Monday, October 11. 2010
The sinister Chamber of Commerce
NYT: Arizona welcomes immigrants
Kent State: Another listen. What if there was an agent provocateur?
Chilling in Texas: Democrats & Computer Models Claim Texas Is Warming: Real Data Has Texas Cooling Last 15 Years, -2.7°F/Century Trend. h/t, Willisms
Betsy: Gee, has Rory talked to his dad about what's wrong with ObamaCare?
GOP threatens Dem seats thought safe
WH defends Obamacare waivers
US physics professor: 'Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life'. A quote from his letter:
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.
VDH: On looking bad
Black Republicans offer hope after Barack Obama's failures on race
I'm Mr. Blandings. Me, too.
Drowning in Law: A flood of statutes, rules and regulations is killing the American spirit
Via Lucianne, How Obama is invading your home:
The Obama administration isn't satisfied giving the American public vast things we don't want — from stimu lus packages to bailouts to ObamaCare: It's a small-scale nuisance, too — witness its attempt to redesign home appliances. In the pipeline are dumb regulations for almost everything that plugs in or fires up in your home. Just weeks after taking office, the president ordered the Energy Department to speed up the process of issuing harsh new energy-efficiency standards for appliances. Since then, the agency boasts, it "has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than 20 different products..."
Powerline on Che: Remembering a Sociopathic Mass Murderer
Saturday, October 9. 2010
He's rich and plays in politics because his father-in-law owns the Empire State Building, and presumably supports his life style. Video at Ace. What a weenie putz.
Linda has created jobs, built a large business, and knows how the world works.
You don't approve of wrestling entertainment? Then what job-creating, profitable biz could any candidate have been in that you would approve of?
How different is wrestling from MSM news? We need more entrepreneurs in government, and fewer professional politicians who know nothing except government. Government is a parasite. Blumenthal has been on the government teat all of his life - and I assume, the teat of his in-laws. It's all ego for him because he has never done anything real in his life.
Send this smarmy, slippery, phony jerk back to his poolside in Greenwich. He'll be just fine, like his dear buddy Spitzer (they are called "the twins") in New York who I think also lives off family real estate in NYC when he isn't busy with hookers.
Friday, October 8. 2010
 Whose violent words? Not the Tea Party. Not Conservatives (via Gateway).
** Obama: “They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
** Obama to His Followers: “Get in Their Faces!”
** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard”
** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
I have yet to hear anything close to this inciting from the evil Tea Partiers. This Tea Party sympathiser is planning to do some Right Wing violence this weekend though: I am going fishing, up around Montauk. Blood sport, and the freshest Striper sushi.
Slice of cucumber, piece of watercress, slice of wiggling Striper right out of the water, a generous slice of pickled ginger, and some wasabi. Maybe the slightest dip in the Teriyaki, and a few Coronas with lime. We'll be well-fed when we come back to the dock, and will have one filet to grill for supper plus a couple of Bluefish filets. We never keep more than one Striper. That is, of course, if we are lucky to get into fish this weekend.
Otherwise, it's the fish market. This is our final boating of the year.
 Rejection Therapy
Rejection is good for personal growth and humility.
Sullivan: There was no housing bubble. One quote:
You borrowed against your house to send your kid to college. Your kid now lives in your basement eating Cheetos and downloading porn all day instead of out in the workforce, sitting at a desk eating Cheetos and looking at porn on company time as God and Nature intended. But that's a college education bubble. A college loan bubble. You borrowed against a useful and valuable thing, your house, and your children learned Ida Tarbell's bra size, but nothing useful enough to make them employable in a recession.
Surber: An epidemic of epidemics
Each one requiring a government program.
Jay Cost: The Latest Sign of the Dem-Pocalypse
Life in the sticks: More on the South Fulton FD Brouhaha
Poverty Pimps
A culture of lying in the Middle East.
It's multicultural to understand that not all people share our values. Truth is far from a universal value, even in the West.
