The Way My Brain Works

I clearly don't fit the elitist, left-wing mindset.

When I see that I am in debt, the first thing I do is not vastly increase my spending.

If I were a research scientist and someone had just leaked the fact that I had been apparently discussing with my colleagues ways to "hide" evidence that contradicted my theories (theories that were making me very famous - no simple feat for a nerdy researcher) and "tricks" to massage my research, the first thing I would do, if such language was simply being misread, would be to immediately release the raw data I had used, explain what I meant by "hide" and "trick" and why the use of the terms was actually innocuous while having a laugh by how they could indeed be misconstrued out of context...not admit that I had destroyed the raw data before anyone could validate my work.

If I try something, and it clearly does not work, I do not go around bragging about how well it had worked and, at the same time, try to get people to go along with letting me do the same thing again because the only reason it had not worked the first time was because I didn't try hard enough.

If people were worried that I had become too cozy, professionally, with a certain group after convincing many people that I would be open to all and not favor anyone in particular, I would likely try to reassure them that I was still objective and open by prominently mingling with other groups and publicly asking for input from other sources, not telling anyone complaining to shut up and get out of my way.

If I wanted to win a war (that I claimed was absolutely essential to win) that those trained and paid to know how to win wars had told me could only be won with a concerted, sustained, elevated level of effort, I would not give them a token elevation of effort at the same time I was telling them how I would soon retreat.

If I was concerned that people kept calling me a socialist, and I was not actually a socialist, I would not surround myself with communists and socialists, praise the communists that raised me and talk about how I had actively sought out their companionship, and hire people that do things like go around praising mass-murdering communists like Chairman Mao.

But that's just me.

Hot Market For QBs

As a favor to the non-footballists out there, I'll put the rest below the fold :)

Drawing All The Wrong Conclusions

When the New York Times finally weighed in on the global warming hoax being revealed, they did so with one fat finger firmly on the scale and, consequently, drew all the wrong conclusions about what it means that the left's latest scheme to destroy America has gone up in flames. Allow me to explain...

The scientists say that the e-mail messages, which have circulated on the Internet and which disclose the inner workings of a small network of climatologists who chart the planet’s temperature, have damaged the public’s trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet, just as many countries are poised to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions.

So when the 'research' they're using as "evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet" turns out to be manipulated and exaggerated, does the Times conclude that maybe the faked data showing warming is, in fact, questionable? No. As the 'researchers' themselves concluded that the data showing no warming must be wrong, not their theory, the Times concludes that the fact that it's been revealed that they're faking data and suppressing contrary evidence merely will "damage public trust" in the fakers...not in the failed theory itself (the theory, you'll recall, calls for massive warming and yearly Katrinas over the past decade as a result of skyrocketing CO2 emissions, but there has been no warming and, oh look, a whopping maelstrom of 3 low-key hurricanes this year). It doesn't cause the evidence to become shaky, it causes "the public" (aka flyover dittoheads) to lose trust in the "evidence", that would be the "evidence" that has been shown to be faked.

And they argue that scientists should re-evaluate the selection procedures used by some scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel that in 2007 concluded that humans were the dominant force driving warming and whose findings underpin international discussions over a new climate treaty.

Of course the Times fails to note that the absolute linchpin of the entire IPCC baloney report was the "hockey stick", the graph showing warming over the past century created by one of the exposed fakers using an algorithm designed to create a hockey stick shaped graph no matter what data was entered into the program. Mann, creator of the long-since-debunked "hockey stick", actually designed his program to suppress temperatures early and inflate them later, so no matter what actually happened in the real world, a hockey stick shape would emerge. It also fails to note that the guys busted by this leak were the ones controlling the scientific journals via pressure and intimidation.

A fierce debate over the significance of the hacked material erupted as soon as the e-mail messages and other documents surfaced on Web sites just over a week ago. Some see in the e-mail correspondence — which includes heated discussions about warming trends, advice on deleting potentially controversial e-mail messages and derisive comments about climate skeptics — evidence of a conspiracy to stifle dissenting views and withhold data from public scrutiny, or, as some have put it, “Climategate.”

Really? Heated discussion, email deletions, and derision towards "skeptics"? How about talk about "tricks" to "hide the decline" in temperatures? Isn't that much, MUCH more inflammatory than talk bashing their 'enemies'? How about the code used to force a hockey stick-shaped graph that contains the text marker "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!? (yes, the misspelling is in the original) Isn't that a little more damning than talk about deleting emails? Doesn't the examples the Times cite rather underwhelm its readers vs. the really damning stuff found?

Gavin A. Schmidt, a NASA climatologist involved in many of the e-mail exchanges, said that voluntarily disclosing more data would never satisfy the “very hard-bitten, distraught core” of climate skeptics.

"distraught"? By what? The fact that they keep being proven right year after year of no warming? Of course it wouldn't satisfy them that the faked data is real, because it would show that they're correct, which is, perhaps, why these fakers deleted the climate records they were holding and only kept their 'corrected' and 'modified' versions of the data. Is that what 'researchers' and 'scientists' do? Delete raw data and only keep their massaged data so that no one can ever check their work? Is that what they do? Do they refuse to respond to freedom of information requests?

Finally, questions have been raised about whether the e-mail messages indicated that climate scientists tried to prevent the publication of papers written by climate skeptics, which were described by the scientists in the e-mail messages as “garbage” and “fraud.”

Would an unbiased source, given this information, now have to conclude and state with absolute certainty that "there is no consensus"? I think so.

Officials with Britain’s national climate office have defended the integrity of the climate unit’s work, noting that the warming trend it has measured is largely replicated by separate groups at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What conclusion do you draw from this? Item 1 is that these guys have been caught fudging data to make it fit their theory (as opposed to what scientists do, that is, adjust theories based on observation). Item 2 is that "separate groups" have come to the same conclusions as the conclusions that we now know were forced and fudged by these guys. So the conclusion we're supposed to draw is that it's OK that they fudged their data because they got "the right answer" and NOT that we should similarly doubt these other groups for getting the same answer as the guys that we know used fudged data and processes??

And even some environmental campaigners believe that the disclosures have damaged calls for climate action. George Monbiot, a British environmentalist and author, excoriated some of the climate unit’s scientists and many of his fellow activists on Wednesday in a column in The Guardian.

“No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science,” he wrote. “We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.”

I believe the term for this would be "a day late and a dollar short", Mr. Monbiot. The time to question the data was when it was first presented, questioned, and they refused to provide their documentation, NOT now only after it is revealed that they were fudging their work and destroying original data.

“We won the war — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and climate and energy legislation is near the top of the U.S. agenda,” Dr. Curry said. “Why keep fighting all these silly battles and putting ourselves in this position?"

And, finally, the Times finds no words to rebut this monstrous statement. "We won the war"?? Yes, based on 'research' that has just been exposed as a fraud. Obey-Won would be so proud. "We won, we will trump you on that." Apparently one of the tenets of the Global Warming religion has been revealed as one Michael Crichton tried to expose - The end justifies the means.

Move Along, Nothing To See Here

Pay no attention to the criminals behind the voting booth curtain:

Christopher Edwards, a former Nevada ACORN executive, received a sentence of three years probation and a $500 fine today for his role in an illegal voter registration conspiracy, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

In August the former ACORN field director pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime of compensation for registration of voters. The newspaper reported

The attorney general’s office said Edwards organized and operated a quota system called “blackjack” or “21+” through which the group paid canvassers based on the number of voter registration cards they collected each day. The canvassers were to gather at least 20 completed cards daily and anyone who turned in 21 or more would be given an extra $5.

Edwards has agreed to testify against Amy Busefink, a former regional director for ACORN who allegedly participated in the scheme.

ACORN the group is also charged in the case. The trial is scheduled for April 19 next year.

Your Random Saturday

Andrew Tallman pointing out the obvious to the oblivious:

Teaching introductory logic for ten years made me vividly aware of the low average quality of reasoning among college students. It also showed me how little improvement can realistically be accomplished by only one semester’s training in the art of thinking clearly. By all rights, then, I should have severely pessimistic expectations about public discourse in this country. Nevertheless, whether I suffer from my own strain of bad induction or just unquenchable naïveté, pandemic outbreaks of illogical memes still catch me by surprise.

