SEVEN STORYLINES TO AVOID. Too late.

ROGER THAT

Roger Kimball posts an ode to Chris Muir for his Day by Day cartoons.

CASH FOR APPLIANCES

[The] White House plans to pursue its similar [to Cash for Clunkers] $300 million stimulus program for home appliances.

Heh. Soon, I hope. I need to upgrade my failing kitchen appliances. While they're at it, how about “Cash for Air Conditioners"? And “Cash for Rain Gutters”? And “Cash for Dead Trees”?

WHAT TO BLAME ON GLOBAL WARMING

Here’s a complete list of things allegedly caused by global warming, thoughtfully compiled by Number Watch in the United Kingdom. Links are provided.

Here are a few of the better ones: acne, aggressive weeds, air pressure changes, Baghdad snow, beer shortage, circumcisions in decline, crocodile sex, evolution accelerating, the Earth speeding up (and slowing down), footpath erosion, icebergs, killer cornflakes, a kitten boom, UFO sightings, a violin decline, and rotton tomatos ....

Oh, my.

MORE WEIRD ROBOTS

Listen to the podcast first; then check out the videos.

The shape-shifting robot is fascinating, if only because there is so much good science-fiction based on shape-shifting themes.

BETTER STARVED THAN UNHEALTHY

“When a small church comes to the Bowery Mission bearing fried chicken with trans fat, unwittingly breaking the law, they’re told ‘thank you'. Then workers quietly chuck the food, mission director Tom Bastile said.... ‘It’s always hard for us to do,’ Basile said. e know we have to do it.’ “

“The city’s law banishing trans fat took effect in July 2008 and touched everyone with Health Department food licenses — including emergency food providers.”

From the comments: “Thanks for exposing this travesty. It is horrible that people should go hungry to feed the self-indulgence of government officials who think they know what's best for us.” - amphils

Via Instapundit.

NAUGHTY BOYS

Click on the image and then scroll around through the network.

Link via Instapundit.

PALIN GOES GRACIOUS

An interesting article in the New York Times. In the first two paragraphs,

I got a lesson in civility, grace under pressure and general human fellowship recently from, of all people, Sarah Palin. ... I’m not talking about lessons learned from her book, but rather from her televised interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Five paragraphs later,

We’ve been seeing and hearing the extreme edge of nastiness politically ever since the summer, when the boorishly boisterous “tea parties” began. ... Sarah Palin hasn’t helped matters much with her continued talk of “haters,” and there was plenty of hatred lurking not so very far beneath the surface in interviews with die-hard Palin book buyers

Notice the unconscious bias: the belief that disagreement the liberal position must be taken as “hate.” I’ve been to three Tea Parties, including the 100,000+ protest at the Washington DC mall, and while I’ve listened to strong opinions, none has been remotely “hateful.”

Read the whole article.

THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST

Makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, doesn't it?

FORT HOOD NEVER HAPPENED

Ann Coulter is in fine fettle:

Is it still too soon to come to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terrorism?

Alas, it is still too early ... at MSNBC. For Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews ... the shooting of George Tiller was an act of terrorism, no question. The death of a census taker in Kentucky was also an act of terrorism. But as to Maj. Hasan, the jury is still out -- and will be out for many, many years.

At MSNBC, ignorance isn't bliss, it's a requirement.

JOURNALISM’S SLOW, SAD DEATH

A slow, sad, and well-deserved death. Michael Gerson laments the death of “objective journalism”.

[W]hat is passing is not only a business but also a profession -- the journalistic tradition of nonpartisan objectivity.

Heh.

Free markets, it turns out, often make poor fact-checkers, instead feeding the fantasies of conspiracy theorists from "birthers" to Sept. 11, 2001, "truthers."

“Birthers” not including the Trig Palin fanticizers, of course.

"...Walter Cronkite prospered in the old environment, ..."

And Tet was a victory, not a defeat.

[F]ew American bloggers have the resources or inclination to report from war zones, famines and genocides.

Michael Yon, Michael Totten, J.D. Johannes. And Mudville Gazette, Blackfive. Maybe the mainstream media could consider engaging them?

[B]bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting.

Rathergate.

What is to be done? A lot of good people are working on it.

Yes, but they’re not working in the mainstream media.

[Update & bump] Big Government isn't as kind to Gerson as I am.

THE ECONOMY AS A PHYSICS PROBLEM

University of Utah physicist Tim Garrett has published a study that approaches the economy and its relation to global warming as a physics problem — and comes to some controversial conclusions: that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.

This is an intruiging article ... and as an engineer, I’m tempted to put more trust in physics than I am in climate “scientists.” Garrett's model has a certain elegance about it, and I’ve found over my career that simple, elegant models – even wrong simple, elegant models - usually offer more insight into the fundamentals of a problem than do more complicated ones.

Link via Instapundit.

BACK TAXES

California Gov. Schwarzenegger must be preparing to join the Obama administration.

PULLING NO PUNCHES

Andrew Breitbart of Big Government is on the attack. He leaves no scorn unexposed in his criticism of the mainstream media’s defense of ACORN.

Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood. For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.

