Maggie's Farm

Obama wants less college drop-outs. Focus on Outcome. Is "outcome" a piece of paper? That is easily done: High Schools hand them out every June to anybody with the brains and foresight to show up.

Why don't people live within their means, and save for a rainy day? A teed-off  Sowell.

Man finds images of D-Day rehearsals

The 11 Most Expensive Catastrophes in History

Remind me again - what's wrong with bottled water? And what's wrong with using water too? Unless there's a local drought. Anybody hear about the water cycle? It all returns. Our drinking water is old dinosaur pee (which is why I stick with beer instead).

Not to worry about the environment. Sweden will save us all!

The results of 10 years of socialism in Britain

The Leftyism of academia is probably underestimated

Why aren't environmentalists celebrating the drop in consumption?

Dems getting worried about Obama. Jack Welch:

[Obama] is locked in another world. And he's throwing all these initiatives into this game in the middle of a crisis. Focus on the crisis! Focus on the economy!

Related: The Obama Disaster: 50 Days that Changed the World! Related: Why Obama's case for doing so many things at once is pure baloney. (Image from SDA)

Related: Is Obama in trouble? DC Examiner. Is he a charming lightweight with what somebody referred to as a "dorm room philosophy"?

Not a bottom. Short covering. I think so too.

Jacoby at The Boston globe discusses the religion of AGW

2009 college grads face 22% drop in hiring

The new Left Wing conspiracy. Politico

Obama seeks to turn America to the Left of Europe - and the rest of the world. Related from Kimball: An idiot's guide to destroying the economy. Only amateurs can be as arrogant as these folks are.

Quote from Telegraph columnist Janet Daley at Powerline, re the economy:

... I grew up with the Left and what this looks like to me is a power grab: a seizing of the moment by the forces which always believed in state domination. The Left sees an opening here, first for telling a critical lie about the historical origins of this crisis, which was propelled as much by the Left-liberal determination to spread prosperity through easy credit to the poor, as by the greed of bankers. And then, out of the wreckage, to restructure the economy along the lines that it always wanted, complete with central controls over the pay levels in private financial institutions.

North Korea puts Obama to the test.

Last week's purge in Cuba. So progressive!

A shining milestone for social justice.  Related: Did Obama intentionally nuke the economy?

Related: Has the O Admin declared a War on Business? Why? It's the private sector which creates the jobs, supports all our charities and non-profits, and pays the gummint's bills. Without strong business, we ain't got nothin...as we are seeing right now. Sometimes I speculate about how many jobs, professions, and industries are ultimately parasitic to Business-produced wealth: law, medicine, advertising, academia, the entire investment and finance industry, every "service" industry, all of government...the list goes on and on. That's why any rational government would be thankful to business enterprise, and would try to get out of the way of those who want to produce and create. We have built a gigantic economically-interdependent superstructure on the backs of our wealth-creators. But this is all obvious, isn't it?

The ten biggest rookie mistakes of the O Admin. Related: Robert Samuelson labels O The Great Pretender

The war on Barbie dolls

Another women-in-science study

The US has 2 million job openings right now

Cap and trade is a tax on everybody. (h/t, Viking) Related: Why "doubling" alternative energy means nothing

Roger Kimball: On the road to serfdom. One quote:

...not only are the President’s naive and utopian fiscal policies exacerbating an already parlous economic situation: his starry-eyed understanding of foreign relations is set to compromise America’s defense capabilities at the very moment when other parts of the world–Iran, Russia, China–are struggling madly to upgrade their military forces.

A simple alternative to socialized medicine. NRO

A Supreme decision which will harm patients

This Pelosi move sounds like something Chavez would do. Only two months, and we have seen the Feds plan government power grabs in the banking biz, the auto biz, the medical biz, the pharmaceutical biz, the oil and energy biz, and the radio biz. And yet no screams about "dictatorship"!

Supremes narrow minority district protections. I find the whole idea disgusting.

Jim Cramer asks "Why am I a target of the Obama Clan?" Cramer is a Dem, I believe, and a free-market Liberal.

Who listens to Rush Limbaugh? Part of what limits and shapes his audience, I think, is work. Most folks cannot listen to the radio at work.

With the job losses, why do we need illegal labor? Opie reminded us about Operation Wetback. Also: Stimulus gives 300,000 jobs to illegals

David Axelrod having a surreal experience

To Hell with Niceness. I am all for that. I appreciate good manners, but not niceness.

Cockroach rights in Britain. How about some freedom for humans?

Cruel but funny.

Chris Dodd update: The Hartford Courant finally gives him some attention. (h/t, NRO)

In which Robert Reich calls people like us "crypto-fascist demagogues." Sheesh. May I engage in this mature, elevating and highly-informative discussion of the issues by calling Reich a "pinko dwarf"?

