Friday, March 12. 2010
At Commentary, an excellent review of the politics: Health Care: A Two-Decade Blunder.
 Your recycling ends up in landfills
Temperature records gleaned from clamshells reveal accuracy of Norse sagas.
More on the foolishness of photovoltaics
Junk Science Bombshell: NASA & Media Knew About Bogus Climate Data 3 Years Ago
Arab Emirates: No Jews, please
Obama Justice Department Shut Down Federal ACORN Investigation According to Documents Obtained by Judicial Watch
Credit Default Swaps Under Fire
EU monitoring "hate" sites, hoping to ban them
Lots of good posts at Moonbattery
From SDA:
When the mother of a five year old girl received a letter detailing a litany of health risks her daughter would face in the future because her body mass index was one-percent outside the recommended limit, mom was appalled, and its no wonder: take a look at the child in question. Actually, take a close look, because she might be following you: various local Councils recruit "environment volunteers" as young as seven to report people for offenses ranging from littering to making too much noise to putting out their trash on the wrong day. The little recruits "are given information packs about how to collect evidence....which could later be used in criminal prosecutions."
In an essay titled Nanny State Britain is Killing Common Sense, Dr. Eamonn Butler writes:
"The organisers of a Christmas party in Embsay village hall were told they needed a full risk assessment, and nut allergy warnings on the mince pies. Schools have banned playground football. Clowns in Zippo's circus couldn't use trumpets in a three-minute sketch because they'd need a music licence. Manchester taxi drivers cancelled their annual outing for needy kids because each cab would need a risk assessment, each child would have to be accompanied by an adult, and each adult would need a six-week criminal record check." (emph. mine)
Thursday, March 11. 2010
Salt wars? What next?
Maybe broccoli. I read that it is carcinogenic - especially if it is "organic". Everything causes cancer.
Wednesday, March 10. 2010
 White House invents organic Easter eggs. It's about time. Chickens never could figure it out how to produce organic eggs. Sunny-side up or over easy with those recycled wooden government eggs?
Detroit Farms? Makes sense to me.
Cool Baltic shipwrecks. Would love to see the ancient ones.
The NYT as partisan hypocritical hacks, # 3487. h/t, Tiger
Dartmouth's Rob Portman looking good in Ohio
California's College Dreamers - When will students figure out the politicians have sold them out?
Obama Is Late to the Party
Does Government Have To Do Everything? Darn good question. Simple answer: No. We The People aren't morons. In fact, we're the Boss. We create the money that they spend.
Pathetic: Climategate: George Monbiot despairs of the AGW cause – 'There goes my life's work' . Yes, burned up in global warming.
White Trash Barbie. h/t, Vandy
Bob Dylan: Jewish Messiah? Sorry. Just one darn good songwriter and song and dance man.
Fish photo via theo
Shamefully stolen from our pal Surber:
See Dick Morris: The Democrats' Pickett's Charge. And there is more: Obama pushes senators for climate bill. My solution? Add Thorazine to the water in the the Capitol.
America's great export: Rocket science finance, layers of abstractions and computer modeling, and shadow banking. One quote:
What is shadow banking? It is one of a handful of terms — structured finance is a more technical one, ghostly economics a more evocative one — used to describe the infrastructure of debt finance that provided the conduits for capital from around the world to flow into the American housing sector. It is best understood as a technological innovation amalgamating computing power and probabilistic modeling to vastly expand the various world markets in debt securities. The late journalist Mark Pittman, in an authoritative 2008 report for Bloomberg, called it “the biggest U.S. export business of the twenty-first century”...
Related, how our government does rocket science finance - minus the rocket science.
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
 Image: The American air is getting cleaner.
Gun-free zones: Shooting fish in a barrel
Brit governments putting microchips in garbage cans. h/t. How do the people put up with that crap? Well, The Englishman doesn't.
Stimulants increase learning and learning speed. h/t Insty. Every college kid knows that.
Poll: Young Adults Turn Toward GOP. Change!
Diane Ravitch discouraged by education reform. Schools should be entirely run by and for localities, not by the Feds and not by the unions. That's how reform can happen. The famous Albert Shanker quote: "When schoolkids get union cards is when we'll worry about their interests." Something like that.
Effects of CO2 are logarithmic, not linear. That's High School math. Is it part of the computer models?
Feminists: College gals should drink, Yes means No, and campus rape definitions. I thought the feminists said all hetero sex was rape.
Don't hold your breath for The New World Order
Bucknell: You cannot debate the 2009 Dem stimulus package. Too controversial for college?
 Florida, sugar, government and the Everglades: The corporate State
Not predicted by the models: South Pole cooling, ice increasing
Doc:
...if I am ever told I have to see every patient who wants to see me and the government determines both the appropriate treatment and the fee I can charge, I will retire and find another way to make a living. (Maybe I will be so disturbed by the changes in my profession that I would need to go on Disability?)
WHT?
This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...
Good grief. Those are some crazy links!
