THE BRAVE NEW WORLD of the smart grid.



Overblown, but not necessarily inaccurate. Overblown, as existing smart technology only measures gross power consumption and would possibly affect your electricity bill if a variable rate structure was in effect. Not necessarily inaccurate, however, as control of 'smart appliances' is clearly in regulators' sight. As far as privacy goes, yes, there's room to worry if your power consumption consistently differs from that of your neighbors.

Reason enough to be increasingly wary of the power of big government.

THE AUTOWORKERS Obama left behind.

PRIVATE SPACEFLIGHT: Has the 'tipping point' been reached?

BLINK? Or bluff? With a new 'Dear Leader' I can hope for 'blink' but I'd bet on 'bluff'.

PROHIBITION: Good or bad? The evidence is mounting that prohibition simply makes a bad thing worse.

WHEN GOVERNMENT BECOMES TOO POWERFUL: Power Struggle Over Indian Tribe Splinters Into Violence in California. Would this have happened if the government hadn't granted Indians Native Americans the right to build casinos on tribal lands?

HOW'S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKING OUT? Will Democrats Help GOP Quash Obama’s Plan To Save Medicare?

WORDS WORDS WORDS: More Statements, Less Meaning.

GOOD: How to survive a school shooting. Better: Shoot back. Best: Shoot first.

THOMAS SOWELL: Pettiness and Mud.

THE 'PRIVILEGE' OF BEING AMERICAN: "The Founders argued that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were rights that preceded government—not things to be granted by it."

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S 'Grovel-Ready' Foreign Policy.

WORDS FAIL: Ethicists Argue in Favor of 'After-Birth Abortions' as Newborns 'Are Not Persons'. If 'after-birth' abortions become legal, I know exactly where to start.

More here.

IF YOU AREN'T GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING, you aren't getting your fair share.

FEELING THREATENED? Perhaps I should; I clicked on the link and responded that I would donate to Zeeba the syphlitic camel before I would donate to Obama.

WHERE DID YOU WEAR IT? We taxpayers fund these idiots.

IT'S NOT A HATE CRIME if I'm a member of a 'protected' class: Lawyer Argues That His Lesbian Clients’ Assault on a Gay Man Can’t Be Hate Crime.

PROGRESSIVE CALIFORNIA leads the nation: gasoline prices jump 26 cents in one week.

DEPRESSED? LOW SELF-ESTEEM? Consider the alternatives ....

ASTEROID 2011 AG5 could pose threat to Earth in 2040. Not to worry -- with Obama at the helm, the Earth may not be here in 2040.

IS AMERICA still 'America the Free'? Well, yes, if your definition of free is 'free lunch'.

LET'S MAKE SURE he can buy the 2013 model.

A SWORD IS DOUBLE-EDGED: TransCanada announced Monday that it will build the Oklahoma-to-Texas portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline without approval from Obama.

If the Obama administration can ignore the will of the people, then the people, as represented by TransCanada, can - and should - ignore the will of Obama.

CALIFORNIA IS AT RISK of losing aerospace companies to other states if it doesn't become more business-friendly.

NEW DEMOCRAT PARTY SLOGAN: "We Don't Respect the Constitution."

SUPPORT YOUR ENEMIES, not your friends.

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU reportedly tells US officials that Israel won't warn the US if it decides to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in order to prevent the US from being blamed for failing to stop an attack.

I.don't.think.so.

Netanyahu won't warn the US because he knows damned well that the Obama administration would promptly tell the Iranians.

MY APOLOGY to Afghanistan President Karzi.



Don't be fooled by the first minute or so ....

REAL TAX REFORM: a new Buffett rule.

I DON'T KNOW: Why is school prayer only allowed during tragedies?

READ THE COMMENTS: It must be easy to be unemployed if you're a liberal.

Linked from Instapundit.

OBAMA bows to the mob; Gingrich, on the other hand, has it right: "[Y]ou are going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life ... because you clearly don’t want to learn ... how to be unmiserable. And that is what you are going to see happen."

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: President Obama reminds me of Wimpy from the old Popeye cartoons: "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

Read the Wikepedia entry for more similarities ....

DEBT CEILING: Obviously Obama didn't ask for demand enough.

POLITICAL CALCULATIONS: Should you trade in your gas guzzler? In my case, the answer was a clear 'No'; I should keep my Mexican Cadillac (pickup truck) until it falls apart and scatters itself along the roadside.

WHEN I GROW UP, will I have food stamps, too?

TEN WAYS Obama could reduce gasoline prices now -- but won't. The next Republican president, however, will.

MINING THE MOON: a discussion begins. Unfortunately, it's Canada that's taking the lead, not the U.S.

GREEN -- the color of rotten corruption.

SOME ARE more 99% than others.

FOX NEWS HOST Eric Bolling test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors. For four days in a row, [he found] the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.

Bolling calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery, so the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles. That equates to a gasoline efficiency of 27.2 mpg and an electric efficiency of 1.56 m/kwh.

At my home, gasoline is $3.60/gallon and electricity is $0.114/kwh, so a 'full tank' would cost $34.22 or 12.7 cents/mile driven. Using electricity only (limiting the Volt to 25 miles/day or less than 9,000 miles/year) the cost per mile drops to a low of 7.3 cents/mile.

For a 500-mile road trip (about 10 hours with stops for gas) my Honda Pilot will get an average of 22 mpg at a cost of roughly 16 cents/mile. Taking the same trip (10 hours, one gasoline-only fill up) in a Volt will cost roughly 13 cents/mile (475 miles at 27.2 mpg plus $1.82 for electricity). For a 500-mile road trip in full-economy mode (electricity only), plan on taking roughly 8 days (210 hours) at a cost of $1.67 per mile (including food and hotel costs, since it takes 10 hours to recharge the Volt’s battery every 25 miles or so). Average speed … a bit less than 3 mph.