Freedom of speech on trial in the Netherlands
Higher-Ed-Bubble Update: Pansexuality Edition
WSJ: ObamaCare and the Election - The GOP needs to raise the health-care stakes in 2010, and beyond
Sowell: Red Herring Politics: Part II
Postcards from Vermont
I don't get why VT politics are so different from NH.
Via Neo's Left and right, Britain and here:
Not everyone believes Obama is a Marxist. Coming from England he seems pretty right wing to me.
The Battle for America 2010: Labor Unions Looking to Rescue Feingold in Wisconsin
Poll: Sarah Palin Favorable Rating Just 22 Percent.
The media's Newt Treatment worked on Sarah, but it almost always works on anybody who is targeted. I think she should have run for the Senate.
Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.1% in September, Underemployment, at 18.8%, is up from 18.6% at the end of August
Rove: Democrats and 'Poisoned' Politics - Incumbents launch personal attacks to divert attention from the economy's poor performance.
Delaware:
If these polls even come close to measuring the sentiment of Delaware voters, then Coons, an out-and-out leftist, will waltz into the Senate and begin serving at the beginning of the November lame duck session.
This did not have to happen.
Thursday, October 7. 2010
Today’s federal district court decision on a challenge to ObamaCare’s mandated purchase of medical insurance seeks to so expand federal powers as to override all personal decisions about almost anything.
The Commerce Clause in the US Constitution has been expansively interpreted to allow the federal government to classify almost anything as an “economic activity” affecting interstate commerce. There are some guideposts laid out by the Supreme Court, basically that the regulation of economic activity be necessary to implement the regulatory purpose and that it be proper, not invading constitutional state sovereignty.
A federal district judge in Michigan today decided to further expand the federal government’s regulatory authority to “economic decisions.” In the case at hand, the judge says that the ObamaCare mandate to buy insurance is legit as the decision to not buy insurance may affect others who do by possibly shifting costs to the latter. So, even if aspirin will do the job, instead of a visit to the doctor, you are shifting costs to an insurance buyer.
At law blog Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett points out:
By inventing a new “economic decisions” doctrine, Judge Steeh has gone beyond the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clause doctrines established by the Supreme Court. Only the Supreme Court is authorized to expand its own interpretation of the scope of Congressional power….
If the Supreme Court ever accepts the government’s “economic decision” theory, then there is nothing it cannot mandate in the future in the name of regulating “commerce . . . among the several states.” Congress will then have the general police power that both the Constitution and the Supreme Court has always denied it.
Ilya Somin adds:
The Michigan court’s decision doesn’t bind the Virginia and Florida district courts currently considering the two biggest challenges to mandate (those brought by 21 states and the National Federation of Independent Business). Moreover, Judge Steeh’s conclusion that this case is fairly easily covered by existing Commerce Clause precedent is at odds with the Virginia judge’s earlier ruling concluding that no previous precedent covers this case. It therefore seems to me unlikely that the latter will follow the Michigan reasoning in his own eventual decision (though he could of course uphold the mandate on other grounds). And of course both this ruling and those that will be eventually issued by the other district courts are subject to review by the US courts of appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court.
Alan Greenspan cites fear as the cause for the non-recovery. It's fear mainly of the consequences of government actions. From what I see and hear, that seems right.
Money will sit dormant on the sidelines until people know what is coming next. No new investment means no jobs.
 True Grit; One Awesome Trailer
Socialist ‘Success’: Food Stamp Use Breaks Record
A horror story about a small businessman vs the Feds. h/t Cafe Hayek
AVI contemplates how Libs view government differently
How Obamacare is already affecting medical practice
Postcards of the hanging
Blue collar folks abandon Dems. The wealthy still like the Dems.
Via Gay Patriot:
...in this election, Republicans are running more blacks in white majority districts than the Democrats are. Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration when accusations of racism are being hurled about?
