UNIVERSITIES CAN iMPROVE SCHOLARSHIP by “buying out” non-productive tenured faculty.

Harvard’s endowment isn’t large enough. They wouldn't have any faculty left, either.

Link from Instapundit.

A POST ON POLLING devolves into an interesting discussion of chronic conditions health coverage in the comments.

Linked from Instapundit.

SO, CAN I SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE and take one aspirin every two days?

WHO HAS RACE ON THE BRAIN? In academic lala land, scholarship and teaching too often came second, bumper-sticker identification first — another sign that with supposed intellectual progress, so often comes moral regress.

THE LOOK OF OBAMACARE



Ecch!

THIS SAYS IT ALL


Note the language: "A taxpayer voting ..."

AN ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGN AGAINST TOYOTA? I’ve been wondering about that myself.

More here.

EVERYONE KNOWS that people without health insurance are more likely to die. But are they?

The evidence –such as it is – seems to indicate that health control, not health care, has more effect.

Obama will be pleased.

The American public will not.

WHERE DO THE TEA PARTIES GO FROM HERE? Karl Rove comments: “The tea party movement will be more effective than it otherwise would be if it refuses to allow itself to become an appendage of either major political party.”

He’s right, I think. The point of the Tea Party movement is to impress upon the establishment of both political parties that the rising tide of federal spending, debt, and over-reach must stop.

LOGOGATE: The Missile Defense Agency has updated its logo.

Riehl World View notices the similarity with the Obama campaign logo: “[I]s this about the only way Obama can find to leave his stamp on America?”

Other critics saw things differently. "I'm having trouble seeing past the crescent and star in the new logo," one critic posted on WashingtonTimes.com. "Is this our signal to the muslim world ...?”

My thought is that this is much ado about what is really a minor waste of money.

IS ACORN COMING TO AN END? Or merely changing names?

Unfortunately there's no reason to think it isn't simply rebranding, to emerge with a different name and the same shenanigans.

CHILD OBESITY IN THE NANNY STATE. Marybeth Hicks has some thoughts.

CLIMATEGATE 2.0: the rot continues.

The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.

As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity. NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective.

Here are the links to parts two, three, and four.

The corruption is stunning.

EVERY MAN A SEX ADDICT. More preposterous psychobabble.

Link via Instapundit.

FROM THE EMAIL. If George W. Bush had ...

been the first President to need a teleprompter to get through a press conference, would you have said this is proof of how he inept he is?

reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?

been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was Cinco de Mayo, would you have winced in embarrassment?

burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?

okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether he actually understood what happened on 9-11?

ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

proposed to double the national debt in one year, would you have approved?

then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

spent more than all the Presidents combined since George Washington, would you have approved?

So, tell me: What is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

MAYBE NEXT YEAR. One year later, only 22,000 homes “weatherized”.

I could laugh if only it weren’t my tax dollars being spent not weatherizing my own home.

EXCELLENT QUESTION: “Capitalism is about progressing via the ingenuity and excellence of minds unfettered by government regulations and interference. [E]nvironmentalism based on the man-made global warming theory is about regressing from the advances that unfettered minds have made. It’s also about pushing the government to regulate and interfere at every step along the way.”

Knowing this, why should capitalists ever want to go green?

SARAH PALIN MAY SAVE AMERICA.

America need[s] a headliner to counter Obama’s famous brand of demagogy. Sarah Palin can do it.

Sarah Palin appeals in a more-than-rational way to all of us....She is a solid, substantive, conservative thinker, open-minded about facts. ... [L]ike Ronald Reagan, Palin adds something rare and special to a substantive understanding of life and politics.

[Democrats] think in sociological categories: black (check!), male (check!), cute (check!).... Palin happens to be an articulate, conservative woman who also looks good on TV, thereby defeating all of the left’s stereotypes at a single glance.

It’s an interesting argument, with more than a nugget of truth. Read it all.

A BIDEN MOMENT at the health care summit:

I think it requires a little bit of humility to be able to know what the American people think, and I don't. I can't swear I do. I know what I think. I think I know what they think, but I'm not sure what they think.

The truth outs: they don’t know, and they don’t care they don’t know.

MANNED SPACEFLIGHT: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” 23,000 of them, to be exact.

And the source of the problem is in the White House.

NOTE: the source of the phrase "we've had a problem" is here.

WHAT A FINE GOVERNING CLASS WE HAVE: “The common thread here is a twisted sense of entitlement; all of these folks in high office encountered circumstances where the rules and laws that the rest of us have to follow proved inconvenient, too inconvenient to interrupt the important work of these important men.”

EDUCATION IS TOO IMPORTANT for a government monopoly.

[T]wo factors predict a country's educational success: Do the schools have the autonomy to experiment, and do parents have a choice?

Yet the establishment is against choice.... This is typical of elitists, who believe that parents, especially poor ones, can't make good choices about their kids' education.