That’s why I’ve been so shocked at the widespread assertion that a national mandate requiring individuals to carry health insurance is legitimate (and even Constitutional) because we already require everyone to purchase auto insurance. There’s just one small error this idea seems to forget: the federal government does not actually have a law requiring individual drivers to carry such insurance. Only states do...

Additionally, you should note that no state requires you to have liability insurance until you positively engage in some enhanced risk activity, like driving, performing surgery, or opening a restaurant. Even though any of us at any time could harm another person (bicycling, playing softball or even just tripping on a crowded escalator), no one is required by law to carry bodily motion insurance...

Furthermore, the actual car coverage levels required by most states are extremely low. Although I suppose some people are satisfied with $25,000/$50,000 coverage (a common benchmark), most drivers understand that $100,000/$300,000 is much more prudent. But if the more robust protections are so obviously smart, why aren’t they required? It’s simple. Because all of the states recognize the need to balance the wisdom of carrying insurance against the restraint all levels of government must exercise when infringing upon the core value of individual liberty.

Since the right to property (in this case to not pay insurance premiums) is so fundamental in our system, it must be violated only for the most extreme of reasons and only to the most humble of extents. Thus, basing health care reform on this same pattern would require at most only some sort of minimum catastrophic coverage. Suffice it to say that current proposals which cover every form of health care down to the most routine are not modeled on the same recognition of liberty and property rights.

So, having taken a more diligent look at whether mandatory automobile insurance justifies the imposition of health insurance, we now have a much better sense of its validity. In order to make the comparison justify current health care proposals, Congress (not the states) would have to currently require that all people (regardless of personal wealth or actual car ownership) owned an insurance policy provided by Congress itself that covered routine maintenance, periodic breakdown, and collision repair to their own cars, even ones they acquire with pre-existing defects (like from a junkyard).

Should we be worried about the dollar (since Obama and Bernanke aren't)? Larry Kudlow says 'you betcha':

Obama has no plan to stabilize King Dollar, and the Asian economies don’t like it. China’s top banking regulator said the Federal Reserve’s money-creating binge was the main cause of “massive speculation.” Similar sentiments came from top officials in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.

And while Ben Bernanke tried to calm dollar worries during his recent speech at the New York Economics Club, it was clear that the greenback’s value ranks low on his priority list. Nothing but dollar lip service from the Fed head.

Because of the slumping dollar, U.S. import prices have jumped 10 percent at an annual rate over the past three months, and nearly 6 percent excluding energy. This is a tax hike on consumers and businesses, and it could depress holiday sales. It’s reminiscent of the gigantic energy shock of 2008 that was caused by the dollar’s collapse...

President Obama did talk about entering free-trade discussions. But his Commerce secretary, Gary Locke, threw cold water on the idea in a Singapore speech. He said trade agreements have to wait because of a crowded U.S. legislative agenda. (Hat tip: James Pethokoukis.) He may have a point: The South Korean free-trade bill has been languishing for several years in the Democratic Congress.

Then there’s the massive U.S. health-care takeover plan, which is now estimated at $3 trillion. This additional dollar depressant will tax the patience of China, Japan, and other would-be buyers of our massive debt creation.

Your Random Friday

Baloney sandwiches still available in the Obama aisle, courtesy of David Limbaugh:

Just to illustrate the speciousness of Obama's preposterously unprovable claim that saved jobs are measurable, you should know that two administration financial officials, Ed DeSeve and Jared Bernstein, were unable to say how many of the 640,329 jobs were saved and how many were created. It's also noteworthy that Obama promised in January that more than 90 percent of the stimulus jobs would be in the private sector, but more than half -- 325,000 -- were in education alone...

Of all the words Obama uttered, though, nothing came close in sheer audacity to his announcement that he had planned "a forum at the White House on jobs and economic growth ... to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again."

Isn't this the precise combination of words Obama used to sell his stimulus package in the first place: "creating jobs to get the economy moving again"? The answer is yes.

Mona Charen blasts the 'pass anything' Democrats:

So the strategy on crafting sweeping legislation that will profoundly alter one-sixth of the U.S. economy in the midst of the worst recession in 20 years is: Don't stress about the fine print. Just pass something!...

The Democrats also seem confident that -- no matter how sloppy or unseemly the process of getting to passage may be -- voters will be pleased with health care reform after it becomes law.

This, too, is a leap of faith. It requires a stubborn indifference to the steadily accumulating polling data showing that voters -- particularly the all-important independents -- are souring on health reform and are worried about overspending in Washington...

The House-approved bill contains, among other things, $170 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage; $56.7 billion in cuts to home health care aids; $42.3 billion in cuts to the prescription drug program; and $5.3 billion in cuts to rehabilitation facilities. If these remain in the final bill, only two outcomes are possible. Either the cuts will not materialize, in which case Democrats will have to explain why they irresponsibly deepened an already punishing debt; or the cuts will bite, in which case the anger of older voters will make Rostenkowski's experience seem like a ticker tape parade.

I think she's missing a small part of their strategy, though, a small part that is the crux of the whole deal...they don't need to convince everyone that socialized medicine is great, only about 4% of the people. They are already paying off somewhere around 48% of the population who pay no income taxes. Buy off another 4% and the game, and the country, is over.

How Stimulating

Hope this doesn't keep you from being able to give some thanks tomorrow:

House Republicans asked the Obama administration to stop touting the number of jobs “saved or created” by the $787 billion economic stimulus law, citing widespread reports that the data are inaccurate. They requested a response from the administration before the Dec. 3 White House “Jobs Summit.”

“The inaccuracy of the job creation and retention claims posted on the Administration’s website, www.recovery.gov, has not prevented administration officials from touting this misleading and inaccurate number as evidence that the president’s stimulus spending package is succeeding even as the unemployment rate continues to rise,” House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, who is charged with overseeing the stimulus plan...

Criticism of the oversight and reporting of recovery act funds and their effectiveness has intensified in the last week. News reports starting on Nov. 16 showed that the Recovery.gov Web site listed federal funds purportedly spent and jobs purportedly created in congressional districts that do not exist, such as the 86th district of Rhode Island.

That same week, the Government Accountability Office released a report showing that only 22 percent of the recovery money had been spent in the first fiscal year, while highlighting several reporting errors, such as 9,247 reports listing a total of $1 billion spent and no jobs created or saved.

That contrasted with 3,978 reports that showed more than 50,000 jobs were created or saved, despite zero funding...

The nationwide unemployment average has reached 10.2 percent despite the Obama administration’s claims that if the stimulus bill passed it would keep unemployment below 8 percent.

Since the stimulus bill was enacted in February, the United States has lost 2.8 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Those job losses increased in 29 states last month, according to the BLS...

Issa wrote a letter on Nov. 13 to Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, asking if Devaney could certify as “accurate and auditable” the number of jobs created or saved that the administration was touting. Devaney responded in writing and in testimony before the House that he could not certify the numbers.

During a hearing last Thursday of the House Oversight Committee, Devaney essentially agreed with Issa’s statement about counting the jobs.

“Mr. Devaney, you’re the most honest man I know,” said Issa. “Without a whole lot of in between, shouldn’t we be more conservative and say, ‘Look, this is what the reports are. We’re scrubbing it. This is a new system. It has its problems. We hope at least they’re reporting the dollars right and we have no idea whether those people have the ability to calculate the full-time jobs equivalent but we’re going to get to the bottom of it. Wouldn’t that be a fairer way to put it?”

Devaney said, “I like that statement.”

Take a peek over at the Kiddy Table...they're the ones that are going to pay the most for what Obey-Won and the Debt-i Knights running Congress are doing...and many of you voted for them to do just that. I'm thankful I didn't. How about you?

Heh

The Real Inconvenient Truth

IBD:

For years, noted scientists and other global warming skeptics have been accused of being on the take, their research tainted and funded by grants from Big Oil and other fossil-fuel interests.

Now, it turns out, it's the warm-mongers who are fudging the numbers and concealing the inconvenient truth...

In one e-mail sent to Michael Mann, director of Penn State University's Earth System Science Center, Raymond Bradley, a climatologist at the University of Massachusetts, and Malcolm Hughes, a professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona's Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research, Jones speaks of the "trick" of filling in gaps of data in order to hide evidence of temperature decline:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Hide the decline? "Keith" is Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit, also involved in the bogus manipulation of data.