The Census: "My race is human"
Doug Hoffman is back! He'll win.
John says the O is an ignoramus about insurance costs. Maybe he is, or maybe it simply does not serve the narrative to mention the reality that if coverages are mandated, costs increase.
Evil, evil Drudge. Do not look at his site!
Are we allowed to have two per day? Previous one was from Lenin, this from Nancy Pelosi on health care:
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Of course it is. With it, they control your very life. For your own good. I mean, for the "Greater Good," or for "Society." Whoever they are. Never met them.
The Dems and the O are always about talking and negotiating endlessly with other countries, and never drawing a line. But with their fellow Americans, 'The time for talk is over.'
Thus an accommodating attitude towards enemies, and a warlike attitude towards Americans.
It suppose that is change.
 Cover image via Jonah
You like him; how can you tell if a guy likes you back? h/t Linkiest
Harvard Law Prof Bill Stuntz Talks of His Impending Death, Faith
No Tweeting: Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them
Pinkerton:
Sen. Lautenberg voted for the Senate proposal that would have denied him the free choice that probably saved his life.
Euroland: Coming Soon: Gravity to be Legislated!
3 good reheated ones at Thompson
Twit is legend in his own mind: Friedman Aflame - The Times columnist’s mind melts fact and reason into nonsense. Can we say "narratives"?
Gore: Organized Campaign Behind Climate Skeptics. Yes, and Maggie's Farm is the well-funded HQ of the cabal.
Believes in NBC-driven media: NBC’s Chuck Todd Blasts “Drudge Driven Journalism”
Surber's Good v. Evil
Riehl: The Traveling ObamaCare Salvation Show
You know what America needs now? A brutal political battle over amnesty
Geert Wilders speaks in London
Green jobs scam
Via Q&O:
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism.
Indeed.
Rep opposes school choice for his constituents. Does he oppose school choice for the Obama girls?
"He says he opposes an increase in charter schools, even though many of his constituents seem to want more of them, because he believes they have allowed the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to abdicate their responsibility to improve Harlem’s regular elementary schools, which have shrunk as more parents have chosen charters."
Steyn on the Oscars:
It was fun when Marlon Brando had his award picked up by Sachem Littlefeather, Apache Indian and President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, protesting about the treatment of Indians by Hollywood. It was even better when she turned out to be Maria Cruz, struggling actress and Miss American Vampire of 1970. It was touching, in 1977, when Debby Boone sang `You Light Up My Life’ backed by a chorus of 11 children from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf interpreting the lyric in sign language. It was even more poignant when it subsequently emerged that they were just regular Equity kids pretending to be deaf and that the signing was complete gibberish. Ah, happy days.
Monday, March 8. 2010
Toon via Moonbattery
Mark Steyn: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats. Steyn gets it. It's worth any price.
America puts off the pain to have some jam today. And, CBO: $1T yearly deficits for at least the next 10 years
The Tides Foundation: Bagman for the Left
Feeling a "bit off" today? Who doesn't? Crystal meth is good for that feeling.
No mention that a "minority" made that noose. But exactly in what way is academia "tolerant"? Higher ed strikes me as the most intolerant place in America.
Tiger:
Barack Obama has called an "entrepreneurship summit" with the Muslim world. Naturally, I have a question: What could Barack Obama or anybody in his administration teach about entrepreneurship? Years from now, when the Muslim world has gone another generation without a single useful invention, will they look back at this "summit" and regard it as another evil western deception? Of course, they will have only themselves to blame insofar as the invitation promises advice from "social entrepreneurs," Orwellian slang for "transnational community organizer."
The Golden State's Me Generation - In the midst of the Great Recession California students protest in favor of themselves. Worth reading just for the quote from the Prof.
Reason: Busting the Well-Endowed - It's time to cut federal funding for the arts
Sunday, March 7. 2010
 Image via Moonbattery. Related, Obamacare Is a Budgetary Disaster
Related, $2.3 trillion later, 23 million still uninsured
Related, a quote at Powerline:
The great mystery of the health care debate is why liberals, who don't trust doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies or insurers, trust Congress and federal bureaucrats.
Natural methane, from the ground
Can Wild Bison Repopulate the Plains? I am all for that.
A good summary of the issues at Weekly Std: In Denial - The meltdown of the climate campaign.
School Board President of Failing Detroit Schools Can’t Write
All about Rahm Emanuel and health care, etc. TNR. h/t, Driscoll
Krugman vs. Krugman
Chile quake shifted earth's axis. h/t, Vandy
Prof Bill Gray responds to Globe's op-ed titled Climate Change is Proven Fact. At least we are finally getting some debate, and outing those who benefit from the alarmism.
Stossel: The case for legalizing drugs, prostitution, organ sales, and other consensual acts.
While College Fails to Adequately Transmit Civic Knowledge, It Influences Opinion on Polarizing Social Issues. h/t, Protein
Can there be a value-neutral tax? Does income tax punish work?