Via Instapundit.

I SHOULD RUN FOR OFFICE

Researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity found 440 “phantom [Congressional] districts” listed on Recovery.gov, the U.S. government’s official website for data related to Recovery Act spending.

Glenn Reynolds is considering running for office in Tennessee’s 29th [phantom] Congressional District and has already pickedup financial support. Maybe I should announce my candidacy for Virginia’s 79th [phantom] Congressional District – I could use some quatloos as well.

[Update & bump to top] Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is testing the waters for his run for Tenessee’s phantom 29th Congressional District. Go encourage him – better a real congresscritter for a fake district than a fake congresscritter from a real district (and we have plenty of them).

TIGER TROUBLES

Reports claim Woods crash followed argument with wife.

Wasn’t that pretty obvious when the accident was first reported? Leave ‘em alone.

CIRCLE THE WAGONS, GLOBAL WARMERS

The Washington Post’s global warming apologist strikes out again.

The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud. ... [T]ell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting.

Eugene Robinson still has trouble differentiating between weather and climate.

It's warmer now than it was 100 years ago.

Um, given what we now know about the data, are your sure?

At issue is the long-term trend, and one would expect anomalous blips from time to time.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Mr. Robinson that over a period of several thousands of years, the famous “hockey stick” might be the “anomalous blip”.

[W]e know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago.

Know? Or believe? Sorry, Eugene, we know the data is corrupt; beyond that, ... we only believe.

EAT DIRT

Seems sort of obvious to me.

[Update and bump] This may be the only beneficial unintended consequence of ObamaCare.

THROW THE BUMS OUT

Rand Simberg on ClimateGate:

[A] deliberate and unrevealed fudging of results in an attempt to make the real world fit one’s preconceptions is beyond the scientific pale. Journal articles have been thrown out for it; PhD candidates have lost their degrees for it.

My sentiments exactly. I worked hard for my PhD. These clowns have dishonored it. Revoke their degrees and fire them.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

So now John Holgren, Obama’s “Science Czar”, is part of ClimateGate?

Via Don Surber.

CANDID CAMERA MOMENTS

Victor Davis Hanson: “There are a number of isolated incidents that, in the great scheme of things, should be seen as rather trivial. But they are gaining symbolic importance, which is working against President Obama.”

HIDE THE DECLINE

It didn’t take long for the mocking to begin.

PAID TO LIE

Another reason downsize government.

KILL THE BILLS

Do health reform right.

Yes.

HARNESSING THE OCEAN

"The ocean is a potential treasure trove for renewable energy—one NASA study estimated more than 91 000 terawatt-hours annually of accessible energy worldwide... [A]n Australia-based company has found a new way, to predictably and reliably generate energy from the ocean. The technology relies on the power of ocean swells, which are easy-to-predict long-wavelength oscillations."

DRIVER TRAINING

Rather than teach on-the-road driving skills, the Michigan legislature is considering “forcing driving students in that state to spend time learning ‘the importance of carpooling and transportation’ along with ‘identifying the attributes of a fuel-efficient vehicle’ and ‘recycling vehicle parts and fluids,’ among other non-driving learning.”

Yes, and let’s not forget the importance of public transportation.

WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION

Spinning in the wind.

Translation: Sarah Palin’s not one of us (the elite, conservative and/or liberal) and therefore cannot possibly be competent to govern.

Via Hot Air.

BRING ON THE VOTE

Nothing like the courage of conviction.

POLITICAL PROBLEM-SOLVING

Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell: ”What is stupid is believing that politicians are trying to solve our problems, instead of theirs.... No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are ... trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two.”

ABOUT TIME

Sarah Palin’s influence on other would-be politicians can by seen by the growing number of women she has inspired to seek public office.

"I think that for a long time people see politicians as part of an elite establishment, and our nation's at a crossroads where the American people realize that the elite establishment has gotten us into a mess," [Patricia] Sullivan [running to unseat Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson in Florida's 8th Congressional District] said, sounding themes associated with Palin.

But, but ... Andrew Sullivan, a homosexual male, knows women dislike Sarah Palin.

THINGS I’M THANKFUL FOR

Frank J on things he’s thankful for:

• So far, the Large Hadron Collider hasn’t destroyed the universe.

• Burritos continue to be cheap and plentiful.

• Having completely squandered public support, the worst of the Democrats being in charge is already over.

• The sun continues to be a cheap and free source of heating and light with no signs of stopping.

• Thanks to Twitter, we no longer have to speculate what inane thoughts are going through a given celebrity’s head at this very moment.

• Due to Sarah Palin’s aerial patrols, wolf attacks are down 30%.

Things I’m thankful for

• Even bankrupted under massive debt and with a ninny as president, America is still like a million times better than any other country.

• Frank J's humor.

IT’S FALL AND THE ACORNs ARE DROPPING

ACORN is left “twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.” I have no doubt that the retrieved documents will make interesting reading over the next few months.

[Update] ACORN responds: “It was theft.”

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME

Mark Steyn on The Ego of ‘O’.
























I am "The Won".