My Honda cost about $26,000; the Volt is a $250,000 car that sells for $35,000 after Obama’s $10,000 rebate.

So Obama wants me to pay 35% more for a car that costs about 10 times as much to drive cross-country and takes about 17 times as long to get there?

Really?

[Amusing Note]: $170,000 is the average income of the relatively few buyers of the $40,000 Volt to date.... Only Mercedes-Benz drivers, at an average $174,000 a year, earn more than Volt drivers. Their high income puts Volt buyers in the top 7% of households, according to census data, and slightly above the rankings held by households with BMWs, Lexuses or Cadillacs. It does not seem likely the Occupy Wall Street crowd will be lining up at their local GM dealer any time soon.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on technology: "Use it — but beware that at best the speed, ease of use, and greater awareness at our fingertips simply accelerate, emphasize, and accentuate whether we are dunces and boors or pretty informed and decent folk. And at worst, it is more likely to make us the former rather than the latter."

NON-PARTISAN BUMPER STICKER: You can't fix stupid, but you can vote it out.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: It's not about America, it's about him.

HOPE 'N CHANGE: after nearly 3 years of Obama ... here's your change! Click on the image to enlarge.


Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration;
(2) Wall Street Journal;
(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics;
(4) Census Bureau;
(5) USDA;
(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;
(7) FHFA;
(8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller;
(9) RealtyTrac;
(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ;
(11) The Conference Board;
(12) FDIC;
(13) Federal Reserve;
(14) U.S. Treasury

The friend who sent me this data wrote this: "I played with the numbers a little further and specifically looked at number of long-term unemployed that increased from 2.6 to 6.2 million. (assuminging one can measure it). If you include those people back into the unemployment rate calculation you get 12% instead of 9.4%. Not what we are being told. Do you think the Obama adminstration is playing with the unemployent statistics?"

Given the 'transparency' of the Obama administration, I wouldn't rule it out, but I think I have a simpler explanation: a booming underground (cash) economy.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW? The Washington Post tries to trash Newt Gingrich again.

THAT’S THE WAY WASHINGTON WORKS: taxpayers get the losses while private companies get the profits … and arrogant senators get to pat themselves on the back for “creating jobs.”

PROGRESSIVES and the politics of victimhood: "[I]f you’re a leftist you’re allowed to be a bigot. It’s practically required."

I particularly liked the comment that "you can't polish a turd." That reminded me of some long-ago bathroom graffiti: "Of course you can; use Turdle Wax."

INSURANCE INDUSTRY could take hit from birth control mandate. The "cost assurances" of the Obama administration are so much hogwash; despite their valiant spin, there is still no such thing as a free lunch.

The significant unanswered question, it seems to me, is what to do about those companies that self-insure. Can a large self-insured company whose owners are, say, devout Catholics also qualify for religious exemption? Or is the Obama exemption just so much window dressing?

OBAMA 2012 ELECTON POSTER


Speaks for itself.

IS RICK SANTORUM an improvement for conservatives? I think it's fair to say he is well right of mainstream America; but I think it's also fair to say he is not as far to the right of the mainstream as President Obama is to the left of it.

'TWAS THE MORNING after breakfast,


and all through the house,


not a critter was stirring,


not even the cats.

AT BOTTOM, multiculturalism is ironically, paradoxically, a racist doctrine. Put on an individual basis, I remember my father saying "Deep down, where it really counts, he's shallow."

ARE ENGINEERS REALLY IN DEMAND? If they are, then why am I still retired?

SHARIA comes to Pennsylvania. Impeachment, anyone?

APPARENTLY SO. Is pregnancy a disease?

AGGRESSIVE JOURNALISM. In an election year.

JOHN STOSSEL: I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand. Another symptom of overweening government.

“HI, THIS IS JIMMY HOFFA, and I am calling to make an offer you can’t refuse.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You own these high gas prices.

BUT STARBUCKS ISN'T HIRING: Number of U.S. adults with college degrees hits historic high.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: "The trouble with economic freedom is that it yields insufficient graft."

JUST SAY NO to health insurance. There are some good ideas here, but the confusion of health insurance with health care detracts from the approach.

GROW UP: Contrary to PC dogma, "A Chink in the Armor" is not a racist statement.

DIANA WEST: Why is the U.S. Apologizing for Scorched Qurans?

It's time to tell the Islamists "Tough shit! When you finally deserve respect, you'll get it. In the meantime, go pound sand."

GARFIELD on the oil crisis: A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our OIL is located in:

Alaska
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal Florida
~~~
Coastal Louisiana
~~~
Coastal Alabama
~~~~
Coastal Mississippi
~~~~
Coastal Texas
~~~
North Dakota
~~~
Wyoming
~~~
Colorado
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
~~~
Texas

Our dipsticks are located in DC. Any questions?

VENTURE SOCIALISM. Cronies reap; taxpayers weep.

SPACE SOCCER: Tiny 'Soccer Ball' Space Molecules Could Equal 10,000 Mount Everests.

Who knows? We could be just a miniscule part of an interstellar soccer tournament....

REPUBLICAN 'ESTABLISHMENT' supports Romney?

ROBOT SOLDIERS: coming to a battlefield near you.

CHRIS CHRISTIE TO WARREN BUFFET: "Write a Check and Shut Up"; Advice to Rest, "Don't Send Them Money In the First Place."

OF COURSE NOT. Would President Obama even dream of inflicting Obamacare on Al Qaeda?

DEFLATED: Navy will mothball revived airship program.

SHOOTING BACK: Hunters Open Fire on Animal Rights Surveillance Drone (registration required).

