DAMS HELP MORE: NASA helping California deal with drought.

'LIBERTARIAN PARANOIA': Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

FOURTEEN YEARS worth of reasons why the GOP grassroots scoff at Washington Republicans.

Republicans who lack the will or principles to fight on major issues will still use Obama’s obstructionism as the baseline for excuses not to advocate bold initiatives. Whether it’s a debt ceiling or a budget bill, they will fear brinkmanship with Obama as much as they do now.

The Red State post is here.

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE, Obama declares Happy Hour. It makes you wonder what he would have done on 9/11/2001.

THE FIRST HUMAN to die on another planet may be alive today.

LAND OF INEQUALITY: California's flight of the middle class.

An analysis conducted last year by the Hoover Institution’s Carson Bruno revealed that the group making up the largest share of the California diaspora is the middle class. These are not titans of industry looking to maximize profits in Texas or Florida; these are everyday citizens who’ve found themselves priced out of what was once called the California dream.

Read it all.

THE OUTER LIMITS: Shut up, they explained.

But it's no longer "shut up, they explained". It's now "Shut up, we explain."

FAA RISKS losing drone war.

“Most people want to comply with the FAA rules,” said Ted Ellett, a former FAA general counsel who is now a partner specializing in aviation at the law firm Hogan Lovells. “But the more the FAA acts like a big daddy, behemoth government agency that is imposing excessive restrictions, the more the feeling of ‘I’m an American, they can’t tell me what to do’ kicks in. And that’s a real danger for the FAA.”

This applies, I think, to much of Obama's liberal agenda, especially ObamaCare. I expect such massive passive civil disobedience that the ruling class will have to surrender.

Americans won't -- can't -- be controlled.

VIA INSTAPUNDIT: The Honest University Commercial. Funny, but it does remind that honesty appears to be making somewhat of a comeback. Recently I received a mailing from one of those 'we buy your house for cash' outfits that was surprisingly honest. They wrote - upfront, not in the fine print - that they would not pay you market value for your home; discount would be their return for the risk of repairs and reselling it at market prices.

TWEET OF THE DAY: "You call what I just did walking into a wall. I call it looking for walls I can pass through and marking that one off the list." From @goldengateblond via the Instapundit twitter feed.

IT'S TIME to move on from blaming the Bush administration.

FRANCE. I RECOMMEND FRANCE: Angry homophobe Alec Baldwin vows to leave New York.

DEMOCRATS introduce bill to ‘protect children’ from electronic cigarettes.

Well, they promote abortion to protect them from birth....

BREAKING NEWS! Wet streets cause rain! And climate change causes weather (or is it weather causes climate change; I can never remember).

Almost every time I read -- or see on television -- a story of which I am professionally knowledgeable, it is wrong in some important detail.

DRIVING FREEDOM: Automobile 'black boxes' still lack consumer protection. Not particularly well-written, unfortunately, but from someone acknowledged to be knowledgeable about vehicular data recorders.

One thing stands out, both with this post and this earlier Gingrich post on healthcare: who owns the data? I stand with Gingrich: we need to adopt the principle that you own your data, to be shared at your discretion or formal court order.

INTERESTING: CRS-3 Falcon 9 first stage to sport legs and attempt a soft splashdown.

Way back in the 1950's I was a big fan of the Tom Corbett Space Cadet science fiction juveniles, where 'spaceships' routinely took off and landed vertically, much in the way a car parks in a parking lot today. From a purely rocket perspective, it's looking like we're approaching the 50's.

DOESN'T THIS remind you of ObamaCare?

YES, BUT DOES IT HAVE GOVERNMENT-APPROVED BACKUP LIGHTS? Curiosity rover now able to drive backward.

I USED to take employee performance evaluations seriously until I discovered Wally is right.

NEWT GINGRICH: Corruption at the Veteran's Administration. We should expect no less from ObamaCare.

5G SERVICE on your 4G phone?

WIN-WIN: "[T]hose who seek less crony capitalism, corporate welfare and government regulation should make lowering corporate taxes a top priority."

Lower corporate tax rates can also weaken the connection between Big Business and Washington. When everyone — not just the companies that can afford the legal and accounting fees to navigate the current system — is paying a lower rate, competition would move to the marketplace instead of Capitol Hill.

In other words, read Jared Meyer's op-ed.

ANOTHER REASON TO RETURN TO 'DUMB' PHONES: Philips Creates Shopping Assistant with LEDs and Smart Phone.

CAN'T HAVE SCHOOL CHOICE; parents might choose wisely.

READY THE EJECTION SEAT; a crash landing is inevitable.

DANGER ROOM: New jet-powered drone can kill 1,800 miles from home base.

The face of future wars.

CVS CAREMARK PHARMACIES to stop selling cigarettes. I've been a regular CVS customer for nearly 15 years now, and I no longer smoke, but I'm seriously considering moving my business somewhere else because in my estimation this is little more than pandering to nanny-state political correctness.

Which I can do without.

HEH: Surge in concealed weapon permits follows California court Second Amendment decision. And of course California's murder rate will surge tomorrow....

DIVERGING PRIORITIES.

I think the post title is actually misleading; it's not Congress and America whose priorities are diverging; it's the media (and by implication, liberalism) and America whose priorities are diverging.

One only has to note that education and the economy are outside the (20% - 80%) box, indicating a high degree of public interest (and dissatisfaction). Neither gets a significant amount of journalistic attention. Gay relations, race relations, and abortion, all in the every-night-on-the-news media spotlight, are on the publics' meh list.

ONLY HALF? California couple in $10M gold find may owe the government about half. The government is being unusually generous....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TEA PARTY! Five years old today.