If CO2 is classified as a pollutant

Let them fail. Even God doesn't have enough money to support all these things.

Investing: Timing is nothing. Timing is everything.

Spinning it so it looks like Obama did it.

Repubs are The Stupid Party. They ignore tactics. They don't do tactics. Too honorable or too dumb? I don't know.

Nobody's home in Washington. Maybe that's for the best.

The Admin: Britain is just one more country. Not to me. Methinks The Teleprompter dislikes the Brits. Has he ever been there? No.

The Teleprompter signs on to the Cheney view of surveillance. Crickets chirp.

If the entire EU bureaucracy disappeared, would it harm anything?

Brit Hume says it's Obama's Bear Market. Via Gateway:

It's kind of a bear market within a bear market. The market was already down tremendously over the previous year, and I think most people entered this period of the new Obama administration thinking that it probably was bottoming out and that he would give by his very presence and by what he would offer real hope and that it would at least change the psychology a bit. It has changed the psychology, it seems, for the worse and I think he does bear responsibility for that, and the impression that he has managed to leave is that he's too busy with massive new spending and a scatter shot stimulus bill which was reckless and breathless new initiatives. On top of that you have this budget with all these breathtaking new initiatives to reorder our lives in a multitude of ways.

In the meantime, first order of business, the unfinished business of the previous administration. First order of business for the new administration, the financial crisis, the credit crisis. And, so far, no plan of any discernible shape of dealing with that. A couple of pieces in place as Governor Kaine pointed out. But that's what the market is looking for. It hasn't come. It's very hard. But, that's the big problem.

One last weekend of skiing for me, but already planning for summer. My group just leased our usual 345 Conquest for July and August, which we keep docked in Rhode Island. Thinking about beaches (that's a Theo beach gal) and fishing and clams, and hoping we get a break from this global cooling.

Strange how many people are reconsidering not joining Obama's administration. The acclaimed Dr. Gupta just changed his mind, and two Treasury folks did too. What's that all about? It's possible that they aren't sure they can get with the program. See Nobody wants to work with Timmy.

Related re Geithner: "we've never seen such incompetence."

Obama never speaks without a Teleprompter. That's not magic; that's kinda lame. Plus, what happens when their energy policy eliminates electricity? Related: Obama The Magician at Am Thinker. Truthfulness is turning out not to be one of his virtues.

Instead of "The O," I think I'll start calling him "The Teleprompter," or "The T" for short. No, I do not have ODS yet, but I do not like where things are headed.

Confederate Yank explains why Lefty Dems don't care about the economy. The worse the mess, the better for them. Powerline asks Are they doing it on purpose?

Related: Dem war on small biz may cause 14% to fail next year

Nunchucks are illegal in New York? Sheesh. And they are neither automatic nor semiautomatic.

This story about Obama and Brown's visit is almost too embarassing to read

And the initial stab at "smart diplomacy" with Russia is equally embarassing. Hello. They are pursuing their own interests. For how long will the MSM give Obama "A"s just for showing up? Or what's the plan, bend over for Russia and smack the Brits? Jules

Do the rich vote Republican? No

Sad: GOP outreach to Hispanics a flop

Quote from Cramer:

We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.

The UN consider laws against criticism of Islam. Good grief. The UN is the joke heard 'round the world.

Obama's energy proposals and your utility taxes. neoneo

Hates debate. Noted at Driscoll:

Liberal talk radio host Stephanie Miller on CNN’s Larry King Live: “maybe Rush Limbaugh should be executed for treason.”

Liberal Fascism?

Note: We had lots of comment interest in our An obsolete model for education. Check it out if you haven't.

People I talk to are beginning to act a bit scared - even those who voted for Obama. I sense a new fear factor emerging which transcends the banking crisis. People have lost a lot of money, and foresee a business-stifling, high-taxing, low profit future which will burden generations with a bigger government we will never be able to get out from under.

The plan to phase out the mortgage, medical and charitable deductions is just one piece of a series of rule changes in the middle of the game which makes folks uneasy. It's especially uncomfortable for those within ten years of retirement, or with tuitions in their future, who made plans based on existing expectations and stability.

How do you plan for your family when the rules are in flux? How do you invest? How do you invest for retirement? How do you plan to start a business? How do you buy a house? Why would you spend a penny on anything?

Several (non-paranoid) people mentioned to me this week that wealth destruction is a deliberate policy in DC. True or not, Hopey-Changey is slowly turning into plain Scary. We predicted this.

Powerline quotes a reader comment:

If I postpone my retirement as a result of losses to my savings caused in substantial part by President Obama's policies, so that I do not leave the workforce when I had planned, does that mean that my job has been "saved" by Obama?