PITY THERE ISN'T an instrument to measure liberal pollution. If there were, it'd go off-scale flying over California.

REFUSING TO LEAVE THE TITANIC: The Cornered Rats of Climate Change. Buh-bye.

SO WHAT'S NEW? actors are idiots.

OOPS! Did Bad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe?

PAYBACK: The United States agreed ... with Russia, China and 20 other nations to coordinate potential retaliatory trade measures against the European Union in response to a new law that requires airlines to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions if they land in the EU. I favor the airlines instituting a 'drop-off' policy (parachute extra).

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION issues 'e-gizmos' guidelines for cars. Why not just require the driver be locked into a sealed 'isolation chamber' for the duration of the travel?

OBAMA'S TAX PROPOSAL: rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

COME BY MY HOUSE FIRST: I need the target practice.

"A RARE AMATEUR VIDEO of the Challenger shuttle disaster has surfaced ... over 25 years after the tragic event when seven astronauts lost their lives."

WHAT ARE OUR KIDS LEARNING? Poll Shows Professors Fail Presidential History. We should be grateful that so few of them are employed.

THOMAS SOWELL: The 'Fairness' Fraud.

THE HIGH PRIESTS OF LIBERALISM: anti-individualism, anti-religion, anti-science ... oh, hell, anti-everything.

TWITTER IS FOR TWITS: Twitter Mentality Is a Threat to America.

SPACE ELEVATOR to become reality by 2050?

Science fiction come true....

WHO'S ON FIRST?

WALTER E. WILLIAMS: Math Matters. But only if you want to succeed.

OBAMA ON KEYSTONE XL: I was for it before I was against it before I was for it before I ... oh, never mind.

RATS AND SINKING SHIPS: Another Enviro Scientist Turns Global Warming Skeptic. My chances for more government grants is over; I might as well tell the truth....

IT'S NOT THE LAW THAT'S THE PROBLEM, it's the lawyer. Read it all.

THOMAS SOWELL on academic hypocrisy. It's not just within the 'ivy towers'. How many institutions of higher learning will tell applicants that a $50,000 degree in 'victim studies' will likely lead to a job as a Starbucks barista?

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. Why is it that in Microsoft applications the color black has been renamed 'automatic'?

WAS THE COPPERTONE GIRL RIGHT AFTER ALL?


Perhaps so.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Washington D.C. the best city for cheating.

IS OVERREGULATION a precursor to a cash economy? Follow the links.

DIMINISHED EXPECTATIONS -- the new 'Hope & Change'.

A RATIONAL DEBATE: We lie, you listen.

COMING TO A CAMPAIGN STOP NEAR YOU: "Divide et Impera." Read it all.

INTERESTING THOUGHT: quit subsidizing the takers.

DISABILITY FRAUD holds down unemployment rate; more here.

MISCONCEPTION: It's not about birth control, it's about government control.

TOLD YOU SO: Privatization is still a better deal than Social Security.

CYBERSECURITY VS. CYBERFREEDOM:

“Everyone wants to improve cybersecurity, but, if we’ve learned nothing else from previous legislation affecting the Internet, we know that an imposition of an overly broad regulatory regime of the Internet ecosystem will not sit well with the American people.”

Jail is very secure, but it's not very free.

THE ILLIBERALITY OF OBAMACARE:

Rather than respect each individual's freedom to make their own choice, President Obama demands that even those who will never need contraception — gays, lesbians, the post-menopausal, the celibate, the infertile — must underwrite other people's sex lives.

It's not just contraception. What about Viagra? Cialis? Cosmetic breast surgery? Transgender (sex change) surgery? The slope slippens ....

"IT IS EASY TO THINK that the federal government has a near monopoly on misguided and harmful housing policies. Sadly local governments manage ... to give the federal government some real competition."

THE ORIGIN OF YODELING:

Many years ago a man was traveling through the mountains of Switzerland.

Nightfall was rapidly approaching and he had nowhere to sleep. He went up to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if he could spend the night. The farmer told him that he could sleep in the barn.

As the story goes, the farmer's daughter asked her father, "Who is that man going into the barn?"

"That fellow traveling through," said the farmer. "needs a place to stay for the night, so, I told him he could sleep in the barn."

The daughter said, "Perhaps he is hungry." So she prepared a plate of food for him and then took it out to the barn.

About an hour later, the daughter returned. Her clothing disheveled and straw in her hair. Straight up to bed she went.

The farmer's wife was very observant. She then suggested that perhaps the man was thirsty. So she fetched a bottle of wine, took it out to the barn, and she too did not return for an hour. Her clothing was askew, her blouse buttoned incorrectly. She also headed straight to bed.

The next morning at sunrise the man in the barn got up and continued on his journey, waving to the farmer as he left.

When the daughter awoke and learned that the visitor was gone, she broke into tears. "How could he leave without even saying goodbye," she cried. "We made such passionate love last night!"

"What?" shouted the father as he angrily ran out of the house looking for the man, who by now was halfway up the mountain.

The farmer screamed up at him, "I'm going to get you! You had sex with my daughter!"

The man looked back down from the mountainside, cupped his hand next to his mouth, and yelled out ...

"LAIDTHEOLADEETOO."

From my email.

CUT SPENDING: Bring 401k's to the military. I very much doubt that it will significantly cut spending - at least in the short term - but it is still a very good idea, for the same reason as privatizing Social Security. Secondly, it takes 20 years to earn a military retirement; if you leave before 20 years, you get nothing. A 401k can be vested immediately; therefore even short-termers will leave with something as opposed to nothing.

ASK NOT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY, ask what your country can do for you. Quite a change in only 50 years.

GUILTY by reason of metaphysics.

