NEWS TO CELEBRATE: Henry Waxman is retiring! Bonus -- he’s blaming his exit on the Tea Party.

UPDATE: Er, maybe not. ContraceptiveGirl and Georgetown Law 'social justice advocate' Sandra Fluke may be considering running for Waxman's Congressional seat.

NEWT GINGRICH: Freedom to Choose.

JUST HOW “AFFORDABLE” IS THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT? Watch.

THERE'S A REASON a gun has a safety.

IT'S JUST A ROCK: NASA responds to Martian life lawsuit. My earlier post is here.

HOW TO DEBUNK THE ‘WAR ON WOMEN’: Forget politics and focus on policies.

A KEY STATE DEPARTMENT REVIEW raised no major environmental concerns about the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline.

What will be the Obama administration's next delaying tactic? I don't think there's any question there will be one; the question will be how clever -- or arrogant -- it will be.

UPDATE: Someone else thinks as I do. Thomas Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, released this statement:

The State Department’s release of the Keystone XL report should give proponents no hope that President Obama will someday approve this much-needed, job-creating pipeline. He will continue to give excuse after excuse, but President Obama will never side against the anti-oil ideologues both in and outside of his White House, despite the tremendous benefits for this nation and the overwhelming public support from the American people. As long as Barack Obama resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I have a better chance of getting drafted by the the New York Yankees than we have of breaking ground on the Keystone XL.

I think he's right.

THE PORK CONGRESS APPROVES is just the tip of the spending iceberg.

What's interesting is the graphic. Looking at the 'number of spending bills sponsored', we find 65 of the 70 legislators shown sponsoring spending bills were Democrats; looking at the 'dollar amount of bills sponsored', we find that 51 of the 70 legislators shown were Democrats (the legislators shown are not the same in each graphic).

Going to the Washington Examiner's 'Appropriate Appropriations?' tracking page, I found that Virginia Democrats sponsored legislation totaling $11.725B plus additional bills allocating 'such sums as necessary'. Republicans sponsored legislation totaling $61.946B plus 'such sums as necessary' (but that included a single bill appropriating $61.945B for the Department of Commerce).

Now here's what's truly shocking. I did a 'sort by amount' on all bills placed on the Senate and House legislative calendars and found at least 378 bills (I may have lost count) with the 'such sums as necessary' allocation.

There were (again, at least) 572 bills allocating specific amounts, ranging from a high of $1T to a low of a mere $30K. Of that 572, 156 were for allocations in excess of $1B.

Congress is a pork-production shop of unparalled size. See for yourselves....

HIGHLY EDUCATED, HIGHLY INDEBTED: The Lives of Today's 27-Year-Olds, In Charts.

The only thing I found remotely interesting -- meaning different from my memories of 1971 when I was 27 -- was item 12: home ownership. Over 50% (51.3%, to be exact) of those with 'skills' training (certificates or an associate degree) own homes.

That suggests to me that the 'highly educated' are actually highly miseducated.

ROBONAUT 2 waltzes to "The Blue Danube":



More here.

WE SHOULD BE SO LUCKY: Will Nancy Pelosi Be the Next to Retire? Unfortunately, I suspect she'll be leading the remainder of the Democrat band when the Titanic goes down in 2016.

OUR NEW CONSTITUTION: of the elites, by the elites, for the elites.

THE OBAMACARE THEME SONG: You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Blue Shield.

SO, WHAT DO WE THINK of Obama’s proposal for “myRA” retirement accounts?

I tend to agree with Hot Air's lead sentence: "if O’s for it, it’s probably a bad idea". As a retirement account, myRA stinks. As a 'kickstarter' to get a low-income entry-level worker started investing regularly, it may have some utility if the worker moves almost immediately to a regular IRA. Otherwise they're just a way to fund the government's overspending on the backs of the poor.

FEDERAL AVIATION AGENCY puts microbrewery's drone beer delivery project on ice. You can spy on your neighbor, but not sell him a beer....

ANOTHER STUDY THAT PROVES THE OBVIOUS: Speeding drivers spend more money on gas.

POWERLINE'S (MID)WEEK IN PICTURES: SOTU Edition. My favorite:

NOT CHICAGO 'VALUES': Chick-fil-A just fed thousands of stranded people in Alabama.

Only the government has the wisdom to properly serve its fellow citizens.....

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: Climate scientists are not the brightest bulbs in the scientific marketplace.

A LEAD PIPE IS MORE APPROPRIATE: Michelle Malkin takes a 2×4 to MSNBC. A 2x4 isn't strong enough.

THE LIVES of PajamaGirl and PajamaBoy under government supervision.

Not pretty.

THE MAGIC PIANO



Cute. The, er, 'business man' could use a lump of coal in his stocking, though.

GOODBYE MARYLAND: Beretta to open new factory in Tennessee.

Feet. Vote.

THEY'RE TOO BUSY INVESTIGATING THE TEA PARTY: IRS customer service leaves millions of calls unanswered.

NEWT GINGRICH: Obama’s toughest critics ... aren't Republicans.

INCOME GAP? Not many are obsessed. Well, unless they happen to be progressive Democrat community organizers....

POWERLINE'S State of the Union.

POPULAR SCIENCE: Lawsuit alleges NASA cover-up of life form on Mars.

THE CLUELESS SELF-IMPORTANCE OF DC captured nicely in one simple tweet.

EVEN THE WASHINGTON POST REBELS: Fact Checking the 2014 State of the Union address. Will the New York Times be next? Nah.

HEH.

OBAMA'S DISTANT COUSIN calls him 'worst president in our time'.

