalization insurance, tough. Not only will it not be available, it will be illegal for an insurance company to offer. Medicare – the model for ObamaCare – is already very close to that model.

DECLINE OF THE WEST. “This is not the intellectual autobiography [Cornel] West promised a decade ago.”

I’m wondering who ever thought Cornel West is/was an intellectual.

FROM THE COMMENTS: "We are NOT Sarah’s army, but rather we are an army of Sarahs."

I don’t think the Democrats - and the corporate Republicans - have yet to realize the essential truth of that statement.

OOPS! A Dutch study concludes Mount Kilimanjaro's snow melt — used as a symbol of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) by Al Gore — is entirely natural.

CLIMATEGATE: SETTLED SCIENCE? Frankly, I think Mother Nature is a pretty tough old lady, and it’s the epitome of hubris on the part of a few hundred (or thousand) climate “scientists” to believe that they can know her mind.

THANKS TO A LONE OFFICER on routine patrol, the world will be spared the spectacle of a trial for the man who murdered four officers in Lakewood, Washington.

But what is troubling is this:

[T]he wider public may have been surprised to learn of the assistance Clemmons received from friends and relatives even after he was identified as the suspect wanted in the murder of four police officers.

How heinous must a crime be before people – even friends and relatives – step forward?

RIGHT STRING, WRONG YO-YO: After the incident of the wannabe reality TV stars crashing the Obama’s first state dinner, Jim Geraghty wondered whether or not it would be a good opportunity for President Obama to start talking about our national culture and the destructive impact of this widespread, obsessive, reckless, narcisstic pursuit of fame. So he asked, and Mary Matalin and Peggy Noonan responded.

Mary Matalin contends Obama no longer has cultural authority to speak on our national values, if he ever had it:

I think a 21st century cultural arbiter is a good concept to explore, but not in the same breath as Barack Obama. As we say in Louisiana, “you got the right string, baby, but the wrong yoyo.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan also questions whether Obama is the right man for this message:

People won't mind if a president of some years, experience and hard won perspective — an Eisenhower, a Reagan — weighs in on some aspect of our national character, which is what we're talking about. But a new president who is young and still not fully understood by the American people? That might be... complicated.

My feeling is harsher: I think Obama sees himself as the winner of the world's greatest reality show.

GLOBAL WARMING IS COOLING DOWN: Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

But we need give it only a year or two and the “warmists” will turn “coolists” with the same fervor and lack of scientific rigor. Their grants depend on it.

AN UPDATE ON OBAMA’S AFGHANISTAN SPEECH: ”Obama has decided to fight the war with the proper resourcing, or close to it. But what exactly is the purpose of the escalation? There was no sense of purpose in the speech, no grand sense of mission, save one: getting out. Obama never once mentioned “victory” in the address, nor [did he] attempt to define (or even re-define) what he wanted for an outcome.”

Which is why his speech was so disappointing.

LIVE GREEN, LIVE CLEAN. How long is another matter for discussion.

Not to worry. Congress has the solution.

WHY I’M ANGRY: “The economic decisions involved [in ClimateGate] make [hundreds of million dollar] drug research programs look like roundoff errors. The data involved have to be very damned good and convincing, given the potential impact on the world economy, through both the possible effects of global warming itself and the effects of trying to ameliorate it. Looking inside the CRU does not make me confident that their data come anywhere close to that standard.”

Link via Instapundit.

NEW WAY OF DETECTING EXOMORONS NARROWS SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE. Surely, somewhere, there’s a cartoonist, satirist, journalist who can write to that title. Any takers? Scott Ott? Frank J? Chris Muir? Scott Adams?

Loosely based on the title of an Instapundit post.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC has an attention span “measured in angstroms.”

Since an angstrom is a measure of distance, not time, what does that tell us about the scientific knowledge of journalists?

I’d suggest that an angstrom is the proper measure of its depth.

HOW CHILDISH: White House insisted F-22 be removed from Obama speech venue.

When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hanger. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn't want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end.

“I won’t play; it’s not my football.”

You’ll have to scroll down from the top of the page as the permalink doesn't appear to work.

METRO RECOVERY INDICES: an interesting ranking of the top 100 U.S. metro areas as they begin to recover from the recession.

CAT TRACKING: Using GPS to find KooKoo.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON proposes change we can believe in. Needless to say, it's not change the Obama administration believes in.

Read it all.