Never Yet Melted, with a quote from Obama's book:

Who could possibly have predicted that a red diaper baby community organizer with a life-long record of radical associations would adopt an ultra-left program of taxing and spending? Messrs. Buckley and Brooks obviously weren’t paying attention when they read Dreams from My Father. Obama explains that he learned as an adolescent that he could get away with doing drugs and raising Cain, simply by mollifying the adults in his life by speaking softly and politely.

DFMF, 94-95:

It was the start of my senior year in high school… and one day she [his mother] marched into my room, wanting to know the details of [his friend’s] arrest. I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry. I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.

Dick Morris:

...he is determined to pass his agenda of bigger government, nationalized healthcare and vastly greater spending even at the price of inflation and subsequent recession. He puts ideology first and the economy a distant second.

The stock market has figured out his priorities and is responding accordingly. One can only hope that voters also eventually realize what is going on.

Mankiw:

Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, has said, “You don’t ever want to let a crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”

What he has in mind is not entirely clear. One possibility is that he wants to use a temporary crisis as a pretense for engineering a permanent increase in the size and scope of the government. Believers in limited government have reason to be wary.

Why so tentative about that, Professor?

From Krauthammer's The Obamaist Manifesto:

In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48 percent to 47 percent of GDP during the past 10 years. In the United States, it has shot up from 34 percent to 40 percent. Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.

Ed. note: To top it all off, and to add insult to injury, Congress has now given itself a pay raise, along with an extra gift of $93,000 for petty cash. If $93 grand is "petty," I am in the wrong business. With their pensions (not 401-Ks - real old-fashioned pensions) and remarkable medical plans and perks, they are entirely insulated from the consequences of their own actions. I see no collectivist "sacrifice for the common good" on the part of Congress.

US companies pay the highest taxes in the world. I have never understood why businesses are taxed at all. All it does is to make prices of things more expensive for consumers because a tax is just another expense to be passed along. In other words, biz taxes are just a covert tax on consumers and investors.

Equity Analyst in Chief. Embarassing

Has anybody read A Canticle for Liebowitz? (h/t, Grow A Brain)

Did you know that To Kill a Mockingbird was a racist book?

Map of the EU economic crisis

Cooler heads at NOAA changing their tune on climate

Dr. Clouthier is fed up with unmanly men and other PC baloney

How Obama ambushed and used the head of Caterpillar

Whites told to "go home" in Detroit.

Centrist Dems feeling uncomfortable. Christopher Buckley has second thoughts. So does David Brooks.

Budget rant by Ace

Isn't the WH getting a bit petty and vindictive? They attack Rush for a week. Now it's Jim Cramer. Must be a deliberate diversionary tactic.

Rick Lowry quoted at Betsy:

Obama exaggerated the downside of the economy two weeks ago so he could get more spending, and now he’s exaggerating its upside so he can get more spending. The fixed goal is more spending. The means — the rhetoric, the arguments, the assumptions — are flexible so long as they serve that ultimate goal.

The past few weeks should have cleared away the debate over Obama’s intentions — is he a pragmatist or an ideologue? Obama is a pragmatist in pursuit of an ideological prize, willing to zig and zag so long as his lodestar of expanded government is ahead of him.

It's 13 degrees F in NYC this morning. The Park is a winter wonderland.

Church membership decline

I hope these protesters do not return home tonight to a heated house. Related: The Farce of Global Warming at Am Thinker

Do Congress' kids go to public schools?

Control of the Census and one-party rule

America's worst traffic bottlenecks. h/t, Marginal Rev

Party like it's 1928

Brits fighting Brit jihadists in Afghanistan

For once, I kinda agree with Krugman. Revenge of the Glut

Tax increases for the middle class are inevitable

Obama's Doublespeak. Villainous. Leftist pols rarely say what they mean directly.

 The big reward for mortgage fraud. WSJ

And yet another tax cheat for the Administration. What is it about Dems and tax fraud?

Affordable housing. Guess what the median home price is, in Detroit

John Bolton on Iran

Tax hikes "demotivating and demoralizing"

Rahm: Obama agrees to 9000 earmarks

Nobody ever accused blogger Pam Geller of being shy. A revival meeting for Geert Wilders. If he stands for free speech, then I am on board. I am not sure that he isn't a jerk, though.

From Insty:

DEMONIZER-IN-CHIEF?

What is it with this President? Obama has an obsessive need to find enemies against whom to campaign. . . . Attacking lobbyists is not the point of Obama’s latest ploy. Rather, painting anyone who opposes him as a “lobbyist” is the point. In attacking the “lobbyists” Obama is doing what he did on the issue of race during the campaign: Anyone who opposes me doesn’t just have a different opinion, they are evil and dangerous to the rest of you. This tactic simultaneously generates support among the majority and silences the minority. Other presidents have been accused of using “enemies” as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the “evil empire” and “axis of evil”). Obama is the first president “in my adult life” to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.

Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.

Ouch.

Wilkinson on the Dem-union attack on the DC charter school experiement:

If you believe, as I do, that the returns to further government spending on education, given its present structure, is zero or negative, and that the best hope for increasing the quality of education for the least well-off, and for increasing economic and social mobility generally, is to legalize competitive markets in education, then you will tend to believe, as I do, that this attempt to destroy voucher programs before than can show themselves effective is nothing less than a powerful political interest group screwing over poor people by bending the democratic process to their advantage.

From Steyn on Statezilla:

Is the new all-powerful Statezilla vulnerable to anything? Unfortunately, yes. He loses all his superpowers when he comes into contact with something called Reality. But happily, Reality is nowhere in sight. There are believed to be some small surviving shards somewhere on the planet — maybe on an uninhabited atoll somewhere in the Pacific — but that’s just a rumor, and Barack Obama isn’t planning on running into Reality any time soon.

Nice snowfall overnight here, and today too. Beautiful.

1.5 million year-old human footprints. Video

The Gun Control Genocide Chart

George Lakoff explains The Obama Code

Re-usable toilet wipes? Gimme a break

How Iran got the plans for Obama's new helicopter. It's about file-sharing.

Why Socialists in Vermont? AVI

Centrifugal forces in the EU

New Jersey's War on Business

Why Obama went big. Politico

Why some non-profits can't use their endowment money now

Dick Morris:

The draconian tax increases on the segment of the population that pays most of the taxes, generates most of the jobs, employs most of the workforce, and accounts for much of the consumer spending will chill whatever small warmth the stimulus package can generate. How can Obama pretend that he wants to encourage confidence among bankers and consumers while he regulates them, taxes them, and vilifies them? His tax increases make it clear that he is less interested in solving the recession and the financial crisis than he is in vindicating his political agenda of redistribution of wealth and income. The price of this policy will be lost growth and lost jobs.

Welcome to the egalite cafe: Neoneo

 NBC pulled this SNL skit from its website in October, and had it removed from Youtube. Too much truth.

Dino:

We wrote very little that was critical of the incoming administration as it assembled its team and raised the prospect that President Obama might try to govern from the center. In little more than a month, Obama’s counterproductive economic policy choices have clarified matters considerably. Decisions will likely come from the left, and pretty far left for that matter; talk about consensus building appears to be just for the cameras. We’ll just have to see what happens to this latest expensive boondoggle. (Oops — it seems that we may already know.)

Sorry about our sick server today. Obviously up and running now. If we are down tomorrow, it will be blizzard-related, not Server Influenza as it was today.

Photo is this morning in Alabama, from Weather.com. We have the duty to warn our readers about the crisis of Anthropogenic Global Cooling, caused by too many Priuses and too few F-150s, Suburbans, and Cadillac Escalades:

Japanese scientists refute AGW

A nationwide ammo shortage hits US. Besides ammo, there's one more thing that is selling very well these days

Here comes the God particle

Did Obama cross the line? Coyote

Paul Harvey began broadcasting news in 1944. Didn't I hear him on the radio last week?

Jesus the reformed racist? Anchoress

Obama lies. Riehl:

More mindless demagogy. Obama has his own special interests as do most all politician's. And his budget has little to do with economics and much to do with Leftist political reform. His rhetoric is simply meant to distract and divide the public so he can pull the wool over their eyes before they realize what they are going to get in the end. We'll be getting what everyone always gets from government, way too little for way too much.

The era of even bigger government. Reason.

Betsy: Obama admin oblivious to incentives, tradeoffs, and unintended consequences.

How will Dems let cap & trade die? Megan

Andrew Bolt via Insty:

GOOD thing for Barack Obama that he isn’t George Bush. He’d have been slaughtered for starting so badly that he’s picking a Cabinet of tax cheats. . . .

how loudly would the people who cheer Obama have screamed if Bush had, for instance, surrounded himself with this extraordinarily long list of spivs and chiselers?

On arrogance, a quote from Cafe Hayek:

Today's cackling by politicians and pundits about how the auto industry should be restructured, the health-care industry overhauled, and the banking industry reorganized is deafening.  Surely I'm not alone in being horrified that so many people with no experience in these industries - and with no skin in any of these games - fancy themselves qualified to pontificate about matters on which their knowledge can't possibly be more than superficial.

What if Obama turns America into Europe? Pajamas. Or into California?

What I am reading: A few of Michael Novak's books

Mike Pence at CPAC: Video. This guy is good.