WHAT’S NEXT? THE AUGUSTINE REPORT

The space shuttle Atlantis arrived home safely at 9:44 a.m. EST today.
Only 5 shuttle flights remain. What’s next?

Well, the Augustine Report on the future of manned space is in, and it isn’t pretty.

A White House committee is urging President Barack Obama to develop commercial taxi services to fly American astronauts to and from low Earth orbit, a move that would be a major shift in longstanding national space policy.

Under the plan, NASA still would build its Orion spacecraft to fly astronauts beyond Earth orbit -- on missions to orbit the moon and Mars or perhaps land on asteroids. The agency also would move rapidly to develop a human-rated heavy lift rocket to launch large components required for deeper-space missions. That rocket would provide a "fallback option" if U.S. aerospace companies fail to develop space taxi service to low-Earth orbit.

However, the shift in approach essentially would take NASA out of the business of launching its own astronauts -- a job the agency has done since Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space in 1961.

Commercialization of space is an obvious – and personally welcome – development, but the lack of a “Grand Plan” is disturbing:

Also among the big questions Obama will have to answer: Where should astronauts go next? The panel boiled it down to three options: Stick with current plans to go the moon, go straight to Mars instead, or fly interplanetary voyages to orbit the moon, Mars and perhaps land on an asteroid.

As is the clear lack of financial support:

NASA's budget needs to be ramped up by $3 billion between 2011 and 2014 to carry out any "meaningful" human spaceflight program.

Unfortunately, I don’t view the Obama administration as interested in space exploration or competent to develop a vision if it were interested.

It’s going to be a long three years for the next frontier.

PARTY CRASHERS

"United States Secret Service agents are conducting an internal review to determine how Washington area socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi managed to sneak in to President Barack Obama's first State Dinner on Tuesday despite high security."

The Secret Service will certainly get a black eye over this one, but my bet is that if the media doesn’t go all defensive (likely) we’ll find out that the Secret Service was overruled on security precautions by someone in the White House.

[Update]: Hmm. Lawyer: White House cleared crashers.

WHO DESERVES CREDIT FOR THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS?

Two Bell Labs contemporaries of Nobel Prize winners George Smith and Willard Boyle put some doubt into the accepted history.

An interesting podcast. People tend to think that science and engineering are pretty cut-and-dried. They aren’t.

DEFINING MSNBC

”[I]t’s the Stuff White People Like network.”

I’d only add the single word “Elite” between “Stuff” and “White.”

PALIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

It’s in full bloom:

Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:

“The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”

Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”

But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”

What is the sound of an ego deflating?

Link from Instapundit.

THANKSGETTING

Why did I have the uneasy sense that Thanksgiving is all about him?



Getting thanks instead of giving thanks?

GLORY DAYS

Rebuilding an IBM 1401 computer (slide show). The story is here.

I feel right at home. As an undergraduate student, I was a systems operator (unpaid; it was love) on the University’s first computer.

JAWS

Taken at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC. It’s a female great white shark – the mouth is open.

OBAMA'S CHARISMA

I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President.

CASH FOR CLOTURE

Harry Reid bribed his way to cloture on the Senate healthcare bill.

Well, in Mary Landrieu’s case at least, it’s not bribery; it’s logrolling ... a time-honored Congressional tradition.

WELL SAID

The New York Times tells Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds to ”STFU.” Commenter datechguy (8:39 pm) responds “There was a time about 7 or 8 years ago when Instapundit had a quote at the top that called him the “New York Times of bloggers” ... if the New York Times wanted to regain it’s former status as an actual respected and believed source of news it should strive to become the ‘Instapundit of Newspapers’.”

More.

CLIMATEGATE

Lord Monckton calls it criminal. If the climate-controllers succeed, it should be genocide.

AL GORE WAS RIGHT

Global warming is anthropogenic – the data was rigged:

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

Is there a Nobel Prize for lying?

TEACHING IDEOLOGY

All cultural biases aren’t created equal:

Katherine Kersten wonders when ... universities began demanding ideological purity as a prerequisite to attaining a degree. The University of Minnesota will apparently demand that its education graduates, the future teachers of Minnesota, confess to their own bigotry if they believe in the American dream of equal opportunity as a means to cleanse the Minnesota education system of cultural biases.

What happened to reading, writing, and arithmetic?

[Update] FIRE has taken notice.

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

A first look at the climate model computer codes:

As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU’s code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU’s climate model.

One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: “I feel for this guy. He’s obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources.”

Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU’s Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” and “APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION.” Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: “Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend – so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!”

It’s not clear how the files were leaked. One theory says that a malicious hacker slipped into East Anglia’s network and snatched thousands of documents. Another says that the files had already been assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request and, immediately after it was denied, a whistleblower decided to disclose them. (Lending credence to that theory is the fact that no personal e-mail messages unrelated to climate change appear to have been leaked.)

Maybe the codes are not as sophisticated as we have been led to believe.

BLOGGER ASSISTS NEW YORK TIMES

Mark Steyn reports on a reader's offer to help the New York Times with it's ClimateGate reporting.