Driscoll: Individuality is Fine as Long as We All Do It Together
How do they do it without Fannie Mae? International Comparison of Home Ownership Rates
More UK insanity: School installs £9,000 facial recognition cameras to stop students turning up late... and teachers could be next target
At Am Thinker: The Left's Terror Folly
The lesson from these attempted attacks is clear. Islamic radicals are trying to kill us not because of the policies of George W Bush or Tony Blair, or because there aren't enough U.N. or EU resolutions condemning Israel, or any other grievances the left are trying to project upon our enemies. The reason America and Western Europe are being attacked is because radical Islamists hate the Western way of life. They hate that we are not enslaved to their extremist version of Islam, and they hate the freedom and prosperity that we enjoy in the West.
Weekly Standard: Democracy is Winning in Latin America
Via Insty: Psychology: The Latest Threat to Campus Free Speech?
The interesting speech by Pinker about taboo thoughts is here.
Wednesday, October 6. 2010
Not yet, anyway. He seems to imagine that somebody thinks Obamacare can work. Of course it cannot. It is not meant to work.
It's meant to fail, and is doing so already. The greedy insurance companies will be blamed, and the Feds will step in...as long as the Lefties are in control.
Gagdad Bob takes on the Cosmos
Mao's little helpers in the Western intelligentsia
Former Secretary of State George Shultz to President Obama: “You’re out of your mind.”
Are Dems uninformed?
Breaking news: Bristol Palin eats at McDonald's. Horrors. We think that their Angus Burger with cheddar, mushrooms, and bacon is darn good.
Quote via Jammie:
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.
--- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Gov. Christie goes to Iowa.
Your Stimulus Dollars at Work: Teacher Pay Raises
A case of pure projection: On the right, hateful words are fired like bullets. Who, where, what, when?
This fellow Cravaack in MN 8th looks good
Conyers admits Obama care is just the first step to complete government control. As we always say, first they break it, then offer to fix it.
Chicago Boyz: Just say it! Teachers Unions are morally illegitimate
Levin: The War on the Young - Obama tries to fool them again.
Department of Climate Disruption: Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way
Great idea for "at risk" kids: Unreal. New Hip-Hop Curriculum Refers to Founding Fathers “Old Dead White Men”
Iran Admits It Could Pull Nuke Trigger on US, Israel.
Tiger:
Our Congress is deeply, embarrassingly incompetent. Willful incompetence in my view is simply the equivalent of corruption. Incompetence which springs from ignorance is merely stupidity at work. Whether the current Democratic leadership of Pelosi and Reid is one or the other doesn't really matter. Of course, I have an opinion. But the result is the same.
Tuesday, October 5. 2010
 Good: ‘Alternative Pathways to Desirable Careers’
Bill Gates: Soak the mini-rich. Brilliant!
Is Rahm ready for prime time?
Samuelson: The government is stifling job-creation
Walter Williams: Politicians Exploit Economic Ignorance. True indeed. It's their stock in trade.
Derbyshire: I love America. Why does it need transforming?
What happens when government gets involved with your medical care
I am deeply offended by what PC insanity the UK is up to now. This is psychotic policy-making.
Coyote on the Corporate State:
A European-style corporate state is typically ruled by a troika of large favored corporations, industrial and public employee unions, and long-time political insiders. Most definitely excluded from power are consumers, entrepreneurs, small businesses, younger workers without seniority, and taxpayers.
The Tea Party is a diabolical cabal
Venezuela shows how it's done. First you break it, then run in to "save" it.
Green jobs scam
Buying gold by the ton. That is called "money on the sidelines."
Powerline: Get your hand out of my shower. How and why is this a Federal responsibility?
Crazy California: Proposition 23 and the damage it would do to California:
Setting aside the state's climate change law would damage the state's green economy and imperil California's commitment to fighting greenhouse gas emissions.
Good grief.