An e-mail from scientist Mick Kelly to Jones also speaks of manipulating data to hide the fact that Earth is actually cooling: "I'll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again, as that's trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent coldish years."...

Trenberth also says: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't." He goes on to say that "the data is surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

Well, that much is true. We have reported on information obtained by Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat on the inaccuracy of temperature-monitoring stations around the country and the screwy places these scientific stations are located. Daily temperature data are gathered by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center and the 1,221 or so weather observation stations it monitors around the country.

Watts and a few volunteers decided to check a few of them out. They found one station in Forest Grove, Ore., that stands just 10 feet from an air-conditioning exhaust vent. Another station in Roseburg, Ore., is on a rooftop near an AC unit. In Tahoe, Calif., one is near a drum where trash is burned.

When bad numbers aren't enough to show global warming, it's okay to just make them up. Hansen, the NASA scientist who began the climate scare, was himself caught fudging the numbers when he declared October 2008 the warmest October on record.

This despite the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's registering of 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranking it the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So how did Hansen claim it was the warmest October ever? As Christopher Booker wrote in the U.K.'s Telegraph: "The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running."...

As it turns out, Mann is the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" graph used in reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...

Canadian researchers and others have thoroughly debunked the hockey stick, finding serious problems with the study, including calculation errors, data used twice and a faulty computer program that produced a hockey stick out of whatever data were fed into it.

Their study also totally ignored major events such as the widely recognized Medieval Warm Period (about A.D. 800 to 1400) and the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1600 to 1850)...

Let Me Guess - The Public Is To Blame?

I have to conclude that the fact that about 80% of the citizens of the United States no longer believe Obey-Won can only mean one thing to the press - that they're stupid, need more prime time speeches on every network, need more of their businesses to be run by the Won and his donors, and have too many rights. MRC reports on their puzzlement:

Long after conservatives and the American people figured it out, CBS on Monday night came to the realization President Barack Obama has a “credibility” problem fueled by the “disconnect” between Obama's promise to reduce the deficit as he pushes for massive new spending. Back in August, the CBS Evening News denigrated the town hall questioners as “unruly protests”...

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide this transcript of the story on the Monday, November 23 CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: Turning to politics now, is the honeymoon over? Though President Obama has been in office less than a year, many Americans are growing disenchanted with his handling of the enormous problems he and the country are facing – from unemployment to health care to Afghanistan. His poll numbers are sliding, and at least one poll, Gallup, shows his job approval rating has fallen for the first time below 50 percent. Chip Reid is at the White House tonight. And, Chip, are there signs of strain apparent at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days?

CHIP REID: There sure are, Katie. The President is getting battered on everything from health care to the economy to foreign policy. Some polls show Americans are increasingly questioning his credibility. It's a speech the President has given over and over-

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA Our economy's growing again for the first time in more than a year.

REID: -emphasizing the good news and promising to fix the bad...

REID: But with unemployment over 10 percent and expected to rise for months to come, he offered no new ideas. He says next week's White House jobs summit will break new ground, but critics are already dismissing the summit as a gimmick. To make matters worse, the American people are increasingly questioning the President's credibility. He says the stimulus has saved or created 640,000 jobs, but only seven percent of Americans believe it has created any [CBS News poll]. And he's repeatedly promised health care reform will not increase the deficit, but a mere 19 percent believe him [Quinnipiac poll].

JOHN DICKERSON, CBS NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: The more he talks about these hard issues, the less people are buying it.

REID: Dickerson says for many Americans there's a basic disconnect – a President who promises to trim the budget but only seems to want to spend and spend.

DICKERSON: People want something to be done about the deficit, and here he's talking about spending a trillion more dollars.

REID: All this comes as the so-called debt bomb is getting ready to explode. The national debt is now more than $12 trillion – simply paying the interest on the debt is expected to soar from $200 billion to $700 billion by 2019. The President is also suffering a credibility gap on foreign policy. He called his eight-day Asia trip a "job strategy" but came home with little to show for it. Highly respected foreign policy analyst Leslie Gelb calls the trip "amateur hour" for failing to get deals locked in before the President left home. On Afghanistan tonight, the President holds his ninth meeting with his war council, a full month after Dick Cheney accused him of dithering over the decision – and the President says it's still several weeks away...

It's almost as if the answers are all right there, isn't it? IBD picks up the thread:

The closer the Democratic Congress' radical health package gets to enactment, the less popular it becomes...

The newest Rasmussen poll finds public support down to 38% — falling for the first time below 41%. Of the 56% who now oppose the plan, 43% are "strongly opposed." Among senior citizens, 60% are against it.

People clearly don't believe the hype about this plan. Only 16% say they think it will lower health care costs — one of its well-advertised purposes — with 60% saying it will increase costs. And 54% think quality of care will decline. Rasmussen also found that 63% want a guarantee that no one be forced to change his or her coverage. That's the wrong question; the onerous new regulations will change the world of health insurance even without a public option...

Don't Hold Your Breath

Any conservatives, small government proponents, or 'right wing talkers' holding their breath waiting for apologies from the fever swamps of the left now that this news has come out?

A Kentucky census worker found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with "fed" scrawled on his chest killed himself but staged his death to make it look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday.

Bill Sparkman, 51, was found Sept. 12 with a rope around his neck near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of the Daniel Boone National Forest in southeastern Kentucky. Authorities said his wrists were loosely bound, his glasses were taped to his head and he was gagged.

Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said an analysis found that "fed" was written "from the bottom up." He was touching the ground, and to survive "all Mr. Sparkman had to do at any time was stand up," she said.

"Our investigation, based on evidence and witness testimony, has concluded that Mr. Sparkman died during an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide," Rudzinski said.

Authorities said Sparkman alone manipulated the suicide scene. Rudzinski said he "told a credible witness that he planned to commit suicide and provided details on how and when."...

Anti-government sentiment was initially one possibility in the death. Authorities said Sparkman had discussed perceived negative views of the federal government in the county.

Given their level of invective:

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan immediately fingered “Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts.” Author Richard Benjamin acknowledged that the area where Sparkman died is an infamous drug haven, but zeroed in on “anti-government bile” as his favored culprit. Benjamin singled out GOP Rep. Michele Bachman of Minnesota for her criticism of ACORN and the Census.

“Progressive” talk show host Stephanie Miller blamed the Tea Party movement for inciting violence. Echoing the unhinged liberal base, New York magazine indicted conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh, “conservative media personalities, websites, and even members of Congress.”

you might think a few apologies would be in order.

Well, like the falsely accused Duke students, you'd probably be wrong.

The tolerance, understanding, thoughtfulness, and due diligence of the 'grown ups' and 'innocent until proven guilty except for people we don't like' crowd is simply blinding.

Look What's STILL Considered Headline News

Unreal.

10-21 featured headline: Obama: Afghan troop decision possible before vote result

11-9 featured headline: Sources say Obama near decision on Afghanistan troops

11-13 featured headline: Obama: decision soon on troops for Afghanistan

Today?

11-24 featured headline: White House: Obama Afghanistan decision 'within days'

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney was lambasted by the left and by the press for saying the following back in mid-October as the leftwing press complimented the Won's "careful deliberations":

"The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," the former vice president said. "It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity."

Your Random Saturday

So. Ummm....

Yeah.

I got nothin'.

Sorry about that.

Hey, long weekend for many next week, extra long Random Saturday next week! Probably even a Random Friday to read after you get back from the Black Friday madness and need to unwind.

Talk About A Chilly Reception

Hmmm...seems someone (an insider? ex-insider? flat-out hacker outsider? EXXONMOBIL?!) hacked the system of a major global warming pusher, copied a bunch of files and emails, and the published them for the world to read. The Algore crowd has a lot of explaining to do...

cuz...

you see...

the emails discuss things like hiding data that shows declining temperatures, "tricks" to replace missing or inconvenient data with more 'favorable' data, and claims that, because the data doesn't show warming, they think the data must be wrong - not their theories.

Watch for this in the MSM...or it's absence.

Somewhere Michael Crichton is smiling.

You Gotta Wonder

You really have to wonder about their sanity when you read liberal press and hear liberal pundits and more pundits reporters when they talk about how dead the Republicans and conservatism is and then actually look at polls.