Dear Mr. Broder,

Very nice article today on the upcoming Copenhagen meeting. I've heard about the cutbacks at the NYT and I guess it's gotten so bad that they no longer allow internet access to reporters. So my news tip is that apparently, there's some kind of development regarding the scientists behind the global warming data, involving emails or something like that. Some of the papers in the UK are reporting on it and even a few here. If you are not permitted to go online to find them, I could email you a few examples in pdf format. Even better, I could download the file containing the emails and other documents themselves, burn them onto a CD, mail the CD to you, and then once you had access to the primary source material you and your colleagues would be able to do your own reporting and investigating. None of this is to imply in any way that this stuff I've heard about could have any possible relevance to a meeting aimed at a global warming agreement based on conclusions based on data that may have been — let's call them ambiguous. Just thought you might be curious is all, and I'm always happy to help out when I can.

Via Instapundit.

AWASH IN FOSSIL FUELS

According to George Will, the world is awash in fossil fuel.

Such good news horrifies people who relish scarcity because it requires -- or so they say -- government to ration what is scarce and to generally boss people to mend their behavior: “This is the police! Put down that incandescent bulb and step away from the lamp!” ...[T]here is a name for the political doctrine that rejoices in scarcity of everything except government. The name is environmentalism.

I’ve posted on the ecological insanity of environmentalism, and Will is right. The exact quantity of fossil energy notwithstanding, the world needs to generate and use more energy, not less. The choice is stark: America’s standard of living -- or Somalia’s.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Or intended?

Obamacare May Target Gun Owners.

I don’t really think so, but the text referred to is disturbing.

The Vookh Conspiracy has more:

The rules for a “Wellness Program” begin on page 87. In brief, if you participate in a Wellness Program, you can get a health insurance premium discount of up to 30%. Stated another way, if you don’t participate in a Wellness Program, you will pay a substantial insurance rate penalty for not doing so. The definition of a “Wellness Program” begins in paragraph (B) on page 88:

(B) The wellness program shall be reasonably designed to promote health or prevent disease. A program complies with the preceding sentence if the program has a reasonable chance of improving the health of, or preventing disease in, participating individuals ....

Pages 29–30 of the Reid bill mention some of items that “Wellness and Prevention Programs” “may include.”

Such as (1) Smoking cessation, (2) Weight management, (3) Stress management, (4) Physical fitness, (5) Nutrition, (6) Heart disease prevention, (7) Healthy lifestyle support, and (8) Diabetes prevention.

What’s left?

The phrasing does not appear to exclude other items.

From that, I infer the bill would in fact make it easy for a HHS Secretary to write “wellness” program regulations which penalize almost everyone.

And this is an intended consequence: the discount is not based on risk, but on the requirement that the insuree engage in ‘politically correct’ behavior. If that’s not coercion, I don’t know what is.

The text of the bill is here.

CALLING ACORN

A South Dakota couple is accused of using their home as a base for an underage sex trafficking operationThey should have contacted ACORN for assistance.

EMERGENCY “PREPAREDNESS”

Another example of the future of ObamaCare.

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA?

Stay-at-home dads are “bums.”

If they're conservatives.

STUNNING

When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15% and 19% of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet — over 90% of its prior experience was in the public sector — is remarkable. The Obama administration approached terrifying - over 90% of his Cabinet have no private sector experience at all.




Democrat administrations are in blue; Republican administrations in red. The dashed lines indicate the average over all administrations of each party.

Jeff Jacoby shares my concern in another context.

The original post is here.

Via Instapundit.

SKIING ROBOT

Move over, skiers, here comes the robot. It’s confined to the beginner slope.

For now.

ELITE SNOBBERY

Elliot Gerson of the Rhodes Trust is greatly disappointed that a few Rhodes Scholars have gone into business.

How ... gauche.

On the other hand, it’s not obvious that the business world needs Rhodes Scholars. Perhaps it’s best to keep them in positions where they can’t do much harm.

Read it all.

Via Instapundit.

FINALLY!

An Afghanistan decision. Only 313 days after Inauguration Day.

Assuming Obama lives up to his announcement ....

GUNS DETER PIRATES

Who’d’ve thunk it?

HEY BIG SPENDER

My wallet is suddenly lighter. Obama has spent three-and-a-half trillion dollars in his first year alone, more that Bush and Clinton combined in their first years.

Oh, my.

TRUTH TO POWER

Lou Dobbs on WTOP radio Monday when asked what he would do following his departure from CNN: “I want to speak ‘truth to power’.” Just what the hell does that mean?

Jonah Goldberg calls it a phrase of Quaker origins adopted by campus radicals, Hollywood gadflies and establishment journalists, as something of an abracadabra slogan to justify criticizing government or big corporations.

He’s right. Every time I hear the phrase, I think of some pompous airhead declaring that he/she has an exclusive contract for the truth.

CLIMATEGATE IS NOW OFFICIAL

Late on the night of November 19, news broke that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear.

•The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic.
•The emails are incendiary.
•The implications shake the scientific basis for AGW, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots.

Some of the emails are here; and a searchable database of all of emails is here. Expect to see much more as bloggers continue digging.

Charlie Martin comments on the computer codes.