Romney is looking better too.

How did the Left come into power? Hawkins

Thought crime at Central Conn

Cruel and funny, but apt

John Silber on university Presidency coups (with references to the Larry Summers debacle)

The Dyl sends in this piece on slums via a fascinating site, Emergent Urbanism. I blame Jacob Riis for our misunderstanding of "slums." Also via that site, half of Americans want to move. That is sad.

"I dress for church." Englishman. So do I, most of the time.

Don't these bozos realize that trees are grown on tree farms?

The opening chord of "Hard Day's Night." It's sort of a "clang," isn't it?

Dems seek to kill DC school choice

The genetics of male superiority in chess and science.

A closer look at the Bombay slums. They are neighborhoods, really. As I recall, "urban renewal" didn't work too well in the US.

How the socialized medicine scheme will work. I don't think folks will go for it.

Welcome to anarchy. Hitchen's Battle of Beirut

OK, some links re the proposed Obama socialist, eat-the-rich budget:

I actually agree about eliminating the mortgage interest deduction.  There is nothing fair or rational about it, and all it does is to drive up the price of housing. However, their just mentioning this will add to the slump in home prices. They will just tighten the deduction phase-out at the high end.

I do not particularly like the idea of eliminating charitable deductions, despite the arguments for it.

Marginal Rev had this:

Today President Obama proposed about $634 billion in new spending and taxes.  But since we here at MR cover only the quantitatively significant policy initiatives, I have nothing to say about it.

Q&O:

The era of big deficit financed government isn’t just back, it’s back on steroids sitting in a rocket sled pointed at economic  hell.

Insty:

BOB KRUMM: “Barack Obama’s plans to hyper-inflate the government bubble while he taxes the rich at confiscatory levels, is so certain to collapse the economy that I can only conclude that he is a brilliant Rovian plant whose purpose is to finally drive a stake into the heart of the era of big government.”

Henninger: This is a radical budget:

Barack Obama is proposing that the U.S. alter the relationship between the national government and private sector that was put in place by Ronald Reagan and largely continued by the presidencies of Bill Clinton and the Bushes. Then, the private sector led the economy. Now Washington will chart its course.

A Vermont Lib goes through the lies in Obama's speech. h/t, SDA

Cap and trade is a tax on everybody. Volokh:

The most dangerous proposal in the new budget is the institution of a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Indeed, the single largest source of new tax revenue in the budget going forward are these payments to be made by businesses for the right to emit excess carbon.

The goal is an 83% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.

That would bring US per capita emissions of CO2 down to a level below what we had in the 1700s.

The Audacity of Trope at Villainous. She quotes the NYT:

“To the extent that Mr. Obama has talked about raising taxes, he has focused on households that make at least $250,000 a year. . .But the problem can’t be solved just by taxing the rich. That top 1 percent pays only about one-quarter of federal taxes. Once the recession ends, taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise, too.”

From a piece on the budget at Politico:

For those who might feel assured that this sneaky tax increase – pretending for deductibility purposes that your tax rate is lower than it actually is -- is only hitting the multi-millionaires of Obama’s derision, think again: the vast majority of the resulting new tax revenue will be paid by the entrepreneurs, professionals and successful small businesses (the ones with actual employees) whose paychecks are only a tiny fraction of those dastardly bankers and CEOs. For a Subchapter S small business, where personal income tax rates apply, it takes only a handful of employees to generate the $150,000 or so in taxable income (for a single owner or a married owner filing separately) to get hit with this tax increase. Moreover, this is not simply money that would otherwise be pocketed by the owner; these retained earnings are usually the only source of equity capital for sustaining their payroll and growing their businesses. And with banks so reluctant to lend, this is the worst possible time to reduce their working capital.

And to sum it all up, Dick Morris:

Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring.

And then there is the matter of blame. The deeper the mess goes — and the further down his rhetoric drives it — the more imperative it becomes to lay off the blame on Bush. He must perpetually “discover” — to his shock — how deep the crisis that he inherited runs, stoking global fears in the process.

So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.

But the jig will be up soon. The crash of the stock market in the days since he took power (indeed, from the moment he won the election) can increasingly be attributed to his own failure to lead us in the right direction, his failed policies in addressing the recession and his own spreading of panic and fear. The market collapse makes it evident that it is Obama who is the problem, where he should, instead, be the solution.

The fallacy of positive rights

Not satire: Dartmouth's Climate Justice Research Project. I demand a colder climate.

Thoreau: Anti-government free-marketer

When children roar. Thompson

Via Insty:

ERIC HOLDER: Gitmo is a “well-run, professional facility” that will be hard to close. Now they tell us.

Stocks are good buys now.