Dr. Milton Wolf, the radiologist challenging Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), told The Hill on Monday that while Obama’s a “nice guy,” he believes he’s “the worst president in our time, if not our history.”

“You can’t choose your family, but what you can do is to rise up and stop your family from destroying America, and I think Barack Obama is destroying America,” the GOP Senate hopeful said in an interview. “I think his policies are an absolute disaster and I think they’re a betrayal not only of our Constitution but a betrayal of the American idea itself.”

Wolf has the proverbial snowball's chance in Hell of unseating Roberts, but a strong challenge may stiffen Robert's spine.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: IRS, The Emblem Of Big Dirty Government, Gets Dirtier. All the more reason to get rid of the IRS altogether, and implement a flat tax.

DEMOCRAT SENATORS intervene in Hobby Lobby case, urge justices to deny ObamaCare exemption. On the bright side, at least some Republicans are fighting back: Sens. David Vitter, R-Louisana; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; John Cornyn, R-Texas; and Mike Lee, R-Utah should be congratulated, and more Republican congresscritters should join in.

GOOD NEWS: Obama vows no political harassing by NSA, says that's the IRS' job.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ on the State of the Union.

SENATOR MIKE LEE gives the real State of the Union message:



Join and support the Tea Party today.

I'VE GOT OBAMACARE. Yes, but you don't have a doctor -- or a hospital.

MY REACTION to the State of the Union: I've been to better high-school pep rallies.

SOTU: Must have been his mention of climate change; it's snowing in Washington D.C.

OBAMACARE FAIL: ObamaCare costs cancer-stricken Republican his doctor. But "Most Americans don’t have the means to pay for specialists out of pocket. Obamacare will kill them."

And it will reduce the strain on Social Security....

STATE OF THE UNION: “It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention.”

The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live.

And I'm betting he'll be watching....

WHY HAVE A SMART PHONE? Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps.

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, Democrats kill people.

POWERLINE: Senate Democrats are swimming upstream in 2014.

VIDEO: Quadcopter launches rocket.

CHINA'S MOON ROVER Jade Rabbit experiences abnormality. Some reports are indicating lunar dust affecting the solar panels. Hopefully it will 'wake up' after its second lunar night dormancy.

UPDATE: lunar dust appears to be the culprit.

MARC A. THIESSEN: The lie that hangs over the State of the Union.

MALLARD FILLMORE: Another victory for the Left.

BOEHNER: You may have a pen, but we have a Constitution, and we intend to use it.

TELLS YOU SOMETHING about the Nanny State, doesn't it?

ANOTHER VICTOR FOR 'IRISH DEMOCRACY': Connecticut scrambles for amnesty plan after realizing that citizens are refusing to register their “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines.

Linked from Instapundit.

OBAMA PIVOTS from his war on nuns to burning down towns with crude oil.

HOW TO print a pizza.

A MODEST PROPOSAL for saving the State of the Union speech.

Instead of a formal speech, the president stands before Congress and the nation and has to answer five questions each from the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, with no answer allowed to go longer than two minutes (the House minority leader stands behind the Great Man with a cattle prod to enforce the time limit).

Sure, it would still be meaningless rhetorical drivel, but at least everybody would know from the outset exactly how long the misery will last, which ought to make it a little easier to endure.

At least it would have some entertainment value.

AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN suggests that James O’Keefe and Osama bin Laden have something in common.

I can smell the fear from Virginia.

AMERICAN HUSTLE: An Oscar-worthy performance.

ALLEN WEST: Left Tries to Win the Women’s Vote by Talking from the Waist Down.

Heh.

SOMETHING'S BASS-ACKWARDS HERE: Washington wants to do what it shouldn't but can't do what it should.

But then that's Washington....

SURE, THAT'LL WORK: Close all the gun shops!

DON SURBER'S Daily Scoreboard. Bookmark it.

THE 'IRISH DEMOCRACY' IS WORKING: ObamaCare is unraveling because young people won’t sign up.

DON’T BLAME THE MAPS: Republicans don't appear to owe their current congressional majority to gerrymandering.

FROM MY EMAIL: Falling Obama. If he gets stuck between the 'O' logos, click and drag him to get him falling again.

My only complaint was that he never seems to hit bottom, but my brother immediately corrected me....

Thumbs up. I like to fling him high to the left (by the seat of his pants) so he gets a long uninterrupted fall before hitting something.

The reason he never hits bottom is that there is no limit as to how low he can go.

Heh.

STATE OF THE UNION: An Empty Suit Prepares To Deliver an Empty Speech.

WARY OF ANOTHER BEAGLE MOMENT, the European Space Agency managing expectations for Rosetta’s ride-along lander Philae.

NEW YORK TIMES: free speech is only for those who agree with us.

TO USE A SOCIAL SCIENCE TERM: Your data is obviously fucked up.

Just another liberal twit wanting Americans to move to cities where it's easier to provide the government 'services' that will keep them poor.

Enjoy the fisking, and be sure to check out the comment about Loving county, Texas.

I LOOK DOWN on young women with husbands and kids and I'm not sorry.

Anonymous posts a scathing - and well deserved - response.

PREPARE FOR SEVERAL YEARS OF BAD LUCK: Birds attack peace doves freed from Pope's window.

Be sure to note the Leftist 'hate mail'.

MISUNDERSTANDING OBESITY: What cats can - and can't - tell you. I have three, and they exactly verify Martin's observation. Two, Shadow and Daisy, are normal; the third, Diamond is, well, fat. Yet all eat exactly the same meals.

Read the comments for a plethora of studies, opinions, and discussion, but the gist, to me, is this. One, the laws of thermodynamics hold: if you ingest fewer calories than you expend, you'll lose weight. The trick, of course, is in the expenditure side, which is complex and highly individualized. And two, for most people to lose weight, just eat a bit less and/or exercise a bit more.

