Maggie's Farm

Wooly Mammoths used to live in LA. Not very long ago, either.

But you already knew that (h/t, Jungle Man). They are findling lots more interesting bones, though. 

She's a Dartmouth gal, and she keeps rifles around the house.

I think she's a Maggie's Farm sort of senator (despite being D-NY). The self-protective instinct seems sadly lacking in the flabby Western world these days. Plus she has a nice, honest smile.

If you get immunized for Polio, you should just as reasonably immunize yourself against the bad guys by being armed. Both dangers are rare, but can really hurt you.

Somebody made her move those guns, though.

Starbuck's stock price tracks the economy. Ouch.

As much as we enjoy promoting the simple virtues of Dunkin Donuts here, we have never really been mad at Starbucks. I like their House Blend, and I think the idea of a "third place" to hang out for a while either alone or to meet - which isn't a pub - is a civilized thing.  

And, when you think about it, they don't charge any more than a pub would charge you for a drink. As with a pub, you are paying for a place to go to, not for the liquid.

I think they over-reached in their expansion. The are spots in NYC where you can see at least two of them from one corner.

Dunkin is still making money, and, if you don't mind hard plastic chairs, no wireless, no semi-cool CDs for sale, no bean-sprout sandwiches on bread so "natural" that I doubt Medieval serfs would want to eat it, no phony 1/4" thick ambience, and no barristas, Dunkin is still a pleasant "third place" for lots of folks.

Still, for your first e-Harmony get-together, Starbucks is probably a better idea...

On Fitna and dhimmitude. h/t, Stop the ACLU

Photo above: Train of death, according to James Hansen. Cranks rule the world.

And just one related comment about all of the excitement about electric cars. What do they run on? Coal. Coal is where the electricity comes from. Some people seem to think it comes from magic out of sockets.

Aspiring moonbat Prince of Wales to travel with gigantic carbon footprint to spread warming religion

We used to joke about "thought police." It's become real, in the UK. Spiked

Driving ships through the graveyard of the Pacific. I have run a few bars in my time in boats, and it is scary.

Depressing. What we just did. Surber: "Too bad this bill is born-again communism."

The Obama plans for February. They were serious about changing America.

Have Obamacons been Obamaconned? Q&O. Duh.

Obama to Eastern Europeans: You're on your own. Nice. Looks more and more like Carter.

Who was America's best Presidential speechwriter? Ted Sorensen answers.

Jeb Bush: Make Repubs a national party.

I'd be scared to lend too, with these economic idiots in charge

Sign above from Right Wing Prof. More seriously from him, What have I been saying? College kids are not prepared for college-level work.

Get ready. I don't know what this has to do with stimulus, but the stimulus bill gives the government the power to over-rule your doctor for cost purposes. That is insane, politically and humanly.

Stimulus gives states incentive to add to their welfare rolls.

New York State gets stimulus windfall:

Gov. Paterson called yesterday for fiscal restraint with the massive influx of federal aid. His budget office estimated that New York will receive $24.6 billion over the next two years, $4 billion more than first believed.

Restraint? Haha. Fat chance.

Obama's "shock and awe" will be paying the bill. But what the heck, White House admits stimulus won't do anything.

A few things economists agree upon. Mankiw

 From a piece by Paglia:

Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment's thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows. (My latest manifesto on this subject appeared in my last column.) The failure of liberals to master the vibrant medium of talk radio remains puzzling. To reach the radio audience (whether the topic is sports, politics or car repair), a host must have populist instincts and use the robust common voice. Too many Democrats have become arrogant elitists, speaking down in snide, condescending tones toward tradition-minded middle Americans whom they stereotype as rubes and buffoons. But the bottom line is that government surveillance of the ideological content of talk radio is a shocking first step toward totalitarianism.

One of the nuggets I've gleaned from several radio sources is that Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has been in the aggressive forefront of the campaign to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, is married to Tom Athans, who works extensively with left-wing radio organizations and was once the executive vice-president of Air America, the liberal radio syndicate that, despite massive publicity from major media, has failed miserably to win a national audience. Stabenow's outrageous conflict of interest has of course been largely ignored by the prestige press, which should have been demanding that she recuse herself from all political involvement with this issue.

Stimulus is largest increase in government hand-outs in history. Good grief. Yes, we are back to the dole again, undoing Clinton's best deed for the poor. I think the Admin is over-reaching here. Same mistake Clinton made in the beginning. Nobody wants a change back to 1970.

Greenies upset with stimulus' billions for highways. I am actually sympathetic with them. Don't we have highways everywhere? Around here, we have highways to nowhere already.

Do the Blue Dog Dems have any clout anymore? Less, but still some.

Road to Serfdom, in cartoons. We linked this once in the past. h/t, Insty

Stimulus problems, at RCP. A quote:

"If we borrow money from China to give money back to individuals to spend (in the form of tax cuts or tax credits), will their spending eventually go back to China because they use it to make purchases at stores such as Wal-Mart?" she asks.

Which begs a follow-up question: How would that stimulate job growth here?

The current stimulus plan lacks ambition, innovation and creativity, Brown says. Government shouldn't create jobs; it should create markets that spur private companies to create jobs. "The government's job is to speed up the process known as 'creative destruction,' " she says.

Much of the money in the stimulus plan goes to states to help balance their budgets or to programs created long ago -- some successful (such as Pell grants) and some controversial (sexually transmitted disease prevention) -- but not many that are really "new" or experimental.

"Too much for too little" is Brown's assessment of the stimulus package.

Plus I always wonder what happens when China stops wanting to buy our debt...Won't we be in the same position as the banks? Insolvent, with nowhere to borrow and nobody left to tax? Which is precisely where California is right now.

