Obama Knew!!!

When can we expect the damning cries of "Obama knew!!!" from the left?

[..] Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano [..]  kept a straight face when she claimed in the immediate aftermath that "the traveling public is safe" and "the system worked"? Soon after, she was forced to agree during an NBC "Today" interview that the system of protecting the homeland from terrorists actually "failed miserably."

Abdulmutallab's father walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria earlier this year to warn America about this fanatic. The U.S. apparently ignored the message. Can a system that looks such gift intelligence in the mouth be said by anyone to be working?

Just So You Know...

Things get quieter here around Christmas Time, and for good reason.

Keeping Christmas is something we take seriously in our household.  When you walk in to our house at Christmas Time, there is no mistaking what time of year it is.  Not gaudy.  But let's just say well decorated and not in a tacky way.

There are things to wrap, traditional recipes to make, family coming in... less time for blogging.

Not saying there will be NO blogging ... just that something's gonna have to hit me but good to stop what I'm doing and post.

I assume the senate passage is a done deal.  Just hope the House hates it and squabbles over it.  Or better yet, trashes it completely.  But I' trying to be realistic here.

Apparently the special election to replace Ted Kennedy is next month.  And it's not any sort of certainty that the Democrat will win.

I sure hope America is pissed enough.

Mean time, there will be much merry making with friends and family.

To My Senators

McCaskill and Bond (yes, I did send it to them).  I don't think Bond will vote for the bill.  It is a given that McCaskill, Pelosi's lap dog, will.

NO. Health Care provision is not a proper role for government.

61% of America is against this health care bill. 50% would prefer you do nothing.

But Democrats plan to do it anyway. They campaign saying they're going to Washington to represent us. And end up spending money from our state to buy votes from other states just to get a bill to the floor.

Why, again, am I going to be paying for Nebraska's Medicare indefinitely? So Democrats can vote again and force me to pay everyone else's? Nebraska has been promised money from me, not a voter in that state, to pay for medicare in that state, all so that Nelson would get on board with the bill.

You may call that business as usual on Capitol Hill. We little people call it stinking corruption and far from the Founders' vision - so far that they would not recognize it as theirs. But they would recognize what had happened. And they would not be happy.

Claire, I suppose you know you're out next time you're up for election. I also suppose you don't care, as I'm sure you've been assured you'll be "taken care of".

Well there are lots and lots of us who do care, and Democrats' tin ear to us will not be forgotten. I suppose you feel that you are doing something great and will be able to bask in the glory of "getting something done". What you are getting done is likely the final nail in the coffin of the Great American Experiment, and send us down the path of the Great Soviet Experiment and all the others like it failing all over the world.


No. NO no no no no. No no, no no no no. Did I mention No????

You'll Take it, and You'll LIKE It!

So, over 61% are against the currently circulating and constantly morphing collection of mumbo jumbo called "Teh Health Care Bill".

And Pelosi said (according to the article that prompted this post) : Pelosi said she wouldn't change course on health care just because Americans are turning against the plan. (my emphasis)

In other words, we don't represent you, we represent the Democratic party -- as it looks at this as some major accomplishment and advancement -- a necessary progression -- in "our" society that they've been trying to push through for 100 years.

But her members aren't so cocky. Reports circulated last week that a half-dozen Democratic representatives from swing districts are considering retiring rather than explain to voters why they helped push the country so far to the left.

Then don't do it!!!!  B'Jezuz!  Have you no conscience?!  Or have there been death threats from party leaders?????

The article also says: 

Schauer of Battle Creek and Peters of Bloomfield Township serve constituents who aren't used to their representatives saluting San Francisco-style big government policies.


Pelosi is freeing a number of these at-risk members to cast votes that will play better in their districts -- but not enough of them to place passage of her priorities in jeopardy.

What is this?  Why should one Senator have any power to dictate how any other Senator votes?  Isn't that an obnoxious corruption of the system?  You elect someone, and yet someone else from another district, another state, gets to tell them how they will vote.

We are so far away from the Constitution it is truly frightening.  I hope to God a backlash next November will be enough.  I fear it may be too late.  But backlash we shall!!!