 If Repubs win the House and/or the Senate, what will they decide to do?
Many Repubs really cannot answer the question. Paul Ryan has his answers, but I'm not sure they are election winners. The only winners, I think, are to undo Obamacare, to stop the January tax increases, and to halt any further Federal intrusion into our lives.
Related at Reason - The Tipping Point:
Suddenly the country had a Resistance movement, standing athwart the flow of Obama history, shouting, "STOP!"
That brings us to this historical moment. If it was not clear during Obama's 2008 campaign (and he made deliberate efforts to obscure it) certainly in late 2010 it is clear where he wants to take the county--toward a European-style socialism, a command economy, driven by an all-powerful central government, determined to redistribute wealth and remake America as a multicultural, secular humanist state.
The election next month is not about returning the Republican Party to power in Washington. It is about stepping back from this tipping point, this precipice that Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress have led us to. There is a pervasive sense that this is momentous.
Important? Yes. Momentous? I am not sure. A reaction? Certainly. Much of this is just vague sentiment without specific content, but much of politics is about emotion. Devil is in the details, etc.
I think this post reflects much of the current sentiment: return to the default setting. But which status ante? Here are some default thoughts I can relate to.
Related, Beinart sends a warning: How the GOP Could Blow It:
...Which brings us to the Tea Party, many of whose activists seem genuinely dedicated to slashing government spending (except on the military, of course) and making the party of Reagan and Bush, once again, the party of Goldwater and Gingrich. Maybe this is one reason the GOP establishment is so scared? Over the last half-century, the Republican Party has been, at times, a genuinely anti-government party and, at times, a politically successful party. But it’s never been both at the same time. Once this fall’s elections are over, I suspect the Tea Partiers will begin learning that, the hard way.
Sounds like sour grapes already, yet he has a point. But does Beinart forget Reagan?
Monday, October 4. 2010
Kondratieff has received his $250 bribe check from Medicare, purportedly a penance for the Part D donut. However, since Dr. K's vote is not for sale, he is gleefully endorsing it over to a Tea Party candidate of his choice.
 Sometimes we're lucky to have friends with whom we can have civil conversations, even when we disagree. Fewer times, we're even more fortunate to have a friend whose learning and temperance wakens new thinking in ourself. Such a friend earns the right to be listened to carefully, always.
The Rabbi at my synagogue is such a friend. He is deeply liberal in all the best senses of that term, courageous in stating his views, and in altering them as new information is found. Several years ago, at his High Holiday sermon, the most heard of the year, he called for more openness in our listening to criticisms of Israel, not to pull it down but to get closer to our ideals.
In the meantime, others have gathered force to pull Israel down. So, this year, the Rabbi's sermon confronted those who cross the line from legitimate criticism to delegitimization. "When it comes to Israel’s many faults, there is a bold line between criticism and delegitimization, and that line is being crossed by those whose real agenda is the elimination of the Jewish State."
It is a beautiful and informative discussion. As usual, the Rabbi speaks clearly and covers the pros and cons, resulting in a reasoned conclusion. "To teach our children, to educate our neighbors, and to raise our hands against the slaughtering knife of delegitimization of the Zionist Project."
Read it all for yourself.
Here's how it should have gone down:
"What? You're asking me why after I paid my maid three times the minimum wage, checked her paperwork, paid taxes on her - and she turns out to have defrauded me - I'm the bad guy? Next question."
Defrauded - and betrayed. Unfaithful servant indeed.
What did Meg do wrong? She should not have hired a Hispanic.
The Left is unhinged by the Tea Party partly because they’ve never seen you before. And this isn’t limited to Leftists who are presently, you know, alive.
He makes a good point about the "de-closeting" of Conservatives. Until the last decade, they have mostly been living in the shadows. Now they are out and they are proud.
Royal Navy Field Gun Competition
Dylan meets Obama. Sort-of.
Megan: Where your tax dollars go
Vid: Al Gore Confronted in Tampa about Global Warming Again!!