Steyn is back with Macleans, and urging folks to have kids

Packed with info and analysis: Rich States, Poor States - ALEC-Laffer State Competitiveness Index. h/t, Cafe Hayek

Are violent video games adequately preparing our kids for the future? Let's hope so.

Obama's balancing act: Scare them enough, but not too much. Related: Are we seeing a generational shift towards big, parental government?

Mr. Free Market has Slumdog fatigue:

If I want to watch a feel good film about India, I will watch North West Frontier again & fantasize about the redoubtable Captain Scott, played with perfect aplomb by Kenneth More, ordering his Havildar to turn a Maxim gun on the entire audience at the Academy Awards. Now that would be worth watching. The nobilty of the slums my a*se

Bobby Jindal does better without a teleprompter

Government and medical care in the US, via a piece at Willisms:

The pretty, well-endowed girl in the photo led to Obama's Presidency.

Pols now want to ban primates as house pets. Aren't children primate house pets?

Why your kids are less well-educated than Belgian kids

Cause of cancer finally found. It's the Jews.

Trying to keep Obama honest: His lies about regulations. His lies about medical bankruptcies. I know lying is their job, but I don't have to like it.

Quote at Patterico:

We hold this policy to be unfair and unjust as it rewards those who do not pay their mortgages, and punishes those who work each month to pay theirs.

How rich bastards like me rip off the taxpayers

Am Thinker: I will defend to the death their right to silence you

15 Dos and Don'ts of The New Progressive order

Is the excellent Bobby Jindal too dorky for prime time? Obama can make anybody seem dorky by comparison.

A new approach to the global warming scare: Maybe even a teensy change will be catstrophic. They are getting desperate to salvage this thing.

Beijing's Olympic center. Empty and abandoned.

Kill "mark to market." I agree. Investment is future-oriented, not present-oriented.

Greenies beginning to come around to nuclear

Memo to Eric Holder from Am Thinker:

...one of America's greatest and most precious dialogues between black and white took place in a sound studio in New York City back in 1959. That was when the immortal jazz great Miles Davis defied some serious criticism coming from the black community and chose the white Bill Evans to accompany the famed group on piano.  Why, the black community wondered, when there were so many great black jazz pianists, did Davis pick Evans?  The answer is quite simple: Bill Evans was the best (sorry Art Tatum fans).  The result?  The best selling and most beautiful jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue.

Funny how little we hear about Iraq these days. Quoted at Lib Leanings:

'Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: "I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.'

Politics in the guise of science. Tierney in the NYT

Jihadist recruitment tactics are changing. The UK seems to be their fertile soil now.

Bipartisanship debunked. We are in a phase of polarized parties.

The ten things you need to know about the Employee Free Choice Act

Don't you want to help this foreclosure "victim"? And these "victims"? Annie Liebovitz is a victim too! Housing prices in 2009. Supply and Demand Related: History of home values:

Too smart by half. How quant David X. Li created the formula that killed Wall St. h/t, Volokh

More on the topic at Marginal Rev.

Politico translates Obama's speech. I think they got it right.

Ecstasy is safer than peanuts?

 Few American cars driven by the Admin

Men and women view art differently

The upside of the foreclosure mess

The War Against Drugs has failed.

With recession, carbon emitting has gotten cheaper h/t Insty

Is the world experiencing "Green fatique"?

The big picture: Obama wants to move the center to the left. No kidding. He is a Socialist, and he never had a real job.

Is letting kids excel racist?

Don't blame Obama. A Pres cannot take an economy out of recession

Economic indicators, early 80s vs. today, via Coyote:

A Modest Proposal for CO2 emissions.

I noticed this too. Obama is running hard for reelection already. The family Bush was always above that sort of thing. Dems are "better" pols: They understand the power game better.

11 states skeptical about the Trojan Ponies in the stim bill. Bobby Jindal on accepting stimulus money:

...here's the problem.  So many of these things that are called temporary programs end up being permanent government programs.  But this one's crystal clear, black and white letter law.  The federal stimulus bill says it has to be a permanent change in state law if you take this state money.  And so within three years the federal money's gone, we've got now a permanent change in our laws, we have to pay for it, our businesses pay for it.  I don't think it makes sense to be raising taxes on Louisiana businesses during these economically challenging times.  And what it shows is what we're going to do in the stimulus is we're going to look at every program, every dollar.  If it makes sense for Louisiana, makes sense for our taxpayers, we'll use those programs and dollars.  If it doesn't, like on Friday we said, "This doesn't make sense for us.  This is not a good deal for us." It makes--my job is to represent Louisiana's taxpayers.  Makes no sense for us to take temporary federal dollars and create permanent state obligations.