And, finally, because of the media's lack of interest, should it be called CLIMAQUIDDICK?

IT WAS PEACEFUL!

Sarah Palin drew a crowd of over 4,000 on Monday to her book signing at Fort Bragg.

"It was just a peaceful crowd -- orderly, no one making any strange comments that I know of," a Fort Bragg official told FoxNews.

Oh, my. Don’t these tea-bagging conservatives know that they’re uneducated, racist, bigoted, violent, neanderthal thugs?

JUST IN THE PAST OF TIME

The swine flu epidemic may have already peaked. Vaccine for the general public may be available in December.

Remember this when you vote for ObamaCare.

On a personal note, it’s mildly amusing to see Congress trying to spend something on the close order of one-and-a-half trillion dollars to bring health care to the same standard it was 60 years ago when I was a child.

I SEE BY YOUR BUTTON THAT YOU ARE A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER

Get yourself a button and be a community organizer too.

With apologies to the Kingston Trio.

MAGNIFICENT WARBIRDS

Photos from the 2009 Edwards AFB Open House.

THE PATIENT OR THE STATE?

There will be money for bureaucrats; just not for patients.

A NEW RECORD

The Obama Approval Index from Rasmussen just hit -15 for the first time.



Hope is fading fast. T-shirt is available here.

THE VALUE OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION

Via Frazz.

IMMIGRATION INSANITY

”Illegal immigration is a problem, but it can only be solved by overhauling our dysfunctional immigration laws, not by demonizing or scapegoating illegal immigrants. Those immigrants didn't come here in order to be lawbreakers; they broke a law in order to come here. That's a distinction with an all-important difference -- one that sensible and principled conservatives should be able to understand.”

Jacoby is right.

DON'T TELL THE DEMOCRATS

Sarah Palin's uterus has a blog.

UNEMPLOYMENT TRENDS

This one is amazing – a county-by-county, month-by-month slide show of unemployment from January 2007, when the Democrats took control of Congress, through September 2009.

Via “It is no doubt rude of me to point out that this outbreak video represents two years’ worth of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and one year’s worth of a Democratic-controlled government” Moe Lane and Instapundit.

GLOBAL SOMETHING OR OTHER

Global warming appears to have stalled.

The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

So here’s my question. Why is it inconceivable that the 30-year run-up in temperature is the outlier?

SMART BOOKS

Bay Area readers are too smart to bother reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue:

“Our customers are thinking people,” said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. “They’re not into reading drivel.”

So what do they read? Here’s a selection of some of the non-drively, thinky-type books Mr. Embretson carries at his store, per the Pendragon Books website:

Jim Marrs, Inside Job: Unmasking the 9-11 Conspiracies

Ward Churchill, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality

Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

(a collaboration), Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies

William Ayers, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist

Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen

Lyndon H. Larouche, Cold Fusion: Challenge to U.S. Science Policy

Ah, yes, the reality-based community.

A THOUGHT ON OBAMACARE

Is there any ObamaCare supporter in his or her right mind (right mind? - Ed. I know, I know.) who believes that anyone in the Government or its hangers-on will ever be on the public option (or "consumer" option, as Nancy Pelosi has called it)?

Get real. They will all have "Cadillac plans" - paid for with your -and my - tax dollars.

MORE OBAMA PROTESTS

In St. Louis and Los Angeles.

HMM

So the guidelines for frequency of mammograms and pap smears have been revised.

I suspect the revisions are entirely reasonable, but the timing leaves me scratching my head. With the health care debate on the front burner - and boiling over - why on Earth would the Government risk bringing the rationing argument back to the fore?

One has to wonder about the Obama administration's competence. Are they completly clueless? Or simply arrogant?

[Update] It's been noticed.

COMPLETELY NUTS

Andrew Sullivan, of Trig birther fame, has completely lost whatever tenuous hold on sanity he ever had with his latest outburst of Palin hatred.

Either that or someone has been tinkering with his meds.

CRADLE TO GRAVE

Chris Muir understands ObamaCare.

The whole cartoon is here.

RIGHT WING, LEFT WING

Sarah Palin, WWE star.

One has to marvel at the insularity - and arrogance - of the "progressive" Left.

Link via Hot Air.

WHO'S UNEMPLOYED?

Democrats and unaffiliateds are more likely to be unemployed than Republicans. Well, yes. Republicans have to work for a living.

Via Instapundit.

CLOTURE PASSES

Well, the Senate got the 60 votes it needed to continue the debate on healthcare.



Now it's our turn.

WHERE'S THE BENEFIT?

Most Americans want health care reform if it will bring cost down and maintain quality.

So our president and his Democratic allies - possibly in another teaching moment - filled our news media and Congressional Budget Office with a pile of proposals. And because Americans are optimistic, we jumped in and started digging through the pile, even though that pile looked and smelled like manure. But we figured that with all that manure, there had to be a pony in there somewhere.

We kept digging through the Democrat proposals in search of the pony. But there was no pony.

But the good news is that there's plenty of manure.

SAVE $155 MILLION ANNUALLY

And the suck-up award winner is ... the National Endowment for the Arts.