I don't generally donate to organizations, even Tea Party organizations, preferring to donate to candidates of my choice instead, but today I did, mostly to prove to Tea Party haters that we're not going away.

OBAMACARE: Expect 11 million small business employees to see primiums to rise in 2015 (if they haven't been 'downsized' to get under the small business 50 employee limit).

But don't expect them to notice until after the 2014 election.

NEWT GINGRICH: Two charts on minimum wage.

Of the 9 countries with miminum wage laws, the average minimum wage is $9.43, and unemployment rate is 13.8%). Of the 9 countries in Europe with no minimum wage, the average unemployment rate is 6.3% (throw out Italy, the outlier, and the average unemployment rate drops to 5.6%).

Case closed.

THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE shot an arrow into the air, and where it fell was into the heart of ObamaNomics. (It wasn't a cheap shot. Really.)

GRIEVING FOR A CHILD who doesn't exist.

THE GUINEA PIG STATE: Oregon’s quarter-century of failed liberal health care experiments. I'm thinking that 'hamster' is a better analogy, since hamsters seem to like those little wire treadmill cages where they can go like hell and never get anywhere.

HEH: Like a good neighbor, Project Veritas is there.

SMART MORTAR ROUNDS make good spies. Reminds me of an item from Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers: "I'm a 30-second bomb! I'm a 30-second bomb! 29...28...."

WHY DO LIBERAL CITIES have so much income inequality? Perhaps because 'vibrant' cities need a large servant class?

VIRGINIA SEN. MARK WARNER ties himself in knots over minimum wage. But Ed Gillespie isn't the Republican to beat him; Shak Hill is.

ARIZONA GOVERNOR vetoes controversial bill allowing religious beliefs as defense for denying service.

Wrongly decided. What about the 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' bans we all see in beach communities? And can bars now legitimately refuse to serve drunks? Will naked dining return to San Francisco?

JUST NOT MY VISION: A Vision of a Smart, Happy, City.

WHITHER THE RECOVERY? Higher grocery bills are the new normal. I don't normally worry about my grocery bill, but I have noticed that my expenses are higher than I budgeted for this year.

COVERED CALIFORNIA: ObamaCare enrollee can’t get doctor to see her.

Free lunches require Someone to foot the bill; in these cases, Dr. Someone was out.

MCDONALDS 'SECRET SAUCE' is more transparent that the EPA's secret science.

A VIRTUAL STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH:



Bill Whittle on gun control. As usual from Whittle, a brilliant video.

HEINLEIN: an armed society is a polite society. And a safer society.

SCIENCE SANITY prevails (once outside the Obama administration).

MUSINGS: Why isn't Obama resigning in disgrace and other quick takes on the political scene.

ANGRY AT TED CRUZ? Republicans should remember what who he represents. For good or ill, the debt ceiling debate is done, but I would suggest that the Republican 'establishment' consider this quotation:

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

And this one:

This nation was built by men who took risks - pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.

There is an election in 2014, and conservatives are not happy with the Republican aristocracy.

FEDS TO ALASKANS: Wildlife is more important than human life.

The new normal.

OBAMACARE: Growing up means grossly overpaying for health insurance.

Good luck with selling millenials with the “Democrats don’t stink as much as Republicans” message after watching the sheer incompetence of HHS and the White House over these last several months of the rollout.

IRS SCANDAL is merely the tip of a titanic iceberg of rogue agency problems.

WASHINGTON POST columnist Eugene Robinson continues to practice incoherence with this column on the minimum wage. Where to begin?

It's better to zero the wages of 500,000 workers in order to give small raises to 25 million others.

Extending unemployment benefits will create 200,000 jobs.

Sequestration was a Republican ploy to destroy 900,000 jobs.

And

The $800,000,000,000 stimulus created (or saved) 1,600,000 jobs (at $500,000 each; do the math).

Other than that, his column was spot on.

OBAMA DELIVERS the foreign policy he thinks America deserves. Never mind the little people who will suffer because of it.

GREENPEACE CO-FOUNDER: No scientific proof humans are dominant cause of warming climate.

Oops.

MICHAEL GERSON: A golden age of physics. A nice science interlude to politics, with this exceptional misunderstanding:

At every level, from top to bottom, we gain knowledge of the world only by cutting our ties to common sense and intuition. The largest things are hidden from our view. The smallest things defy any coherent mental picture. There is, in fact, a strangeness at the heart of all things.

It is precisely this 'common sense and intuition' that enabled our golden age of physics.

RICHARD COHEN: "an [Obama] administration that values the sound of policy over its implementation." A nice use of language in an otherwise unremarkable column.

MCAULIFFE'S COMMERCE SECRETARY is under federal investigation. Usually it takes a year or so before a new administration is alleged to be corrupt. The McAuliffe administration must have been preapproved.

EVEN DEMOCRATS balk at Obama's minimum wage hike. Perhaps they're finally coming to the realization that Obama's redistributionism is all about ensuring that all Americans (well, all excluding the ruling class) have an equal share of nothing.

PIERS MORGAN STAFFERS happy for cancellation? It's a question, not a statement, but I'm inclined to believe it. Morgan was such a jerk on-screen that it easy to believe his off-screen persona is at least as bad.

NOW THEY TELL US: Most ObamaCare state exchange sites were deemed 'high-risk' before launch.

There's no clown shortage; it's just that Government pays better.

OBAMACARE. Now you can follow your dreams.

CBO REPORT: Increased domestic spending may be behind military cuts. More pay for bureaucrats; less for warriors. Is that any surprise?

RELATED: Cut warriors, not bureaucrats (among other topics).

