EXACTLY BACKWARDS

"Regardless of the outcome [of the Massachusetts senatorial election] ... this should be a gigantic wake-up call to the Democratic Party - that we're not connecting with the needs, the aspirations and the desires of real people right now," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The Democrats are not trying “to connect ... with real people”; they’re busy demanding that real people submit to their authority.

LIBERAL ARROGANCE. Michael Barone slaps a Slate writer around for his attack on Scott Brown:

[L]isten up. Scott Brown made his money.... Scott Brown is a shining example of the American way: he started off at some point near the bottom of the ladder and worked his way up. He wants others to have the same chance. What’s wrong with that?

Conclusion: “This is not a byline I feel I need to check out again.”

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE are losing confidence in Team Obama because quite simply they are tiring of being lied to, and treated like children in need of Ivy-League Platonic guardians.

Read it all.

CRUISE SHIPS are still docking at Haiti despite the earthquake. According to some, this is indefensible:

"I just can't see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while [in Port-au-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water," one passenger wrote on the Cruise Critic internet forum.

"It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving," said another. "I can't imagine having to choke down a burger there now."

Instapundit readers Leo Jiang and Rob Crawford interpret: Not all money is the same. Rich people on cruise ships give Haiti money voluntarily through evil capitalism. What they really need is handout money confiscated by force from the middle class and given through government compassion.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE WINNING when Keith Olbermann calls you a “homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman.”

HEADLINE from the Boston Globe web site at 1:51 pm today:

Senate Poll: Coakley up 15 points.

The poll was done on January 10th - over a week ago.

WHY I AM not a Democrat. In a post on the Washington Post's PostPartisan web site, Jo-Ann Armao tries to explain the meaning of the Massachusetts Senate race. The money quote is taken from Ted Kennedy's memoir, True Compass:

That building [the Capitol] symbolizes ... the benevolent power and the majesty of our government.

Wrong. The Capitol building symbolizes the "benevolent power and majesty" of the American people. Or, as Scott Brown so eloquently put it, "It's the people's seat."

T. BOONE PICKENS drops Texas wind farm project. The blowhards are in Washington, not Texas.

I MISSPOKE. The Indian scientist who claimed that global warming will melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 has acknowledged it was speculation and not supported by any formal research.

Oops.

CO-RELIGIONISTS Pat Robertson and Danny Glover believe Haiti is suffering because mankind has sinned. In Robertson's case, it's because Haitian's have turned away from God and made a pact with the Devil. In Glover's case, it's a result of mankind turning away from Gaia and refusing to endorse climate change, er, global warming.

BROWN V. GOLIATH: Jules Crittenden on the Massachusetts Senate election today: "It could still be a squeaker for either camp, and remains impossible to call. But it is beginning to look like a rout in the making, something momentous that only happens when a lot of forces line up."

I'm cautiously optomistic.

[Update] Mark Steyn thinks that Brown is leading, but "it's not necessarily beyond the margin of Acorn, the margin of lawyer, and the margin of Franken-style recounts." I suspect he's right.

TALES FROM THE VAULT: the "Pogo Stick." I have the honor of being a Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (by virtue of being 65 years old and a member for 35 years). The Life Members newsletter has a section titled "Tales from the Vault" of anecdotes from member's experiences. Here's one from the December 2009 issue (not on line yet) on the development of the Convair XFY-1, the first vertical takeoff aircraft.

When I worked at Convair's Dynamics Test Lab in the 1950s, we were flight testing a novel new combat support aircraft nicknamed the "Pogo Stick." So far as I know, it was the very first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, other than helicopters. It had delta wings and large contra-rotating props on its nose, driven by u turbine engine. For safety, Flight Test had us inst all accelerometers on the turbine bearing cases and the case of the reduction gear transmission, which drove the props. That way, the test pilot would receive advance warning of a bearing was getting noisy and about to seize while he was hovering tail-down. If that catastrophe were imminent, a row of red lights on his instrument panel was supposed to light up, giving him time to touch down. Or, so went the theory.

There was one small problem. When I climbed aboard the aircraft to check the calibration of the instrumentation. I found someone had gotten tired of seeing the lights constantly flickering (due to the exremely noisy environment in this experimental craft) and had cranked the channel gains to zero. Problem solved. Right! When I informed the Flight Test Department that they had been flying this highly experimental craft without their safety net, so to speak, the chief test pilot was not a happy camper.

There were other problems. They had provided the pilot with an ejection seat. This seat swiveled forward when the craft was hovering vertically, so he was at least able to sit much as one sits in a recliner chair, not upright, but not flat on his back either. Flight Test wanted to see how much actual safety this arrangement provided in case the pilot had to eject at a very low altitude, so they arranged a test. With the craft resting on the tarmac, and the seat in the appropriate position, they fired the 75 mm shell attached to the seat, propelling it at prodigious velocity in a low arc. The seat and its occupant (an anthropomorphic test dummy). landed perhaps 250 feet away, still traveling at high velocity. The parachute, which was supposed to have deployed by this time, dragged uselessly behind, partially opened at best. Needless to say, the dummy suffered a cruel fate indeed. The chief test pilot, who was of course watching intently, merely walked away, muttering. Rumor had it he went directly to executive row and negotiated a much larger bonus for his services.

