REPUBLICAN REPLY

10:38 pm. Gov. Jindal just finished. Fox is "analyzing" as mediocre and this time I disagree. I thought Jindal did well. Sorry, Fox News, this one you got wrong. I was impressed with his emphasis on the strength of America being its people, not its Government.

10:36 pm. We place our hope in you, the American people."

10:34 pm. Jindal speaks to ethics and ethics reform. Again, ignored by Obama.

10:35 pm. More drilling for oil at home. Totally ignored by Obama in his speech.

10:32 pm. "Would you borrow from your children to buy things you don't need?"

10:29 pm. "The strength of America is not in its Government; it's in its people." Good anecdote about a bureaucrat insisting that rescuers have licenses and insurance.

10:28 pm. Jindal: "I was a pre-existing condition."

10:25 pm. Waiting for Gov. Jindal.

OBAMA'S SPEECH TO CONGRESS

10:10 pm. It's over. I'll give him this: Obama is a good speaker, and has good speechwriters. Nevertheless, I'm left with the feeling of "So?" I heard nothing specific, no answers.

9:57 pm. He's speaking of deficit reduction now. The usual; reduce fraud, waste, and abuse, kill programs that don't work. Plus a reduction in defense spending from bringing troops home from Iraq. Plus Medicare - why waste money on Medicare when those old folks are just going to die?

Interesting ... Obama mentioned Social Security momentarily. Is the "third rail" finally touchable?

9:48 pm. We will provide competitive education for every child from birth until entering the workplace (read as Government-provided salt mine).

9:45 pm. Here comes the Nanny State -- big investment in preventive medicine. The health nannies are going to love dictating what we eat, how we exercise, etc.

9:40 pm. Carbon caps? "We invented the automobile; we can't walk away from it." You've got to be kidding. With $5.00 gasoline, we'll have to walk away.

9:30 pm. Energy, health care and education. Obama's priorities. I agree with the first two (but differ on "how"); I strongly disagree with the third.

9:34 pm. "I will be careful with your money - not a penny for the Wall Street executives." But Harry Reid will get his monorail to Las Vegas.

9:32 pm. No more fancy jets or new drapes for the Wall Street CEOs. Will Air Force One be grounded too?

9:25 pm. We're told that for years we've avoided doing anything, and now - right NOW! - is the time to do something. OK, well, for at least the last four years, what have the Democrats been doing? Does obstruction sound familiar?

9:21 pm. "Take responsibility once more." If only ... my questions is how "we take responsibility once more" when the Government won't let us.

9:20 pm. He's begun to speak. My initial impression was the smirk. Going to be hard to overcome as he continues.

9:15 pm. The President has arrived.

9:07 pm. Hillary Clinton walked over to speak to Justice Ginsberg. I didn't see Justice Ginsberg arrive - she looks frail.

8:55 pm. It's about to begin. The congresscritters are milling about waiting for the President to be announced.

8:50 pm. My thoughts exactly. From Dennis Kneale at CNBC:

One month later a queasy sense of dread emerges whenever he takes the lectern. As our new president prepares to address both houses of Congress at 9 p.m. eastern, the markets and investors brace for his next damaging soundbite.

Thanks to Dr. Helen.

8:30 pm. It's about a half-hour until the President speaks to Congress and us. On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and Alan Colmes are busy trying to set expectations. My feeling is that I hope, but am not hopeful. I simply do not believe the Democrat's stimulus plan can possibly work; the best outcome will be that it does no damage.

WOUNDED WIND DUCK

After the high winds we've had all week, our poor wind duck lost his wings.
Here he is after surgery. We'll wait until the winds die down before putting him out again.

MONDAY CATBLOGGING

Shadow at his usual post on the couch.

Diamond waits for dinner.

Daisy in her afternoon nap.

MORE DEMOCRATIC ARROGANCE

Katie Allison Granju writes on Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary about Republican angst during the presidential campaign. In an interview about her documentary, Pelosi (daughter of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) spoke in detail about her identification with her interviewees’ sense of exclusion. Now Katie Allison Granju:

But then she reveals how little she actually "gets" where her subjects are coming from when she says this:

Respectfully, I wanted to say to them, I live on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. I am on the winning side of capitalism. I work for HBO, corporate America. The Man has been good to me. You, on the other hand, are driving a truck that says, "Obama is a socialist idiot," and you're in a much lower tax bracket than most of the people in Manhattan that are voting for Obama. So the times I would actually get into it would be like, "OK, explain to me why you think he's an idiot. He's trying to give you a tax cut. You understand you're voting against your own self-interest?"

Surely she can see that it's just this kind of maternalistic, elitist filter that these folks in Pelosi's documentary object to. They don't necessarily want to live on 5th Avenue or work for HBO; they like driving a truck and living in Peoria. They don't want what she thinks they want or should want.

And that, for me, is the key point ... what the Democrats know I want and what I really want are diametrically opposed.

Hat tip Instapundit

FEMINIST NONSENSE

This was written on a feminist weblog.

Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’.

But what if there were no families? What if we say no to reproduction?

My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression. Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered (as I analyzed here) and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent money the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.

So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it , and a lot was said about that on the blogosphere recently (here, and here), but an ecological consciousness is not how I came to my decision to remain child-free.

I’ll let Protein Wisdom respond:

I say to author “freethinkr” and some of her sisters in the comments ... please, do not get married, do not have children. By all means, do not pass on your genes nor inflict yourself on any rational human being.

The author “freethinkr” must be a university student or graduate; for only on a university campus can such incredibly arrogant post-modern pap be found.