Left gears up to fight media wars
David Warren:
Economic decline is a choice, not a fate, and it has everything to do with big, intrusive government.
Saturday, March 6. 2010
Re the press and climategate:
The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business. For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up. Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics. They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards. They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay. That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.
Friday, March 5. 2010
California Republican Senate primary contenders Tom Campbell, Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore had an hour radio debate today, their first, slated to focus on national security issues. I listened closely to the first 43-minutes, leaving to play 1-on-1 with my son after school and watch the basketball tryouts. I was struck that at the tryouts there was none of the under the basket elbows and knees I was used to from Brooklyn schoolyard basketball. But there was plenty at the debate.
Continue reading "CA Senate Debate Knees and Elbows (UPDATE: Refs Miss Campbell Fumble)"
Headed to Sugarbush for the weekend. (Do you know what a "sugarbush" is? It is a grove of Sugar Maples.)
In praise of Parsnips. We love parsnips. Steam, then light sautee in butter.
Chile will survive the earthquake because its democracy works.
Global aid harming Haiti economy. h/t, Tiger
‘The Science is Settled,’ They Told Copernicus
Population Bomb Author Giving Advice to Global Warming Nuts. A quote in the article:
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
 If you are like me, you are getting sick and tired of the endless push for government control of medical care.
These folks aren't listening to America, but they are wearing us down and the Libs are doing a full-court press now.
One more chance to send your Senators and your Rep a brief note with your opinion. A FAX is more useful than an email, but anything is better than nothing. I advise doing so regardless of their position on the topic.
I faxed my folks in DC. I told them I would support the Republican proposals for health care reform, but that the 2000 page Dem mess is an obnoxious and unwanted piece of garbage.
FAX and emails of Congress here.
 Want more kids to graduate from college? It can be easily done: just lower the standards even further.
Speaking of college, look at these ungrateful crybabies
Muslim group moves to ban burka
How loopy is Liu? He is a real live moonbat.
Legal aspects of the digitus impudicus
The NYT finally deigned to do an obit for Arnold Beichman. Final paragraph:
Socialism is dictatorship, he told Columbia College Today, the alumni magazine, in 2005. “The control of wealth is the control over human life,” he said. “So if a centrally planned economy decides how wealth is to be created and how it is to be distributed, then they really have a control over human life.”
Like we said:
In a private meeting with House progressives, President Obama said that this bill is just a foundation for future reform, and could pave the way for a later push for the public option and even single-payer systems at the state-level.
Hurricane Katrina Victims to Sue Oil Companies. That defense team is going to have fun.
From OMG! Global warming!!!
Thursday, March 4. 2010
The current Newsweek reviews a new book about North Korea based on study of its internal news reports, art and school texts. Threats, mostly hollow, and mild sanctions, by Bush and Obama, have not stopped North Korea’s nuclear bomb making or long-range missiles fired over Japan.
Kim Jong Il and, before him, Kim Il Sung based their legitimacy not on fabricated reports of the country's economic success (that line is directed at outsiders) but on a world view that casts them as "great parental leaders" who embody Korean virtue at its most untainted. In this national narrative, the Korean people "are too pure-blooded, and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world" without the leaders' benefic guidance, writes Myers. This potent myth of racial superiority is aimed at confirming to the North Koreans that they are morally superior to Americans and the rest of the world, even if they lag behind it in technology or wealth. When visiting foreigners are covered by the domestic media, they are portrayed as being highly respectful--even obsequious--toward their North Korean hosts.
Today a North Korean colonel who spent 16 years in Austria procuring luxury goods for the father and son tyrants, before faking his death in order to defect, held a news conference to tout his tell-all book that “shows the deep divide between the lifestyles of the North Korean leadership and their citizens, who sometimes must subsist eating tree bark, knowing they will be sent to labor camps if they criticize the government.”
Kim Jong Ryul said the late dictator had dozens of sprawling villas — some of them built underground — filled with crystal chandeliers, silk wallpaper and costly furniture…. It was in these palatial homes that Kim Il Sung and his family would feast on an immense array of fine foods — including Austrian specialties….He also described how Kim Il Sung — while publicly denouncing "Western decadence and imperialism" — had an extensive luxury car collection that included Mercedes, Lincolns, Fords, Cadillacs and Citroens. Kim Jong Il, who liked taking fast sports cars for a spin, also appeared to share his father's passion.
There’s more tasty tidbits, like Kim Il Sung sending chefs to Austria to ferret out recipes from the best restaurants.
Admiring the North Korean regimented mass dance steps, Vietnam has imported North Korean marching dancemasters to advise the government on choreography for its celebration of Hanoi’s 1000th anniversary.