Some states, like some businesses and individuals, can be blinded by greed. Bobby is the Not Obama.

It's not easy to demonize a tall skinny blond-with-a-brain who has a sense of humor, but the MSM has done it - and made her a "controversial" celeb in the process. Love her or hate her, Ann Coulter serves a useful purpose. From Klavan on the Culture:

Look, I don’t always agree with Coulter. She sometimes seems to scream black whenever the media screams white (a strategy that works only about 85 percent of the time). I’m pretty sure we really did evolve from apes—myself within living memory. And I enthusiastically endorse any and all non-bloodletting sex acts done in private between consenting adults—as long as you don’t then ask me to pay for the resulting child, abortion or course of medication.

But the whole way liberals work is to redefine manners and morals in such a fashion that conservative common sense automatically becomes hateful. If you note that women and men are different, you’re misogynistic. If you denounce the destruction of marriage in black communities, you’re racist or moralistic. If you call for the defense of America against the world-wide Islamist menace, you’re a bigoted warmonger. If we take this garbage seriously even for an instant, we spend our whole lives playing catch-up, saying sorry, going on defense.

Coulter’s answering strategy is to blow all that foolishness away. She says the unsayable thing, does it with intelligence, humor and style and gets the world exactly right far more often than not. And did I mention she’s disconcertingly adorable? There’s more good, honest material in a paragraph of her work than in any entire edition of the New York Times. She may be a loose cannon now and then, but somehow the barrel always ends up pointed in the right direction.

 Ann loves to stir the pot, but most important is that she keeps things "sayable" that others are too timid to say. I always get a kick out of Ann.

FYI: Van Morrison's live performance of Astral Weeks, recorded in Nov. 2008, is released this week.

Keep Hate Alive!

Off to ski this weekend at Mad River. I gotta go where there is lots of snow, I gotta go where it's cold! Warm weather makes my brain and body lazy. Leaving y'all with these:

Gimme, gimme gimme. Michelle.

It's not fascism now. Change!

Sen. Coleman's quagmire. P'line. What a mess. Good entertainment, though.

The admin plans a war against coal. Not smart.

Rove: Is the ADmin winging it?

Jules: Katrina who?

In 2016, paying for Social Security becomes a big problem. Viking

Cancel your trip to Guadeloupe

George McGovern ages well. Tiger

MA taxpayers fail to take opportunity to pay their fair share

Mankiw: How will we know if the stimulus stimulates?

Admin mortgage rescue rewards fraud and default. More at Marginal Rev. Also, Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party (video)

Iowahawk: The Archbishop of Canterbury Tales (h/t, NYM)

I tried hard. Give me an A. It used to be sarcastic to refer to "A for effort."

The plight of the (delusional) Left-wing talkers

Carpentry joke du jour: What's the difference between Jesus and Obama?

Who will qualify for mortgage help? Not speculators. I'm glad about that. This via Insty:

MEGAN MCARDLE ON OBAMA’S HOUSING PLAN: “Well, the obvious point is that it represents a massive transfer to borrowers from lenders and the rest of us. As far as I can tell, there is no penalty for having borrowed more than you could realistically afford to repay–not so much as a speck of dirt on the credit report. The administration’s release talks a lot about ‘responsible homeowners’, but very few responsible homeowners have payments that amount to 43% of their monthly income.”

My take — let’s see what they’ve done with the first trillion before we give them any more money to play with . . . .

Dem culture of corruption: Rahm Emanuel's tricks. And remind me again - how do people with these political jobs become multi-millionaires?

Getting politics involved with the bailout was a big mistake

EPA expected to regulate carbon dioxide. Good grief. The world has gone mad. If they try to regulate fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, we will consider civil disobedience.

How much "authenticity" can a marriage handle?

The ten most famous UFO hoaxes

Redefining "hate speech." Volokh. With rules like those, how can anybody say anything about anybody?

Just name the "disaster":

Let me guess: this disaster can only be forestalled through yet higher taxes and still more suffocating regulations, which coincidentally benefit no one but authoritarian bureauweenies like Michael Bloomberg.

But here's some sanity from Mayor Bloomberg:

 "One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes," explained the Mayor. "In the city, that's something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral. The question is what's fair. If 1% are paying 50% of the taxes, you want to make it even more?"

Economic warfare? Jules:

We could dicker all day about whether George Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks was appropriate, proportionate, all that. We could argue all day about the same on Obama’s plan. No one sane thinks either man should not have responded in some way. It’s a question of how, how much, and what it gets you. At the current rate, Obama’s economic war will make Bush’s shooting wars look like an exercise in fiscal restraint and a bargain. If Obama’s plan works, fine. War’s over, we all go home. But at what point does Obama’s econ war get a downloadable counter, and when does Congress and the national media start squawking and declare a quagmire?