Paul Greenberg has an example.

REPORTING THE FACTS is not our policy.

THE CASE FOR catastrophic health insurance: [W]hy I have health insurance is simple: my employer pays for it. If my employer didn't pay for it, I wouldn't have it. I'd buy a catastrophic policy from a reputable insurer to cover any amount that might bankrupt me, and self-insure for everything else.”

I would, too. But I can’t, because my employer won’t offer it; my wife’s employer won’t offer it; and I can’t buy it on the open market because I have a “pre-existing condition” (at my age, anything less than a perfect medical record is a “pre-existing condition”.)

OBAMA must avoid health plan mistakes on energy.

The common theme in ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade is the need for the populace to sacrifice for the common good.

Never having worn a hair shirt himself, Obama doesn’t appear capable of recognizing the discomfort Americans have with his policies.

Liberals : dumb ideas :: moths : flames

CANADIAN PROVENCIAL PREMIER DANNY WILLIAMS says he does not regret coming to the U.S. for heart surgery.

Williams tells the Canadian press: "This was my heart — my choice. I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."
Despite his run to the border for private care, Williams says he has the utmost confidence in his country's public system.

So why did he come here?

Mark Steyn comments.

OXYMORON

Via Prickly City.

[Update] I should point out that one could substitute "REPUBLICAN" or even "POLITICIAN" and it would still be an oxymoron.

LIBERAL ECONOMICS: Empiricism be damned.

WHY I OPPOSE OBAMACARE: Megan McArdle explains my position perfectly.

DO REPUBLICANS HAVE A PLAN?

[Poll] numbers suggest that the Republicans could well wind up with a majority of House seats next year, and perhaps more than they had at any time between 1994 and 2006. And they could even wind up with a majority of Senate seats, as well, though that would require winning all the currently close races and maybe a couple more.

In that case, they may find themselves asking the question the Robert Redford character asked at the end of the movie 'The Candidate': "What do I do now?"

I hope they have an answer to Barone’s question, but I’m afraid this is it.

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT: a benefit of trickle-down regulation.

THE LIMITED BENEFIT of comprehensive insurance: “What first dollar coverage ... does is drive costs. Since [it’s] about spending other peoples' money, naturally we want the right to spend as much of it as possible, even if it's not very useful.... I doubt it's coincidental that the health care markets where people pay their own way are the ones where there are more real efforts at cost control, like plastic surgery, fertility, and vision care.”

I think that’s right. When I see my insurance claim form and find that the sum of my copay and the insurance reimbursement is about 63% of the billed amount, I know that health care market is badly distorted -- and likely not in my favor.

THE SCIENTIFIC RATIONALE behind this proposed massive intrusion into American life requires more than a “consensus” of like-minded climate analysts and bureaucrats. It needs to be right.

JUST HOURS AFTER Joseph Stack deliberately drove his plane into the Austin TX IRS office building, the media began speculating about a possible link with the tea party movement.

New York Magazine wrote of his Internet manifesto: "A lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a Tea Party rally."

A Washington Post blog read: "His alienation is similar to what we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

And Time magazine's online write-up twice included links to a background on the Tea Party movement.

Media commentator Bernie Goldberg writes that: "For the record, there is no evidence whatsoever that Joe Stack belonged to any Tea Party organization or ever attended a Tea Party. None."

I’ve read Stack’s “manifesto” as well, and frankly it reads more like the whining of a self-important, self-entitled, spoiled brat than anything I’ve seen, read, or heard at any of the tea party protests I’ve attended.

NOT LOOKING GOOD FOR OBAMACARE: "Any bill that people have to be bribed into voting for can't any good."

CONGRESSIONAL IDIOT saved by Blackwater.

Even Blackwater makes mistakes.

I QUIT




A pleasant thought, but unlikely.

THE “I” PRESIDENCY: "What's being tested here is not just our [my] ability to solve this one problem, but our [my] ability to solve any problem."

Read it all.

NANNY CARE insults the American spirit.

You are victims. You are helpless against the wiles of big corporations and insurance companies and you need protection. You need the government to take over and do things you cannot do for yourself.

That is the thinking of what David Brooks calls "the educated class"

Most Americans don't share [the] view that they are victims, in need of protection and supervision by "the educated class.

Read it all.

AIMLESS APOLOGIES are just one of the incidental symptoms of an increasing loss of a sense of personal responsibility-- without which a whole society is in jeopardy.

Yes.

And this just in: “Where’s the remorse? Toyota CEO ‘Deeply Sorry’ for Accidents, Safety Problems.” The apology I want to hear from Toyota is this one: “We’re sorry you Americans are too damn dumb to put your foot on the brake, slip the transmission into neutral, and turn off the ignition.”

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID suggested on Wednesday that unemployed men are more likely than women to commit domestic violence.