UNINTENDED (INTENDED?) CONSEQUENCE: Saving energy makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

TEAM OBAMA is looking for a slogan to replace 'Hope and Change' in the 2012 election cycle. My suggestion is

OBAMA 2012
Vote Republican

More suggestions in the comments here.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Ten Commandments for the 21st Century.

A SYLLABUS for a class on the 'Occupy' movement. A real education, not like you would find at Columbia or Harvard.

PRESIDENT OBAMA has done a truly remarkable job: "Unfortunately, I can think of few favorable remarks to make."

JOE BIDEN: a college degree for everyone. Why not just give every kid a sheepskin when they enter kindergarten and spare the effort to continuing to lower the bar?

IT DIDN'T WORK for Dan, uh ... Dan, uh ... Dan Rather either.

AIRLINES THREATEN to scrap the European Union unless the EU scraps the airline carbon emissions tax. Looks like a possible opening for Obama's bullet train ... does it float?

A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION: put Metro on the wrong track. I don't think it's a failure of imagination so much as it is a liberal propensity for control.

WELCOME to Orange County and San Francisco, Mr. President.

All is not well in ObamaVille.

OBAMA'S BUDGET is a written testament to broken promises and failed leadership.

THE ADVANCEMENT of the toxic totalitarian nanny state. And now there's a second example.

The unemployment line for government nannies needs to get a whole lot longer.

UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE: Peter Robinson spends 30 minutes with Newt Gingrich. It's well worth the listen.

IRANIAN WARSHIPS enter the Mediterranean Sea. Good. That way when we sink 'em they won't clutter up the Straits of Hormuz.

PAT BUCHANAN: The New Blacklist. I've never particularly cared for Buchanan, but he has a point.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: Airlines are raising fares again to cover the high cost of fuel.

THE COST of lousy policy.

SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY by taxing medical progress to death. Die sooner.

ICON AIRCRAFT receives first-ever spin-resistance seal of approval.


Beautiful aircraft. Wish I could afford one.

TOLD YOU SO: Even with a Volatile Stock Market, Personal Retirement Accounts Are Better and Safer than Social Security.

And I have the data to prove it.

“POLITICAL CORRECTNESS is a doctrine – fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media – which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.”

Read the entire post.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Life of Ants.

LIBERALISM DENIED: It’s not possible to provide contraception coverage at no cost to anyone. TANSTAAFL again.

HEH. Sen. Scott Brown ( R-MA) leads Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren by nine points in Massachusetts, riding a dominant advantage among independent voters.

FOSTER FRIESS, the billionaire who funds the Super PAC supporting Rick Santorum, stunned MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell with an off-color joke about birth control yesterday. “This contraception thing, my gosh, it’s so inexpensive,” Friess said. “You know, back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

"Off-color" joke? You have to be kidding me. When I was in high school, that wasn't off-color, it was policy!

From today's Morning Examiner blog.

WE HAVE NO PLAN; we just don't like yours.

Four years is enough.

PIPE DREAM: Sarah Palin is running for President. It is a pleasant thought, though, as she is the best qualified Republican around.

CONSERVATIVES ARE DUMB: “We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama’s watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can’t pay–hey, we’re just dumb! ... We obviously aren’t smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea.”

THE 'FREE LUNCH' IS BACK. And it still isn't free.

HURRY, PLEASE. The next Persian Gulf war awaits.

IRAN 4.0: a full-blown Persian Gulf war.

NEXT ENTRY on the ObamaCare enemies list: Christian Scientist shoe salesmen.

We should scrub the term 'healthcare' from the lexicon and return it to what it originally was: health insurance for catastrophic care. For the price of 'healthcare' premiums today, I can buy an awful lot of routine medical care and still have money left over for catastrophic insurance.

A RECOMMENDATION for the movie "Act of Valor." Six of the Navy SEAL stars made their red carpet entrance by parachuting onto Sunset Boulevard where the theatre hosting the film’s release was located.

TECHWISE CONVERSATIONS: How a 3-D-printed titanium jawbone was transplanted into an 83-year-old patient.

OBAMA: Let's talk about contraception instead....

MORE OIL, MORE ROADS: House Republicans push new oil drilling to fund road projects. Democrats are sure to go apoplectic....

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART'S $60M plaza would be an unwelcome 'hangout' according to New York's upper east siders.

Of course. It's being funded by the Koch billionaires.

IT'S A START: Payroll tax deal would take first real bite from Obama's health law.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS? We don't need no traffic lights.

OBAMACARE: Is the mandate a tax, or not?

THOSE PESKY UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Auto dealers warn fuel efficiency proposal will price out millions of buyers.

Long-term fuel savings don't mean much if you can't afford the entry fee.

THOMAS SOWELL on the progressive legacy: Part I; Part II; and Part III.

Summed up in a single phrase: 'to be progressive is to be ignorant'.

NOTHING LIKE A FORD TRUCK.

I bought a new Ford F250 Tri-Flex Fuel Truck. Go figure, it runs on either hydrogen, gasoline, or E85. I returned to the dealer yesterday because I couldn't get the radio to work. The service technician explained that the radio was voice activated.

'Nelson,' the technician said to the radio. The radio replied, 'Ricky or Willie?' 'Willie!' he continued and 'On The Road Again' came from the speakers. Then he said, 'Ray Charles!', and in an instant 'Georgia On My Mind' replaced Willie Nelson.

I drove away happy, and for the next few days, Every time I'd say, 'Beethoven,' I'd get beautiful classical music, and if I said, 'Beatles,' I'd get one of their awesome songs.

Yesterday, some guy ran a red light and nearly creamed my new truck, but I swerved in time to avoid him. I yelled, 'Ass Hole!' Immediately the radio responded with

"Ladies and gentlemen, The President of The United States."