Obey-Won's approval rating? Toilet:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President...

Overall, 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove.

Tax cutting? Overwhelming:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 62% believe tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool.

Republican brand? Rising and holding:

Republican candidates maintain a six-point advantage over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Hmmm...why do Dems keep voting for people that want to give them handouts instead of letting them keep what they earn? Wonder no more:

Data from Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys shows that 15.0% of Democrats in the workforce are currently unemployed and looking for a job. Among adults not affiliated with either major party, that number is 15.6% while just 9.9% of Republicans are in the same situation.

Eye-popping stuff if you can get past the Debt-i mind tricks of Obey-Won and the media.

Oh, The Hypocrisy!

The increasingly desperate, irrelevant, and ridiculous Newsweek (their editor is the one that called Obama "a god" you might recall) tried to defend using a photo of Sarah Palin from a running magazine on their cover to a skeptical Matt Lauer. It didn't go well and raised more questions than it answered:

MATT LAUER: Tina Brown is editor-in-chief of the Web site The Daily Beast, Dan Klaidman is the managing editor for Newsweek magazine. Good morning to both of you.

TINA BROWN, THE DAILY BEAST: Good morning.

DAN KLAIDMAN, NEWSWEEK: Good morning...

LAUER: Tina, let me ask you a question that's probably impossible to answer, but do you imagine that there was a meeting somewhere at Newsweek with these smart people, where there were a few chuckles as they chose this photo and said, you know what, for all she's trying to do, this is gonna cut her off at the knees a little bit?

BROWN: Well, I certainly hope so.

LAUER: You hope that was the case?

BROWN: No, I don't think that...

Oops, sorry, told the truth there for a moment. This would the "objective news media" that you hear people like Rex Smith defending all the time. Right. This isn't Mad Magazine or a partisan monthly, this is supposed to be Newsweek - not so long ago they were actually a respected news magazine. Now? Not so much. It doesn't help when it becomes obvious to everyone that they have very obvious axes to grind.

LAUER: But do you, should she be doing this?

KLAIDMAN: Look it depends on what her true ambition is? If her true ambition is to be a leader in the Republican Party - no. What she ought to be doing is going to the Council On Foreign Relations or the Detroit Economic Club and giving serious, substantive speeches. Instead she goes around and she [is] sort of enveloped in this, in this soap opera atmosphere, this circus atmosphere. It's not helpful if she wants to be considered serious.

Really? Maybe you're right, Dan. Maybe Jay Leno, David Letterman, or Howard Stern can ask Obama his opinion the next time he's on their show, hmm?

What A Waste

There's a good reason why adults today are unhappily telling their children that, for the first time in many generations, the world they are leaving them is not better than the one their parents left for them. Instead of doing something about it, of course, the Democratic Debt-i Knights with Obey-Won at the controls are putting the "metal to the pedal and the thing to the floor":

We knew something was funny when the White House claimed that 640,000 to 1 million jobs had been created from this year's stimulus. What we didn't know was that it would turn into a massive fraud.

Not only have 640,000 new jobs not been created from the stimulus — an absurd claim, given the economy's loss of nearly 4 million payroll positions this year — but it now seems that even the jobs themselves are fictional...

The "relatively few" errors are in fact thousands in number. But that's the pernicious place we find ourselves today — a public official defending shoddy accounting that looks an awful lot like fraud to the tune of billions of dollars.

One example: the 15th Congressional District of Arizona, where 30 jobs were salvaged with $761,420 in spending, according to Recovery.gov, the official government Web site. As ABC News reports: "There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."

States as diverse as Kansas, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Minnesota and West Virginia also reported phony jobs.

Stimulus jobs were also reported in 35 congressional districts in Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories. The problem: None of those jurisdictions even has congressional districts.

All told, according to the useful Web site Watchdog.org, some $6.4 billion was spent to "create or save" 30,000 jobs in phantom districts. That comes out to about $225,000 per nonexistent job. And that's only what's been found so far.

The Washington Examiner's bogus-job count is even higher — at 75,343, a figure likely to climb as more are discovered.

Some cases were egregious. California's state university system took in $268.5 million in stimulus funds, claiming it "saved" 26,000 jobs. It has since admitted that few, if any, jobs were really at risk...

We said from the start that the stimulus and TARP programs would be an invitation to fraud, waste and abuse. Sadly, this has proved true. Yet no one is likely to suffer so much as a reprimand.

The Left Is Officially Out Of Ideas

How else do you explain this:

UN: Fight climate change with free condoms

What Was Old Is New Again

To steal a phrase from the race-baiting left - I have to wonder if, when people say 'racist', they mean 'anti-socialist'. Or, as put not-at-all subtly in the comic The Knight Life: Do you think, when people say 'racist', they mean something else? In other words, is the far left simply trying to defend socialism by hiding criticism of it in ludicrous and false accusations of racism?*

A very interesting series of columns from Svetlana Kunin are being published in IBD. Here's an excerpt from the third - you can click through and then see the first two, also:

Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States.

They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism.

"Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective, not the individual, is the basis of society.

Revolutionaries in Russia did not go around boasting about destruction; they made inspiring speeches about fairness, equality, justice and the greater good. After securing power and their own access to material goods, government officials decided what to give and take from the masses, according to their definition of what is good...

Why do people born into a free society accept a failed 100-year-old ideology? It seems Americans are simply unaware of modern history. They don't know the theory behind slogans such as "fairness and equality" and "sacrifice for the collective good," much less how it works when implemented. They buy into old utopian slogans masquerading as new progressive ideals for "Hope and Change."

In the USA, people move up and down the economic ladder all the time. In Western Europe, a milder form of a socialist-democratic political system resulted in higher unemployment, less innovation and less social mobility compared with the U.S. European youth face a continuing decline in their standard of living, as they are burdened with an unsustainable welfare state.

In the USSR, China, North Korea and Cuba, a much harsher form of socialism led to mass murder and mass misery under the banner of "sacrificing for the collective good," "fairness and equality" and service to the state...

Compare North Korea to South Korea, East Germany to West Germany before the fall of the wall — these are examples of the same people living under two different systems: socialism vs. capitalism...

In the USSR, they taught us in school that socialism is good and capitalism is bad. That they now teach the same in American schools I find strange.

I don't recall anyone trying to explain away the Koreas or Germanys to defend socialism. Were the East Germans just lazier than their free counterparts in the West? Are North Koreans just unluckier with their crops than those in the South? When you have such perfect comparisons, how do you explain the difference apart from freedom vs. socialism? In both cases you're talking about one country, one people, who were unnaturally divided. The country itself, physically, not so different from one side of an arbitrary line than the other. One side socialist, one side free. One prospered, one starved and faded. If it's not the economic system - what is it?

==
* D'uh, of course they are, it was a rhetorical question.

Obama And Holder Call 9-11 Trial Opponents Cowards

Great. Now along with being the cause of all of America's problems and racists - now the Won's political opponents are cowards for opposing aggrandizing the $@#$% that planned the 9-11 attacks and giving him the same Constitutional rights as an American citizen acting within the United States instead of a terrorist operating in a foreign nation in violation of the Geneva Convention. That's right, if you don't think that sweetcheeks should be tried just like a US citizen accused of breach of contract in Queens, you're a coward:

Attorney General Eric Holder is defending his decision to put the professed Sept. 11 mastermind on trial in New York — and urging critics of the plan not to cower in the face of terrorists...

"I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is," Holder says in a written version of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "I'm not scared of what (Mohammed) will have to say at trial — and no one else needs to be either."...

"We need not cower in the face of this enemy," Holder says...

"I think this notion that we have to be fearful that these terrorists possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up and exacting swift justice, I think that has been a fundamental mistake," Obama said in an interview with CNN...

"We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power — civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others — to win," Holder says.

Well, except for the military, law enforcement, and intelligence stuff.

They just don't get it, or Americans, at all, do they?

I mean, it's not like the way we dealt with the first WTC bombing affected anything, right?

Dipsticks.

America Sucks

What else could the dipstick possibly think?

What part of: 'The President of the United States does not bow to foreign leaders' does he not understand?

Most amateur, unprepared, unprofessional president evah!

I mean, the worst part is that he did this after getting raked over the coals to bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia.

=

Oh, bravo, Cassandra. Bravo.