Former Senator Fred Thompson tweets "Is he saying we should be worried about Mrs. Reid after the November elections?"

Senator Reid is not amused ....

SARAH PALIN’S ROAD SHOW: as seen by Paul Greenberg.

The lady not only knew where she was but, more important ... knows who she is. And makes no apologies for it. That's something else her oh-so-superior critics can't stand. Other politicians are so sophisticated, flexible, plastic, nuanced ... that they seem to have no backbone at all.

Read it all.

TAXES? We don't pay no stinkin' taxes.

THE RECESSION: It's all Kansas' fault.

CORRUPTION: it’s the “Chicago Way.”

Question: Isn't bribery enough for somebody at the Department of Justice to start asking some serious questions?

Answer: With Eric Holder as Attorney General?

AN INTERVIEW with Dr. Manfred Aufgeblasener-Schwätzer, internationally renown climate scientist.

Yes, it’s satire - but just barely.

OOPS! The beginning of a new meme ....

IPCC: Science fiction, not science.

I’ve always thought the IPCC should be considered science fiction rather than science. Literally. Jack Vance, described this past summer in the New York Times Magazine as “the greatest living writer of science fiction and fantasy,” used the acronym IPCC in his futuristic Demon Princes novels to represent the Interworld Police Coordination Company — sort of an intergalactic police force. Our own IPCC — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — does indeed hope to police the world, but aims to free the Earth of carbon dioxide instead of human (and alien) criminals.

Jack Vance’s IPCC is far more connected with reality than ours.

Heh.

GLOBAL WARMING STRIKES TEXAS



It's snowing in Austin, a once in several years event. Perhaps an inch of accumulation.

CLIMATEGATE RESEARCHER Dr. Phil Jones, late of the East Anglia CRU, tries to transfer the burden of proof to skeptics by attacking critics for “hijacking the peer-review process… Why don’t they do their own [temperature] reconstructions? If they want to criticise, they should write their own papers.”

Hey, Phil, you’re the one arguing in favor of global warming. The burden of proof is on you. Just because you believe there is a black cat locked in the windowless basement at midnight on a moonless night doesn’t mean I should have to prove it isn’t there.

Ed Morrissey agrees: “[B]ecause we’re not the people advancing extraordinary claims about man-made influence on global weather patterns.... This must be some new, previously unknown tenet of the Scientific Method, wherein people who point out errors, bias, bad process, and unsubstantiated claims from scientists are somehow required to disprove their unsupported hypotheses. It’s apparently no longer incumbent on Jones and his colleagues to substantiate their own conjectures with actual science,”

Instapundit recalls a similar case. Attacking the critics didn’t work then, either.

IF THE GOP cannot find some way to align itself with the Tea Party and its ethos, then it will be swept away.

I will hope the Republicans are smart enough to avoid self-immolation, but if the Tea Party rises from the ashes all will not be lost.

THE DALLAS TEA PARTY invites the White People of MSNBC to come to the protest.

Link via Instapundit.

Heh.

THE MOUNT VERNON STATEMENT: the conservative establishment’s call for action.

Instapundit senses a libertarian shift on the part of the right.

My own sense is that GOP success or failure in the 2010 and 2012 elections depends on how well the Republicans can blend Constitutional conservatism with Tea Party activism. I hope they succeed.

FUTURE FORMER DEMOCRAT STRATEGIST. Democratic political strategist Pat Caddell gets fired for “speaking truth to power”.

Caddell responds.

TEA PARTY ACTIVISTS craft 'Contract from America'. The idea is simple: use the internet, develop a 'Contract from America,' and have politicians – of whatever stripe - sign on. Signers get grass-roots Tea Party support; non-signers do not.

"You are going to be held accountable by us," said conservative activist Ryan Hecker, offering a preview of what Tea Party activists are going to tell congressional candidates later this year. "We have a plan - a proactive reform plan - for you to follow and not the other way around."

You can influence the Contract from America at its website here.

And Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has an interview with Hecker here (registration required).

OBAMAVILLE. Chris Muir named them, the New York Times reported them, and Don Surber has the video.

Hat tip to Instapundit for the reminder.

BUT, BUT, BUT ... she’s not one of us.

Dorothy Rabinowitz explains why “it's impossible to imagine the Sarah Palin known to the world today as their leader.”

In truth, Ms. Rabinowitz does an excellent job of explaining why the media has been – and is still being – so defensive about President Obama and his Democrat supporters; her column oozes smug oil.

The day is rapidly approaching when the self-anointed discover that American wisdom is not confined to lower Manhattan.

OBAMA’S $1.5 BILLION FINANCING PLAN would help ‘struggling homeowners’ in 5 (of Obama’s 57) states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Florida.

A cynic observes that “cash that was once going to buy up troubled assets but is now just a slush fund for politically motivated deficit spending from the executive branch ... the president’s political rainy day fund.”