I never had a weight problem until I started commuting 30 miles to work every day. I ate a bit more (breakfast in the car) and exercised a bit less (2-3 hours sitting in the car every day) and wound up gaining ... about 5 pounds a year. Now that I've quit commuting, I'm losing weight (albeit much more slowly than I put it on).

DO AS WE SAY, not as we do.

WHY THE NSA’S SPYING on offline computers is less scary than mass surveillance.

Two thoughts: One, I'm not convinced that the NSA's 'mass surveillance' is particularly scary, for the simple reason that while it's hard to find a needle in a haystack, it's much harder being filled even faster than you can comb through it for needles. Like ObamaCare, the NSA's email collection programs will soon collapse of their own weight.

My second thought is that the wireless surveillance tools in the NSA's toolkit are also available commercially. Imagine their use by, say, Project Veritas.

IRISH DEMOCRACY: thuggery only works when people are afraid of the thugs.

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE ... gangland thuggery.

BREAKOUT: Freedom to Choose Better Learning. The times, they are a changin'.

JONAH GOLDBERG: The Constitution is powerless against Satan. Some thoughts about the (non-government) institutions of a civil society.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS -- DARKLY. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen looks at Hillary 2016 ... and despairs.

MAJOR GARRETT: Why are fewer people looking for jobs?

I believe there are some useful nuggets in the analysis, but also a lot of hooey. Two items that jumped out for me:

1) Youth are staying in school (and accumulating debt) because there's no place to go except their parents' basement (i.e., pajama boy).

2) Baby boomers aren't retiring because they want to; they're retiring because they've been forced out (i.e., me). Those who have stayed in, or or re-entered, have either been very lucky, or have taken lesser jobs for which they're substantially over-qualified.

The Labor Department data may be good, but the analysis fails the 'look out the window from your Ivory Tower' test.

IF YOU LIKE YOUR PICK-UP TRUCK, you can't keep it. You must have this BMW instead, and oh, by the way, here's the coupon book you'll need to pay for it.

COMING TO A TELEVISION NEAR YOU: the Kitten Bowl.

BORING: The State of the Union is a grand tradition — but only if people are listening. And they're not.

U.S. ARMY: more tooth, less tail with robotics.

TWEET OF THE DAY: "Strange how 'inequality' never refers to 10% of the people paying 70% of the federal income tax." From Kevin D. Williamson at National Review Online.

FEDERAL JUDGE shoots down Chicago's gun sales ban. So according to liberal theory, we can expect Chicago's homocide rate to shoot up to match that of similar-sized Houston.

MORE TWITS A'TWEETING: Wheelchair truthers.

WHAT A BARGAIN: you can get absolutely nothing for a mere $47/month.

And a reminder: you would have to have a taxable income of more than $56,400/year to pay more than the 1% penalty (if you even chose to pay the penalty).

YOUR SUNDAY LAUGH: Rev. Jesse Jackson wants to 'build impoverished communities'.

Seems to me he's been pretty successful.

ANN COULTER: the heroism of Wendy Davis. There's still time for Texas Democrats to nominate a serious candidate -- the primary is Tuesday, March 4th.

GUN FLIGHT: Smith & Wesson, Ruger quit California over microstamping requirement. Under the 'good for the goose, good for the gander' principle, if I were a firearms manufacturer, I would make it a company policy to sell only microstamped weapons to government agencies.

I KNOW PEOPLE who essentially hide large amounts of cash 'under the mattress'. Perhaps they're right: in England "[s]ome HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it".

TEXAS HOSPITAL ordered to remove life support from pregnant brain-dead woman. It's a sad story, but a correct result. In my view, the final decision must always reside with the patient, or those closest to him/her.

SKY WHALE: the future of air travel?

At least until the first one crashes....

TEXAS HOSPITAL ordered to remove life support from pregnant brain-dead woman. It's a sad story, but a correct result. In my view, the final decision must always reside with the patient, or those closest to him/her.

WHERE'S MY GLOBAL WARMING? U.S braces itself for coldest month of the century with yet another Arctic blast.

MIKE HUCKABEE IS RIGHT, and that’s why progressives are angry.

NEWSPAPER: gun permit database idea was misfire. I suspect that the project was rather abruptly terminated when they were told in no uncertain terms that their names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers would suddenly become a matter of public record should they continue.

ERIC HOLDER: Democrats are too dumb to get a photo ID.

More here.

LGBTQQAOPA: more than you ever wanted to know. Suddenly I'm glad I neither attend nor teach any more.

MOOCH & MOOCHELLE are just simulacra. Valerie Jarrett is the real President.

WISCONSIN GOV. SCOTT WALKER on successful Republican governance.

USEFUL IDIOTS: They thought they'd be charter members of the ruling class only to find out they're just pawns on the chessboard too.

SURE, let's bail out Detroit. There's plenty of other people's money left.

WHO IS Battleground Texas’ Lisa Wortham? The phrase 'Democrat prostitute' comes to mind....

SO WHAT'S NEW? The most polarizing president ever.

VOTER FRAUD? Nonsense. We're Democrats.

YES, PLEASE....

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS: Obama administration believes that Healthcare.gov is so bad it could bankrupt insurance companies. (Without an infusion of taxpayer cash.)

Aetna agrees.

JONAH GOLDBERG: So what was the point of ObamaCare again?

INSTAPUNDIT is "[r]eally enjoying the hopey, changey, post-racial Obama presidency."

POLITICALLY INCORRECT WITHOUT TRYING: The Left can’t stand Lone Survivor's depictions of heroic American warriors.