--

Hot Air has a pile of photos of world leaders that somehow managed to restrain themselves from bowing nearly head to floor, something Obama couldn't manage.

--

The hits keep on coming, including from Miss Manners!

But symbolic subservience to a foreign ruler is worse. When Miss Manners sees American citizens delighting in bowing or curtseying to royalty, she tries to remind herself that they are just being silly, not treasonous. When an American official does it, we can only hope it was because he was noticing that his own shoelace was undone -- and not that he recognizes the divine right of kings in general, or the authority over us of that king in particular.

(tip by Cassandra)

--

Meanwhile, an unnamed, senior Obama administration official told the Politico.com news site that the president had simply been observing protocol.

Horsecarp. I refer you to the photos referenced above.

--

Dick Cheney - "There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."

Uneconomical Renewable Power Gets Less Economical

Hard to believe, but it looks like the solar power pipe dream (for now) is poised to become even more uneconomical compared to, well, every fossil fuel and nice, clean nuclear. Enviro news is reporting:

Solar thermal projects are sprouting in the Southwest like desert flowers after a rain, spurred by the Obama administration's energy agenda and state renewable mandates. But a showdown over their water needs could now preclude the cheapest technologies.

Yesterday, after months of pressure from environmental groups and some concerned residents, one solar project developer backed out of controversial plans to buy rights to a billion gallons a year of local farmers' water.

The water was needed to supply two proposed solar thermal plants in Nevada's parched Amargosa Valley, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Over the plants' lifetime, climate change promises to only worsen water shortages in the region.

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Power Complex will cover more than 6 square miles of California's Mojave Desert. The project will use an air-cooling technique that requires 30 times less water than traditional wet cooling technologies, according to a spokesman. It is the first of more than 100 proposed solar thermal projects.

The decision to switch to more expensive "dry cooling" technology will cut the project's water demand by 90 percent, the developer, Solar Millennium LLC, said yesterday. The German-backed company is a subsidiary of Solar Millennium AG.

Josef Eichhammer, Solar Millennium LLC's CEO, said in a statement that design change should speed the approval process so that construction of the plants, valued at $1.5 billion each, might begin late next year, in time to receive federal economic stimulus backing.

Costs go up, production down
But the change will also increase the costs of the project and reduce the energy it produces, perhaps by 5 percent, according to project spokesman Bill Keegan...

But other companies see dry cooling as prohibitively expensive. According to a Department of Energy case study, dry cooling might increase the costs of electricity by 7 to 9 percent and reduce the power output by 5 percent, making the technology less attractive to utility purchasers.

---

In other enviro-news:

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) slammed major climate legislation yesterday and sharply criticized cap and trade as a concept.

The Virginia Democrat, one of a handful of potential swing voters on an ultimate global warming package, said he would not support climate legislation sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that just passed through the Environment and Public Works Committee. Webb has criticized cap and trade before, but largely has been quiet this year about his intentions.

"It's an enormously complex thing to implement," said Webb at a press conference with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). "There are a lot of people in the middle between the 'cap' and the 'trade' that are going to make a lot of money."

"That piece of legislation right now is something that is going to cause a lot of people a lot of concern," he said.

His remarks are the latest blow for Democratic leaders trying to find 60 votes to push a global warming bill across the finish line in the U.S. Senate. Webb is considered one of 25 fence sitters on a climate bill in the chamber...

---

Throwing (very) cold water on the current, normal climate shifts we're seeing as being 'unprecedented':

Six months is all it took to flip Europe’s climate from warm and sunny into the last ice age, researchers have found...

Previous research had suggested the change might have taken place over a longer period — perhaps about 10 years...

His findings, published at a recent conference, reinforce a series of studies suggesting that the earth’s climate is highly unstable and can flip between warm and cold very rapidly with the right trigger...

What caused such a dramatic event? The most likely trigger is the sudden emptying of Lake Agassiz, an inland sea that once covered a swathe of northern Canada.

It is thought to have burst its banks, pouring freezing freshwater into the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, disrupting the Gulf Stream, whose flows depend on variations in temperature and salinity...

Other research has shown that rapid climate flips are normal. In its 4.5-billion-year history, the earth has experienced at least four main ice ages, of which the last, the Quaternary, is still continuing.

Within each ice age, however, there are periods when ice advances or retreats, and in the past 60,000 years alone the earth is thought to have warmed or cooled by up to 7C at least 20 times. The current interglacial period has lasted about 10,000 years...

---

Finally, sense continues to intrude on Algore's dream:

Less than half the [British] population believes that human activity is to blame for global warming, according to an exclusive poll for The Times.

The revelation that ministers have failed in their campaign to persuade the public that the greenhouse effect is a serious threat requiring urgent action will make uncomfortable reading for the Government as it prepares for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen.

Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third (32 per cent) believe that the link is not yet proved; 8 per cent say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 per cent say that the world is not warming.

Rats

Sigh. Just when I thought we were coming up on the "two minute drill" it turns out we're far from done.

Union Thugs Target Student Volunteers

Well, well, well...isn't this an interesting development? You've got Obey-Won telling his union thugs to keep up the good work intimidating his political opponents, he's met with their head more than anyone else, his dimwitted assistant told them that it was his turn to "dance" with them since they "brought him to the party", etc etc...

Then Obey-Won puts together a show for America's schoolkids, asking them to figure out what they can do to help him succeed and starts pushing "volunteering".

So what happens when the two collide? Union troubled by Eagle Scout project in Allentown

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path...

Balzano said Saturday the union is still looking into the matter and might cut the city a break...

I'm seeing a Boy Scout with a couple of slashed tires on his bike...if he's lucky.

Anyone?

Can anyone explain why this is in the Amazon "Sci-Fi Sale"?

It's Simple

I'm not even going to bother to read this article, because it can't have much merit with such a dunderheaded headline:

The media vs. Sarah Palin
Is sicking an army of fact-checkers on Palin's memoir "Going Rogue' just good journalism — or "politically motivated" overkill?

Let's answer this foolish question with a simple question:

Would the media do this to almost anyone else, or any Democrat at all
Even debating the point is laughable, read it if you must, I won't.

MSNBC Busted Using Fake Palin Pics As If Real

Tsk, tsk, tsk:

On Friday's edition of Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan featured fake photos of Sarah Palin during a mocking segment on why Americans are fascinated with the former vice presidential candidate. While listing the show’s top ten reasons, Ratigan showed a doctored photo of Palin’s head on the bikini-clad body of a woman holding a weapon.

The host never admitted or addressed the fact that his network was passing off counterfeit pictures to his viewers. Earlier in the segment, Ratigan displayed an image of Palin in a short, black mini-skirt. This photo is also not real.

At least someone at the joke of a "news" network had the sense to be somewhat ashamed enough to apologize:

DYLAN RATIGAN: Before we begin this one, I want to apologize to Governor Palin and all of our viewers. On Friday, in a very misguided attempt to have some fun in advance of Sarah Palin’s upcoming book Going Rogue, our staff mistakenly used some clearly photoshopped images of Ms. Palin without any acknowledgment. And on behalf of the show, I would like to say that this was completely unacceptable. We should have never used those photos in the first place and you can rest assured we spent the weekend and Friday afternoon taking measures to make sure it will never happen again. I apologize.

What Will This Do To The Unemployment Rate?

Napolitano Announces Obama Administration Plan to Give Amnesty to Illegal Aliens

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the Obama administration will push for “immigration reform” by giving the estimated 14 million people who are in the United States illegally “fair pathway to earned legal status.”

“A tough and fair pathway to earned legal status will mandate that illegal immigrants meet a number of requirements—including registering, paying a fine, passing a criminal background check, fully paying all taxes and learning English,” Napolitano said Friday at a panel discussion at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C.

“These are substantial requirements that will make sure this population gets right with the law,” Napolitano said. “It will help fix our broken system.”

Napolitano said the Obama administration is working to end the recession and put Americans back to work but said giving legal status to illegal aliens will “strengthen our economy.”

Hmmm...so will these tens of millions of new Democratic voters replace the independents they're scaring away? And how on earth is this going to "help" the economy?

“Think about it: unions will never achieve the best terms for workers when a large part of the workforce is illegal and operates in a shadow economy,” Napolitano said. “By contrast, the status quo not only hurts American workers, it also stifles potential opportunities to grow our economy.”