Impoverished and isolated, North Korea has little to export [aside from nuclear materials and technology] and its tourism earnings have been hit by political wrangling with South Korea over the North's military threats to the region and nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea’s agriculture minister who defected in 1998 estimated that up to 2.8 million North Koreans starved to death during the ‘90’s, that’s about 10% of its population. Now, Pyongyang’s geniuses have committed “currency reform” that made its currency worthless, to wipe out the black market trade that kept many North Koreans alive. Then there’s about 200,000 in North Korea’s prison camps, worked and starved to death in harsh conditions, along the way experimented on, tortured and even babies murdered.
Hey, but don’t let some dead or starved North Koreans, like this woman, stand in the way of a party.
A disastrous currency reform, which wiped whatever little savings North Koreans had, has compounded the effect of international sanctions. For many, survival has become impossible. Currently, ten million North Koreans are living on less than a dollar a day.
In the meantime, this year’s celebrations include the traditional Flower Festival.
For Kim’s birthday, the red kimjongilia was all the rave. The flower, a begonia, was created by Japanese botanist Mototeru Kamo of Shizuoka Prefecture and dedicated to Kim Jong-il.
Two sporting events were also held in the capital yesterday (figure skating and synchronised swimming) in honour of Kim who opted instead to attend a concert by the Unhasu Orchestra, organised to mark the new lunar year, which began on Sunday.
The North Korean leadership’s new motto: Party Hearty Like There’s No Tomorrow. It’s worked so far, for them.
Redstate. The government could not run a candy shop. Enuf said.
 Many cheerful facts about aging
Obsolete: The US Mail
Why recycling glass is silly and useless
Reporters used to be tough guys. This one sounds like a big baby - plus he doesn't have a clue
US now #1 in natural gas production. Hey - it's organic!
Not predicted by models: Sea ice thickens
Prediction of the intertubes, c. 1995
Lowry: Clever rhetoric from the O:
It's all rhetorically clever as far as it goes. But the problem here has never been the salesmanship, but the bill itself, which is an anchor around anyone trying to sell it.
The problem with one-party government: Led by New York, big-government blue states sink deeper into corruption.
Why can't we sell our own bone marrow?
Mankiw:
Americans, as well as citizens of many other advanced nations, now spend about twice as many years in retirement as they did a generation or two ago. During that time, they expect the government to provide them with income support and healthcare. Is it any wonder that we face serious fiscal problems?
Why does this Tea Party thing drive Libs crazy?
Wednesday, March 3. 2010
Post-industrial ghost towns. Why won't these folks move for jobs, like most people do? Texas has tons of work.
Krauthammer on Congress.
Sowell: Alice in Healthcare
Related, The WSJ's Abuse of Power begins:
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
Wilkinson gets it:
A lot of people are saying government is broken. They’re mainly saying it because the Democratic health care bill isn’t going to pass in a form that gives most Democrats what they wanted. The argument, in its general form, goes like this: There is this huge problem! My team’s favored solution to the problem is politically infeasible. So, politics is broken! When you put it like that, it’s evidently a pretty silly argument.
To get a better grip on the debate behind the debate I think you need to understand that big entitlement politics is about enacting policy that generates a kind of lock-in effect for a new power-shifting political equilibrium. Savvy political operators know that big entitlements, once established, create their own political demand. That’s why, for example, it was so important for the left to kill Social Security reform.
"create their own demand." Exactly right. From one seed, another mighty weed to strangle our garden.
Frank Rich: Obsessed and deranged. And Paul Krugman: Always pissed off. These two cranks have a problem with gratitude. We may be cranks too, but we have gratitude - and try for a bit of humor.
Tea Party violence
Inst. of Physics slams CRU
Weekly Standard: Media Failure: Global Warming Edition
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
Mitt Romney. But does he have sex appeal? Does he tingle? Is he cool?
 Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss.
I needed this quick refresher on Hobbes' moral and political philosophy
Our tax dollars at work: The FDA Takes on Cheerios
Hawaii elevates race, big-time. Aren't WASPs a tribe too?
Mohawks Only. Canadian Indians go for ethnic cleansing
To conservatives: Shut up. You are hurting the kids.
A new lame campaign to deal with evil talk radio
Black ministers for WalMart
Chicago Boyz:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
We do not always vote this way, but I think this is true:
America is, quite simply, a center-right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65% to 75% moderates and conservatives.
Monday, March 1. 2010
- The new, improved Science. Prof. Phil Jones:
...he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.
- You can now forget everything they said about hurricanes. Never mind.
- Everybody is mocking Al Gore's goofy NYT op-ed piece. I am beginning to feel sorry for the guy. This from Big Journalism's Former Veep Goes Girly-Man, Has Hissy Fit in Pages of New York Times:
This piece of pure, dribbling, drooling emoting is going to either make you collapse in a torrent of tears or retch into the nearest barf bag. The only human beings on the planet to whom this editorial would appeal are a bunch of 13-year-old girls without a single clue between them.
With hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, Al is going all out to save his “investment” in global warming hysteria. Here, he comes up with histrionics befitting the amount of personal loss he stands to suffer.