MARK STEYN: [ObamaCare is] "a very strange law whose only defining characteristic is that no one who favors it wants to be bound by it."

WHY REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACIES can't write off transparency.

Transparency lets the hoi polloi have a say. Can't have that.

MAGIC JOHNSON touts government healthcare to help him out of health problems that Magic’s johnson got him into.

So thanks to the 'Affordable' Care Act, I'm supposed to pay for the healthcare that his risky behavior led to?

Here's another example. Although not explicitly stated, it's clear that his partner is HIV-positive.

PARTY OF 'TOLERANCE' DISPLAYS MORE TOLERANCE: Wendy Davis supporters caught mocking Greg Abbott's disability.

Abbott responds.

RULE OF LAW? WHAT RULE OF LAW? Virginia's attorney general has officially joined a lawsuit challenging the state's 2006 ban on gay marriage.

Virginia's chief law enforcement officer is suing to overturn Virginia's same-sex marriage prohibition. So I guess that means that only 'politically correct' laws must be enforced.

This 'will of the people' thing really means the 'will of the people's ruling class'.

PUTTING MORE PEOPLE on Medicaid does not mean ObamaCare is a success. It means it's a failure.

QUNNIPIAC POLL: Majority of Americans say Obama is incompetent and untrustworthy. But other than that, everything's just peachy.

SHOULD I BE SURPRISED? Emails expose close coordination between EPA, Sierra Club and other liberal environmental activist groups.

HMM. Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres.

THOMAS SOWELL: The Left has a vision, not facts. For the Left, 'vision' and 'fact' are synonymous.

More Sowell here.

NEWT GINGRICH: Who's Extreme?

I DOUBT THEY EVER KNEW: The Left has forgotten what the First Amendment means.

GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS are the reason for the really cold winter.

OBAMACAREFAIL: Minnesota ObamaCare exchange failing, panel recommends scrapping. The train wreck continues....

AMEN.

DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE BACKSIDE ON THE WAY OUT: Kanye West Threatens To Leave United States Due To Racism.

THOMAS SOWELL: The 'war on poverty' made the problem worse.

More here and here.

As usual, never mind those pesky facts. If a liberal says it, it must be true.

THOSE EVIL Republicans seek to sabotage ObamaCare with higher premiums.

Right. It's better (for the Left) if those higher premiums come out of your back pocket in the form of higher taxes....

GUESS WHO watches MSNBC?

HINT: It's not the Red states. Which States Have Received the Most Federal Funds Since 2000?

DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: The government closed and no one noticed.

POWERLINE: Why don't we merge these disasters and call it ClimateCare?

[W]e have a health care policy and a climate policy both falling short of 'ambitions'. And for the exact same reason: reality just won’t conform to the will of liberalism. Darn reality anyway.

They're both dying of the same cause: liberal hubris.

INTERESTING: U-2 and Global Hawk duel for share of defense budget.

I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE: An ObamaCare website failure even bigger than Washington’s.

'HELLO, WORLD!' Comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft wakes up.

SOME POLITICIANS just shouldn't be allowed to tweet.

Or maybe all politicians should be required to tweet....

AARP: One More Big Brother? More like Big Sister, but that's a mere detail.

Anything arriving in my mailbox from AARP is automatically round-filed without opening, and I'm getting to the point of wanting to wear latex gloves before I even touch it.

HEH.

DEREK HUNTER: Killing Liberty With Kindness.

HOW COLD is it outside? Even the leaves are crying "Enough!"

SO THE NYC SNOWPLOWS 'took a vacation' from their plowing duties yesterday. Want to guess where de Blasio's plows didn't go?

Will Mayor de Blasio's 'Manhattan-gate' receive the same media attention that Gov. Christie's 'bridge-gate'?

Incompetence is back in style (along with petty, mean, vindictiveness).

MARS MYSTERY ROCK appears from nowhere. Or did a Martian drop a jelly donut?

INSTAPUNDIT has the answer.

OBAMA WOULDN’T LET HIS ADULT SON PLAY PRO FOOTBALL. And if he had an adult son, I'm sure his son wouldn't let Obama play President.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES:

Bonus edition.

CHARLES LINDBERGH: that first trans-Atlantic flight. Win Perkins, a real estate appraiser who specializes in airport properties, has posted on his website a series of four videos he created of Charles Lindbergh's famous and risky takeoff in the "Spirit of St. Louis" on May 20,1927.

According to Perkins, he "painstakingly assembled news footage from five cameras that filmed Lindbergh's takeoff from Roosevelt Field, Long Island and mixed it with enhanced audio from the same newsreel sources." Here are the 4 videos, in order:

Part 1: Dead Men Flying
Part 2: A Sudden Change
Part 3: Well, Then, I Might As Well Go
Part 4: I'm Not Lindbergh!

How times have changed.

MAYOR DE BLASIO TAKES OVER NYC; NYC snowplows take a vacation.

JUST BECAUSE I'M PARANOID doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama's Recessional.

SELF EXPLANATORY: A picture is worth 1000 words.

MILLENNIALS UNHAPPY with Obama's war on the young. The $64 question is whether or not they will learn from the experience.

THOMAS SOWELL: Fact-Free Liberals.

Conservatives: "You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." Liberals: "You're entitled to my opinion, and facts are irrelevant."

TIME MANAGEMENT ADVICE: "[T]here's always room for a couple of beers with a friend."

FINALLY: It's snowing. It's really, really snowing.