I see. It's actually a plan to help Obey-Won's union buddies. Great.

In The News?

Anybody wanna bet this shows up in the papers without the minority report or anything about else in this article on sex ed 'analysis'?

I Don't Get It

Obama China Town Hall: Select Audience, Easy Questions

It was a town hall, but this time Barack Obama was not in Iowa or New Hampshire. There were no hay bales, no bunting and no activists with questions about universal health care, clean coal or legalizing marijuana. This forum, after all, was being held in a nation controlled by the Communist Party.

Instead of being greeted by voters mulling their options, Obama on Monday met with several hundred well-dressed, attentive and relentlessly on-message students, handpicked by Chinese authorities for the occasion. They listened attentively, nodding in agreement at some of his answers and laughing at his jokes. Most of their questions were something less than challenging. "What measures will you take to deepen this close relationship between cities of the United States and China?" asked the first questioner, a young woman whom Obama picked randomly from the crowd. "What's the main reason that you were honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace?" asked another. A third followed up on the Nobel Prize line of inquiry. "What's your university/college education that brings you to get such kind of prizes?"

Yeah? So? How, exactly, is this any different from his "press conferences" and "town halls" here? Hand-picked attendees, planted questions, softballs...am I missing something? Are they saying that the only difference is the lack of "hay bales" (which surely represents the great unwashed masses in flyover country)? Nah, that'd be too honest.

Graphic Unemployment

Feelin' Stimulated?



Thanks here and apologies here.

Something To Keep In Mind While Christmas Shopping

I know how it goes - even with the down economy you're going to be out at the stores looking at "unbelievable" and "outrageous" deals this Christmas season. And you're going to spend a bit more than you planned - after all, you're going to efile in January and have your refund in time to pay off the credit card balances, right?

Just bear in mind that the IRS is going to be coming after some of you next year for that "tax cut" that Obama "gave you".

More than 15 million taxpayers could unexpectedly owe taxes when they file their federal returns next spring because the government was too generous with their new Making Work Pay tax credit.

Taxpayers are at risk if they have more than one job, are married and both spouses work, or receive Social Security benefits while also earning taxable wages, according to a report Monday by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration.

The tax credit, which is supposed to pay individuals up to $400 and couples up to $800, was President Barack Obama's signature tax break in the massive stimulus package enacted in February.

Most workers started receiving the credit through small increases in their paychecks in April. The tax credit was made available through new withholding tables issued by the Internal Revenue Service.

The withholding tables, however do not take into account taxpayers with multiple jobs or married couples in which both people work. They also don't take into account Social Security recipients with jobs that provided taxable income.

The Social Security Administration sent out $250 payments to more than 50 million retirees in the spring as part of the economic stimulus package. The payments were meant to provide a boost for people who didn't' qualify for the tax credit.

However, they went to many retirees who also received the credit. Those retirees will have the $250 payment deducted from their tax credit — but not until they file their tax returns next year, long after the money may have been spent...

The tax credit is also available for 2010. Russell said the problems will continue in 2010 if they are not resolved.

The "best" part is that they haven't even bothered to FIX IT. Why, you ask? Because can you imagine, with his popularity already underwater, Obama going on TV and saying 'uh, about that tax cut, um, we're going to have to take some of that away - that is, you're taxes are going up...Merry Christmas, suckers!'

Ghost Writing

A couple of posts at American Thinker are definitely worth checking out, if only out of curiosity and to get 'ahead of the curve', or ahead of the media, if you will.

The first just sets the stage, here: Here comes the Sarahlanche

The much more damning piece, with about 20 times as much evidence to support the claim that terrorist Bill Ayers wrote or significantly contributed (without attribution) to 'Obama's' first book as I ever knew existed, is here: Who Wrote Dreams and Why It Matters

You may not be convinced, but you can't help but be intrigued (or troubled if you think the Won can do no wrong). I'm sorry, but I can't help but disbelieve that Obama could write clumsily and poorly in several essays, fail to produce a book after being given an advance, suddenly churn out a florid, eminently readable and memorable memoir after meeting Ayers, and then go back to being often clumsy and unenlightening (that is, when 'off Teleprompter' where his words may be aided by anyone). And, strangely enough, his brilliant memoir just happens to contain a large number of literary flourishes and colloquialisms that just happen to also be a signature element of Ayers' writing style. And not even mentioned is the uncharacteristic publishing gap which I believe I have read exists in Ayers' career just at the time Obama was 'writing' his book.

Bud's Birds

Maybe the NFL was right...Rush Limbaugh just doesn't fit into this kind of company:

Whatever his reason, Adams found a new way to draw the spotlight to his franchise when he was caught not once, but twice flashing a set of middle fingers at the Buffalo Bills sideline during Sunday’s 41-17 win. Amazingly, Adams also watched part of Sunday’s game with league commissioner Roger Goodell, who probably doesn’t hold a pro-bird stance when it comes to NFL communication...

We’ll find out Goodell’s true stance in the coming days, since Adams felt obliged to whip out the gestures in front of at least one reporter and one cell-phone camera. Initially reported by The Tennessean, Adams was seen standing in what appears to be a luxury suite, flashing his middle fingers.

Yeah, they just can't have the kind of unpredictable aura that Limbaugh would have brought to the owners' ranks.

It's Not Just Me, Is It?

Please, please won't someone tell me that I'm not the only one that is continually infuriated by the idiotic and uninformed nonsense spewing forth from Troy Aikman on Fox's top game week in and week out? The guy's a freaking train wreck whenever he veers away from breaking down plays.

Particularly when it comes to officiating. Absolutely cringworthy. Week in and week out we're treated to "I disagree with that call" after the officials make and absolutely clear cut call - all because he has no clue what the rule is.

This week was just the freaking cherry on top of his season-long crapwich - the QB is hit and fumbles, his teammate appears to fall on the ball to recover the fumble (hard to tell, different angles present different opinions), but then a defender rushes in, pounces on the back and the ball goes flying before the defense scoops it up. The ball is awarded to the defense. Initially the play is challenged by the offensive team, basically trying to get the officials to rule that the recovery was made by the offense. After some confusion the ref clearly announces that the play cannot be reviewed because fumble recoveries are not reviewable plays - no different than asking them to review an offensive holding call - it's simply not allowed under the rules. After much confused jabbering we're treated to Troy telling us that it's somehow the officials' fault for not reviewing the play. Pathetic. It literally seems like every single week I'm yelling angrily at the TV at least a couple of times per game because Aikman is saying he doesn't agree with a call that he doesn't understand - and it's not close stuff, either. Like a defender hauls down a receiver before the pass gets there and he complains about the pass interference call.

Every year we're told how the league holds meetings with each team to go over any rule changes, tell them what plays they're going to be emphasizing (like crackdowns on defensive pass interference, etc), and make sure everyone is on the same page.

For the love of the fans - can't they please do the same thing with the television announcers?! I bet at least half and probably more like most of the ex-players that they have in the booths have no clue what the current rules are and think the rules are the same when they played a decade ago. Hey, what's that guy doin' out there with that funny hat? He should be wearin' a leather helmet!

Sigh.

More Quick Hits

Do you think the media's pre-emptive strike on Sarah Palin has failed? Their spurt of Palin bashing, before her book is even out, has done nothing except generate headlines that, in turn, have "Sarah Palin" as the #1 search currently at Yahoo. Keep up the good work.

==

I'd like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the area Democrats. These wonderful folks jammed a whopping 8 ads into my mailbox just on the day before election day. So that's not TOTAL, that's just one day.

All told my mailbox was packed to bursting with a staggering 860 square inches of ads, that's nearly 6 square feet of political propaganda on ONE DAY!

editoriaLIES

Hey! Haven't had one of these in a while, eh? As usual, the editors let their emotions get the better of them and can't stick to the truth writing about a liberal issue near and dear to their hearts...

In today's paper -

Coverage would be notable better under the bill the House has passed...

Coverage? Yes. Care. Uhhhhh...no. At least that's what experience everywhere it's been tried has demonstrated.

~~~~~~

Hi, honey, I'm home.

How was your day?

Oh, not bad.

Did you find a job? You know we're pretty far in the hole already on our credit cards, mortgage, 2nd mortgage, loans...

Yeah, I know. But, look! I bought a new car!

WHAT!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU BOUGHT A NEW CAR YOU #$$^&%$&@#$!? WE DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY! WE'RE HEAVILY IN DEBT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU BOUGHT A NEW CAR!!??