NEW YORK TIMES: The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00. That was then (1987); this ($10.10) is now.

Linked from PowerLine.

IRS SCANDAL is merely the tip of a titanic iceberg of rogue agency problems.

WHERE DOES THE DEMOCRAT PARTY find these loons?

TURN TEXAS BLUE — Because Texans deserve serious, non-insane leadership.

If only there were any serious, non-insane Democrats left in Texas....

HOW GUN CONTROL helped a stalker kill my husband.

RANDOM THOUGHT about cigarette warning labels: they're far less disturbing than the warnings on all the prescription drugs advertised on television each evening.

ONE WAY? Jimmy Carter plans trip to Venezuela.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? HHS official found White House in 'disarray' months before health law rollout.

THE STIMULUS AT FIVE: Put another billion on the birthday cake.

SITUATIONAL ETHICS: But he was against it beore he was for it. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe joins other coastal governors pushing for offshore drilling exploration.

PUNCHING BACK: CALIFORNIA COLLEGE STUDENT teaches school $50,000 lesson on Constitution. The school should also have been forced to pay his legal bills as well.

MIKE ROWE punches back: "I’m sure Matt’s a swell guy, but unfortunately, he’s so eager to report on a story that doesn’t exist he’s resorted to a career in fiction."

For an honest take on the Walmart 'controversy', read this.

HEALTH NANNIES HARD AT WORK: Soda could soon have a warning label like cigarettes do.

In California, of course.

NON SEQUITUR explains Congress.

WELL, THEY DID VOTE FOR HER HUSBAND: Michelle Obama calls young people ‘knuckleheads’.

MORE OF the Left's 'settled science'. Ignoring 6 out of 7 ain't bad.

AOL: Can your cat's behavior predict the weather? When the weather is foul, all three of my cats check each of the four doors in the house to see which door leads to summer.

Best comment: "I love my cats but when they lick their butts, I have to wonder what they could possibly have gotten on their tongue to make butt licking a viable alternative."

THE WASHINGTON POST is pretty worried about the people Obamacare hurts. Because victimhood is a strategy only allowable to the Left and the Right isn't playing fair.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS: Carbon Bigfoots? Not really. They're just incapable of putting two coherent thoughts together to understand the consequences of their policies.

OLYMPIAN DAVID WISE leads an 'alternative' life style. He's married, with a young child.

What sets David Wise apart from his competitors – what makes for an “alternative lifestyle” – is being a husband and father at the age of 23 and wanting to be a pastor one day, according to NBC’s Olympic coverage.

Putting it more consisely, he's an adult. Which is more than you can say for the juveniles at NBC.

“WORKING 9 1 TO 5″: (The ObamaCare Remix).

And here's a short list of only 400 employers nationwide who have either cut hours or laid off employees as a result of ObamaCare.

GOT A STATE MEDICAL MARIJUANA CARD? You’ve just given the government an excuse to come for your guns.

Heh.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Cancer patient defends ObamaCare criticism after Democrat Congressman threatens TV stations airing ad.

Good for her.

FEDERAL COURT rejects Green Party attack on voter ID: "The elusive snow leopard is easier to find than someone who can't get a photo ID."

But, hey, I'm pretty sure the Abominable Snowman doesn't have a photo ID. And closer to home, his cousin Bigfoot probably doesn't either.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Climate change advocates try to silence Charles Krauthammer.

Those, like Secretary of State John Kerry, who liken climate skeptics to flat earthers should be reminded that it wasn't that long ago that a flat earth was the conventional wisdom.

GOODBYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE. Alec Baldwin self-destructs and Piers Morgan gets a good look at the handwriting on the wall.

HE'S BACK: it was a beautiful weekend; mild, sunny, and temperatures in the low 60's. I missed it all, being confined to bed with flu-like symptoms. Today it's colder, darker, with possible snow in the forecast, but on the bright side, I've regained a mild interest in staying alive....

Blogging will pick up soon.

KIRSTEN POWERS discovers Krauthammer's Law.

PROJECT VERITAS catches Battleground Texas doing 'bad things' -- again.

UPDATE: Texas Lt. Gov. Dewhurst takes notice.

MINIMUM WAGE: A tale of two companies. Most telling is the plight of the third 'company', higher education:

Eastern Illinois University predicts an increase will cost about $940,000. And, because the university has committed to no tuition increase next year, a minimum wage hike likely would trigger a reduction in the number of student workers, said Derek Markley, chief of staff to President Bill Perry.

Remind you of ObamaCare enrollees' "I've got health insurance, but no doctor" lament?

BUT, THEN, SO IS HE: Piers Morgan's ratings are terrible. A match made in He..., well, somewhere.

MARK STEYN strikes back against the Empire. Poor Empire....

I'M BARACK OBAMA, and have I got a deal for you....

Not quite up to the level of the 'you may be entitled to financial compensation' ambulance chaser ads I endure on TV every night. (And now that I wrote that, I'm going to be having 'you may be entitled to financial subsidies' nightmares every night.)

OBAMACARE: Con artists and criminals in charge. So what's new?

With billions up for grabs and no oversight, crooks are going to be falling all over themselves trying to grab a piece of the action. That's what happens when Big Government tries to do 'big things'.

GUN VIOLENCE: Detroit mother shoots back. But, but, ... victims aren't supposed to have assault weapons guns.

CHARLIE CRIST: Obama hug ended my Republican political career. No, being a closet Democrat ended your Republican career.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Outdated Business Model of Diversity, Inc. Right; in order to have a 'diverse' society, we must all share the same views.

THE BOONDOGGLE GROWS: Tax preparers getting tax dollars to sign you up for ObamaCare.