The moral preening of celeb hypocrites. Paltrow in this case (photo)

Putin warns American Dems against Socialism

Surprise. Chrysler and GM want more $. The populist in me is getting tired of rewarding failure and imprudence.

Waiting for the backlash. P'line

How severe is the economic situation? Dino. Related, the explanation of why Geithner seemed so lame

 Deconstructing Krugman. RCP

All of them are British citizens

Style over substance on the economy. Villainous

You mean it's not a quagmire? Surge in Afghanistan begins

Stanford Financial Group and the ongoing Dem culture of corruption. h/t, Insty

What will become of the "Freetown of Christiania"? Sounds like a den of thieves to me.

Something else to panic about. Eastern European debt. Big mess. Another result of cheap money.

Kill The Rich! Am Thinker. But aren't there tons of rich Dems? I'd wager that there are far more filty rich Dems than there are Conservatives. Certainly true in public life, beginning with the Clintons and the Obamas. And heck, Wall Street has been a huge Dem donor source for years.

Hey Will! We're part of the anti-intellectual knuckle-dragging, nose-breathing Right, and we are offended by that. Truth is, 97.4% of the Conservative political brains are in Newt's head.

Bank nationalization gains ground among Repubs

New t-shirts, via Theo:

Dem culture of corruption exposed further: Burris in hot water

Is Rep Eric Cantor now targeted for Palinization? (Or should we call it Gingrichization?) Why? See Dem Underground: Repub Party needs to be "eliminated." Liberal fascism, anyone? Why the heck can't we debate issues rationally and in a civil manner?

Teen sexting leads to child porn arrests. Not worth the risk, kids.

Isn't it about time for some government-required "fairness" on TV? PBS' latest outrage.

Has an Afghan surge already begun? I will be skeptical about anything we try to do there, because the place is not a country in any usual sense of the word. It's just a place.

Why don't they love us now? Protests against Hillary in Indonesia. North Korea greets Hillary with threats.

We do not have "unfettered Capitalism" in the US today. We have what's termed a "mixed economy." But if you compare our economy's handling of downturns with Europe and Japan, we handle it better.

Dear Obama: Make it rain candy. Good grief. Maybe we have become a nation of children.

I doubt this would have happened with Bush in office: Pakis make truce with Taliban

Photo: Re our post last night. If Starbucks wants to thrive, I think they should serve booze. Or at least Irish Coffee in the morning.

Inflationary warning above from People's Cube via Moonbattery

The WaPo is in love with Obama. But is it love or lust? 

Rick Moran isn't:

I hate to say it but we have got to find a way to right the ship at the White House. History has reached out and tapped this novice on the shoulder at a time when there is real danger his bungling will result in a catastrophic economic collapse as bad as the worst in our history.

Mark Steyn not in love with O either: So far, it's been Obomateur Hour. (h/t, Jules)

Stimulus: 1.6 billion for "science."  Yes, just "science."

We are not great fans of Geert Wilders, but we are fans of free speech. Atlas has posted his 15 minute film Fitna here.

A rising voice: Rep. Cantor of VA

Ledeen: We are all Fascists now. One quote:

...not one person in a thousand knows what fascist political economy was. Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a "third way" between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded. This was necessary because the Great Depression was defined as a crisis "of the system," not just a glitch "in the system." And so Mussolini created the "Corporate State," in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management. Some of the big "Corporations" lasted a very long time; indeed some have only very recently been privatized, and the state still holds important chunks-so-called "golden shares"-in some of them.

Back in the early thirties, before "fascism" became a pure epithet, leading politicians and economists recognized that it might work, and many believed it was urgently required. When Roosevelt was elected in 1932, in fact, Mussolini personally reviewed his book, Looking Forward, and the Duce's bottom line was, "this guy is one of us."

Fascism, like Socialism and Communism, assumes that politicians are wiser, more far-seeing, and have more integrity and less self-interest than the average person. Also, that the regular person is a feckless dope. Little evidence for that, on average, thus far in history. Politics is just "Hollywood for ugly people," as they say - but also for many who cannot make it in the real world.

Speaking of Fascism, Jerry Brown:

 “a little state control (of radio) wouldn’t hurt anybody”

Democracy at work, at Ace:

"We are obviously very pleased with the court's decision ... there's a large chunk of ballots that have now been taken out of play," said Franken lawyer Marc Elias.

The unintended consequences of the executive pay cap. NYT

Sen. Burris: "I forgot." (He's a lawyer, mind you.) But here's the most revolting Dem corruption story of the month.

Sisu on timeless wisdom and hopey-changey socialism. She reminded us of our 2006 post The paradox of conservatism: Seeking power to extend freedom.