~~~~~~

Whoa - bit of a day dream there. It was triggered by this foolishness:

"During difficult economic times, the price tag on the House bill was just too high," [Rep. Murphy said]...

That's a view he may have difficulty defending.

Uh, yeah? Sure, it's pretty hard to defend not spending bucketloads of money when you DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY, isn't it?

...

That flushing noise you hear is the 2nd editorial where an even stronger emotional trigger, abortion, leads to a real disconnect from reality...

[The House of Representatives] is ready to do with the stroke of a pen: Deny women the right to chose.

Really? They're voting to pass a bill to ban abortion? No, of course they're not. This is lie #1. The bill, as currently amended, if actually signed into law as currently amended, would deny using federal taxpayer monies to fund abortions. That's all. It will simply disallow the use of taxpayer subsidies to fund insurance that covers abortion. It certainly does nothing to prevent anyone from hopping down to the local abortionist for an abortion, the same way they could last week, the same way they can today. (Tangent alert! If this "government option" is supposed to so fantastically force "competition" with private insurers, wouldn't this mean that private insurers would be rushing out to offer plans that cover abortion - thereby leading to more women having "the right to choose"? I know, pretty funny, as if competition or not funding abortion is the goal of the democrats, ok let's move on]

What many won't have, though is the means to afford one.

Ummm...can they afford one now? Because this isn't changing anything. If you take woman X, ok, Y, either she can or can't afford an abortionist now. If she can and you pass this monstrosity, will she still be able to? Probably. If she can't, and you pass this monstrosity, will she be able to? Probably not. But she can't now. And, if health care is such a crippling cost to people without insurance, then wouldn't helping them cut their medical care costs leave enough money in the bank for them to afford their abortions? Wouldn't this bill actually help them afford abortions? This is lie #2, there is simply no way to justify a claim that passing a bill that doesn't do something that isn't done now will stop something from happening.

Not if a reactionary, discriminatory...amendment is allowed to stand.

Uh, 'discriminatory'? No. Lie #3.

And now for something completely different...gut-cramping laughter:

And if they have the foresight to plan for an unplanned pregnancy.

Hooo-boy. What a knee-slapper. Wow, that's a good one. Of course the 'planning for something unplanned' thing is funny enough. But, if you think about this foolishness for a moment (after the shaking has subsided), you begin to realize a deeper sentiment that makes you start torturing your abused laugh muscles all over again - what they're essentially saying is - the abortion rider insurance is only any good if you actually get insurance before something happens! Do you get it? One of the major problems people have with covering pre-existing conditions is that they're buying insurance. In no other realm do you insure something after it's already happened! But that's what the democrats want - they want to let you buy horse insurance after it's already run away - auto insurance after you've already had an accident - fire insurance after the building has already burned down. It is the exact opposite of what insurance is. Now, when it comes to abortion, suddenly it's a bad thing to make people actually buy insurance before they need it! Hooo....funny stuff.

In reality, women would have to choose between affordable health coverage that doesn't cover all their potential needs, or paying extra.

*GASP!* Pay EXTRA for extra services?! What is the world coming to?!

Paging editorialist #2, editorialist #1 just said that covering health needs would be "mandatory". What happened in between?

Why should women have to pay a premium for a legal procedure that millions may someday need?

I dunno, why should men have to pay a premium for a legal procedure that they are GUARANTEED to NEVER need?

That's an equally dumb and ignorant question if you ask me.

Why should they have the added burden of deciding whether to play the odds on any aspect of their health?

This is, by far, one of the stupidest things I've ever read in a newspaper. Now "choice" is a bad thing? Maybe we should sterilize all women? How about that? Then they won't have to worry about "playing the odds" of having unprotected sex, of skipping their birth control, of not making their partner use protection, of not deciding to have unprotected sex if they don't want to possibly end up with the natural result of such activity. Oh those poor women! Imagine, after they go through all the trouble of deciding to have sex without a condom that they can get free just about anywhere, then you're also going to make them decide whether or not they should get abortion protection? Bastards!

Lie #4 is something about "equal protection under the law"...there is nothing in the bill that give abortion to one person and keeps it from another.

Lie #5 is something about "church and state", apparently the Catholic Church opposing funding for abortions is the same as Congress passing a law establishing a state religion. Apparently the Church, like all opponents of Obama, should just sit down, shut up, and do what they're told. My response, as a non-Catholic? A genial eff you.

Lie #6 inserts "privacy" as a right equivalent to "life" and "liberty" in the Constitution. I can't find that one in there.

Lie #7 indicates that taxpayer funding of abortion is a "core belief of America since its founding".

And, finally, lie #8 in this crapfest:

And they must not effectively revoke a woman's right to safe, legal and affordable abortion and call it reform.

Everyone with a functioning brain know that all the bill does is keep taxpayer funds from being used for abortions. Giving a woman someone else's money for her abortion does not make the abortion "affordable". It does not keep abortion from being safe - well, no safer than now. It does not make abortion any less legal. Now that I think on it, this is actually lies 8, 9, and 10.

Pathetic. Just because you want to take peoples' money and use it to pay for other peoples' abortions doesn't give you the right to lie about the bill, the Constitution, or the history of the United States.

Quick Hits

So I see Obey-Won is going to have a "jobs summit" to figure out how to "make jobs".

Funny, I thought he and his Democrat Debt-i Knights spent a trillion bucks earlier this year to "make jobs". I thought it was working 'beyond their wildest dreams'.

-

Can I explain the whole 'health care/illegal alien' thing to the remaining clueless supporters of this boondoggle in just a few words?

Look at it this way: There is a law against driving faster than the posted speed limit. Now, yes, you can drive faster than the speed limit, but there are cops out there to catch you if you do and if you get caught there are laws to punish you for doing so.

Now imagine if the government said, right there in the law, that you can't drive over the speed limit...but there are no cops to catch you if you do, and if, somehow, you were caught speeding, there was no punishment for doing so.

That's how illegal aliens fit into the Democrats plans and why Republicans and conservatives keep saying that it will give health insurance to illegal aliens - there is NO mechanism for finding out if you are breaking the law (cops) and there is no punishment for taking public money when you're not entitled to it if you do break it. You might say it's a win-win for illegal alien criminals and lose-lose for taxpayers and those trying to get health care.

Yup, More Bias

Is this bias? Well, depends on who you ask, but taking a step back and simply checking the facts of the cases...of course it is.

Back in June, Times liberal columnists lined up to link conservative talkers Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh to James von Brunn, the 88-year-old man who killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum, and the murder by Scott Roeder of abortionist George Tiller...

So how did these professional hand-wringers treat another incident of violence, this one even more tragic: A mass killing of 13 people, many of them soldiers, at Fort Hood in Texas by a Muslim Army major shouting “God is great” in Arabic?

They’ve ignored it.

As of November 13, eight days after the Fort Hood murders, neither Rich, Krugman, or Warner have mentioned the massacre, much less Hasan’s radical Islamic beliefs. Only Bob Herbert devoted two sentences to Hasan on Saturday, a leaping-off point to talk about post-traumatic stress suffered by veterans home from Iraq and Afghanistan (even though Hasan hasn’t even seen combat).

Your Random Saturday

Thomas Sowell makes it look easy on health care:

If the government has some magic way of reducing costs-- rather than shifting them around, including shifting them to the next generation-- they have certainly not revealed that secret...

What about insurance companies denying reimbursements for treatments? Does anyone imagine that a government bureaucracy will not do that?

Moreover, the worst that an insurance company can do is refuse to pay for medication or treatment. In some countries with government-run medical systems, the government can prevent you from spending your own money to get the medication or treatment that their bureaucracy has denied you. Your choice is to leave the country or smuggle in what you need.

However appalling such a situation may be, it is perfectly consistent with elites wanting to control your life. As far as those elites are concerned, it would not be "social justice" to allow some people to get medical care that others are denied, just because some people "happen to have money."...

Ironically, it is politicians who have already made medical insurance so expensive that many people refuse to buy it. Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

In various states, medical insurance must cover the costs of fertility treatments, annual checkups and other things that have nothing to do with risks. What many people most want is to be insured against the risk of having their life's savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness.