"IT'S SUCH A PERSONAL INSULT to liberals that we would choose deciding for ourselves over their magnanimous offer to have their wisdom decide things for us. It’s almost like we don’t think they’re all geniuses — and we really don’t, because liberals are pretty much all useless idiots who can’t run their own lives, much less tell someone else how to run his."

Read it all.

"SCIENTISTS AT the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based."

"It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. "

And we're supposed to trust these clowns?

IT’S A LOCAL CALL: I’ve given away the punch line, but the joke’s still good.

EVEN THE DEMOCRATS ARE WORRIED:

“I have no idea what [the Administration believes],” a leading House Democrat and Obama ally told me recently when I asked if he could define the administration’s governing philosophy. “I know that their governing strategy seems to be, ‘Don’t worry, the big guy will make it all right in the end.’ They have the sublime sense that they don’t have to do all that much to plan events, or to come up with the message for what they’re doing, or to line up support ...."

Read it all.

HEALTHCARE RATIONING: first it was mammograms, then pap smears, now swine flu shots for seniors, and Americans are upset.

Maybe it’s because Americans understand rationing by price, over which the patient has at least some control, and rationing by bureaucrat, over which the patient has no control ....

LIFE ON MARS? Suppose for a moment that this report is true. What will be the effect on America’s space program?

DIVERSITY is not a strength; unity is.

The article is specific to the trial of the Navy Seals who allegedly gave a terrorist suspect a fat lip, but the conclusion is relevant to political correctness generally.

"MSNBC REACHED A NEW LOW tonight when Chris Matthews referred to West Point as an 'enemy camp.'"

"Chris, he's commander-in-chief."

U.N. RETALIATES against nuclear Iran with 'utter neglect': "The U.N. Security Council today retaliated against Iran's newly announced plans to build 10 nuclear enrichment facilities in defiance of previous U.N. resolutions by passing a resolution punishing the Islamic Republic with 'utter, devastating neglect from the global community.'"

GOOD GRIEF: doctors should give patients advice on climate change. Oh, yes; take two aspirin and reduce your carbon footprint ....

Via Tim Blair.

KITCHEN-TABLE POLITICS: Sarah Palin's governing philosophy.

Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory) was our first President to have a Kitchen Cabinet; maybe it's time for a second.

Link from Instapundit.

LIVEBLOGGING OBAMA ON AFGHANISTAN

We know the basics: 30,000 troops (plus hopefully 10,000 NATO forces); 6 months to fully establish themselves in theater; and a "planned" withdrawal beginning in 2011.

8:01 PM: Obama enters.

8:04 PM: Going over some history ... Islam is one of the world's great religions. President Bush never mentioned. That should satisfy the PC crowd.

8:08 PM: I sent troops to Afghanistan immediately after I was inaugurated; I authorized strikes into Pakistan and the safe havens along the border.

8:10 PM: Let me clear .... there has been no request for additional troops prior to 2010. (Huh? Did he really say that?)

8:15 PM: Our goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, defeat Al Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

8:16 PM: I'm confident that our Allies will contribute (but there have been no announcements of assistance).

8:20 PM: The days of providing a blank check are over. Our strategy will include Pakistan as well.

8:21 PM: Quick summary. A three-part strategy - military effort, civilian surge, and partnership with Pakistan.

8:25 PM: Our costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when I was inaugurated approached one trillion dollars (but I spent well over a trillion in my first 9 months in office).

8:27 PM: The President has gone into campaign mode ... so much for the announcement.

8:28 PM: My goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons (so Iran is redoubling it's effort to gain them).

8:29 PM: America will speak out for the world's human rights (but we won't do anything beyond speaking out).

8:31 PM: End of address.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A disappointing speech. Listening to Charles Krauthammer, I'm in agreement - Obama's committment was conditional at best.

[Update] Thinking back, half his speech was in campaign mode. He's been President for 10 months now; isn't it time to quit campaigning, and start governing?

CARBONHAGEN: Follow the links and enjoy the eco-hypocrisy.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from Thomas Sowell: "Many colleges claim that they develop "leaders." All too often, that means turning out graduates who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. There are already too many people like that, and they are a menace to everyone else's freedom."

There'smore.

RIDING THE TIGER: Victor Davis Hanson on war and Administration naivete.

In just a year, the president, driven by narcissism, fueled by ignorance, has badly undermined old-fashioned deterrence.

Read it all.