UNGOVERNABLE? Charles Krauthammer says no: “Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country… That's not a structural defect. That's a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself -- despite the special interests -- through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.”

IF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION INCLUDES cuts in government spending, one can rest assured it will fail in Congress.

The American people will stand for it; Congress will not.

AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT PUNDIT misses again.

As a parent of school-age children, I can join the amen chorus when Obama calls for more nutritious school meals, comprehensible food labels, helpful tips from pediatricians and changing the 1950s-era presidential physical fitness standards.

Young Mr. Huffman might not realize it, but it was his side, the progressive left, that in the 60’s lobbied to remove PE requirements from high schools and colleges; imposed building codes on kid’s tree houses and backyard forts; removed trampolines and jungle gyms (and dodge balls!) from schools; discouraged pick-up ball games in the vacant lot down the street; and on and on....

As a parent of a school-age child, why doesn’t Mr. Huffman get personally involved:

Make his child’s own school lunches (after reading the nutrition labels); my mother did.

Act on his own pediatrician's advice; I did for my kids.

And – say – walk his child to school; my daughter-in-law does for my granddaughter.

It’s Mr. Huffman’s responsibility to take care of his own – not mine.

GLENN BECK ADDRESSES CPAC: It’s “not enough to not suck as much as the other side.”

The quote is at 16:30 in an address (with chalkboard) that lasts just over an hour.

NOW THAT OBAMACARE is in its death throes, supporters are backpedaling furiously.

For much of the past year, President Obama lavished praise on a few select hospitals like the Mayo Clinic for delivering high-quality care at low costs, but a pointed analysis published Wednesday in an influential medical journal suggests that the president’s praise may be unwarranted.

Mr. Obama received his information about the hospitals from a widely cited analysis called the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, produced by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. An article in The New Yorker magazine last year written by Dr. Atul Gawande that used the Dartmouth Atlas as its organizing principle became required reading in the White House last year.

But an analysis written in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Peter B. Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, suggests that much of the Dartmouth Atlas is flawed and that it should not be used to compare the relative efficiency of hospitals.

Even the authors of the Dartmouth Atlas are backing away. Dr. Elliott Fisher, director of the Center for Health Policy Research said that “he and his colleagues should not be held responsible for the misinterpretation of their data.”

IT’S THE UNCERTAINTY, STUPID

It’s obvious to me that the Obama administration has no grasp on what their ‘flavor of the day’ tax and regulatory proposals do to business decision making, but perhaps I can summarize for them:

“No investment means no hiring and no new tax revenues. It’s the uncertainty, stupid.”

Businesses won’t start breathing easy until one particular American loses his job on January 20, 2013.

HELP WANTED -- 'Arrogant Americans' need not apply.

What I find amusing is the faux outrage on the part of the Left. Had it been written as “Help Wanted – ‘Culturally-sensitive Americans’ only”, it would have been lauded as an example of the progressive vision.

MORE LIBERAL STUPIDITY.

Washington’s snowstorms were brought to you by global warming.

Washington’s snowstorms were brought to you by global weirding.

Harvard-educated, Oxford-educated. Journalists, both. I would add “idiots” but that would be redundant.

Try on the hair shirt first, big guys, before you go around fitting the rest of us. Friedman, you first.

GEORGE WILL on Sarah Palin and populism. He might even be correct were not the “pointy-headed intellectuals” so ruinously inept.

Instapundit comments here and reader Brian Gates takes him to task.

A BABY LOTTERY? Michael Barone thinks she’s kidding. I’m not so sure.

But I am sure that if Rachel Gurstein has kids, the lottery wouldn’t apply to her.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Peggy Noonan on the Obama presidency.

CAR TALK: the intersection of engineering, politics,and fun.

COMPREHENSIVE ANYTHING: another Victor Davis Hanson essay.

WAL MART FUDE TASE GUD: some of the tasters were not happy.

Link from Instapundit.

FROM THE EMAIL: “I'd rather have money in my pocket than change shoved down my throat.”

WHAT DOES THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPSE have to say about this?

HEH. Matched up against Barack Obama, Sarah Palin gets 22% from people who don't think she's qualified to be President!

DEMOCRATS LOSING COAL COUNTRY: bye, bye.

ANOTHER OBAMA PROMISE bites the dust.

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

CASH FOR CAULKERS. Cost per house, $78,000. Materials and labor, $4,255. Bureaucracy, $73,745.

Who said the government wasn’t efficient?

FIRST AL FRANKEN, now John Mellencamp. Another indicator that there’s no significant difference between politics and entertainment.

SOMETHING TO PONDER FOR 2012: Sarah Palin's ahead of where Obama was 30 months before his nomination.

Heh.

CAN’T LET FACTS INTERFERE WITH THE NARRATIVE. An Idahoan responds to the New York Times.