Damn, I love this truck.

And it was built by a company Obama didn't bail out.

THERE IS NO NEUTRALITY, no safe harbor from liberalism's moral vision.

OBAMA'S BUDGET: It's my money, America.

A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE: If you don't like green eggs and ham, you can have ham and green eggs.

CONSERVATIVES WIN on payroll tax cut. Only if they can hold the line on other tax increases.

POLLING DUELS: According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of Americans believe religious institutions should be given an exemption from federal mandates that force employers to pay for contraception, 44 percent say they should be required to pay like all other employers. A CBS News/New York Times poll shows that 61 percent of Americans believe religious employers should be required to cover contraception, only 32 percent said they shouldn’t.

Who do you believe?

ACCORDING TO A NEW UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS STUDY, Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country.

Who's the mayor of Chicago? Rahm Emmanuel. And which President started his political career in Chicago?

DR. OBAMA'S ECONOMY: "This patient may indeed be on the road to recovery, but Dr. Obama appears incapable of giving it what it may need most: a good leaving alone. Instead, he always seems to be running around rearranging the deck chairs on the U.S.S. Economy, whistling a happy tune as the band plays on."

Read it all.

TRIGGER THE VOTE.

GONE WITH THE WIND: Hurricanes could destroy the offshore wind farms the U.S. is planning to build in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Surprise, surprise ....

IN BLUE OREGON? [T]he state House of Representatives blocked approval of Oregon's ObamaCare health insurance exchange.

REPUBLICANS send Valentine's Day cards to Obama and Democrats.

TAX-AND-SPEND BUDGET: A budget is a statement of priorities. Obama has made it clear what matters most to him.

THEY'RE NEARLY ALL DEMOCRATS: Nearly 2 million dead Americans are still on active voter registries.

NOT VERY PRACTICAL, but certainly a lot of fun.

REPUBLICAN MILLIONAIRES earn their money; Democrat millionaires ... well, read on.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: The Buck Never Stops With Them. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on Sunday television:

On MTP: “Well, one of the things about the United States Senate that I don’t think the American people realize is that it takes 60 not 50 votes to pass something.

On CNN: “We also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support.”

That is simply false: “The budget resolution…requires only a majority vote to pass, and its consideration is one of the few actions that cannot be filibustered in the Senate.”

Confusion when it comes to the budget law is nothing new for this Administration. The President’s budget request tomorrow is already past the deadline set by the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, the latest in a lengthy string of violations of their legal obligations.

Has the White House bothered to ask their party’s leaders in the U.S. Senate the real reason they refuse to prioritize the American people’s tax dollars? Is it that they can’t admit to how much more they want to take from hardworking American families in order to fuel their spending appetite?

Not can't admit; won't admit.

BUMMER: Pollution Related to Electric-Cars May Be More Harmful than Gasoline Cars.

Linked from Instapundit.

TRUE LIES: the Obama budget.

JUST PEACHY: my tax money being spent to pay for an 'Occupy' protest in favor of raising my taxes.

WELCOME TO THE 2013 BUDGET: Mr. Obama, we don't have a tax problem, we have a spending problem.

Obama just won't take "No!" for an answer. In 2013, he won't have an option.

COMPROMISE? What compromise?

EXPLAINING WHY ObamaCare is an abomination.

[T]he individual mandate inevitably leads to full-blown socialized medicine.... When the government mandates that you have to buy health insurance, then it has to specify what health insurance is required to satisfy the mandate. This means politics is involved in deciding what must be included and covered by that insurance.

And once politics is involved, that means you can't leave anything out, as that would be taken as an offense and a slight to both the consumers and the providers of the excluded service. Mental health benefits and counseling, drug rehab, maternity benefits (even for men and seniors), abortion -- everything must be covered.

Some related thoughts here.

CRONY CAPITALISM: Corruption ... is not a byproduct of big government; it is its essence.

CUT SUBSIDIES -- just not my subsidies.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: the ‘obesity epidemic’ is proof that Americans are telling the nanny-staters to mind their own business.

IF MY CATS COULD TALK, they’d tell the author to stick her opinion where the sun don’t shine.

JEFF JACOBY: The Third Jihad.

OBAMA’S ‘TRANSFORMATIVE’ PRESIDENCY: ”The question raised by the Catholic Church's battle with ObamaCare is whether anyone can remain free of a U.S. government determined to do what it wants to do, at whatever cost.”

Older Americans have sought for years to drop out of Medicare and contract for their own health insurance. They cannot without forfeiting their Social Security payments. They effectively are locked in. Nor can the poor escape Medicaid, even as the care it gives them degrades. Farmers, ranchers and loggers struggled for years to protect their livelihoods beneath uncompromising interpretations of federal environmental laws. They, too, had to comply. University athletic programs were ground up by the U.S. Education Department's rote, forced gender balancing of every sport offered.

With the transformers, it never stops.

WHAT A SURPRISE: World Bank Report Shows Large Public Sectors Reduce Economy. Mitchell is wrong on only one point: the real solution is not to restrain government growth, but to reduce government size in absolute terms.

OLIVER NORTH: Freedom from religion for our military. And then what?

RADICAL ISLAM: If You See Something, Shut Up: “Criticizing Islam is now a punishable offense in several European countries.” It’s close to that in the United States.

LATEST MORTGAGE BAILOUT: Victims get 6%; ‘profiteers’ get 94%.

ED FEULNER: A Job Too Good to Be True. If you live in or near D.C., the disparity is obvious.

NO BIRTH CONTROL LEFT BEHIND: ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’. There’s more than just women's health and religious freedom at stake.

DREAM CHASER, a possible Shuttle replacement, is in Louisville, CO, for final assembly in preparation for testing at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. It is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to eventually deliver supplies and people to the International Space Station.