Merry Christmas from Haloscan

Real exciting news indeed.  Got an email from Haloscan:

Exciting news – Haloscan, the legacy comment system that JS-Kit acquired last year, is getting upgraded to the new Echo platform. You can test Echo on the bottom of this blog post to get a feel for it’s features.

This transition will happen in batches of users over the course of a couple of months. The first batch of users will start getting a notice of the upgrade right away on their Haloscan admin dashboard.

Once presented with the upgrade message, Haloscan users will have 2 weeks to make a decision. You will have the following two options.

1. Upgrade to Echo for $9.95/year – all your comment data will be transitioned over automatically
2. Export your Haloscan comment data and turn off their service

Users need to respond within the two week period to ensure uninterrupted service.

In other words, start paying or all your comments will be deleted and you will no longer be able to use the service.

I can't remember why I went to Haloscan in the first place.  I think it had something to do with how Blogger handled comments in the past.  I think that's been improved.  So ... as of Jan 2, all comments up to last night will be gone unless I can figure out a way to import my exported comments into Blogger.  And we're just going to start using Blogger's comments feature instead.

All your comments are belong to us.

If it's good enough for Buck, it's good enough for us.

The Anchoress Nails it

Via my buddy Morgan -- this is fantastic from The Anchoress.

Dear Congress:
After watching the absurd kabuki theater going on in Washington, where Harry Reid spends half his time crowing, “we’ve got the votes!” and the other half bullying people to get the votes, and Nancy Pelosi walks around like a smiling set of brass knuckles, offering anything, hourly, to anyone who will help her pass their healthcare plan “by Christmas,” I have a message for all of you in both houses of the US Congress:

GO HOME. Drop what you are doing, right now, and go home. Put the 2000 page healthcare bill that you haven’t read into the trash can as you turn out the lights and head for the airport.

RTWT
But this bit is freakin' poetry:

Go home, Congress, and give America a break from your freakish certainties, your falsities, frailties and your folly. Turn off your blackberries and stay off the television and try to find whatever scraps of humanity still remain buried beneath the crust of stinking, corrupt ambition you’ve allowed to grow on you.

The Account of Cyndi's Trip to DC for the Michelle Bachmann DC Gathering

My sister-in-law went to Washington DC for the Nov 5 Michelle Bachmannn-organized "kill the bill" rally to express let her concerns be known about a government takeover of health care ... and everything else.

Brother jeffmon sends her account:

11/3 - Early in the morning, she leaves in the Jetta. Immediately out of the driveway, the car stalls. It's been having cold start problems. She re-starts it, and continues.

Illinois - Construction!

Indianapolis - Traffic! Construction!

Ohio - She arrives at the Reynoldsburg Super 8. It's not the nicest place in the world, replete with strip clubs, sirens, a drive-up to check in to the motel, and standing water in the tub.

11/4 - The car dies again, takes a while to start. After breakfast at Cracker Barrel, things are looking up. Until she is pulled over for 75 in a 65. The officer asks for the usual license, registration, and insurance, and asks where she is going. She tells him about her trip to DC to protest the house 'health care' bill. He asks if she knows how to get there, and lets her go with a warning.

Pennsylvania - Construction!

Maryland - OK.

Virginia - The tom-tom was inadvertently set to give walking directions to the Pentagon Best Western, so it sent her down every goat path from colonial times to get her there.

11/5 - Got up early. Took the hotel shuttle to catch the metro at Pentagon Center. There were other people from the hotel on the same mission, a 60 something Brenda from Houston (who was familiar with DC and help get Cyndi around) and a Seminole dude who had been testifying before congress about some veterans issues. He was sure Cyndi and her clothing and everything else about her was Seminole. Hmmm. Took the Blue Line to the capitol.

There were effigies of Pelosi and Reid. There were people all around the capitol, too many to just meet on the east steps like Bachmann had asked. There were snipers on the roof, and lots of areas blocked off to public access. People inside the capitol were looking out the windows at the crowd. After the speakers were done, pages from the bill were distributed, and people were asked to go in to the capitol office buildings and ask for explanations of that their page meant. There were long lines to get past security in the capitol office buildings.

As it turns out, the capitol building was surrounded by protesters.

In line, people were chanting Naaannnncyyyy..... Naaannnncyyyy.....