From VDH's excellent but scathing Obama Fatigue:
...just as liberals were turned off by Bush’s cowboyisms, so too conservatives are tired of Obama’s professorial, condescending sermons. After a year, the people are tired of all the “let me be perfectly clear” psycho-drama, the “make no mistake about” pseudo-tough man pose, the straw man “I reject the false choice that some would…,” and the narcissistic “I have ordered…..my team…to.” The boilerplate is now recognizable even to the Washington press corps. But as important, it dovetails with more disturbing propensities: there are the periodic signs of inanity like “Cinco de Cuatro” and “corpse-man;” the constant fudging on the truth of multibillion dollar new programs really “saving” money; and the surreal bowing to dictators and emperors, with the relish of turning our misdemeanors into felonies and our enemies’ felonies into benefactions.
Read the whole thing. I did not vote for the guy, but I "hoped" for better.
Perfect place for moonbats to move to.
Powerline: Global Warming Fraud: The Big Picture
Related, A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC: The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
From Roger:
It is just lovely that the New York Times — the world’s most discredited newspaper — would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner — or maybe a padded cell.
Frank Rich: Liar
UK update: Now the Government wants competence tests before you can be a dog owner. How about to enter the country? Or to have kids?
Latest:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. healthcare even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.
Do you think they might just promise them jobs? I'm sure of it.
Now you know: The O says "We can't control nature."
Commenter at Politico:
Had Rangel had an "R" next to his name, he would've been gone last year.
Sunday, February 28. 2010
Smart guys do not tolerate fools or BS, and Lindzen doesn't. How about a Nobel Peace Prize for Prof. Lindzen's lecture videotape? It's long. It's about data vs. models.
Richard Lindzen PhD, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming.
If that link doesn't work (it works for me), try this: http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/f.htm#
From Steyn's Our Own Greek Tragedy:
Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still just about functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn't pay. You'll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?
 In the NYT, We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change:
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Somehow I doubt that it would be "an enormous relief" to Al. He is doubling down. It's his familiar hysteria and fear-mongering accompanied by many factual errors.
From Am Thinker:
Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer - as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an "instrument of redemption?" Holy Mother, that is the scariest idea ever to drool from Gore's mouth. The rule of law is just that - the rule of law. There should be no special qualities that animate the enforcement of the law - certainly not a drive to "redeem" anything or anybody. That smacks of titanic hubris to use the law to enforce your idea of "redemption."
More push-back from Bill McKibben (h/t Legal Ins) - a guy with as much math and science in his background as Al Gore:
... inertia is what gives the climate cynics ground to operate. That's what we need to overcome, and at bottom that's a battle about data, but also about courage and hope. In the last year, we've rallied millions of people in almost every country to demand action on climate change, and to start building the world beyond fossil fuel. The truth will out.
Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books, including the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet." He's a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, a global grass-roots climate campaign. A longer version of this article can be read at tomdispatch.com
So science is about "cynicism" and "also about courage and hope"? Maybe now it is. See Post-Normal Science (h/t, Vanderleun). A quote:
Normal science made the world believe that scientists should and could provide certain, objective factual information…The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge - must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge.
How do we adjust to a world that is packed with narratives and lies? Not too difficult: be skeptical.
Saturday, February 27. 2010
Case in point: New York State. Competition is needed to try to keep politicians semi-honest.
Re medical care, from Andy McCarthy's post at NRO:
I'm glad Republicans have held firm, but let's not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.
Friday, February 26. 2010
Illo: h/t Theo
 Dr. Karasu: Every man is a sex addict (h/t, Insty). Count me in.
Related: Hourglass Figures Affect Men's Brains Like a Drug (h/t, Tiger)
Related fun: What's under your burka?
Related: College on how to perform a textbook BJ. Boring.
Secret turn-ons for women. Plus this:
Other secret turn-ons to feature in the top ten include grey hair, glasses and being a passionate supporter of a sports team.
The evolution of the college dorm: Slide show
An Orchestrated Campaign Against Toyota in Overdrive? Related in WSJ: Trial lawyers and toyota:
Forty billion dollars. That's roughly how much cash Toyota has on its balance sheet, a fat bogey for trial lawyers. Think this was not the animating purpose of the congressional hearings held this week?
Why does the O hate the Brits? Via John's post:
It is astonishing that any administration could make such a mess of both domestic and foreign policy in barely more than a year. One wonders whether we will have any allies left by the end of President Obama's term in January 2013.
SCOTT adds: See also Nile Gardiner's Telegraph column ("Even by the relentlessly poor standards of the Obama administration, whose doctrine unfailingly appears to be 'kiss your enemies and kick your allies,' this is a new low").
How do you shrink a city? Detroit
Best clear explanation of greenhouse gas theory I've seen, from a commenter to this piece at Am Thinker (below the fold and like totally safe for work)
Continue reading "Friday morning links"
Thursday, February 25. 2010
California Republicans are a minority. Start with that reality. Then see what allows a Republican challenger to a Democrat US Senate incumbent to win.