Stuxnet update
Bill Maher Calls Republicans 'A Deadly Enemy'. Lost his sense of reality.
Prager: If You Are Not a Leftist, Why Are You Voting Democrat?
The great divide in America. In our experience, one cannot even discuss across that divide nowadays.
Those marchers aren't into America. Angry haters? Or just paid to show up? But I am sure the Commies showed up under their own steam. Who are these people?
Sunday, October 3. 2010
Obama's Top Ten Broken Promises.
However, we continue to believe that he and his folks are very pleased with what they have done thus far.
Saturday, October 2. 2010
What's new about a black market in sperm? Human sperm has been cheerfully donated or sold for a few hundred thousand years, hasn't it? Best way to deliver it is in person, but lawsuits are the problem. I expect at least a nice dinner- and maybe a show - in exchange for my sperm donation. My stuff is in high demand because I am tall, dark, handsome, and smart, I like to have fun, and my sperm injector works fairly well most of the time except when I am nervous.
P. J. O'Rourke: The Virtue of Sharing
Noonan: The Twister of 2010. Riehl says it's not a twister - it's climate change. I think it's "too late."
Caring: Global Work Party Day on 10/10/2010: come up with your own event. Pretend that you "make a difference." It's easy and fun, it makes you feel good, and you might get a date out of it.
Somebody is buying something: Another Record Week for Intermodal Rail Traffic
Krauthammer: Why Is He Sending Them? President Obama lacks the will to fight in Afghanistan. For the Left, America's only enemies are American Conservatives.
Via Insty, The Khmer Rouge: They Did It Because They Were Communists
Maybe the TARP wasn't such a bad idea: AIG plans asset sale to repay bailout
Hennessey says the Prez gets it re the housing mess
Reason: School Money Math Never Adds Up Quite Right
Business 101 — outsourcing. The government forces it on us, if we want to stay in business.
Norwegian Publisher Cancels Biography of Muhammed. We term that "chickenshit." Plenty of interesting bios of Jesus have been written, and nobody minds. Jesus was the original rebel against PC.
A prediction that the O will make a left turn. He does want to be "transformational." He is a true believer. He will never adjust to reality.
Insty via Reb: THE HORROR: “Is there anything more frightening than seas of grandmothers waving American flags and singing ‘patriotic’ songs? I don’t think so.” Patriotic grannies really scare me.
Greta Destroys Lib Hack Gloria Allred: “Gloria, This Is Almost Delusional”
From Wkly Std: The Obamacare Follies - Don’t let Obamacare reach its third birthday:
Obamacare is less popular than it was on the day it was born, and it wasn’t popular then, either. Practically the only Democrats who mention the law in campaign ads are those who brag about voting against it. Large numbers of Americans, including a majority of independents, would like to see the law repealed. No wonder the pro-repeal GOP maintains an edge in the congressional generic ballot. As much as the public continues to distrust Republicans, it understands that the first step in undoing this harmful law is giving John Boehner the speaker’s gavel.
Friday, October 1. 2010
In just three months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
Continue reading "Your looming tax disaster"
Thursday, September 30. 2010
Stratfor: "European Terror Threat Overstated".
Although it seems to have been overlooked by the media, it is hard not to conclude that Islamist acts of terror are not usually preceded by specific threats, and Islamist threats are not usually followed by attacks. This is basic psychological warfare, and usually works well – authorities in target states must not ignore the threats, and defending against the threat of attack for an indeterminate time frame is costly as well as stressful.
An excerpt from the book, at NRO. Quite entertaining, clever and, I think true. A quote:
Principles are what counts. So stop trying to outdo us by rushing to the microphones with a silly plan to solve every social ill this side of halitosis whenever our pet frogs in the media croak about a new “crisis” in the daily news feed. In fact, forget about programs completely. Just say no! And if we call you out and demand to know — which we will, you can bet on that, it’s part of the playbook — the details of your “plan,” laugh and tell them to shove it and start talking about principles.