BREAKING: Kim Jong-Un death confirmed, now registered to vote in Chicago.

If only ....

BILL WHITTLE: Conservatives Suck!

NO FUN IN LA-LA LAND: L.A. Board of Supervisors Impose $1,000 Fine for Having Fun on the Beach. Liberals remind me of H. L. Menken’s definition of Puritanism: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

FAT OR FERAL? Obesity epidemic strikes U.S. pets. More here. Note the deliberate link in both articles of pet obesity to human obesity – both are “epidemic.”

But here’s the relevant question: would you prefer your pet to be protected, fat, and alive? Or feral, skinny, and ... starving to death?

Exactly the same question is relevant for humans. Would you rather be living in a democratic, capitalist society where you can afford to be obese? Or would you rather live in a chaotic totalitarian society where you afford to be ... starving?

I know what my choices are.

FIVE YEARS LATER and not better off.

“THEY SHOULD REGISTER corrupt pols in Chicago, but that would be all of them, I guess.” I’m for a nationwide registry. Also put ‘em on the ‘do not fly’ list as potential terrorists.

Rand Paul: Do You Hate Rich People?



Related news here.

NEW YORK TIMES: World's Glaciers Losing Billions Of Tons Of Ice Per Year.

Quoting the same source, John Wahr, Fox News reports that the Himalayan glaciers have lost no ice in the past 10 years. US News & World Report, using the same source, reports Earth’s Polar Ice Melting Less Than Thought.

Same source, same data, different emphases to conclude with the “correct” narrative.

Here’s what I find facinating. In the reports, there are two sets of numbers bandied about: 230 billion tons of ice melt causing the oceans to rise 0.06 in/year (US News) and 150 billion tons of ice melt, causing the oceans to rise 0.4 mm/year (NYT).

So now let’s convert those numbers to a common baseline: mm/year per 100 billion tons of melt. The NYT numbers convert to 0.27 mm/year of ocean rise; the US News numbers convert to 0.66 mm/year. That’s roughly a 250% disparity.

And yet the NYT, with the lower number, has a decidedly gloomy headline while US News, with the much higher number, is decidedly optimistic.

Perhaps it would be wise to pay attention to Dr. Wahr: “Eight years of data is great, but it’s still hard to see any kind of trend or to say whether ice loss is accelerating. All I can say is that we have a better sense of the current state of the cryosphere.”

And check the math ....

WELCOME TO OBAMACARE (language warning).

A STRANGE NOTION OF ‘COMPROMISE’. Not for the Obama administration.

More: a requirement that mosques sell bacon?

THE U.S. AIR FORCE – solving problems since 1947!

General: Mr. President, we’ve just invented an invisibility cloak for Air Force One.

Obama: No way.

General: That’s right, sir, the plane will be invisible. Will you be going along on its maiden flight?

Obama: Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

General: Have a good trip, sir.

IF YOU’RE NOT A LIBERAL, you must be mentally ill.

YES, HE CAN! Can Obama be beaten? But it’s going to take a helluva lot of work from the tax payers to make it happen.

BIOCAPSULES: a medical game-changer?

OBAMA/VOLT 2012: What better way to celebrate the massive success of the Chevy Volt than by having this beautiful piece of machinery as President Obama’s running mate in 2012?

ALLEN WEST: The Danger of a Nation of Dependents.

NO. NEXT QUESTION. Do We Need the Department of Education?

(IM)MORAL SUPERIORITY.

LOWERING THE BAR: some thoughts on gay ‘marriage’.

TOUGH LUCK, KIDS. I got mine, too bad you won’t get yours.

TWO MORE SCIENTISTS jump the good ship ‘Global Warming’: “AGW theory functions best in a data free environment”.

KRAUTHAMMER: “I Commend Him [Gingrich] for The Sagacity and the Wisdom of his Choice of Authorities.”

OH, MY: I didn’t know chickens were anti-gay.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD V. KOMEN FOR THE CURE: it’s about the money. Not morality.

HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES tells religious believers to go to hell. The public notices.

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE: It’s possible to sustain today’s level of federal spending and have a balanced budget.

All that Congress would have to do is raise the lowest income tax bracket of 10 percent to 25 percent and the middle tax bracket of 25 percent to 66 percent and raise the 35 percent tax bracket to 92 percent.

No problem.

YOU DON'T MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER by taking their options away.

GENERAL ATOMICS Tests Second Predator-C Avenger UAV.


More here.

DID GINGRICH START SOMETHING? Moon draws growing interest as a potential source of rare minerals.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS from the retirement lane. I now have to make up the bed first thing (after breakfast) in the morning.


Daisy will follow me around the house scratching at my leg until I make up the bed for her morning nap.

DRONES OVER U.S. is authorized by Congress. It’s interesting to read that the major concern is over privacy. I hope someone in thinking about the likelihood of using drones for terrorist attack. It’s doubtful that one can take down a tall building, but they sure as hell can punch holes in them.

WORDS ON PAPER guarantee nothing.

DOUBLING DOWN ON FAILURE: it’s the government way!

MISSOURI, MINNESOTA, AND COLORADO: “[T]he hard core conservative voters that did turn out to the polls don’t like Romney.”

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING: the Blended Wing Body aircraft.



The link is here.

HMM. TransCanada should sue to complete the Keystone XL pipeline. Why not? As candidate Mitt Romney correctly pointed out and the Supreme Court correctly affirmed, companies are people too.

WHERE ARE my ‘green’ subsidies?

GINGRICH MOON COLONY is polling well. As I thought it would. Remember the enthusiam generated by Kennedy’s ‘race to the moon’ in 1960.