DEMOCRATS TO OBAMA: Please, please, reinstitute Medicare Advantage; it's our only hope.

THOMAS SOWELL: The Republican Party needs to master the message.

Granted, Republicans are smarter than Democrats, but that doesn't obviate the need to get out front and explain their message in terms even Democrats can understand.

IT'S NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS. Now go away.

Lots of bad things happen when a constitutionally-limited national government is transformed into a Nanny State Leviathan.

But one of the worst is when federal bureaucrats — apparently convinced that the rest of us are too stupid to figure it out for ourselves — decide to conduct a "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs."

The FCC bureaucrats can't bear to know that somebody, somewhere in this country can cover the news without being told how by the nannies in Washington.

My guess is that the liberal mainstream media will welcome the FCC with open arms, calculating that since they're already nosy nanny-staters, they will be unaffected by FCC demands.

A SAD DAY: Washington Examiner columnist Gregory Kane dies at 62. You can read his last two columns here and here. He had excellent taste in movies.

NEWT GINGRICH: Kerry should resign. I used to think John Kerry was just plain stupid. Now, more than ever, I'm inclined to agree with Gingrich: he's delusional. Or perhaps stupid and delusional.

FIVE YEARS LATER: Where did all that stimulus money go? Up in smoke, mostly.

WILL SMART GUNS transform the gun industry? In a word, no. Smart guns are only of interest to those who are afraid of guns. Guns are tools, like knives and hammers, and should only be used by those knowledgeable enough to use them properly.

A 'smart' gun in the hands of a fool is far more dangerous than a 'dumb' gun in the hands of a sound and sensible user.

WISCONSIN SEIU: Nice job you got there, be a shame if you lost it. Still thugs.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: VW Workers Escape from Detroit.

WEEKLY STANDARD: The mission of today’s Republican party is to defend and restore the rule of law.

BYRON YORK: Why Hillary Clinton's past is fair game in the 2016 presidential race. Only if character is an important trait in a President.

RELATED THOUGHT: Is liberalism a symptom of narcisstic personality disorder? Or conversely?

WHITE HOUSE: stimulus failure a roaring success. Just ask any of those of us who still don't have jobs (or are likely to get one).

AVIATION WEEK: Lockheed Martin Refines Hybrid Wing-Body Airlifter Concept.

SIX REASONS your tax return might will get audited:

1) You're a Tea Party member
2) You donated to a conservative social welfare organization (Tea Party)
3) You donated to a conservative political campaign organization (Tea Party)
4) You're a (Tea Party) conservative
4) You're a (Tea Party) Republican
6) You made too much money

More seriously, six real reasons.

CNN BREAKING NEWS: Asteroid missed Earth by an (astronomical) hair. Nice to know we're still alive.

IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA to be a Good Samaritan. I suspect there's much more to this (evidence the general whininess), but still....

SUBPAR: Anti-Obama street art covers Santa Monica.

AL GORE: If we keep Earth too cold for human life, the aliens won't invade us....

RELATED, but humorously.

BARACK OBAMA: I'm the law. Obama is living proof that arrogance, narcissism, and hypocrisy should be impeachable offenses.

FIVE YEARS AGO -- today.

DON SURBER'S scoreboard:

Number 10 on the list.

LITTLE MARTIANS -- or perhaps little Lunar critters. The little solar-powered yard lights alongside the patio walkway have finally melted their way out of the snow (they were completely covered in the initial snowfall).

The camera flash unfortunately doesn't do them justice. Both are actually lit, and in the dark look like stubby candles floating in a pool of wax. Before the snow, both were the same height above the ground, but the soil is so wet that the one on the left has actually sunk down about an inch.

GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE: Governments must shift to cold preparation.

Heh. I remember, back in the early 70's, some 'experts' claiming that the Little Ice Age (1350-1850) was actually ameliorated by then anthropogenic global warming (e.g., wood stoves).

WHAT IRS SCANDAL? It's only a scandal when the IRS harasses politically favored groups.

WHAT IS CARBON DIOXIDE? The post is somewhat superficial, written at about the level of an average 6th-grader, but even that may be too erudite for the average leftist.

SIGNS OF LIFE: China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover may have survived the long lunar night.

UAVS FLY despite the FAA’s prohibition. This is the destiny of ObamaCare and the rest of Obama's 'mandate' society. Americans are an ornery lot, and when most of us just plain ignore the mandates of our so-called 'ruling class', enforcement is impossible.

KATIE PAVLICH: The Painful Irony of Michelle Obama's $12,000 Dress.

Is Michelle Obama trying to compete with Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton? If so, she failed; the Duchess has class -- and a $395 dress.

OBAMACARE? I prefer cash.

RELATED: A mandate for doctors to participate in ObamaCare in the offing?

It's interesting to note that the only ones in the medical community comfortable with ObamaCare are the bureaucrats.

FLORIDA LAWMAKERS take aim at backyard gun ranges. In Virginia, I could almost have a backyard (handgun) range, but I may be just a bit too close to one of my neighbors.

Plenty of room in the basement, though. It would probably be ear-shattering for anyone in the house, but perfectly legal.

HEH: Barack Obama celebrates Presidents' Day:

THE 'WRECKOVERY': five years later.

Are you wrecked yet?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The 'Let's Save California Now!' acts. Rainbows and unicorns will be forever grateful.

HOW CAN THERE BE A CLOWN SHORTAGE with so many Democrats to choose from?

THE U.S. MIDDLE CLASS is being turned proletarian. Of course. The upper and lower classes can be controlled bought; one with subsidies; the other with favors.

Only an independent middle class cannot.