Bruce Bialosky about health and the young:

When these young adults finish school, they become most interested in building the foundation of their careers and their future life. It’s usually only when they settle down, buy a home, start a family, and begin to make progress in their careers that they start to realize how expensive government is, and begin to get involved in the political process. It has been this way for generations and is validated by voter turnout.

Barack Obama changed that and it had nothing to do with campaign finance reform. The under-30 crowd identified with him and voted heavily for him. And what has he done to reward that commitment? He is attempting to saddle them with a huge tax increase to cover his health insurance plan.

Most people in this age group carry health insurance. But approximately 18 million do not, because they have made a decision that they would rather spend their money elsewhere. They realize that they have very little need for health care, so they spend their money on other priorities or save it for a down payment on their first home...

Mr. Obama, Senator Baucus and Nancy Pelosi do not want to give them that choice. They have targeted this group to fund the Democrats’ plans. They have decided that these young folks should pay for the older Americans who actually use most of the health care...

I believe these young adults should carry catastrophic insurance, at which they would probably not balk, because the cost would be minimal. However, the proposals that are being floated by the Democrats would require them to purchase full-blown insurance that carries a hefty price tag. While this additional revenue would help make the health insurance scheme work, no one is considering the effects of that money being taken out of the economy from where the young adults currently spend it. In particular, nobody is giving any thought to the negative effect upon the housing market caused by the delay of entry-level home purchases because the prospective homeowners will be forced to put their money into the health care system instead of a home.

Meep!

How hilarious is this? Meep!

Are They Serious?

On Monday I posted about the following headline:

Sources say Obama near decision on Afghanistan troops

Gee, guess what's a headline today.

Did you guess?

Obama: decision soon on troops for Afghanistan

Isn't it fun having a completely inept and inexperienced "executive" running the entire country and leading our men and women dying overseas? This is the guy that touted running his campaign as his 'executive experience' that qualified him to be PRESIDENT! Never mind that the campaign couldn't even get the trains to run on time with media screw ups, scheduling nightmares, people not getting paid, etc. (and that's just the stuff that wasn't illegal!).

Dum - Dum - Dumb

Busted.

Thursday’s off-lead story by James Glanz and Walter Gibbs is on recent revelations that Peter Galbraith, an “unpaid adviser to the Kurds” who has influenced Democratic policymakers like former senator/VP Joe Biden and Sen. John Kerry, stands to make millions from his closeness to the Kurds and a Norwegian oil company.

Given the Times sympathies for anti-war and leftish “blood for oil” arguments, the Times couldn’t ignore the story, and indeed provides a lot of new damning details -- but also has one enormous gaffe that lets Vice President Biden off the hook.

...As the scope of Mr. Galbraith’s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis’ deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil. It may not help that outside Kurdistan, Mr. Galbraith’s influential view that Iraq should be broken up along ethnic lines is considered offensive to many Iraqis’ nationalism. Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, who have been influenced by Mr. Galbraith’s thinking but do not advocate such a partitioning of the country, were not aware of Mr. Galbraith’s oil dealings in Iraq, aides to both politicians say.

Oh really? Blogger Tom Maguire remembers Biden's position differently, and in support of his argument calls up...back copies of the Times:

Joe Biden did not advocate partitioning Iraq? Uh huh, and Dick Cheney never worked for Halliburton.

Meanwhile, back here in reality we are left wondering, if Biden never advocated the partition of Iraq then why did the Times print this guest rubbish from none other than Peter Galbraith back in 2007:

In a surge of realism, the Senate has voted 75-23 to acknowledge that Iraq has broken up and cannot be put back together. The measure, co-sponsored by Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, supports a plan for Iraq to become a loose confederation of three regions -- a Kurdish area in the north, a Shiite region in the south and a Sunni enclave in the center -- with the national government in Baghdad having few powers other than to manage the equitable distribution of oil revenues.

Charter Schools Succeeding

I'm not going to link much of this because the original is loaded with backing links - so I recommend reading it there:

"Opponents of school choice are running out of excuses as evidence continues to roll in about the positive impact of charter schools," declared the Wall Street Journal last week.

In recent months research has shown that charter schools benefit their own students as well as students in surrounding traditional public schools. Low-income NYC students attending charter schools from kindergarten through 8th grade can nearly close achievement gaps with their peers in the affluent suburbs, 86 percent of the reading gap and 66 percent of the math gap.

IBD Updates The Important Stuff

IBD's editorials today really wrap up all the big stuff and, naturally, this is stuff you won't read much about in the MSM.

Iraq:

Democracy is finally taking hold in the wake of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. That, not American withdrawal, should be the big story. It's time to acknowledge success and to learn from it...

With last Sunday's passage of a law that paves the way for the first national elections since 2005, the Iraqi people will soon be able to cement their unity and nationhood in a way they never have.

The contrasts with 2005 are telling.

Back then, the elections were blighted by a Sunni Arab boycott. Iraqis voted for parties, not individual candidates, on sectarian and ethnic lines. If anything, the balloting heightened divisions and boosted the insurgency.

This time, voters will choose individuals rather than parties. No serious boycotts are in the works. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has broken with his old Shiite alliance and is leading a national-unity coalition. The touchy issue of who will claim oil-rich Kirkuk was defused in a compromise that satisfied Kurds and Arabs...

In Afghanistan, the Iraqi experience should offer reason for hope. It wasn't so long ago that Iraq looked every bit as unpromising politically as Afghanistan does now, with a stumbling central government, deep sectarian divisions and a raging insurgency.

Pessimists such as Joe Biden, who proposed partitioning Iraq, were proved wrong. Biden, who as vice president is reported to be urging a pullback in Afghanistan, could be proved wrong again.

The two nations are different in many ways, but the basic principle behind the strategy that worked in Iraq — to create havens for civilians and to use divide-and-conquer tactics against the insurgency — deserves a fair test.

Porkulus:

Americans seem to know what their leaders in Washington either don't know, don't want to know or refuse to acknowledge — that the economic stimulus they foisted on us has been one big letdown.

Fully two-thirds (66%) of those surveyed in the latest IBD/TIPP Poll said the stimulus has fallen short of their expectations in creating jobs. A little more than one in five (22%) said it has met their expectations, and only one in 15 (6%) said it has exceeded their expectations.

This is not exactly news, given how the results so far compare with the promises made in January. That was when the president's economic advisers assured that unemployment, now at 10.2%, would level off around 8%. But it is worth noting for those in the administration and Congress who still think all the people can be fooled all the time.

Even Democrats are underwhelmed. As the table shows, 48% of them said the package has fallen short vs. 45% who said it met or exceeded their expectations. The same is true for self-described liberals...

Independents, however, are almost as disapproving — giving the stimulus a 73% thumbs-down. Sixty percent of self-described moderates (who can be Democrats, Republicans or Independents) also feel it has fallen short.

And Cap'n Tax:

After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed.

In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway.

Williams and Zabel do not deny climate change or its alleged dangers. They are fans of alternative energy and support carbon fees, rebated to energy consumers, to curb emissions. But in two segments of the video they say cap-and-trade is a "big lie" and carbon offsets are a "big rip-off."

Williams states: "Cap-and-trade for climate change has been tried in Europe. It produced harmful volatility in energy prices and few greenhouse gas reductions. It raised energy prices for consumers and raised billions in windfall profits for utilities."

Zabel, who has helped oversee California's cap-and-trade and offset programs for more than two decades, says "carbon offsets won't work because they can't be certified or verified as real additional reductions." Williams says carbon offsets are like "subprime mortgages and other clever financial instruments" and similarly "lack integrity."...

In a Washington Post op-ed echoing their video, they cite an example of a landowner paid not to cut a forest he wasn't planning to cut anyway. Even if he was planning to cut it, this means only that another forest will be cut.

"Purchasing this offset allows owners of a coal-fired power plant to burn extra coal, above the cap," they write. The demand for wood remains. The burning of coal remains. Money changes hands with no reduction in greenhouse gases...

We have also noted how the EPA has engaged in a cover-up of its own analyses of climate change, and discouraged public dissent. At EPA's insistence, Zabel and Williams took down the video from their Web site, but not before it was copied and widely circulated.