There is a new president and a new NEA. The president first. This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

Why is this hosanna appearing on an official government website? Has it become the job of the NEA to communicate how wonderful our Dear Leader is?

Why are America's taxpayers funding this tripe to the tune of $155 million annually?

Mark Steyn piles on.

MSM FACT-CHECKING

From the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web (scroll down to Accountability Journalism):

An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We'd like to compare this dispatch to the AP's dispatch earlier this week "fact checking" Sarah Palin's new book. Here goes:

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11

Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432

Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3

On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives. That's what they call accountability journalism.

And the AP also created a ”word cloud” of Going Rogue, which presumably means ... some of the 11(!) AP researchers had too much time on their hands.

PRESCRIPTION FOR AMERICA

DON’T MESS WITH ME

"The sheriff's deputy asked why I shot at them seven times," said Gifford. "I told him I ran out of ammunition.”

The moral of the story: Always keep a spare magazine handy.

Via Don Surber.

SWEET WORK

The U.S. government hands out millions of dollars each year to various environmental organizations to help protect fish, wildlife and other aspects of the environment. And every year, those same groups spend millions suing the government over everything from forest policy and carbon emissions to water quality and wolf habitats.

Nice work if you can get it ... biting the hand that feeds you.

NARCISSISM

Our troops. Just another photo op.

$1.8 TRILLION!

The true 10-year cost of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s $849 billion health-care bill is well over twice that: $1.8 trillion. Yes, trillion with a ‘T’.

And yes, I trust the New York Post far more than I trust Harry Reid. I know Harry Reid lies.

NOT UNEXPECTED

President Obama's approval rating has hit a new low of 46 percent, even as a majority of Americans says he is providing the kind of leadership they expected.

Yes, his leadership performance is lousy, and yes, I expected it to be lousy.

THIS IS JOURNALISM?

Even in the Washington Times: “Hundreds turn out to cheer at GOP darling’s book tour,” referring to the first stop in Sarah Palin’s book tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

GOP darling. How, um, ... snotty.

At least the Times was embarrassed enough to change the sub-headline; by mid-morning it became “Hundreds turn out to cheer at GOP's former vice presidential candidate.”

JUST GO

Time for the power elite on both sides to get up and get out.

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

Government’s done so well with the swine flu pandemic:

In the metro area, free swine flu shots are only being made available to people in priority groups: pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months old, health care workers, anyone 6 months to 24 years old, and those age 25 to 64 who have health conditions that put them at higher risk for complications from the flu.

"The vaccine supplies that we have received are not ample enough to vaccinate the general public," says Mary Anderson, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Health and Human Services. "Eventually, there will be plenty of vaccine so that anyone who wants to get a vaccination will be able to get one."

Yep. About the time the flu season ends.

PALIN-ODES?

Victor Davis Hanson assessing the Palin phenomenon:

I would trust the judgment of someone with Palin’s background on matters of Iran or Honduras or Putin far more than I would someone of Obama’s resume.... We know now that you can do nothing and still finish as the head of Harvard Law Review, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you miss an antlered moose, or run out of gas in the tundra, or fall overboard on a salmon boat, there is no Norwegian committee or Harvard Law Dean to bail you out.

And a point I’d like to see repeated over and over again:

[W]hat I learned over years of farming—dealing with California labor, environmental, legal, and tax regulations, pruning, tractor driving, listening to my grandfather, and handling unsavory characters, understanding plant physiology and fruit-production, etc.—I think gave me a different, but in the long run as good an education as a BA/PhD in Classical languages.

Better, I’d say. The snobbery of the non-productive “elite” is damning.

KISS YOUR FREEDOMS GOODBYE

Andrew Napolitano:

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.

Read it in full.

PALIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

Newsweek advertised its cover story on the release of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” by asking, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?”

But the real question is ”How do you solve this problem without Sarah?”

By the way, who has better legs?

And yes, I am a dirty old man.

ROAD TRIP

I-66 from Manassas to Washington DC suffers from severe congestion daily. So what does the Virginia Department of Transportation do? Build more roads, or commission yet another study on how to get commuters out of their cars?

Three guesses; the first two don’t count.

Something might get done if the entirety of Congress were forced to live in, say, Haymarket and be required to be in their offices at the Capitol every day at 8 a.m. sharp.

EYES WIDE OPEN

From my email ...

Little Mary had a box of very small kittens that she was trying to give away, so she had them out on the street corner with a sign 'FREE KITTENS' next to them.

Suddenly a line of big black cars came up with a policeman on a motorcycle in front.

The cars all stopped and a tall man stepped out from the biggest car. It's President Obama.

"Hi, little girl, what do you have there in the box?" he asked.

"Kittens" Little Mary says. "They're so small, their eyes are not even open yet."

"What kind of kittens are they?" he asked.

"Democrats," says Little Mary.

The tall man smiled, returned to his car and they drove away.

Sensing a good photo opportunity, President Obama called his Press Manager and told him about the little girl and the kittens.

It was planned that they would return the next day, have all the media there and tell everyone about these great kittens.