JOHN KERRY: a “weapon of mass destruction”. The rest of the PowerLine team piles on.

Kerry and the Obama administration remind me of an old joke from my days as a military contractor. A Prussian leader (Bismarck?) once divided military personnel into four categories: brilliant & industrious; brilliant & lazy; stupid & industrious; and stupid & lazy. The brilliant & industrious were to become his field generals; the brilliant & lazy, their staff. The stupid & lazy were kept as cannon fodder; the stupid & industrious kicked out.

Now we know from where the Obama administration came....

AIR FORCE can’t explain questionable details of Obama’s Tennessee visit.

But the White House can. Ask yourself who contributed more to the Obama campaign.

IT'S PRESIDENTS DAY: Honor them.

By executive order.

FAITH IN SCIENCE? Skip the trust part; if it can't be verified, it ain't science.

Science is a tool, not an authority.

TO LIBERALS, arithmetic is magical thinking. One plus one is anything you want it to be....

As I noted in at least one earlier post, for a liberal to propose something is for it to be so -- none of those intermediate messy steps need be taken.

More Sidney Harris cartoons can be found here.

PELOSI: We're going to save the 'little people' from their follies even if we have to kill them to do it.

GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF TEA PARTY RACISM: Um, .... let me get back to you on that.

THANKS TO GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES, expensive, inefficient solar power plant fries birds in Nevada.

More on the bird fryer here.

HE'S GETTING WORRIED: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) pulls stupid tweet attacking Republicans.

SCARY CHART?

Not to me; in fact, it's moving pretty well as I predicted well over a year ago. If, as I hope, the Republicans take over both Houses of Congress in 2014, I expect a significant, but not catastrophic, loss of market value as investors start withdrawing funds from 'storage' to reinvest in productive economic activity. If the Democrats win, then I expect to see the market continue to rise as investors continue to seek safe haven.

MILTON WOLF: Sen. Pat Roberts is a 'former' Kansas resident.

Seems to me that's a charge you could make against almost all the D.C. political aristocracy.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. The sole purpose of income/wealth redistribution is to make everyone equally poor; or as I put it in other posts, to guarantee everyone an equal share of nothing.

HEH: Tennessee workers reject unionization bid by United Auto Workers. Ths despite the fact that VW was favorably inclined.

HE SHOULD CHANGE HIS NAME TO DAVID GREGORY: DC Man Faces Trial for Having a Shotgun Shell that Doesn’t Work.

A CLASS-ACTION SUIT I'M (FINALLY) PLEASED TO BE A PART OF: Rand Paul Suing President Obama.

This class action suit isn’t about Republican versus Democrat, or progressive versus conservative. This is about defending the basic civil liberties of every American from a government that has crossed the line.

It's about time.

POLL: Majority believe purpose of ObamaCare is for government to 'control our lives'. They're right.

JEEZ: New Jersey considers bill to rename Sea of Japan. Next:

Let’s put the Russians on notice. They’ve been getting away with having “the Black Sea” for far too long now. It’s clearly racist. New Jersey should rename it the Sea of Equal Opportunity at their next legislative meeting.

And rename New Jersey 'New Stupidity' while they're at it....

GET READY for an explosion of eco-terrorism if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved.

Mass hysteria is always their starting gambit. If that doesn't work, then there's lawfare, and if that fails, warfare.

OBAMACARE CHANGES in one infographic.

Linked from here.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, pop culture edition. My favorite:

Watch your step for my second choice ....

FACEBOOK: two sexes, 50 genders. One stupid.

A GOVERNMENT OF IDIOTS, BY IDIOTS, FOR IDIOTS: Happy Valentine's Day.

THOMAS SOWELL: Mascots of the Self-Congratulatory Elites. You could will be next.

OBAMA: California Central Valley drought due to climate change. No, it's not. It's been brought on by environmentalists using lawfare to take California back to its original 'natural' state.

ONE IN FOUR Americans 'do not know the Earth circles the Sun'. But they do know global warming is real.

CAT LOVERS outraged by the use of kittens to sell ObamaCare:

[K]ittens make poor sales critters for Obamacare. Everyone knows that cats are way too independent to obey the individual mandate, plus, they’re far too smart to believe the president after he told us ‘If you like your vet, you can keep your vet. Period.’

Cats are smart. Liberals aren't.

SAVE GLOBAL WARMING ('HE' stands for 'high emission'):

Linked from here.

POSTMORTEM: Is he writing about Argentina? or the U.S.?

NEWT GINGRICH: The Senate Must Stop Obama’s Diplomatic Corruption.

NEWT GINGRICH: Obama Abandoning the Rule of Law. Abandoning? Abandoning? Hell, he was never on that ship to begin with.

WHY DEMOCRATS hate work. I think there's a simpler reason: people who work are less dependent on government and thus harder to control.

SURELY THERE ARE more efficient ways to kill birds.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: An Orwellian Nation of Obamathink.

OH, THE HORROR: feeding starving children in a church (with a steeple) violates the separation of church and state.

It's time to tell the American 'Humanist' Association to put on their big-boy pants and get a life.

OBAMACARE is no longer limiting itself to one failure per day.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS is a Bugatti.

MEDICAL CENTER won't let patients watch Fox News. Remove the facility's federal funding and see how fast it changes its mind.

RANDOM THOUGHT from the retirement lane. Progressives and liberals seem to believe "common sense" is a extreme right-wing propaganda tool.

COMMON SENSE: 'Disparate impact' doctrine often hurts those it's intended to help.

BLOG LEFT: Wendy Davis Makes a Clarification on 20-Week Abortion Ban. Read this post, then ask yourself "Do I have the faintest idea of what she thought she said?"