To do otherwise is to accept our premises, which means you have already lost. Instead, stick to the big picture: liberty, self- reliance, faith, freedom. Those concepts are to us like a crucifix to a vampire, but heed not our squeals. Instead, keep brandishing your integrity and have the satisfaction of watching us collapse, writhing, on the floor into a puddle of putrescent malefaction, just like Christopher Lee in all those great Hammer movies.
Fierce feminist lobbying
Neo on mixed political marriages
The Kombucha kerfuffle
A look at auto-tuning. I need that for my church singing.
Horrible. Far Left Fabricates Maid Sob Story to Smear Meg Whitman
The horrible Grayson looks like he's on the ropes
Dems refuse to vote for tax increases...at the moment.
Islam in France (video is in English)
Related: Multiculturalism in Germany
Driscoll on the myth of Hoover and laissez-faire
Not Again! Obama Takes Roadshow to Iowa – Gets Earful
A review of Communist political goals
Re the O at Univ of Wisconsin:
"The enthusiasm gap is real," said Rodd Freitag, UW-Eau Claire political science professor. "I think younger voters may be experiencing the frustrations of seeing our political system at work, of not getting everything you want immediately. The euphoria has gone away."
Where's my pony?
Times Devotes Entire Editorial Page to Attacking 'Pledge to America'
McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world.
Does Linda McMahon Stand a Chance in Connecticut?
Here's a new term: "fundamentalist Constitutionalists". Seems like it is meant to be an insult.
Wednesday, September 29. 2010
 We have no "insurgency" in the US now. What I think we have is a reaction to governmental overreach - an overreach which, as I posted yesterday, will only with time ratchet ever upwards until it breaks.
What did the guy say? "Tighten the bolt until it breaks, then back off a little."
Being a Constitutional Conservative is a depressing role.
From Protein's One Party Washington? No-Party Insurgency:
The American government has become a gigantic regulatory juggernaut. It decides the fate of individuals, businesses, whole industries, and entire regions. A few lines in a statute, or a paragraph in one of the many administrative codes that enmesh our productive lives, can mean wealth or ruin. This is a huge, unchecked, and increasingly unaccountable power. Where there is such power, as our Founders knew, it will be abused. Picking better people won’t solve the problem, because where such power exists, it will corrupt the people who have access to it. This is a political law almost as universal as those of Newton and Maxwell in the realm of physical phenomena. A regulatory state this powerful will necessarily be corrupting, venal, and suffocating.
OK, sure. But people voted for that stuff. What can anybody undo? Even Ronaldus Magnus could not take on the ridiculous and useless federal Dept. of Education. Megan McArdle mulls over government coercion, and exposes the straw man of Somalia. A quote:
Unfortunately, I don't have a Grand New Theory with which to replace it; I think of "society" as a chaotic system, within which government, like corporations, are necessary evils that will only ever imperfectly perform the idealized roles to which we would like to assign them. As such, I can't generate any neat sound-bytes like "Taxation is theft!" or "Why don't you just move to Somalia, huh?"
Nobody is advocating nihilism. I do have a grand theory, from Thomas Jefferson: "That government which governs least, governs best." A light hand. The Constitution remains a good idea, and it worked pretty well for a long time. We had a country of self-reliant, strong men and women and kids who took nothing for granted except that their lives were in their own hands, and God's.
Stanley Fish urges opponents to engage the Tea Partiers on the merits, instead of name-calling. He is right.
And Matt Taibbi snarkily notes the Medicare Tennessee Tea Partiers in their government-paid scooters. I think that Medicare should have been means-tested, but that fight is long gone. The Liberal youngsters are going to pay my medical bills in a few years - if they can find a job. The joke is on them because, the way things are going, I have far more assets than they will ever have. Too bad it's not a joke.
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