At long last came the day of the big flight-the first transition from vertical hovering to horizontal flight supported by the delta wings. The Marine Corp's Osprey performs a similar maneuver. All of us were gathered beside Lindbergh Field watching expectantly. The pilot hovered about 20 feet up for a few minutes, gunned it, and the craft thrillingly shot straight up several hundred feet, then performed a beautiful arc into horizontal flight. There was much cheering among the observers. After a triumphal tour around San Diego Bay, Pogo Stick returned, roared down the length of the field, and then performed a perfect upward arc. It came to rest, hanging on the huge props as planned. There was only one small problem: It was about 500 feet up.

Now, this might not seem like such a problem. What's the big deal? All the pilot had to do was back down to a touch down, right? Well, as we know, conventional aircraft control surfaces assume the slipstream is going to flow from front to back over the rudder and elevators. When Pogo Stick hovered, this flow was supplied by the propwash. What happens when the craft is traveling backwards fast enough that the propwash is overcome? Answer: The effect of the controls is reversed. Still no problem, you say? All he had to do was back down slowly, just as he had done on dozens of practice sessions while hovering 20 feet off the ground. But imagine what it is like to visually judge your sink rate from 500 feet. You can't.

So, while we watched breathlessly, the pilot began his descent. Suddenly, the craft began oscillating wildly. The controls had reversed and the pilot had now become part of a positive feedback loop. He quickly realized his situation, gunned the engine , and roared upward, saving himself from certain doom. However, he now found himself about 1,000 feet up! This was not going at all well. I honestly don't know how he did it, but he spent the better part of an hour slowly, slowly, easing himself out of the sky. The landing was not a thing of beauty, but the aircraft and pilot survived. The Pogo Stick was never flown again.

Thomas l. Kirkpalrick, LM
Half Moon Bay,CA

Some engineering details of the aircraft can be found here, and here is a short video of an RC "Pogo Stick."

This one is of personal interest to me, as it dates to my early interest in flying - and eventually a career in science and engineering.

THE DEMOCRAT PLAN FOR WINNING ELECTIONS - cheat.

And: “I’d cheat to keep these bastards out.”

Via Instapundit.

IS THE GOVERNMENT coming for your IRA?

Try it and I’ll be on the next (one-way) flight to Costa Rica.

More here.

And an especially prescient comment here: " I have an old friend who is converting his life time savings into gold, silver, ammunition, booze and other non-perishable staples for what he believes is the inevitable "economic crunch." I hope he is wrong that it is imminent, but at least now he can rest easy knowing that the government can't get to his nest egg, and based upon the recent price of ammunition and gold/silver it is appreciating nicely. "

IF OBAMACARE PASSES, I predict the Amish community will grow significantly.

The Amish have it right: it's insurance, dammit.

I'd happily give the liberals their ObamaCare if like-minded conservatives could opt for Lloyd's of London-like insurance based on the Amish model.

WHAT? Entitlement isn’t enough? This comment says it all: "WORK, Martha. It's what politicians have to do to EARN respect."

COMMENT OF THE DAY: "Politicians are movie star wannabes sans talent."

From my wife.

A PITY IN THE MAKING. Moderate Democrats may be headed for extinction.

Congressman Vic Snyder, (D-AK) has announced he is not running for reelection this year.

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) will not seek reelection next year.... Gordon joins Reps. Dennis Moore (D-KS.), John Tanner (D-TN) and Brian Baird (D-WA) in announcing his retirement in recent weeks. Also, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) announced that he will resign early to run for governor.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) was booed after dinner out at a pizza parlor in Omaha. I suspect he’s headed for eventual defeat in 2012 unless he redeems himself by voting against final passage of Obamacare.

Maybe Nelson can be that "one brave Democrat" the nation needs.

ERICK ERICKSON from Red State writes:

There is a serious problem developing among some of [Sarah] Palin’s biggest fans....

[T]here are Republicans who like — even love — Sarah Palin who think some of her handlers might not give her the best of advice or think she should or should not do one thing or another. And I’m finding ... that when those points are brought up, the person raising the point is often inappropriately attacked as a Palin hater.

Allahpundit from Hot Air responds:

How did she get to this rare, exalted, and enviable position? Erickson’s surely right that part of it comes from an instinct of wanting to defend her after the relentless media nastiness towards her, but obviously it’s more than that. Is it cultural identification, that she’s blue-collar and familiar in a way that most cookie-cutter pols aren’t, which makes the slings and arrows of liberal “elites” sting twice as much? Is it a function of the leadership vacuum in the GOP, with the emergence of someone young and charismatic such a precious thing that some supporters will do battle with anyone who risks upsetting that? Is it just that she really is more unshakably conservative in her policies than anyone else?

I rather suspect it’s not the criticism, it’s the critics.

WILL IT BE YOU? The Washington Times is looking for one brave Democrat to step forward and kill Obamacare for the good of the nation.

If your senators are Democrats, email them the link and ask "Will it be you?"