The next day, Little Mary is standing out on the corner with her box of kittens with the 'FREE KITTENS' sign and the big motorcade of black cars pulled up with all the vans and trucks from ABC, NBC, CBS, BET and CNN but no FOX News for some reason.

Everyone had their cameras ready and then, President. Obama got out of his limo and walked up to Little Mary.

"Now, don't be frightened," he said, "I just want you to tell all these nice news people just what kind of kittens you're giving away today."

"Yes sir," Mary said, "They are all REPUBLICAN kittens."

Taken by surprise, President Obama said, "But yesterday, you told me that they were DEMOCRATS."

Little Mary says, "Yes, I know. But today, they have their eyes open."

Cats are smart.

WORSE THAN TAXES: SPENDING

John Stossel: "I don't think [a tax revolt] will happen until more people see the ruling elite for what it is: a gang of arrogant bullies that has the audacity to believe that they know how to direct our lives better than we do.... The politicians' spending schemes represent presumptuous interference in our lives. They are an assault on our autonomy."

Read it all.

WALKING AWAY

The Democrats are getting worried as independent voters begin to jump ship.

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage.

And what changes are needed?

"[W]e’ve got to do a better job of messaging. There’s a lot of work to be done to get independents more comfortable with what we’re doing.”

Messaging? Isn't it just barely possible that independents are fleeing the Democrats precisely because they are uncomfortable with what the Democrats are doing?

FACT-CHECKING "GOING ROGUE"

The Associated Press (AP) has assigned eleven (11!) reporters to 'fact check' Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue.

Palin responds:

Imagine that – 11 AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up the book, instead of using the time and resources to "fact check" what's going on with Sheik Mohammed's trial, Pelosi's health care takeover costs, Hasan's associations, etc. Amazing.

Conservatives for Palin is fact-checking the fact-checkers. And winning.

ANOTHER BROKEN PROMISE

Maybe they're working dogs.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

THAT CARTER FEELING

I think a Carter-era rerun is a best-case scenario at this point . . . .

THOUGHTS FROM THE LATER REPUBLIC

Victor Davis Hanson:

We are witnessing nothing less than an attempt to reinvent the United States at home and abroad into something it never was.

Read it all.

LISTENING TO HARRY REID

I'm listening to Senator Reid introduce the Democrat's health care bill.

Judging from his stuttering, stumbling, and evasive looking everywhere except at the camera, Reid doesn't believe a word he's saying.

JUSTICE CHICAGO-STYLE

In one of a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, [President Barack] Obama said those offended by the legal privileges given to [Khalid Shcikh] Mohammed by virtue of getting a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

Er, isn’t there this weird “presumption of innocence” concept in American jurisprudence?

Obama reminds me of the old 50’s westerns I used to watch as a kid. The sheriff rides up to the vigilante mob about to hang the rustler from the nearest tree and says “No, no. We’ll take him back to town, give him a fair trial, then hang him.”

And Bush was supposed to be the cowboy President.

GOOD FOR THEM

“The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, .... Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday, ‘The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem.’"

More here: “The battles in which the church finds itself embroiled today are not simply about the underlying moral issues -- abortion and gay marriage -- but about more aggressive policies that might restrict the ability of the church and of individual Catholics to act according to Catholic teachings.”

It's past time to start pushing back against politically-correct government intervention.

WAFFLE

Obama calls for revised Afghanistan war options.


Every Obama promise comes with an expiration date. Every one.

The man cannot - will not - make a decision.

AN ACORN FALLS IN LA

"[T]he ACORN story is far from over. There are more videos to come next week. You’ve seen the Baltimore story, the Philadelphia story, the New York story. Now you will know about the LA story."

This should be interesting.

[Update] More. Via Instapundit.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Pelosi: ObamaCare is our Christmas present to America.

Hey, Nancy. Guess what you’re getting for Christmas next year.

FEAR OF THE (M)OTHER

Contextualizing Sarah Palin:

One of the most common attacks against those who failed to see Barack Obama as a shining demigod upon a hill was to psychologize an unflattering "fear of the other" onto them, but as you catalogue in detail there was quite a bit of hysteria about this "stranger from the strangest part of America" coming from those same ranks, no? How much projection was going on?

Via Instapundit.

GOVERNMENT

Order yours today.

Via Instapundit.

NO NEW TAXES

Just fees.

IF ONLY

Obama marks election anniversary with sabbatical.

President Obama marked the one-year anniversary of his election by announcing he would take a nine-month sabbatical "to rest and refresh after a grueling year of staggering accomplishment."

During the president's sabbatical, Vice President Biden will take over Obama's daunting schedule of daily news conferences, political fundraisers, television interviews, health care rallies, White House visits with important celebrities, and the other presidential duties as outlined in Article 2 of Constitution.

Biden would be an improvement

CANADA'S OBAMACARE

Link from Instapundit.

ABOUT TIME

Phyllis Chesler speaks the unspeakable:

It’s not “phobic” to be worried about Islam/Islamism. It is eminently rational, given that since 9/11, there have been more than 14,000 jihadic attacks against civilians around the world. This does not include battlefront statistics.

Read it all.

ENOUGH!