SNOW DAY: Jonah Goldberg on D.C.'s aversion to bad weather. Best part:

I don’t run to the supermarket to buy canned goods and bottled water when the weatherman predicts snow. I run to the supermarket because I know everyone else is going to run to the supermarket. If you don’t get to the good stuff early, you’re going to be eating gluten-free egg noodles with unsalted butter for a week.

Read it all (and watch the video).

THE POLAR VORTEX HAS ARRIVED! I just saw a snowflake.

POLAR VORTEX II shuts down DC, hits eastern US. Except that at the time of this post, the temperature has risen three degrees (to 37F) and not a single snowflake has fallen.

FEET. VOTE. Sean Hannity to Leave New York After Andrew Cuomo's Anti-Conservative Rant.

INSTITUTIONALIZED DIM-WITTED LEFTISM: don’t they collectively illustrate the Arab proverb, “The dogs bark, but the caravan passes by?”

I'm too lazy to go search out the link(s), but I've made essentially that same comment: Americans are generally ignoring the Emperor Obama's diktats and going on about their lives.

BRET BAIER: As Obama hammers ‘income inequality,’ gap grows under his presidency.

What the graphic shows, I'm afraid, is not the rich getting richer, but rather the amount of money sitting on the sidelines, chasing stocks instead of being put to productive use. I expect it will continue at least until 2015 (if Republicans take the Senate in the mid-term elections) or 2017 (when Obama is finally turned out of office).

In a bizarre way, I should be pushing for the Democrats to win, since every stupid thing they do moves the stock market ever higher....

MARTIN LUTHER KING was a Tea Partier.

"HIGHER EDUCATION should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power." If that's the case, perhaps we could start with our abysmal secondary schools.

The comments aren't as kind as I.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The thin strand of civilization is fraying.

MAJORITY OF NEW YORK VOTERS say they would re-elect Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The bad news is that I have to drive through New York in order to visit my daughter; the good news is that I don't have to stop.

THIS IS one of those rare cases where I'm all for a lack of White House transparency. The less I see or hear of Michelle Obama, the happier I am....

OF COURSE: Is a lot of scientific research just crap? This is just a single instantiation of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. (Just look at the number of garbage channels on cable television as an obvious example.)

OF COURSE NOT: Should Americans believe anything President Obama says?

GOVERNMENT SLEAZE: It's going to be a long 4 years. The only bright spot is the knowledge that I didn't vote for him.

A PREDICTION that will almost certainly come true.

PROGRESSIVES: Killing Liberty With Kindness.

TWITTER ON FEMINISM: "Scrolling though #WhiteWomanPrivilege, I see a lot of gender studies grad students who'll have trouble paying off their student loans."

THE LATINO POPULATION is projected to surpass that of whites in California in March to become the single largest "race or ethnic group," according to a report on shifting demographics

Linked from here, with the comment: "Some of them may actually be citizens."

HOW BIG is the target shooting industry? This big.

There are 18 gun ranges within 25 miles of my house, and I live near a major metropolitan area that bans guns.

IT'S OSCAR TIME: and the winner is ...

Via Townhall.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane on privacy. What privacy? Less than two weeks ago I had two teeth extracted (paid in part by my dental insurance) and told no one except my wife. Today, every place I go on the internet, I see ads for dental implants.

Question: Who's selling my personal information? My dentist? Or the dental insurance company?

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DELAY: White House reportedly delays ObamaCare equal coverage provision.

At least until they can write rules to distinguish the nomenklatura from the hoi polloi.

YEAH, IT'S A RESULT OF GLOBAL WARMING: Is a mini ice age on the way?

ARIZONA HOMEOWNER, robbed twice in two days, reduces crime rate. Good for him.

DENNIS RODMAN checks into rehab after North Korea trip. He should have been checked in long before now.

SO SHE CAN WORK FOR TIME MAGAZINE? Why I Let My Daughter Get a ‘Useless’ College Degree.

Note that Mom & Dad are footing the bill.

OBAMACARE is in a lot bigger trouble than anyone has let on — or anyone has imagined. You only change horses mid-stream when the horse is dead.

CUOMO: Pro-life people have “no place in the state of New York”. Then the state of New York has no future.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES: Aging Boomers Edition. My favorite:

Scroll down for the better ones.

REPORT: Most ObamaCare enrollees already had health plans. So the net effect of ObamaCare has been to move many Americans from health plans they liked to more expensive health plans they don't like while leaving most uninsured Americans uninsured. Good job, Barry.

LIBERAL MEDIA continues childlike wishful thinking on Obamacare enrollment demographics. Yes, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just over the next hill.

PEW RESEARCH CENTER: Surprising Number Of Americans Don't Believe In Evolution.

So Republicans now believe less in evolution and Democrats now believe more. There is a very simple explanation.

They spend their time observing each other.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. I just received another letter from someplace Big and Important stamped in BIG RED LETTERS 'Personal & Confidential' in a bulk mail stamped envelope. Do these people really believe I'm that stupid?

Round file. Unopened.

A REMINDER:



It's here on YouTube.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL) on how Harry Reid is destroying the Senate.

SURPRISE! 7 of the 10 Worst States to Retire In Have Been Run by Libs for Years. Nevada has been picking up Lockheed Martin retirees from Burbank and Sunnyvale for years....

FROM TWITCHY:

Iowahawk on Covered California's 'twerkathon': "This is your government on LSD."

Andy Lancaster on Obama's Paul Revere reference in his NSA speech: "The excuses are coming! The excuses are coming!"

Iowahawk on Obama's NSA speech: "The NSA is to Paul Revere what the TSA is to lap dance."

OH MY GOD!

I'm becoming a Democrat. I've gotta get to the range more often....