And President Obama wants to increase spending on education?

via Instapundit.

THE LOYAL OPPOSITION - 2009

Now that President Obama has been inaugurated, Andy Levy presents his “To Don’t List” for those of us on the right side of the political spectrum. Here are my favorites:

DON’T question the motives - question the policy.
DON’T make it personal.
DON’T pretend you’re being brave when you criticize your government.
DON’T use the phrase “speaking truth to power.”
DON’T say or do everything in your power to drive this country apart and then claim you want unity when it’s your guy in power.
DON’T automatically think people who disagree with you are stupid or evil.
DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way.

Read the whole thing. It’s a good list, and one worth keeping in mind. But also read the comments. A common thread is the feeling I’m struggling with – after 8 years of Bush Derangement Syndrome and several months of Palin Derangement Syndrome from the Left, an intense desire to pull out the Clue Bat and start swinging.

MOVING GUANTANAMO

Chuck Norris gives his top ten reasons for moving the terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Alcatraz Island. My favorites:

D-Block. Not the hip-hop group, but the row of solitary confinement cells.

It is rumored that "Dirty Harry" still roams the streets of San Francisco with his .44 Magnum.

It would give Congress something better on which to spend those hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money than the current absolute waste of partisan pork.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district includes Alcatraz Island. Let her deal with the aftermath.

Better to keep them out of the US, of course, but if we have to bring them ashore, then give them to the liberals.

PALIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

Giving liberals a black eye.

In her quest for the Vice Presidency, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin mentioned a second-hand shop in Alaska where she sometimes buys clothes.

Apparently the name was already used by a big non-taxpaying chain of secondhand shops (in Hollywood!)— selling clothes that are donated for tax credits. Goaded on by Patt Morrison, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio commentator, the chain put the muscle on the obscure tax-paying shop in Alaska to get the name changed.

Morrison gloated about it.

Patt, you were a knothead when I lived in southern California 15 years ago. I see you’ve grown old gracelessly.

Hat tip to Don Surber

MORE SCENERY FROM IRAQ

The reeds along one of the irrigation canals are in full blossom.

A small picnic area alongside one of the lakefront villas.


Another lake view taken from one of the running trails within the camp.

ELECTRIC CARS

What happens when there's no outlet?

WHAT A MAROON

It has been almost two months, and this one still sticks in my craw.

Richard Cohen, the butter knife in the Washington Post’s columnist drawer, is amazed to find out that former President George W. Bush can read:

In what without a doubt is the most astounding op-ed piece of the year, Karl Rove reveals that his friend and former boss, George W. Bush, has read probably hundreds of books over the course of his presidency.

After a few snarks about his selection of books and the number read, Cohen admits:

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is.

But that won’t stop Cohen. He whines

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake ....

In other words, Mr. Bush doesn’t read the books Richard Cohen approves of. Probably not.

I don’t read Zippy the Pinhead either.

POLITICS AND (UGH!) POLITICIANS

From Cal Thomas, writing about Tom Daschle’s tax problems: it was the late hotel magnate Leona Helmsley who uttered the immortal words, "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.”

“Naturally, one who had been squired around when he was a senator and public servant shouldn't be expected to drive himself and search for his own parking spot, or worse, take public transportation. Once someone has enjoyed the power and perks of the Senate, it's difficult to come down to where the "little people" live. Perhaps some counseling would have helped.”

Two thoughts:

First, mandate that all politicians, er “public servants,” be required to undergo counseling for “post-politics” stress syndrome on leaving office. Obviously they need it at least as much as our soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan need counseling for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Second, mandate that every person elected to Federal office, and every appointed official requiring Senate confirmation, be fully audited by the IRS every year they are in office and for 5 years thereafter.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Here’s a consequence of the mortgage bailout that I hadn’t thought of – and should have, since I consider myself to be a pretty good systems engineer.

Bailing out homeowners who would otherwise be forced to find more affordable housing could hurt people who are ready to buy homes at rock-bottom prices.

There have been a number of ads on both radio and TV lately encouraging renters to step up and buy. One of my co-workers, a life-long renter, did just that a few months back.

One more reason for the Government to keep out and let the market take care of itself.

SHOVEL READY

From Michael Ramirez at Investors Business Daily.

In a related item, Mickey Kaus asks "Isn't the border fence shovel ready?"

OOPS

From Fox News: Extremely Rare Bird Found, Photographed ... Eaten

Where are the environmentalists when you need one?

OBAMA SIGNS "STIMULUS"

Fasten your seat belt ....

STIMULUS?

President Obama will sign the porkulus, er, "stimulus" bill in Denver in a few hours.

The market is already down 200 points.

LAST CHANCE

Congress will vote soon, possibly today, on the compromise stimulus bill. Now is our last chance to kill it and hope for something better. Email your congresscritter now. Here's mine.

PLEASE. Vote No on the compromise stimulus package.

This is a plan the consequences of which will still be with us when my as-yet unborn grandchild votes for the first time. Yet the details of this stimulus plan were created in secret, aren’t widely known (most likely even to you), haven’t been examined, and haven’t been publically debated.

Don’t we, the American people, deserve better?

Kill this turkey. Kill it dead. Then start fresh, in the open, with full transparency for the American public. Only then will there be a believable bill the American people can trust.

Do it now.

COMPROMISE STIMULUS BILL

Thanks to Newt Gingrich, the language of the compromise stimulus bill is here.

It's roughly 1400 pages; the final language starts about midway through the pdf.

Read it and weep.