"I am also tired of the asinine questioning, 'Why did he do this?'—as if we are to be perplexed that Hasan the deep philosopher inexplicably committed mayhem. We have reached real Bathos, when talking heads ponder whether trying to contact al Qaeda is really that bad, or whether yelling 'Allahu Akbar' as one blows apart human flesh is really an act connected to radical Islam."

‘Diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ have limits.

BILLBOARDS

For our collective amusement, a sampling of Canadian billboards ... or at least as they were advertised in the email. Real or PhotoShop, they're hilarious.

A MESSAGE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY

Bill Whittle has a message for all veterans - and a lesson for the rest of us.

If the link doesn't work, try here. You may have to register. Do it; it's worth the time.

TEABAGGER?

Or patriot?

You make the call.

FAUX NEWS

Journalists raise funds for troubled Fort Hood shooter.

Journalists across the nation, moved by the plight of a troubled Muslim psychiatrist whose "understandable emotional turmoil" broke out in gunfire last week at Fort Hood, Texas, will hold a major fundraising event in the coming weeks in honor of the accused shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

It's not hard to imagine this being a real news story.

DUMB QUESTION

Did fear of being ‘crucified’ over free speech hinder the Hasan probe?

Do bears sh*t in the woods?

LOOT AND PLUNDER

The Vikings could take lessons from the current Congress ....

IT'S VETERANS DAY

Fly the flag.

From around the neighborhood on Veterans Day.

A POST-ELECTION THOUGHT

Why the 2008 Presidential election reminds me of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Peggy Noonan on White House adviser David Axelrod arguing that Virginia gubenatorial candidate Creigh Deeds should have embraced President Obama: “My goodness, throw the drowning man an anvil.”

Miss Noonan has a way with words. Read the whole thing.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

And I thought the liberals were adept at reading between the lines ... turns out they’re more adept at making excuses.

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek offers excuses for why Obama can, but hasn’t.

My personal favorite Quindlen-ism: “[I]f you're confused about the public option, just ask yourself this question: would you like to be eligible for Medicare at 40 rather than 65?” Quindlen’s only 57; in only 8 more years, she’ll know the answer isn’t just no, but “Hell, no.”

Link via National Review Online.

OBAMACARE

What to expect.



We can only hope that the Senate is smarter than the House has been.

RINSE, WASH, REPEAT

Mike Baker:

When it comes to Afghanistan, we’re screwed. It’s just that no one’s being honest yet about the screw job.

Yep.

AN INESCAPABLE TRUTH

On healthcare: “Insurance is not part of the solution; it’s part of the problem.”

With a minor quibble that what we have in the U.S. isn’t health insurance, it’s prepaid health care, Landsburg is right. If only Congress would have paid attention ....

By the way, The Big Questions is a very interesting web site. Highly recommended.

THE NEW AGE OF AQUARIUS

”When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace shall guide the planets, and love will steer the stars. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”

”I hope I am wrong ... and that human nature really has magically changed in the era of Obama. So close your eyes, listen to the Messiah’s voice, and repeat: “Debts will be forgiven by creditors; inflation will not follow from massive borrowing; breakthroughs in solar and wind will power our cars and heat our homes; enemies will admire our compassion and join us to achieve world peace; and terrorists are either misunderstood or provoked needlessly by our bellicosity that alone stands in the way of peace.”

Believe all that and you can lay back and enjoy the Age of Obama.

And the cycle repeats.

POLITICAL PUNCH

“We’re 2-0 against Palin,” according to a senior administration official. Strikes me as more like 1-0 since only the NY-23 House race was discussed.

But, umm, didn’t Palin also endorse Christie in New Jersey and McDonnell in Virginia? For Governors? Seems more like 1-3 to me.

OBAMA’S COATTAILS

Why am I reminded of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Peggy Noonan on White House adviser David Axelrod arguing that Virginia gubenatorial candidate Creigh Deeds should have embraced President Obama: “My goodness, throw the drowning man an anvil.”

Miss Noonan has a way with words. Read the whole thing.

BEST OF CLASS

Sarah Palin may have been one of the most qualified members of a presidential ticket in a decade.

The frenetic hostility to Sarah Palin, even by many on the Republican side, is unnerving, because her qualifications to be president are objectively better than those of almost anyone who has been on the national ticket over the past decade.

Read it all.

KILL THE BILL

There was (is) a “kill the (healthcare) bill” rally at the Capitol steps today, originally called by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN, 6th District), and sanctioned by House Republicans. Estimates of attendance are as high as 10,000.



Gateway Pundit has details and updates.

THE PUBLIC OPTION EXPLAINED

Scott Ott explains how the public option will work.

PALIN POWER

First Sarah Palin endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava in the NY district 23 Congressional race; then she endorsed Republicans Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie for the Virginia and New Jersey governorships respectively.

This morning it looks like a “two-fer” and possibly a “three-fer” for Mrs. Palin.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Sic transit gloria mundi -

Tuesday is usually worse.

DISMANTLING AMERICA

Thomas Sowell:

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Wake up and read the whole thing.

Via Instapundit.

BACK AGAIN

Flu is not compatible with blogging.