1. A disliked or tepid campaigner Democrat incumbent.
2. A liked or respected star-quality Republican challenger.
3. Dire economics impelling desire for change.
4. Deemed political chicanery by the incumbent.
5. Enough money to campaign in a big population and area state.
The shape of the Republican primary campaign, thus far, is lacking in taking advantage of favorable factors and is even frittering them away.
Continue reading "California Republican Senate Primary Playing Into Democrat Hands"
A reader has a good op-ed piece which has things in common with the Repub medical insurance ideas. The point being "Why should Washington run things?"
It's about time some different views got some public air time, if people aren't bored to death by the topic -
Surber: Rave reviews
Excellent: Rising star Paul Ryan (h/t, Gateway) -
 Now the obnoxious nanny idiots are targeting salt. What next? Ten years ago they told us to eat broccoli. Now they say broccoli contains carcinogens. Ten years ago they said to avoid fat. Now they say eat all the meat and fat you want, but avoid carbs. I say "Ignore them all." Food has little or nothing to do with health.
Charlie Munger on China
The next bubble: Carbon trading. As they say, how can the promise not to produce something which is invisible be a valuable commodity?
Al Gore peeks out his igloo and says nothing but untrue things.
The O's team already planning for 2012
Abortion debated, with civility
Obama's Rules of Engagement: Calling Lawyers for Permission to Kill Terrorists.
From Roger on Obamacare:
The issue of freedom is one that is too obvious too require commentary: if ObamaCare passes, you will be less free in about 87 different ways. You’ll be poorer, you’ll have less choice, and you’ll be subject to vastly more regulation and bureaucracy. It’s a horrible thought. The DMV coming to a doctor’s office near you.
A rant from Prelutsky: Searching for intelligent life on the left
I expect tricks like this from the warmists, but not from the CBO. Computer models?
Warmism at its height, just before the fall
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Cuban Doctors Sue Over 'Modern Form of Slavery'. "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more..."
Hurricane-Like Snowstorm Aims for Northeast...
Looks like another big dump for New England. This will please the News Junkie, who I believe suffers from a serious case of Skiing Addiction. (He loves the cold fresh powder and the fine wintry weather this global warming is bringing us.)
 I do not know the history of how government unions came to be, but I deplore them. Who are they defending those employees from? Their evil neighbors who pay their salaries and their benefits?
The days of fat-cat evil Capitalists oppressing workers are long gone. Private sector unionization is in the dusk of its history, but government unionization is growing by leaps and bounds. Can anyone imagine a unionized military?
In my view, public employee unionization should be illegal because their opponent, in effect, is the public. But there is the basic right to free assembly. At the very least, public employee unions should be prohibited from politics and political contributions: that seems corrupt by definition but, again, there are logical consistency and freedom issues here.
People have been thinking about the topic lately:
From Declining unions, increasing stranglehold:
As the latest BLS statistics reveal, more union members – 7.9 million – now work for the government than the 7.4 million union members working for companies in the private economy, which has five times more workers. This imbalance has profound consequences for all workers, and for democracy itself.
From Rick Moran's WHAT DO WE OWE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES?
We have allowed public employees to ascend to a privileged place - a pedestal that they were never intended to occupy by the Founders - to the point where their influence over politicians, especially at the state and local level, have made them a force unto themselves in growing the size of government. More public employees means more union members, which means more dues money, which translates into more political contributions to friendly politicians who will gladly repeat the cycle.
This vicious circle must be ended. The biggest reason is that it is bankrupting us.
At Reason, Class War: How public servants became our masters:
People who are supposed to serve the public have become a privileged elite that exploits political power for financial gain and special perks. Because of its political power, this interest group has rigged the game so there are few meaningful checks on its demands. Government employees now receive far higher pay, benefits, and pensions than the vast majority of Americans working in the private sector. Even when they are incompetent or abusive, they can be fired only after a long process and only for the most grievous offenses.
It’s a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results: Higher taxes, eroded public services, unsustainable levels of debt, and massive roadblocks to reforming even the poorest performing agencies and school systems. If this system is left to grow unchecked, we will end up with a pale imitation of the free society envisioned by the Founders.
Nearly 25% of all mortgages are underwater. What's the big deal? Is a home an investment, or a home? What is truly remarkable in life is to buy something - and to have it appreciate in value. That rarely happens.
100% of auto loans are underwater, and so is the vacation you took last year and put on the credit card. That new leather sofa too, the TV and the boat. And probably your life savings, compared to a few years ago.
For those headed for trouble because of job or income loss, however, I have nothing but sympathy... while I blame Washington: We need tax cuts instead of ever-higher taxes.
 Prager via Lizards:
For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-Christian values), followed by parents. Of course, government must also play a role, but it is ultimately accountable to God and it should do nothing to undermine parental authority.
For the left, the state and its government are the supreme authorities, while parental and divine authority are seen as impediments to state authority.
Can the Euro survive?