I HATE TO SAY "I told you so" but I really don't: Sluggish Economy Prompts Europe to Reconsider Its Intentions on Climate Change.

A COMMENT I CAN LIVE WITH (scroll up for the photo): "I don't want to see Ms. Dunham at all but Ms. Loren is divine fully clothed." Culture has devolved.

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT may actually be the Unaffordable Care Act.

REGISTER AS A DEMOCRAT. "I'm a negative, hateful person. What should I do about it?"

NEWT GINGRICH: Obama should take care of the Little Sisters of the Poor. He won't, but perhaps the Supreme Court will.

DREAM CHASER flies through another CCiCAP milestone.

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) successfully completed another key milestone for their Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) contract with NASA this week. Known as Milestone 7, the Certification Plan Review for the entire Dream Chaser Space System (DCSS) covered the vehicle’s full design certification and outlined how SNC would operate its first crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

SpaceX, I suspect, is still the leader in NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

SUPREME COURT to decide if bicycle trails trump property rights.

PUNCHING BACK: Please Take Me off Your List of Hate.

What is mildly amusing is this "psychologist's" association of the Tea Party with Nazi Germany (fascist) and Maoist China (communist). So in Dr. Schneider's mind (I use the term 'Dr.' advisedly), the somewhat conservative Tea Party is even further to the Left than he is?

A LETTER FROM KATE. As the Scorekeeper said, "Good."

OBAMACARE IS WORKING! Just not the way we were told.

Most Americans do not understand this, and it’s not necessarily because they’re stupid. It’s because the facts have been purposely suppressed. It’s also because the law is complex and requires study, and many people’s eyes glaze over when discussing the finer points of health insurance and funding. And then of course there are a number of people who couldn’t care less, as long as the subsidies go to them.

Government cheese.

THE WEEK IN DRONES: A military transformer, an app for aerial photos, and more.

NEW FRONTIERS in scandal management. To really disrupt a scandal investigation you need to have a Democrat in charge.

NEXT-GENERATION BORDER CROSSING: First-Ever High Speed Train To Connect U.S. And Mexico By 2018.

The faster to smuggle drugs into the U.S. It could also be used to speed the departure of illegals, but the lousy U.S. economy appears to be doing a better job.

TEARING AWAY Obama's veil of secrecy surrounding the IRS scandal:

Slowly but surely the truth is becoming known about President Obama's blatant use of the Internal Revenue Service to suppress the First Amendment political free speech rights of Tea Party, conservative and evangelical non-profits during the 2010, 2012 -- and now -- the 2014 campaigns.

Read the whole thing, and follow the link to the WSJ article.

WORLD WAR II:

Joe Rosenthal/The Associated Press

WORLD WAR III:

Michael Rameriz/Investors Business Daily

TECHNOLOGY: the seamless wing.



Flexible wings have long been a 'holy grail' of aerodynamics. It looks like we may be getting there.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. It's impossible for liberals to lie. They live in a world where facts are as stated (by them) and not subject to independent verification.

DEMOCRATS: ObamaCare really stinks, doesn't it?

Running away as fast as their little legs will carry them....

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. As a matter of law, isn't my house - by the fact of being lit by ObamaBulbs -- a hazardous waste site subject to EPA regulation? Or is it only after the bulbs burn out?

CAN THE GOP WIN THE SENATE? "Yes, [but] a GOP win has to be beyond the margin of fraud or votes will be found, as with Al Franken." I wonder. With Democrats progressives, is there such a thing as a 'margin of fraud'? Or will they go to the ends of the Earth? I suspect the latter.

FEMINIST ALERT: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail male."

BOB GATES: "[W]hen the government tries to build something really big and really complicated especially in the technical world, it almost always fails."

It's also true when the government tries to build something small and simple; it's just that 'small and simple' doesn't cost the taxpayers as much.

WHAT'S IN Congress' $1.1 trillion spending bill? The better question is "What's not in Congress' $1.1 trillion spending bill?" And the answer to that is 'very little'.

HEH: "The elderly [and hence more likely to have health problems] are packing into the exchange plans as though they've found the last train to Medicare."

US OFFICIALS: China Tested Hypersonic Missile Vehicle.

Movin' on up....

POPULATION DECLINING in states with relatively high dependence on government. Without a host (taxpayers), leeches die off.

REMEMBER, KIDS, you voted to make us rich.

NASA MISSION to Psyche proposed. The asteroid, not the mind.

MORNING EXAMINER: Data show false premises of gun-control advocates.

MEME ALERT: What's good for women is what's good for men. Because, after all, men are just women with penises.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE for the incandescent light bulb. I'm stocking up anyway. Particularly for 3-way bulbs, which are in nearly every room in my house.

CAL THOMAS: British experience with NHS reveals ills of government health care programs like Obamacare. Money quote: "If it's a question of dogma vs. experience, experience should prevail."

Except where the Left is concerned; then the converse is always true.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The rural American way.

OBAMACARE'S SEX PROBLEM: his favorite demographic 'victim' group is signing up in too-great numbers.

ANDREW KLAVAN on gun controllers:

But in fact, neither Dianne Feinstein nor any other leftist really wants to ban guns. Not at all. They merely want to prevent private citizens from owning them. You can bet the official officers of the state will still be allowed to carry them, no matter what happens. Which makes one suspicious given the, you know, facts. If guns protect the little guy from the powers that be, and if leftists are, in effect, the powers that be, it seems likely that all Feinstein and Bloomberg and Schumer and their ilk are really trying to do is make sure that the state and only the state has the power to defend itself.

It's harder to ignore the protestations of the citizenry when the citizenry is armed.