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, FOLKS. Let's move along now.

In the end, protests won't solve what ails environmentalism. All over the world, the environmental agenda is in retreat.

Carbon caps have had little impact on emissions. The Kyoto framework has long since been abandoned. Renewables mandates have proved costly as innovation policy and ineffectual as climate policy.

In this sense, the turn toward Keystone and now divestment mark not the beginnings of a new climate movement but the death rattle of the old one.

Maybe there's hope for a restoration of common sense and realism in the environmental movement after all.

Nah.

COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Now that our President is actively encouraging the John Galt-ing of our nation, only the richer Americans will leave.

Shorter version of the Obama/Dem talking points: After 5 years, we don't have a clue how to create real jobs so we're going to pretend we never wanted them and neither should you.

Scroll up to read the rest of the post.

SORT OF AN ACOUSTIC BLENDER: Nanomotors Could Churn Inside of Cancer Cells to Mush. My question is will it kill 'em or spread 'em?

MISGUIDED WAR ON HILLARY? Instapundit argues that Ron Paul's attack on the Democrats' "war on women" meme will make it painful for them to bring it up: "Even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain."

Unfortunately Democrats are not as smart as flatworms.

CURIOSITY ROVER conquers Martian sand dune.

LEADERSHIP: Obama seems to be taking Dilbert seriously.

THOUGHTS from the Scorekeeper. My responses/additions:

2. Enough to cover the entire South to a depth of one inch.

5. Change 'Poca' to 'real America'.

7. Note that the real economy still beat the government economy.

11. Pink flip-flops.

15. Alley cats should be insulted.

CLARENCE THOMAS: Society is overly sensitive about race. Liberals are not amused.

SNOWPOCALYPSE: Manassas edition. Some photos from around the house.

Love that global warming....

GO BACK TO WORK? What do the jobless do when the benefits end?

Democrats want to give the unemployed more benefits; Republicans want to get them jobs.

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: revised edition.

400-POUND DEMOCRAT: Republicans ‘Just Want People to Starve’. And Democrats just want to make them fat.

What's mildly amusing is Jerrold Nadler's utter lack of self-awareness.

Linked from Instapundit, where the comments aren't pretty.

OBAMACARE is what Obama wants it to be. "The actual text of the legislation ... is secondary to what best serves his political purpose at the time. While Republicans are attacked for wanting to sabotage Obamacare whenever they propose reasonable changes through the constitutional legislative process, it has been deemed perfectly acceptable for Obama to unilaterally make sweeping alterations."

NO RUNWAY, NO PROBLEM: Use the freeway.

CRAZY IDEA: "What if Obama nominated qualified people as Ambassadors to countries they knew about?" That would be sooo ... Republican.

HUH? A good guy with a gun could end up in jail for four years because he lobbied for a law that assumed there was no such thing as a good guy with a gun.

Proof that the law is often an ass.

OBAMA’S BUNDLER NOMINEE for ambassador to Argentina anxious to get to work just as soon as somebody tells him where it is.

AND NOW, back to regularly scheduled programming....

SNOWPOCALYPSE NOW: The winter storm has finally reached the Washington D.C. metro area. It's been snowing for about an hour, steadily increasing, and is finally beginning to stick. Pictures tomorrow.

RANDOM THOUGHT from the retirement lane: It's nearing Valentine's Day, and the PajamaGram hoodie-footie is all over the ad airways again. Question: Why aren't they marketing to Pajama Boy? He'd look much better in a hoodie-footie than in that silly plaid onesie.

OBAMA ON HEALTHCARE MANDATES: ‘Our Goal Here Is Not to Punish Folks.’ Well, you've done an outstanding job of failing to achieve your goal.

THE JOY of 'job-lock' liberation. Full speed ahead....

THE LATEST OBAMACARE DELAY: "Employers with 110 employees have [a year] to figure out a way to offer 'freedom, Chuck Schumer-style' to 11 workers to avoid the 'penalty' which may or may not ever kick in."

OBVIOUS THOUGHTS on the efficacy of raising the minimum wage. And completely incomprehensible to the average liberal....

NOT LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS: Conservative Acquaintance Annoyingly Not Racist.

YES! WE HAVE MORE BANANAS. We're building a Banana Republic. "[I]t seems safe to say that the Obamas have lost touch with at least some portion of reality...."

Click through to the post, then ask yourself: "Some?"

FCC INVESTIGATING editorial choices and bias in broadcasters. I wonder if they'll be surprised to learn Fox News is on cable -- and not subject to any broadcast licensing.

RIPE FOR MOCKING: the NGO community. Overripe, I'd say.

HEH: NYC MAYOR DeBlasio vows to raise taxes on the wealthy; Sean Hannity puts NY home up for sale.

Feet. Vote.

LEFT HAND, MEET RIGHT HAND: HealthCare.Gov shutting down for maintenance — and just in time for Youth Enrollment Day!

The Obama administration must practice incompetence to be this good.

HEH: More 'Mayors Against Guns' are getting the message.

ANGLING TO SIT NEXT TO MICHELLE AT THE NEXT SOTU? NFL prospect comes out as gay.

For anyone not a liberal, this is a 'so what?' story.

DAY BY DAY learns to speak French.

HEH: Rules shouldn't be just for 'little people'.

JEFF JACOBY: 'Leading From Behind' to a New World Disorder.

World War III, anyone?

DRONE-LIMITING BILL overwhelmingly approved by California Assembly. Note that the restrictions are for lawfare and spying, not air traffic management and flight safety reasons. I agree with the restrictions, but shouldn't they apply equally to manned aircraft?