Cuba is great because...no MacDonalds
How crappy was Haiti before the earthquake?
Driscoll:
...from Walter Duranty to Pinch Sulzberger, Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich, the Times has a long history of being dazzled by the abstractions of totalitarianism, and thus being blinded from the workaday world of actually reporting the news.
How Stupid Do the Elites Think We Are?
How stupid do Swedish elites think the people are?
Climategate Meets the Law: Senator Inhofe To Ask for DOJ Investigation
Krauthammer video: Krauthammer: Obama's Health Plan "Is Really A Travesty Masquerading As An Outreach To The Republicans"
It's my health, it's my choice.
McCotter: The Crisis of Consent: Republicans Must NOT Abet Obama’s ShamWoW! Summit
Like we said: Will the White House demand that every business “justify” its price increases?
FAIL… White House Can’t Find GOP Health Care Bill That’s On Their Website
Brilliant analysis from Vandy:
Obamacare takes a long and detailed look at the current state of American health care and identifies those areas in which it is not yet fucked-up and closes all those unfucked-up loopholes in only 2,000 pages. Given the problem of having to fuck up still functioning elements of the health care system in all 50 states, Obamacare is a masterpiece of concision.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
"Contemporary mainline churches have confused the Blue social model with the Kingdom of God." Bingo.
One way to drive them out of business: Obama to Urge Oversight of Insurers’ Rate Increases. Hey, why not do the same with the cost of cars, and tuition...and the cost of government?
Are all narratives untrue? Jawa
Senators do not want Obamacare restrictions. Says Legal Insurr:
Obama's plan (and so too the House and Senate versions) is the worst of all worlds. It is a replica of the housing bubble, thrill for the first few years, and then the bill becomes due without any way to pay for it.
The trap. Q&O via Blue Crab:
Obama gets his moment recorded by the TV cameras no less. And mournfully he pronounces the Republicans as obstructionists who refused to negotiate in good faith as the great and wonderful Democrats have offered to do. And because of that, it is with a heavy heart and reluctantly he is forced to agree with the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reconciliation is the only route left open to them to do “what is right” for the American people.
Insty:
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT when U.N. “climate change” commissars are meeting on Bali — again. “Yet again, we are asked to believe the UN deserves special exemptions from its own preachings. Its conferees are jetting to Bali for the greater good of all the little folk, whose job is merely to pay the bills for such pleasures, and live with any resulting rationing and regulation. According to the Jakarta Post, some 1,500 people from 192 countries are expected to attend this shindig — where UNEP claims that envoys of some 140 governments will be present.” Somebody tell these people about Skype.
Getting rich off climate, Via Hot Air:
“According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States – and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency – demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market…
“‘Carbon developers’, many of them employed by large multinationals, travel the world in search of carbon reduction projects to sell, while firms of carbon accountants have been established to verify on the United Nations’ behalf that those reductions are real. The whole thing, though well intentioned, looks wide open to abuse and scams. Mr Schapiro’s account of the carbon trading market is obviously a sceptical one, and no doubt there are others that take a less cynical view. But I wonder what all the wide eyed climate change campaigners are going to say when the first scandals begin to break, still more what they’ll make of it when the whole thing turns out to be another giant asset bubble – if indeed the non production of carbon can be described as an asset.”
Monday, February 22. 2010
Related to our previous post, From Drudge:
Boehner: New Obama Plan Doubles Down on Failure, Puts Summit in Peril...
SWALLOW: White House Warns Republicans: We'll Pass It With 51 VOTES...
PROPOSAL SUMMARY USES WORD 'TAX' 35 TIMES...
'Increase in Fees on Brand Name Pharmaceuticals'...
Broaden 'Tax Base for High-Income Taxpayers'...
Orders 'Comprehensive Database' On Health Claims...
FORCED: 'Raises percent of income assessment that individuals pay if they choose not to become insured'...
BACKDOOR FIX: Healthcare 'Funds will be transferred to the Social Security Trust' if necessary...
White House Endorses Sen. Landrieu's 'Louisiana Purchase'...
President Obama’s proposals for health care legislation fiddles and fizzles, hardens disputes with opponents, excludes bridges to agreements, and ignores the root cause of overwhelming public unease. Rather than “change” he continues and exacerbates failure.
Summaries, inadequate, are available from the New York Times and Washington Post. The Washington Post, also, offers – more usefully -- the White House provided sketch of details. All leave out in-depth analysis.
Essentially, Obama’s proposals are compromises between the entirely Democrat House and Senate legislation. It actually increases some taxpayer and industry garnishments to pay for enlarged entitlements, adjusting or delaying some. Similarly, the imposed mandate on the states to fund enlarged Medicaid eligibility is delayed a few years but remains a fiscal time-bomb impacting all other state services and driving tax increases. The penalty on large employers who do not provide medical insurance is slightly eased, for the first 30 employees, but the penalty increased, and it is still a sub rosa “mandate” and economic and competitive burden. Some additional database measures are added to perhaps and marginally combat Medicare fraud.