BOTH: Zoning out or cashing in? My sense is that Americans - to the extent possible - are simply ignoring the diktats of the Obama administration and going on with their lives. I'm also seeing some evidence of the Right beginning to take advantage of the Left's favorite weapon: lawfare.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: It's a good thing for the federal deficit that Air Force One isn't leased; even under the most generous lease agreement, surely the Obama administration would be paying a mileage charge by this point in his administration.

GLOBAL WARMING FAIL? 'Big Green' names disappear from 'Big Green' environmental groups.

MORNING EXAMINER: Conservative insurgents strike blow against GOP Establishment. About time.

YOU DON'T SAY: Brookings study points to Harry Reid and Senate Democrats as source of gridlock.

The truth finally got its boots on; now it's time to start kickin' ass.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION knew within minutes that Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

What difference, indeed.

OBAMA SUPPORTER recounts his misadventures dealing with HealthCare.gov. You'd think he'd have learned something, but apparently from the tone of the post, not.

PUNCHING BACK: Universities should drop American Studies Association membership or risk Title VII liability.

Let the lawsuits fly....

TODAY’S #OBAMACAREFAIL, in Spanglish! "The Obama administration has responded that it will 'feex thee wheb sight monyawna or by thee sinko qwatro de mayo wheechever comes firsto'."

BREAKING NEWS: Climate change causes prostitution. [Related: Congress causes idiots.]

BELTWAY LOGIC: it's not wasteful spending if it buys a vote.

BUT CAN IT SPOT FROZEN ENVIRONMENTALISTS? Small Drone Probes Antarctic Ice With Radar.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Give the poor the option to opt out of the welfare system and receive a check. Can't have that; the Left knows that the poor are poor because they can't behave rationally enough to advance their own self-interest and thus need 'edjumacated' progressives to make their bad decisions for them.

A SMALL VICTORY FOR VIRGINIA: Jim Moron Moran announces his retirement from Congress.

IF YOU CAN'T BE POLITICALLY CORRECT, you can't be an academic.

OBAMACARE IS GOING SO WELL we should switch horses in mid-stream.

CAL THOMAS: What will it take for reporters to demand of Obama what they demand of Christie? Answer: forever, without a spine.

THE DEMOCRATS WAR ON INCOME INEQUALITY is actually about taxing the poor to subsidize the rich.

Which may explain why wealthy progressives favor it....

THANKS FOR REMINDING ME of the sleaze Virginia has become.

WORST-OF-THE-WORST in energy efficiency earn LEED's highest --- and meaningless --- rating.

LEEDS certification is not about efficiency; it's about giving the politically correct fancy digs.

WASHINGTON POST: Young adults not signing up for Obamacare. Can I say "I told you so"?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON reminds us that "'equality' is usually about empowering progressive elites rather than materially helping the poor."

AMERICAN THINKER: Sarah Palin's father harassed by IRS six times since 2008. But it was only criminal harassment; not the far more serious crime of 'bullying'.

GO, LUBBOCK: LHS group competing for control of robots on the International Space Station.

MORNING EXAMINER: How many more times must Iran spit in America's eye in order to get our (laughingly called) leadership show some backbone?

HARVARD STUDY: Few asteroids are worth mining. Planetary Resources and other asteroid-mining ventures disagree. I tend to side with them.

'D' IS FOR DECEIT.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON on the progressive's view of Americans:

[Progressives] see the bottom half, and maybe even the bottom 80 percent, of citizens as passive participants in economic life, not people who do things but people to whom things are done, the direct object in Lenin’s summary of politics: “Who? Whom?” And from the point of view of the policymaking class — not just the progressive perches at Princeton but the policymaking class in general — it is easy to see the great majority of the American public as something like dogs exhibiting various degrees of ruliness while waiting for table scraps. People cannot be expected to live. It is up to “the nation” to “offer” them life.

For those of Professor Krugman’s persuasion, that usually means taking wealth from politically disfavored holders of it and transferring it to the politically favored, with the permanent class of professional welfare administrators charging a transaction fee in the process....

It's about control; it's always about control.

TECH FOCUS: A New Way to Prevent Dropped Cellphone Calls. As one who is subject to the constant blather of cell phone users nearly everywhere I go, I'd prefer a 'cognitive radio' system that would drop more calls.....

NOTED FEMINIST attacks feminism: "A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues". Conservative commentator Emmett Tyrrell nominates her as woman of the year.

SPACE-X may pick Texas over controversial Merritt Island launch site. It's jobs vs. environmentalism, and the spaceport economy may lose big if the environmentalists win.

I wrote about the Shiloh Launch Complex earlier here.

JAY CARNEY: Robert Gates was wrong.

I WANT ONE OF THESE:

Zombie killer.

HMM. WILL BOEING MOVE FROM SEATTLE? Boeing machinist campaigns to replace national union leaders.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS gotta stop acting like Caspar Milquetoast. Establishment Republicans may still be 'milquetoasty' but I'm seeing more and more indications that the rank-and-file is getting testy.

HEH: Stick it to the man. I hope some Instapundit readers from Washington D.C. see this post.

Also check the comments. Best: "Cloth bags are for downtrodden losers."

WHAT UNEMPLOYMENT really looks like. I'm in the U4 category (0.5%).

RANDOM ACTS OF ACADEMIC KINDNESS. I was going to title this post 'World's Shortest Blog' but somewhat to my surprise....

NEW YORK POST: worst principal and school in the nation. At least, one can hope.

BUT, BUT ... I HAVE HEALTHCARE. No, you have ObamaCare.

US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE plans to spend millions to defeat Tea Party style candidates in 2014.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it will back “pro-business” candidates against Tea Party-styled opponents in this year’s elections, largely in response to conservative lawmakers fueling last year's partial government shutdown fight.