BLOG LEFT: Even stopped clocks are right at least once a day. "ACLU explains to Rhode Island AG that free speech even covers mean, dumb pictures on Facebook."

SUCCESS: Iraq car bomb instructor blows up 21 of his students.

HOPEFULLY HE WILL BE AN OBAMACARE SURVIVOR: NBC's Tom Brokaw diagnosed with cancer. Others haven't been so lucky.

MANUFACTURERS change look of AR-15 to make it 'street legal'.

Fixed stock; no pistol grip; no flash suppressor; the rifle is now legal in New York State.

VILE, but what can you expect? Progressives are so smart, so nuanced, that they know what your thinking even when you're not thinking it.

NOW ON GOOGLE EARTH: 150 Years of Global Temperature Data. The question is "Has the data been massaged?" The answer is "Yes."

OBAMACARE'S unworkable employer mandate gets delayed again. It's all about getting the low-information voter to vote Democrat in the next election.

DO ENGINEERS NEED EMPATHY? A study from Rice University finds that engineering students are less concerned about the welfare of others after graduating college than they were when they entered.

I suspect it's probably because engineers come to realize that empathy doesn't get things done.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: A Winning Alternative to ObamaCare.

WHICH ONE is the Democrat?

RELATED: Obama's Brave New World Loafer Nation.

SMART DIPLOMACY UPDATE: Obama nominates unqualified amateurs to key diplomatic posts. Oh, they're qualified all right -- at raking in and bundling the big bucks.

THE HILLARY PAPERS: Archive of 'closest friend' paints portrait of ruthless First Lady. Watching the pundits on television last night, the consensus seems to be that this won't damage Hillary's 2016 run for the presidency. Unfortunately, I tend to agree: the 'revelations' are all about character, and character is not something in high regard in Washington D.C.

A MODEST PROPOSAL to keep senators and representatives home on the range. A much better solution would to be to convene a single 90-day legislative session once a year. For everything else, use Skype.

CONSUMERS NAME 'gotta-have' technology for their next car. In my case, it's all gotta-not-have. The only thing of even mild interest is navigation, and that comes automatically with almost any recent cell phone.

THERE ARE THOSE who look at things the way they are, and ask why. I look at things that never were, and try to explain what idiocy on the left prevented them from happening.

REDSKINS TO LAWMAKERS: Mind your own damn business.

IS IT OVER, and we just don’t know it? If not, we're very, very close.

INSTAPUNDIT: The Late, Great Manly Man. “When the Obama administration launched a campaign to attract enrollees into Obamacare, did they they front up a two-fisted, hard-drinking, cigar-chomping he-man? Hell no. They employed ‘Pajama Boy’ to lure the mice into the trap. This is who they reckoned the rising generation would admire.”

Follow the link provided. My takeaway: "[I]n today’s world it pays to be a loser. After all, you get subsidies. You get sympathy. You can play the victim card."

And 'manly men' get to pay for it...

GALLUP: Only “State” With A Positive Economic Confidence Score Was Washington, D.C. And from a telephone conversation earlier today, that confidence doesn't even extend to Washington's suburbs....

SMART DIPLOMACY AND HILLARY'S PRESIDENCY: "John Kerry’s role is to make Hillary Clinton’s unimpressive tenure at State look better by comparison. So far, he’s fulfilling it perfectly."

LIBERALISM: put my money where their mouth is.

SCORN AND CONTEMPT: Bite me! Reposted from 2011, and should be reposted annually until January 2017.

BECAUSE WE WANT TO FUND OUR OWN LEISURE, NOT YOURS: Why Do Republicans Want Us To Work All The Time?

Best comment: "We won't let them own slaves; this is the next best thing."

THE EASIER TO SINK THEM: Iran sending warships close to US borders.

CHARLES LANE: Let's put an end to public-sector employee unions.

Linked from Hot Air.

WHAT IF Republicans really are doomed by demographics? Then we've reached the 'tipping point' and America as the constitutional republic we knew and loved has disappeared.

LINGERING QUESTIONS for Bill Nye "the Science Guy". I didn't see the debate and am pretty much agnostic on the whole evolution/creation issue, but the questions raised are interesting.

SHE'S A MEMBER of the American 'Used-to-Haves'. So am I. The difference is that I have a much better understanding of which political party's policies made me a 'used-to-have'.

HOLDER EXTENDS federal privileges to married same-sex couples.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Saturday evening that the Justice Department will now follow a landmark Supreme Court ruling on same-sex spouses, which means they will no longer be compelled to testify against each other in civil and criminal cases.

So my cynical side wonders: if two DOJ lawyers are 'married' to each other, can they be forced to testify against each other in a civil proceeding against the DOJ?

A MAN WHO HAS HIS PRIORITIES RIGHT:

IRS ABUSE: Stop payng for it! And other rogue agencies as well.

AETNA CEO: Pulling out of ObamaCare is still an option if the program doesn’t “settle down”. Is Humana soon to follow?

JONAH GOLDBERG: The campus utopians and other random thoughts.

IF YOU LIKE YOUR CURRENT HEALTHCARE, keep it (if you can). Otherwise, pay cash.

WITH UNEMPLOYMENT HIGH AND JOBS BEING ELIMINATED, when will Obama start caring? Rand Paul misses the point: Obama is caring. When people work, they make money, which removes their need for government 'support' and potentially increases income inequality. Which obviates the need for Obama to 'care'.

Remember, the sole purpose of liberalism is to ensure the (little) people get an equal share of nothing.

A CALIFORNIA HOMEOWNER foiled an attempted home invasion Thursday when she grabbed her shotgun and fired near the suspects. 'At' would have been better, but even so, I suspect the burglars got the message.