In essence, the Obama proposals continue on the path of grossly enlarged federal government intrusion into and control of individual choices and states’ variations that fit their circumstances and resources.
Indeed, it goes further than before in adding wholesale federal control over insurance premiums, imposing rates, exploiting ignorant furor at large increases in individual coverage premiums by Wellpoint (Blue Cross) in California. The Associated Press provides, however, some of the facts: the individuals segment is deep in the red; it is unfair for the employer segment or other states’ insured to subsidize it; overall profits are 35th out of 53 industries in the Fortune 500 list. Obama’s proposal only deepens the cost pit for 90+% of insured, while driving private insurers out of business which impels a default to more government-provided and dictated, taxpayer-paid medical plans.
The Obama proposals are meant to bridge differences among Democrats in control of the House and Senate, so they can turn the small procedural loophole of “reconciliation” into an override of all other procedures and precedents, not to mention public opposition. Further, Obama does not mention elements of the House and Senate legislation like wholesale cuts to Medicare spending (primarily of provider reimbursements, already low, which would drive more to not take Medicare patients) thus leaving the cuts included as a false way to mask the enormous budgetary costs because such drastic cuts are politically unlikely to actually occur. Meanwhile, taxes on high earners are increased even further than in the House and Senate bills.
“Reconciliation”, purportedly, allows the House to accept the Senate’s bill. There’s reasonable vote-count doubt about that, as well as legal challenges. President Obama’s proposals are, in effect, a new bill to be agreed by the House and Senate that fiddles with a “reconciliation” ram-through. If the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides an estimate of the Obama adjustment proposals together with the remainders of the House and Senate bills, it should be evident that the costs will be much larger, especially if unrealistic ploys are identified and full implementation time periods are included. (See footnote, added)
Obama fails to address the fundamental opposition to vastly increased federal control over 1/6th of the US economy and the lives of 100% of Americans, while deepening the race to national bankruptcy.
Obama fails to address the cost-driver of excess defensive-medicine, by various measures 10-30% of medical spending, that providers use to avoid excessive tort liability. Democrats’ largest contributors and supporters, tort attorneys, are left immunized from impact. Similarly, the impact on rich union benefits – unions being the other largest Democrat contributor base -- is delayed and reduced.
Reductions in the ability to save pretax dollars for health care remain, via health savings accounts and cafeteria plans, reducing individual choice, rather than maintaining or spreading them to more. Taxpayers or insureds who don’t use or support it are still likely to fund abortions. Sponsors of legal immigrants are still able to avoid their promised financial responsibility for legal immigrants’ medical care. Insureds are still unable to choose benefit plans allowed by other states that better fit their needs and budgets.
Obama’s proposals are nothing more than a campaign ploy to appear reasonable but they actually emphasize and enlarge the distance between Democrats’ floundering take-overs and the alternatives or discreet incremental measures that are widely supported.
Obama’s proposals are a transparent and hole-filled veil over what most already recognize as ugly and unacceptable. And, it isn’t closing time, when vision is blurred or judgment desperate. The public isn’t befuddled, and imperiled Congressional Democrats recognize that.
Rather than score, Obama again demonstrates himself as a crassly partisan loser, “arrogant” in the words of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, when it comes to accomplishing anything beyond words, his words no longer masking his ideologic inability to be practical.
House Republican Leader John Boehner sums Obama’s proposals as an “infomercial,” to be tuned out:
The President has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits.
* The CBO just wrote that President Obama's proposals lack sufficient details to "score" (i.e., cost) it, and even if it did that scoring would take longer than this week, past the so-called TV infomercial "summit." How convenient for hollow proposals to have no relaible numbers. More "ramming" with hidden horns.
Rasmussen said on TV last night that 71% of Americans view government as a special interest group.
Who said Americans were stupid?
 George Washington: The man, the myth, the legend.
How to kill Cane Toads
Sol Stern: The Ramparts I Watched -Our storied radical magazine did transform the nation—for the worse.
Faux nostalgia for American manufacturing
Climategate: The World’s Biggest Story, Everywhere but Here
Related: Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels. Another "Woops, we goofed".
Pajamas: The glory of gridlock
Bolton: The O "not qualified" to be Pres
Beware the health care reform zombiecrats. Related, from Jules: 50 Votes In 60 Days! ROTFLMAO!
How the O has lost voters like me: Althouse. She quotes Chris Rock: "'He speaks so well' is some sh*t you say about ret**ded people that can talk." I think Ann A. was duped by her own wishes. Quite related: Was Chris Matthews born yesterday?
We have met the enemy, and it is the Anglo-Saxon media
If I had a nickel every time a conservative said "limited government" and didn't mean it, I'd be a very rich man.
Back from the dead? The John birch Society
An interesting legal challenge to the EPA
100 years of shale gas. That is plenty of time to get a lot of nuke plants up and running.
Der Spiegel takes a look at the Nazis
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