“In 2014, the chamber will work to protect and expand a pro-business majority in the House and advance our position and our influence in the Senate,” Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue said Wednesday. “We will support candidates who want to work within the legislative process.”

Donohue, in his annual State of American Business speech, didn’t single out the Tea Party specifically but said afterward the chamber’s frustrations are with the movement’s extreme faction and politicians who have linked themselves to the Tea Party.

Backing candidates who support crony capitalism is not exactly the best way to win friends and influence conservatives. The Chamber of Commerce might want to reconsider those words lest they be forced to eat them.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Boycott the boycotters, with contempt.

The Left is a target-rich environment for mockery.

ONCE AGAIN, Democrats vote to cut veterans’ benefits in order to enable fraud by illegal aliens.

Veterans are not reliable plantation workers....

A VIDEO WORTH WATCHING: Texas State Representative Scott Turner on the entitlement mentality. It's long, but worthy.

UPDATE: Turner announces candidacy for Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

GOP SEES POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY rather than risk in opposing jobless benefits:

Congressional Republicans feel little political pressure to extend unemployment benefits ... confident that President Obama’s push for that additional aid would undercut his message that the economy is recovering and that his fiscal policies are working.

[T]he president's insistence on the dire need for additional jobless aid sends the message to voters that five years of his Democratic stewardship has failed to revive the economy.

Here's the proper argument to make in lieu of increasing jobless benefits or the minimum wage.

ONE WAY to crush ObamaCare. Emotionally satisfying, if nothing else.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON has thoughts on college reform.

He's right. With very few exceptions, today's university degree is basically worthless. Trade schools and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the wave of the future.

F--K THE MAGIC DRAGON: read this post for an explanation.

COULDN'T BE SAID BETTER: "They’re [journalists] not the Fourth Estate. They’re the Praetorian Guard."

MARK STEYN on the 'vigilance' vigilantes. Gist: I'm offended, therefore it must be your fault.

The vigilance vigilantes even have a name for it: microaggression. I have a name for them: hypersensitive assholes. And Day by Day has a solution.

OBAMACARE: "Sold on a lie, cloaked in deception and passed on a trick just this side of legal, this act is not merely an outlier but also an outlaw in the legislative history of our republic. It deserves no respect, gets none from the public and therefore can't last very long."

SINCE A DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT can ignore the law as written, why can't a Republican president do the same?

THANKS TO THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, I'm a traffic survivor. (With the assistance of the Obama administration.)

TRAINWRECK UPDATE: “I think the wheels came off very early on.” I'm pretty sure there were never any wheels; it was built in place as a train wreck.

US NEWS: Catholics have taken over the Supreme Court, or something.

THE ANCHORESS issues a scathing response.

US NEWS plays the 'diversity card'; it is roundly rejected.

OBAMACARE CHAOS: Accidental? Or intentional?

Those who have resisted the idea that the HealthCare.gov web site and Obamacare in general may have been intentionally designed to create confusion and chaos as a means for imposing a single-payer healthcare system on a currently unwilling populace are going to have a tough time explaining away yet another recently discovered “quirk.”

The latest “nobody’s this stupid and incompetent” revelation is that Obamacare’s enrollment system “lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.”

There are generally two schools of thought here: the 'never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity' school and the 'once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action' school.

Since the depth of human stupidity has never been adequately plumbed, I generally lean toward the first. But ObamaCare is sorely testing that inclination.

PROMISE ZONE? Or 'broken promise' zone? If I was a resident of one of the designated cities, I'd be really, really worried....

FOR REAL SCANDALS, check out the Obama administration.

INSTAPUNDIT: "One is far less likely to find a spirit of generosity among the advocates of governmentally-required 'compassion'.”

MICHELLE MALKIN: A Washington Republican incumbency protection racket.

THE NEW YORK TIMES kills brain cells (especially of their employees).

GLOBAL WARMING, ER, CLIMATE CHANGE, ER... What catastrophe?

WITH ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT DECLINING, historians look to government for jobs. More secure, less demanding (if that's possible). That's pretty much the gist of the post, except for this little beauty:

Government job applicants with Ph.D.s need to stress their strength in communications, ability to synthesize vast amounts of information into “useable” knowledge, and decision-making skills....

Back in the dark ages when I went to college, those words were the coin of the realm as the reason for getting a classical/liberal as opposed to a business/skill-oriented education. Then along came race/class/gender/victim studies with their 'critical thinking' skills, to turn the whole liberal arts edifice into a smoking ruins.

Read anything by Victor Davis Hanson for more about a classic liberal education.

PROBLEMS SOLVED: Let's have open carry on campus. It might have a beneficial effect on campus 'free speech' policies as well.

WALTER E. WILLIAMS: Politics and the minimum wage. The gist: raise the minimum wage to keep the unemployed and unskilled unemployed, unskilled, and on the Democrat plantation.

TOP SAUDI LETS THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG: Fracking is bad for terrorism.

TRITON: A bigger, badder Global Hawk.

THOMAS SOWELL: The 'trickle-down' lie.

It should win the contest [for the biggest lie in politics] both because of its purity — no contaminating speck of truth — and because of how many people have repeated it over the years, without any evidence being asked for or given.

Water will stick to a duck's back before an obvious truth can penetrate the liberal skull.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES: Vortex edition. My favorite:

Al Gore's 'selfie' is a close second.

EVEN LIBERAL STUPIDITY HAS LIMITS: At Democrats' request, even Mike Bloomberg is giving up on gun control.

I'm surprised. Having hit rock bottom, I guess they've finally run out of dynamite.