Link from Instapundit.

ABOUT TIME. “A Rhode Island high school had a 50% failure rate in a depressed town with high unemployment and a median wage of $22,000 per family. The union representing the teachers, who averaged over $70,000 per year in income, refused the superintendent’s plans to improve the school by extending the work day by 25 minutes and requiring teachers to provide tutoring on a rotating basis. The superintendent summoned her inner Reagan and fired them all, from the administrators to the last instructor.”

Read it all here.

IT’S NOT THAT I LIKE SAYING “I Told You So” About “Global Warming”, but .... “It was never about science. Nor was it ... about ‘saving the planet’. It was ... about moral sanctimoniousness. ”

FORMER AIR AMERICA CEO blames 'Darwinian World' of market forces for failure of 'progressive' talk radio.

Umm. I thought progressives believed in Darwin.

Link from Neal Boortz.

WILL OBAMA HAVE A PRIMARY CHALLENGER IN 2012? Indiana Senator Evan Bayh’s decision not to run for reelection is certainly leading to some interesting speculation.

MILESTONE TO MILLSTONE – in one year. Way to go, Barack.

DEGLAMORIZING SARAH PALIN: the pictures are here; the link from Althouse is here.

This commentor said it all: “I wonder what BHO looks like without makeup.”

BROWN SLAPS BIDEN AROUND: Vice President Joe Biden was “off base” when he suggested Sunday that new Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown get his facts straight on the legal procedures for military tribunals.

Sen. Brown has served in the Massachusetts Army National Guard for more than 30 years and is currently the Guard's top defense attorney in New England.

Oops!

OLBERMANN accuses Tea Partiers of racism; reader responds: “[A] tea party gathering looks something like MSNBC line-up on week-days.”

Heh.

YES, OBAMA LOVES AMERICA. But does he like it?

[T]he message that comes through is that he is going to fix your problems whether you like it or not.

The president has talked time and again about the need to bring change even when people resist it. He describes anxious, fearful Americans misled by Republicans and cable news anchors. He expresses sympathy for those who aren’t able to taste the clear, cool wisdom pouring from the presidential font.

Obama has sympathy for Americans, but not much appreciation for their wisdom.

The President has yet to learn that real change comes from Americans, not to them.

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT - one year later:

The goal of the Tea Party Movement is to free the American people, their livelihood, their property – physical and intellectual, their time, their wallets, and their families from a federal government that has, under both parties, grown to be a political phagocyte that sees individual liberty and freedom as so much debris in the body politic.

Read the entire essay.

Link from Michelle Malkin.

WHITE HOUSE revamps communications strategy.

White House officials are retooling the administration's communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries, a more disciplined focus on President Obama's call for "change" in Washington and an increasingly selective use of the president's time.

Translation: "We're doing the wrong thing; just not aggressively enough."

TESTING POSITIVE FOR STUPID: “The new and current LPD [liberal/progressive/Democrat] ‘natural law’ is illustrated in the ‘spread the wealth’ mantra. But it hearkens back to two of Aesop’s fables. The fable about the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind, as does the one about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.... It’s the latter that demonstrates beyond any doubt that the LPDs have tested positive for stupid.”

INSTAPUNDIT reflects on the Tea Party convention: "The attendees want politicians who will deliver on Obama's promise of clean and open government."

Hmm. That doesn't sound like knuckle-dragging, right-wing racist bigots to me.

I wonder if the political nomenklaltura will get the message.

THE HIDDEN COST OF SENATE GRIDLOCK: Obama can't fire anyone. Ezra Klein argues that because of Republican obstruction (of administration positions requiring Senate confirmation), the President dares not to fire any of his current appointees, even those badly in need of firing.

Au contraire. The President most certainly can fire any of his appointees. The danger (to him) is that we may find the government more effective without them – and without them being replaced.

SCIENTISTS seek better way to do climate report.

Start over?

SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM: cooking again?

One can hope. The Congressional Budget Office long term (2010 to 2020) economic outlook predicts in Appendix D that social security will run a deficit of about $28 billion in 2010.

How's that retirement planning looking?

HOWARD DEAN: "One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more."

"One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in pseudoscience any more.

There. Fixed.

GROUPTHINK COMPLIANCE has never felt so right!

And Audi is no longer on my list of desirable automobiles.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the fall of the Roman Empire.

The only difference between the Roman Empire and today is that with technology we can fail so much faster.

REGARDING Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity, it seems to me that the Obama administration is doing a pretty good job keeping the economy down and unemployment up. I seem to recall from somewhere that starvation is a cure for obesity.

CAN WE HAVE OUR INCANDESCENT LIGHTS BACK? Phil Jones, head of the CRU, comes clean: "It is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

More here. And here.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES: It’s still Bush’s fault.

Um, Mr. President, try turning the ignition off. You do have the key....

[Update] Link fixed.