A LITTLE LATE: I Wouldn‘t Have Voted for Obamacare If I’d Known About Birth Control Mandate.

EXTREME SPORT: Daredevil to plunge from outer space, break sound barrier.

Or extreme stupidity ....

HO, HUM: Just another green failure you and I will have to pay for so “the rich” will have something inexpensive to purchase.

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE too much duct tape.

ANOTHER SURPRISE: Congressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers’ properties.

MORNING EXAMINER: the audacity of Obama’s hypocrisy.

A DEFINING MOMENT: “[T]here is no excuse for not being aware of what a major social disaster the minimum wage law has been for the young, the poor and especially for young and poor blacks.”

Thomas Sowell on Mitt Romney's support of indexing the minimum wage. Read it all.

BEACH SAND can make you sick.


EPA-recommended beachwear.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED to the Gingrich ethics case? Professional jealousy. Ben “Cooter”Jones, sadly, is now a Virginian and lives just ‘down the road’ near Culpeper.

PAUL GREENBERG: Change Happens.

COMMENTER HIRAGHM on this Michelle Malkin post about food stamps.

First comment:

Your desire to masturbate doesn’t grant you the right to control my life. (the editorial “you” and “my” in this case). And no, I’ve never received food stamps.

I’m not only sick of these back-door attempts to control my life, I’ m sick of alleged conservatives falling for it.

Oppose welfare if you want, go for it. But, to wax Randian for a moment, you can’t have Falstaff and have him thin. Either you live in a country that lets people, including children, starve to death, or you create this safety net to salve your own conscience.

Your payoff is not having to live in a country where children can starve to death. Your payoff is using tax payer dollars to make yourself feel all good and noble and warm and fuzzy.

Your payoff is not, cannot ever be, control over other humans’ lives. What next? Telling people they can only use food stamps at Wal-mart or Costco? Telling people they can only buy Borden milk with food stamps, and no other brand?

Alleged conservatives whine and moan about, to use an over-abused metaphor, giving a man a fish instead of teaching him to fish. What you want to do is give him a fishing pole, and because you gave him the fishing pole, dictating where he can fish, what kind of bait he can use, what size of fish he can keep, what kind of fish he can eat, how he can cook it.

What do you want? Do you want to help people become self-sufficient, or do you want to keep them alive so you can continue feeling superior to them? If you make these decisions for them, how and when are they going to develop the ability to make them for themselves? Even if they, in the future, continue buying only gov’t-approved foods, that’s Pavlovian reflex, not decision-making. And you’ve stolen their lives from them.

My elder brother, unfortunately, was taught using the “word-unit” method, unlike the rest of us. This meant he never learned to read a word he hadn’t been taught to read. Likewise, by dictating what a person can buy with food stamps or other welfare, they’ll never learn to make their own decisions about how to handle their money.

What really outrages me is this: this says to children, “Because your parents take food stamps, you can’t have candy. We want you to be alive, this doesn’t mean we want you to be happy.”

And the hilarious part of all this is, fine, they use food stamps only to buy milk and wheat germ, and broccoli and whatever other disgusting idiot food health nuts with gov’t influence dictate. That’ll still free up whatever other funds they get to buy awful products like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. So, it accomplishes nothing, except let the progressives climax over micro-managing other peoples’ lives.

Second comment:

In the Antebellum South, blacks had guaranteed employment, guaranteed shelter, guaranteed health care, guaranteed food. Someone else was paying for all of these things for them (quality of such is fodder for another argument).

In return, they had no decisions to make; they were told where, when and how to work. Their food was selected for them. They got the healthcare someone else saw fit to give them. Their shelter was whatever someone else decided they should have.

In the Antebellum North, immigrants had no guarantee of shelter, employment, health care or food. (again, the abuse of workers during the same era is fodder for that other argument). They could work for whomever they chose; they could do whatever work they chose, they could live where ever they chose, they could eat whatever they chose, they could seek whatever health care they chose.

Why do we consider those Northern immigrants better off than the Southern blacks?

Welfare creates dependence; this is almost a conservative axiom. What is being suggested is that, what little improvement in a person’s life, (or family’s lives) is to be marginalized by taking away from them the decision-making that differentiates the free from the slave. To turn a program intended to buoy up people in temporary difficult straits into the chains of slavery.

If you don’t like the food choices they make using the food stamps, then stop the food stamp program, don’t use it as an excuse to control them.

Third comment:

I’m rofling at the sudden outbreak of progressivism on this blog.

Do you *really* think the progressives *started* these “Great Society”, “New Deal” et al programs in order to help people? The goal all along was to control people. To set the precedent for a sugar tax, a Big Mac Tax (a tobacco tax, cough cough). Obamacare was the goal; how often do we hear politicians and other progressive-sounding idiots claim how much healthcare is costing “us”? There’s a commercial on TV proclaiming the costs of tobacco to companies due to lost productivity… ignoring entirely that said productivity doesn’t belong to the company, but the individual.

You either do-good because it’s the right thing to do, and accept that people will not behave as you would have them behave, or you look in the mirror and admit that you’re a heartless monster (to paraphrase Perry), and refrain from do-gooding.

I don’t care how rich you are, Mr Soros. You don’t get to buy slaves anymore.

Read the whole post for context.

CLIMATE DISRUPTION: new name, old hoax.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: We are ‘them’.

ALASKA'S SPACEPORT TURNS TO TINY SATELLITES: “[N]ew ways of using existing technology could revive the nation’s only high latitude, full-service spaceport.”

JEFF JACOBY: Is a long primary fight good for the GOP?

I suspect not.

POUND SAND: China bars its airlines from paying EU carbon tax. This is one time the U.S. should follow China’s lead.

MICHAEL BARONE: Box-checking Obama in a Liberal Cocoon. Completely divorced from the real world.