Bumper sticker below from Gay Patriot:

From Bruce Kesler:

That isn’t my headline.  It’s the headline on a report in the Huffington Post from Iraq by a reporter opposed to the war in Iraq writing about another who is opposed, Dahr Jamail.

Shane Liddick is a freelancer out of San Diego, with newspaper and magazine reporting experience, currently in Anbar Province, Iraq.  Dahr Jamail is also a freelancer, who has been the darling of the left.

Dahr Jamail’s shoddy anti-Iraq propaganda, indeed invention of false horror stories, has been exposed before.  I wrote about him in March 2008, as “an accomplished propagandist and fabulist on Iraq,” with links to Jules Crittenden, Instapundit, and most tellingly to a series of exposes by Denis Keohane.  The Keohane exposes can be seen here.

Liddick’s words are direct:

… I saw many of the same things you did. But I've come to very different conclusions. That, I believe, is because you had a pre-existing agenda you were determined to conform evidence to (i.e., war is bad, the U.S. is waging a war, so whatever it's doing in Anbar is bad); and because you're a coward….

He goes on to say -

I still don't think we should be here. But that debate became passé six years ago. Now it's a question of how soon the U.S. gets out and what happens before and after it does. I've met too many good and decent people here to write this place off, smart and hard working Iraqis that want and deserve a first-world existence….

As a journalist, criticizing military policy without talking to the military is completely incompetent. But with you, it goes deeper. You hide behind political artifice to lob your mines of pre-conclusion, like a craven wretch. And really, I think that goes to the solid core of the dregs of the problem. You're not a coward merely because you're afraid to seek the truth when it might not conform to your views ... rather your chickenshit views are shaped by the fact you're a coward….

Nearly every American soldier on the ground--no matter how misguided vis-à-vis the underlying motivations that brought the U.S. to Iraq--is here because of a sincere and genuine desire to help; none of them, I wager, have come to further an empire. Whether it be to fight against terrorism so people back home feel a little safer in skyscrapers, or to relieve a weary Iraqi population of a dictator, they're here for honorable reasons; just as is the case with the majority of those Iraqi soldiers (who still have targets on their foreheads). Which makes your fink agenda a slap in the face to about a million people who have fought and died and lost legs, brothers, and lots of blood in the hope of making something as simple as a secure place to live.

The military has been surprisingly forthcoming with me and all I had to do was ask. Marine Corps Colonel Patrick Malay sat with me on three different occasions, for long discussions about security in his area of operation in Anbar. One thing I learned quickly is that the military's officer corps is filled with the best of America's minds--kids that aced their college entrance exams, were the captains of their ball teams, and had to be nominated by senators to go to the schools they did. These are the guys (along with their much more experienced superiors) that are deciding strategy--and they're fucking smart. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of their high level briefings--again, all I had to do was show some kind of aptitude for objectivity--and I can tell you their comprehension of the situation on the ground is apt, their thinking clever, and their intentions centrally wrapped up with the Iraqi people….

The military's policy is designed from the bottom-up on security. The plan is simple--so simple (in theory), it can't fail. Security will bring outside investment, which will thereby enhance existing security, which will bring more investment, further enhancing security, and so on. It's uncomplicated and it's already working. The lynchpin is security. The people of Anbar want it desperately (I lived with these people for most of the past month, and I can't tell you how desperately they want it) and they need it to be able to rebuild….

The heart of the problem in all of this isn't only with the people of Iraq, it's also with Americans in this age of rapid and uncensored hydra-headed media--and the fact anybody can print anything. The threat there lies in the fact that 80-percent of people in society are grazers (and you can check Chomsky on this, Colonel Malay, or anybody who's served time); non-thinkers that only want to be herded and told what to do. It's those people who read your half-truths online and don't realize you're "independent" for a reason.

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals. There's plenty of ugliness to report in Iraq (as there are thousands of stories of hope and headway)--and the U.S. military certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nobody's telling you to report on one side or the other. But manipulating the truth because of your own personal biases is wretched and works in the face of progress. The other end of the political spectrum disregards you, Dahr, and now I know why. I thought it was because you're a liar--but you aren't. You don't have enough backbone to be a liar. You're a craven obfuscationist, intent on promoting your agenda at the cost of a menagerie of much braver men and women. ... s.d. liddick

One month into a failed Presidency. I did think it was odd that the Admin. had no economic plan, and ceded it all to the Dem House sandbox. Why was there no realistic plan, and just a mix of every Dem Congressman's junk pile?

Big stimulus money for warmists only. The warming biz is hot. No doubt there is plenty of pressure and incentive to come up with the wanted results. Even absent-minded professors know on what side their bread is buttered. They like to eat too, and the grant money they can bring in is their bread and butter. The grants pay their salaries.

Sullivan declares that the GOP has declared war on Obama. I think it is the other way around. When you say "F-you, we won," you aren't being collegial. When you grab the Census, you aren't even being civilized: it's a Chavez-like, Chicago-style power grab. I think the WH is planning to crush the GOP for the next 10 years. Who is using projection here? Me or Sullivan? We viewed the Dem handling of the pork and federal power-grab of the so-called stimulus as a declaration of war.

Read Ray Dalio's 4-page piece in Barron's, if you haven't (we linked a couple of days ago). His macro view, while depressing, makes a lot of sense: It's a D-process. He likes gold right now.

Re the national debt chart we posted this morning: If China is buying all of our federal paper, does that mean that they will own us?

General reminder: When you have the time, it's always worthwhile to see what TimesWatch has to say.

Reagan said "The closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this earth is a government program." The gummint racket ratchet has no reverse setting. Why the cost estimates of the stimulus are way off. Does anybody imagine that any of these hundreds of new "programs" will ever be cut or dropped when things settle down? I think we taxpayers are being rolled and scammed within an inch of our lives - if not more.