IF STATES WERE COUNTRIES, here's what the U.S. would look like.

DON SURBER: The lake, the boat, and the noodle salad.

IT ONLY MATTERS that he's 'green' enough: State Deptment Not Sure If Obama’s Bundler/Ambassador to Argentina Speaks Spanish.

YA THINK? "Unfortunately, some current nominees are a modern version of the 18th-century French practice of the sale of offices."

NEWT GINGRICH: Sochi and National Security. It's a dangerous world out there, and we're not paying attention.

IT'S NOT A TRAIN WRECK, it's a cancer.

The goal of liberalism is for everyone to have an equal share of nothing.

A FLYING JELLYFISH:



An interview with the development team is here.

GOP PROPOSAL would require food stamp recipients to show photo ID. If passed, it would pretty well take the wind out of the sails of the 'no photo ID to vote' advocates....

UPDATE & HEH: NAACP requires marchers protesting North Carolina voter ID law to show photo ID.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: MyRA accounts fleece middle class.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to P. T. Barnum, "There's a sucker liberal born every minute."

THREE WORDS: Bad words.

THE GREAT DEFLECTION: Unemployment Is Freedom. Dependency Is Choice. Numbers Lie.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures: the never-ending winter edition. But my favorite isn't about climate change ... it's about jobs.

AN OBAMACARE REPORT CARD: The grades are bad so far — and likely to get worse.

HEH: Medicaid is so good they can't give it away.

Read it all.

WE'RE LOSING the war on poverty. Not so. The government is growing bigger, more expansive, and richer every year.

FROM A SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT) CAMPAIGN EMAIL, some thoughts on the CBO report on the costs of ObamaCare:

Among the report's major findings, these really caught my attention:

- Businesses with over 50 employees will pay $151 BILLION over 10 years in penalties under Obamacare.

- The individual mandate penalties over 10 years will total $52 BILLION.

- Obamacare will force hundreds of thousands of part-time employees out of their jobs.

- Finally, Obamacare will mean TWO MILLION fewer people in the labor market by 2017, 2.5 MILLION by 2024.

$15 billion in increased government income and an additional 2 million Americans under government control subsidy. If you're a big-government liberal, what's not to like?

WORK MORE, EARN LESS: Obama's work trap.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Free the Job-Locked Poets! (They're easier to control that way.)

PARTY TIME IN THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION: Gov. Terry McAuliffe has added a potent weapon to his bipartisan charm offensive: better booze.

At least he's not paying for it out of my pocket....

AS AD REVENUE SLIPS AGAIN, New York Times CEO calls 2014 'a critical year'. Perhaps they could try publishing something worth reading....

BECAUSE SCIENCE IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE: Enviromentalists, use emotion, not science, to convince others of global warming.

OBAMAFAIL: Humana Will Get $250-450 Million to Offset Expected Loses This Year. That’s Just One Insurer.

THERE IS NO JUSTICE at the Department of Justice. "The stench emanating from the Obama administration would make a skunk turn up its nose."

NOT SAYING MUCH: Russians say Sochi as safe as New York.

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE: We're running out of other peoples' money; Democrats encouraged.

OBAMACARE: Making not working pay. Well, remember: "At a certain point, you've made enough money."

Obama's just 'lowered the bar' a bit.

HEH.

OBAMAFAIL: ‘I can no longer be an enabler to the dysfunction’.

CALIFORNIA HOPE? OR CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'? Voters in bankrupt San Bernardino sweep old guard from power.

'NOT A SMIDGEN OF CORRUPTION': Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) begs to disagree.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS: Obama's Climate Action Plan, without a price tag, will assess risks and then tell landowners "this is how you need to manage." And if the landowners choose not to pay attention, then what?

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

WHEW! We're safe at home. FAA investigation has concluded that a piece of metal that crashed through a northern Virginia home from the sky came from a woodchipper, not an airplane in the Dulles International Airport landing pattern.

BRITISH STEALTH UAV begins flight testing (video).

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: Obama's inner Clouseau and salary cops for those who really need them.

WELL, THERE GOES THE LAST VESTIGE OF PRIVACY: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications technology will be mandatory, says The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA).

How soon thereafer will walking be treated as suspicious behavior? Read the comments.

CHICAGO: School officials deeply troubled over guns appearing on signs banning guns.

Given the state of literacy in Chicago public schools, I'd think they'd be grateful for the picture on the sign.

OBAMA, suffering from his own hubris, blames everyone else. Well, obviously. He's so very nearly perfect, how can anything possibly be his fault?

SO THAT'S WHERE OUR PROBE LANDED: The massive Martian crater that practically happened 'yesterday'.

THE WASHINGTON POST'S global warming alarmist Eugene Robinson on dire signs from a warming world:

Another insane cold wave — not the infamous “polar vortex ” but its evil twin — is bringing sub-zero and single-digit temperatures to much of the nation. And global warming may be even more extreme, and potentially more catastrophic, than climate scientists had feared.

This is, of course, no contradiction. The rallying cry of the denialists — “It’s really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” — can be taken seriously only by those with a toddler’s limited conception of time and space. They forget that it’s winter, and apparently they don’t quite grasp that even when it’s cold in one part of the world, it can be hot in another.

Robinson doesn't seem to grasp that the converse is also true: that even when it's hot in one part of the world, it can be cold in another.

WELL, YES: ObamaCare disincentivizes work … by doctors. 'I lose a little money on each patient, but make up for it in volume' is not a path to riches.

But as President Obama is known to have once said: "At a certain point, you've made enough enough money."