SINCE GLOBAL WARMING is killing moose in Minnesota, it must be global cooling in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Vermont, Washington, Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Colorado, and Utah.

A LONG POST on Afghanistan by Michael Yon, courtesy of Instapundit. Read the whole thing.

TAKE SARAH PALIN SERIOUSLY. The Washington Post’s David Broder: “This was not the first time that [Sarah] Palin has impressed me.... Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand. The lady is good.”

More here.

And here. Letter writer Andrew Van Ostrand is having “in reality” problems himself. Perhaps in the future he could suggest some “substantive reasons for opposing her.”

And for those who continue to argue that Palin is too inexperienced to be President, I'll take that argument seriously when they admit that the current occupant of the White House is "too inexperienced to be President."

OBAMA’S NATIONAL CLIMATE (DIS)SERVICE: “If NCS wants to present useful information to the public and decisionmakers, it might try showing the change in the political climate for global warming alarmism. A photo of a falling rock would probably be sufficient.”

Climate.gov is more self-lampooning than informative.

BLACKBERRY SERMONS: a short, sarcastic piece that brings up the “Wright” lesson again.

The President and his enablers are clearly hypocrites where religion is concerned. What bothers me is the contempt they have for the average American – or are they so stupid as to not understand that we can easily see through the blatant hypocrisy?

VALENTINE’S DAY: A holiday overdue for extinction.

I get the picture – you don’t like Valentine’s Day. But no one’s forcing you to participate. This isn’t like ObamaCare – it’s not mandatory.

So why don’t you just shut up and let the rest of us who aren’t haters enjoy life?

PRESIDENT ME (the musical}.

You’ll have to register; it’s worth it.

THE GREEN POLICE: coming to a city near you?

THE PROPER USE of technology in the Third World.

SARAH PALIN’S Keynote Address at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee on February 6.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Now that we’re digging out from a two-foot snowfall, I wonder what the Prius-lovers think about those big gas-guzzling (snow plow equipped) trucks now?

OBAMA SAVES IRAQ. Instapundit responds: “Obama’s about as much the father of this victory as Andrew Young was of Rielle Hunter’s baby . . . .”

NAME THE MOST DISTRUSTED OCCUPATIONS. Trial lawyer? Used car dealer? Nope: climate scientist.

[T]he cadre of climate scientists who have dominated public discussion and have controlled the IPCC have been demonstrated to be far, far less than trustworthy. Like the theorists who invented epicycles to explain away the failure of Ptolemaic theory to account for astronomical observations, they have distorted science in the interest of something that resembles religious dogma.

Read it all.

BARONE ON PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS: “Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.”

Read the rest.

COMING SOON: remedial healthcare with Professor Obama.

SOCIAL SECURITY for me (just barely) but not for thee.

Since 1984, Social Security has raked in more in payroll taxes than it has paid in benefits, accumulating a $2.5 trillion trust fund. But because the government uses the trust fund to pay for other programs, tax increases, spending cuts or new borrowing will be required to make up the difference between taxes collected and benefits owed.

Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017.

Former President George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security and failed; now the chickens are coming home to roost.

TEAM OBAMA goes stupid.

Not really. Team Obama was always stupid; it’s just that now the stupidity is being widely recognized.

THE ‘SMART PEOPLE’ of Cambridge, Mass., consider car bans, bag taxes, veganism to counter climate 'emergency'.

I have a suggestion: ban all trucks within the city limits. No snow plows. No service trucks. Ne delivery trucks. No semi-trailers. No pickups. No trailers. No commercial vehicles of any kind.

That should make Cambridge very, very green ... or brown.

NOT ANTI-AMERICAN; JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE: “The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) released its fourth civic literacy report ... demonstrating empirically the failures of colleges and universities to effectively teach their graduates the fundamentals of American history, government, foreign affairs, and economics.”

These two items stood out to me.

Barely half of college graduates can identify the three branches of government, the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, events from the Revolutionary and Civil wars; and features of our free enterprise system.

Hell, I could not have graduated from high school without knowing that much, and neither can an immigrant become an American citizen.

At our most elite schools ... Yale, Princeton, Duke, Georgetown ... , not only did those surveyed fail to get above a “D,” seniors did worse than freshmen!

And these are the schools our government draws on for leadership. Is it any surprise that our own government is hostile to American values?

Conventional wisdom has long been that “with more college comes more knowledge.” Frankly I doubt that’s ever been true, and the ISI data certainly validates that doubt in at least knowledge of American ideals, culture, and public policy.

Our colleges and universities aren’t anti-American, they’re just on the other side.

The ISI survey can be found here.

SAY WHAT? In an interview with Bloomberg News President Obama said he and his administration were “fierce advocates” of the free market. This from an administration that nationalized two failed carmakers and forced banks to take bailouts they tried to refuse?

RFK, JR: Arguing global warming by anecdote is for idiots. Which is why I do it.