SOME THOUGHTS on ‘F’-words.

THE FIGHT TO REFORM EDUCATION: Unless you’re an educator, you have ‘no clue’ as to what’s best for your children.

COMING SOON: Individual mandate to buy Chevy Volts. Or walk.

‘EVIDENCE-BASED’ MEDICAL CARE: worse than death panels?

OBAMA’S MIDDLE EAST POLICY:

Obama policy is more or less to be summed up by, let Israel do it on Monday, and then on Tuesday we will express “grave concern” and “deep regret” over such a “unilateral” escalation in tensions, as we breathe a sigh of relief and blame the troublesome Israelis once more for stirring up war in the region.

Read it all.

THE PATRIOTS LOST SUPER BOWL XLVI: “[W]hen the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl in 2008, Obama won the White House.”

CONSCIENCE? You’re not allowed to have a conscience.

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: HHS Mandate ‘Must Not Stand’.

SOMEONE FORGOT TO TELL HIM the draft no longer exists.

IS THE PERMITTING PROCESS slow enough yet? Not for the Obama administration.

WE’RE DEMOCRATS; we don’t need a budget.

YOU PICKED A FINE TIME TO LEAD US, BARACK:

MARK STEYN: So Obama wants to be his “brother’s keeper”?

OOPS! Global Warming Engine Unexpectedly Slows.

Preliminary reports from the Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook” (which will be fully published in April) suggest that any carbon crisis may not be quite as imminent as thought. Not so long ago, the EIA predicted carbon emissions levels would rise by 37 percent between 2005 and 2035. The EIA — get this – now thinks that global CO2 emissions in 2025 will be 6 percent lower than they were in 2005.

... snip ...

The truth is that forecasts about greenhouse gas emissions are basically worthless. These recent forecasts certainly were; the difference between 37 percent growth and 6 percent decline is 43 percent. That is about the level of accuracy you could expect from a blind monkey throwing darts at a wall.

But without those worthless forecasts, climate math falls to the ground. If we can’t predict the future level of greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t predict the future temperature of the earth — even assuming that our atmospheric models work perfectly and haven’t left anything out.

None of this suggests that we should ignore climate and energy issues, but it confirms my belief that climate activists tend to be bad logicians, and that the way forward has nothing to do with the cumbersome bureaucratic power grabs, crony capitalist porkfests (ethanol, Solyndra, high speed rail) and economic controls that misguided greens hope will save the planet.

Skeptics have finally put ‘global warming’ on the back burner (pun intended).

MORE: a global warming economics primer.

SARAH PALIN: How Obama Repaid Notre Dame.

SAY WHAT? I am going to stick with my fellow Catholics in supporting the administration on the contraception insurance mandate.

IT'S TAKERS VERSUS MAKERS and these days the takers are winning. We elected a Moocher-in-Chief in 2008; will we do it again in 2012?

AL GORE WAS RIGHT: Concrete Evidence Man is Causing Glacier Retreat.

I DIDN’T LOSE MY JOB; I was retired.

IS OBESITY CONTAGIOUS? It may not be cupcakes.

SNICKERS-FREE ZONES? Introducing the Cupcake Cops. At the rate the Left keeps alienating Americans, I'm sure they'll be wishing America was a 'snicker-free' nation as well.

TIME FOR IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS? Attorney General Eric Holder threatens Rep. Darrell Issa. I don't think you can read Holder's quote any other way.

BRAVO! Elderly man with firearm levels playing field against two attackers.

No statistic he.

LAWSUIT: Defendant Breached a Duty Not to Shoot Bottle Rockets Out of His Anus.

Don’t click on the link until after you’ve put your coffee down.

IN A VICTORY FOR GRIDLOCK, the unemployment rate has dropped 1.5% since Republicans took control of the House.

DON/T KNOW MUCH ABOUT NOTHING:



Linked from The Blaze.

I’M EMBARRASSED to admit I’m a Virginian.

NO SURPRISE: The Komen Foundation Was Bullied By the Left.

More here, here, and here.

RICHARD SCHIFFMAN:Why We Should Work Less. Schiffman misses the obvious point: America is richer because America works harder.

DONATIONS:

A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway outside Washington, DC. Nothing was moving. Suddenly, a man knocks on the window.

The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists have kidnapped Congress, and they're asking for a $100 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, collecting donations."

"How much is everyone giving, on average?" the driver asks.

The man replies, "Roughly a gallon."

Cheap at twice the price.

TELL ME IT’S NOT SO: agenda-driven science at the EPA.

DOT.GOV HAS IT ALL to ‘help’ Americans do better. Think of how much better life would be if dot.gov was “inconsequential to the lives of average Americans.”

MORE: ’Right to work’ means freedom and choice for Americans.

The government mantra of "We're here to help you out" always omits the punch line: "Which way did you come in?"

HOW THICK IS YOUR BUBBLE? Take the quiz starting on page 103.

IS ANYBODY SERIOUS? Of course not.

ROMNEYCARE AND OBAMACARE: a comparison. A good point. Romney still has some explaning to do.

Ann Coulter has more to say.

A SECOND OBAMA TERM: who stands to win – and lose – the most? The losers are obvious – us.

AIR FORCE reveals the X-56A flying wing. From the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, naturally.

OUR ‘INTERESTING’ PRESIDENT. Interesting only in the sense that nothing is ever his fault.

DEFENSE SECRETARY LEON PANETTA believes there is a growing possibility Israel will attack Iran as early as April.

THE CASE FOR ROMNEY: A president who owes you is better than one who owns you.

DON’T BOTHER WATCHING THE OSCARS; the best actor/best supporting actor are already chosen....

POWER TO THE LAZY!

UH,OH.


Data from the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index.