Heh.

ONCE THOUGHT EXTINCT, New England Republicans emerge.

2010 is going to be a bad year for Democrats. And, I suspect, for incumbent Republicans as well.

SNOW SHEET CAKE

6’ x 10’ x 1.5’

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A CENTURY MAKES.

Theodore Roosevelt: speak softly and carry a big stick.

Barack Obama: speak boldly and carry a tiny twig.

I prefer Roosevelt.

CAT SHOTS: Diamond, Daisy, and Shadow check out the snow.


Diamond plows through the snow drifts.

Inspecting the clean-up.

NEW MEDIA help conservatives get their message out. In the Washington Post’s world, it appears to be newsworthy that note-wrapped rocks are not the primary means of communication for conservatives.

GREENMAIL is a “dubious but common practice in which large environmental groups threaten aggressive campaigns to publicly besmirch businesses in order to coerce them to alter successful business practices that don't fit with activists' agenda.... [And] there's reason to suspect that caving to satisfy these demands will not only hurt U.S. business and the workers who count on them, but will also increasing poverty of millions in the developing world.”

Read it all.

TIME TO DIG OUT. It's clear, calm, and cold - time to start digging out. The yardstick reads 18-3/4 inches and since the snow has compressed some, the real snowfall is likely 4-6 inches greater than the measurement.

The sun is out, it's a beautiful day, and somewhere under the snow is a driveway.

That lonely "stick" is the foreground is actually the top of a 4-foot high bush in the patio flowerbed.

The snow on the deck rails is about 18" deep. Our firewood pile is completely buried in the background along the tree line.

GLOBAL WARMING: the other side. John Coleman is founder of the Weather Channel.

Link from Neal Boortz.

AN EMAIL from Dr. John Fleming, the congressman representing Louisiana's 4th District.

Update on H.Res 615: Call on Members of Congress to Enroll in the Public Option.

Because you have previously contacted my office by email in support of H. Res. 615, my resolution calling on Members of Congress to enroll in the public option, I wanted to give you an update.

Like many of you, I am deeply concerned that Congress will press forward to enact an intrusive government administered health care plan, despite the higher costs and lowered level of care other countries with similar systems have experienced.

You will be pleased to know that more than 100 Members of Congress joined in support of H. Res. 615, my common sense measure calling on Members who vote for an intrusive government-administered health care plan to enroll in that system. Since launching this effort, nearly 3 million Americans like you have contacted my office in support of H. Res. 615. In response I offered an amendment to the Democratic Leadership health care bill to automatically enroll all Members of Congress and all Senators in the public option. Predictably, my amendment was rejected out of hand by the Majority and was not given a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Common sense seems to have failed us in the health care debate. That is why I offered a resolution asking Members of Congress to put their “money where their mouth is” and call for Members who support a public option lead by example and be required to enroll in the public option themselves. If a Member is willing to vote for such an option, why shouldn’t they enroll in it?

THE DOCTOR’S DIAGNOSIS: There is no doubt about it; health care in America must be reformed. The answer, however, is not an intrusive government administered health care plan. As a practicing physician for over 30 years, I am concerned that the kind of “reform” being debated back and forth on Capitol Hill will insert Washington bureaucrats between patients and their doctors, burden the middle class with new taxes, and raise insurance premiums for almost everyone. That is unacceptable “reform.” I will continue to work to represent you and to bring common sense back to this debate.

Why is it the "playing field" never includes Congress? ObamaCare - and a lot of other government programs - would die in an instant if it did.

BAD IDEAS delivered with just a hint of condescension.

A CALL TO ARMS: America was once a land of hope; it is becoming a land of dopes.

We must tell our kids to go outside and look at the stars, sit under a tree, read a book. We must encourage them to seek, understand and value our rich heritage and to do that -- they must study, they must read. We must teach them. We need to turn off the television and read a book of history at the dinner table; be the example. We need to revolutionize our thinking, our moral foundation and our academia.

To quote from one of my favorite forefathers, John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

We have come full circle. We have studied painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain for too long.

Janine Turner reminds me of Robert Heinlein, speaking as as Lazarus Long: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

It’s politics and war, mathematics and philosophy. Quoting Lazarus Long again, “Specialization is for insects!”

A RHETORICAL PRESIDENCY: “A majority of Americans have come to doubt Mr. Obama's leadership not because he isn't overflowing with ideas or lacks for charm. They are increasingly skeptical of his performance because he has yet to follow through on some of his most basic promises.”

AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY. Eugene Robinson bashes Toyota for poor quality control; Toyota apologizes and promises to do better, and the most interesting point is missed: we’ve reached the technology point where we’re going to have our cars recalled for software upgrades.

THE SNOWFALL is over, finally, and the blowing snow has just begun. I've scraped a path out to the shed a couple of times and the wind fills it back in within a half hour.


The effect reminds me of the sand dunes at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

SNOW MUSHROOM



Growing on the back deck.

WHY ARE LIBERALS so condescending?

It's a variant of the "Those who can, do; those who can't, patronize" principle. With no record of accomplishment, condescension is the last resort.

IT'S SNOWING, and money's falling.

OBAMA SALUTES NAVY "CORPSE-MAN". Just another pathetic display of ignorance.

Ignorance can be overcome if one is willing to learn; willful ignorance cannot. In Obama's case, the ignorance is willful.

EXACTLY RIGHT.



And as punishment, it snowed some more.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: the ruler and yardstick tell me that between 4 and 5 inches fell since the snow started yesterday afternoon, which isn’t too bad.

But ... the wind is up (gusts at 40+ mph). and it’s started to snow heavily. Whiteout conditions. The radio reported that in Manassas even the snow removal trucks have been told to park for a while.

It’s going to be a long, long day.

1775 AGAIN. Charles Krauthammer on the Democrat's agenda:

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Blinded by their ideology, the Democrats continue to fuel another Tea Party.

A BRIGHT SIDE to the blizzard of 2010: anything that brings the federal government to a dead halt can't be all bad.

SNOW UPDATE: 17 inches at 8 pm; that's roughly an inch of snow per hour. It's going to be a long night.

UPDATE: 10 pm; just under 3 inches so far, with a lull in the snowfall.

If there's no more than another inch or so before morning (ha!), we might get through this one relatively unscathed.

THE RIGHT WAY FORWARD on space exploration?

It sounds lovely - all hopey changey - and it would probably work if we had the government today that we had in the mid-20th century.

But we don't. And the next men on the moon will likely be Chinese.

THE LOCAL SCENE. These pictures were taken Tuesday afternoon after most everyone had managed to dig out. For the most part, roads were passable, although for the most part, the secondary streets had only one lane open each way and many of the residential streets (like ours) were one lane only.

Parking lots were half-cleared, with the other half used for snow storage. This pickup was almost completely covered in snow.

Most homes in the neighborhoods were like this one – snow piled up 3-4 feet along the road, with the passable width just barely enough for two cars.

Manassas train station in Old Town.

The skating pavilion in Old Town Manassas.

Signal Hill road.


The Buckhall Store at the entrance to our subdivision.

Moore Drive, leading home. The road is typical of the secondary streets, still layered with snow and wide enough – barely – for two cars to pass.

SCENIC BEAUTY from the neighborhood as – and after – we dug out on Monday.

Sunday afternoon from the front porch.

Along the driveway (which really is there underneath the snow).

The back yard (almost pictured is the wood pile at the far left).

Monday morning, looking across the street. We’re just beginning to dig out.

Monday afternoon. We’ve finally reached the street.

Finally! The mailbox is roughly 4 feet above the street. Amazingly, both mail and the newspapers arrived on schedule ... well, the paper delivery was a bit later than usual.

IT'S STARTING AGAIN: 5:47 pm and the snow has just started. It's cold enough that the snow is sticking immediately; the driveway already has a thin covering.



Time to start the snow countdown (er, countup?). The base is 15-1/4 inches on the back porch yardstick.


Please, let the power stay on tonight ....

BACK AGAIN. Let’s see ... my last (unscheduled) post was Saturday at 8 am. We lost power at 3 pm; not restored until Monday at 4:30 am. Since we have an all-electric house, there was no heat, no light, no telephone, no cable TV, no internet, no water (the well pump is – wait for it - electric). And no leaving as the driveway already had a foot of snow covering it.

We have a fireplace and plenty of firewood, but only after a 25-yard trek through hip-deep snow, Here’s the path I finally stamped out in order to bring firewood into the basement.

The cats weren’t happy and we weren’t happy as we settled in to camping around the fireplace, but at least we had coffee.



Now we’re about to to it again ... 10 to 20 inches is forecast for tonight/tomorrow, and the snow has already started in parts of the DC metro area.

RUSH LIMBAUGH on the State of the Union adddress:

I heard it all before. There was nothing new in it. The only difference was the tone. I went back and listened to some of his soaring rhetorical speeches during the campaign. This was defensive, petulant, immature, childish, sarcastic. He's clearly angry that he's been rejected -- that his wonderfully brilliant ideas (health care and cap and trade) have been rejected. I saw a guy, a young, inexperienced guy just mad. I think, Gretchen -- I really do -- I think this is the first time in his life that there's not a professor around to turn his C into an A or to write the law review article for him that he can't write. He's totally exposed. There's nobody to make it better. I think he's been covered for all of his life. The fact that his agenda has totally failed this year is the best thing that could have happened to this country. I thank God every day that this is going down the tubes, that that Massachusetts election happened. Not that God had anything to do with it. That's just the person I thank.

Link from Don Surber.