As Cyndi was waiting in line to go into the Cannon building, word came out were saying Pelosi was frightened and refused to see anyone. There was a report that she had some people detained (including an old priest, who had thrown pages from the bill at her, or maybe her staff). The second floor was closed. Another report came the Pelosi called a vote in an attempt to prevent representatives from interacting with the public.

Cyndi visited some unknown representative's office. There were cookies.

She also talked to some of Roy Blunt's people, who invited her to come to his office, but she never found it. She and the aforementioned Brenda visited her representative's office, they were very nice. They got hungry and left, eating dinner at the Pentagon City shopping area.

11/6 - The car died again. She got it going, and headed back toward Pennsylvania. She [..] ended up in a Holiday Inn near Big Beaver, PA. She had a good time with some revelers at the hotel who were celebrating birthdays and taking a weekend break from college. She was pretty sure one of them was brother Phil's [ed - that would be me] younger doppelganger.

11/7 - Cyndi [..] let the car warm up for several minutes before driving, and had no trouble. She spend an uneventful day driving to Indianapolis.

11/8 - Indianapolis to home. The bastards passed the bill the night before.

I like the bit where the cop let her go when he found out where she was going.  And, of course, the cookies.  Because everyone likes cookies.

Gavin Goes to a Tea Party Protest

Old high school and college schoolmate and recently re-found friend Gavin reports from Claire McCaskill's doorstep today:

Just wanted to relate my experience at my first official protest! A local radio host Dana Loesch called for a "red alert" protest at McCaskill's office to protest the health care bill. It was an "over the lunch hour" protest to make one last statement to Senator McCaskill. There were 75-100 people there at any given time. (I did a head count 2 times.) There was a lot of support from drive bys too. The office is in the city in a rough neighborhood so they have a security system that requires you to buzz in. Several people attempted to go in the office but were told they already had some constituents in the office. Their office was small so they did not want to "over crowd" it. Myself and 5 other people waited for 35 min to get entrance but to no avail. Three time a spokes person came out and repeated the line that they did not want to over crowd the office. While we were waiting to get in a man in a very expensive suit came up and walked right in. Must have been a "real" constituent. He came back out after 15 minutes. I didn't really expect to get a hearing but was amused at the technique they used to keep us out. Saw another guy in an expensive suit go in the back of the building. Lobbyists I'm guessing.

About 15 minutes after I arrived 3 police cars arrived. One lady officer went into McCaskill's office. Just checking on the staff I suppose. They stayed around till I left. Froze my rear off but got a little education in politics. There were some bloggers there with their cameras rolling but no Other media present of course.

I talked to him about my first protest experience, and he added

I never thought of myself as a discontented citizen. Look at what it took, the threat of losing my way of life. Hope I haven't waited too long to get into the fray.

It was funny. You could tell that all of us were rookie protesters. No one brought a bull horn and the chants were... a little awkward... but by golly we protested!

Been there.

Still there, really.

Rant

I heard from a friend that Amtrack Joe was warning this morning about "health care" being kicked back a generation if it "doesn't pass in this congress".  I snapped.

If Health Care™ doesn't pass in this congress, little baby kittens will die horriffic deaths over and over again (9 times each) in front of your chillllllllldren, and civilization as we know it will collapse back to a bunch of redneck racist greedy fat cats who won't spread the wealth around.

And if no treaty is signed in Copenhagen, and Cap & Trade isn't passed, Polar Bears will fall out of the sky on Manhattan as the rising sea water floods up to the 27th floor of the Empire State Building!  (Not to mention vastly increasing the volume of Al Gore's heated swimming pool.)

So do it now Now NOW!!!! No time to read it!!!!! No time for questions!!!! NOW!!!! Before it's tooooooo LAAAAAAAAATE!!!!!!!!!!  and those gun-totin', moose-killin' NASCAR fans vote a dam' 'publican administration 'r somethin' leaving us smart people on the sidelines!!!!!

sigh

Always remain skeptical when someone is trying to sell you something and they pressure you to buy it NOW!!!

Dr. Sanity

I used to read Dr. Sanity a while back.  I had forgotten about her, but I do remember I liked her stuff.

tim, or "small 't' tim" as Buck calls him, pointed me to a really great article on her blog with links (circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, eh?) on what the Hadley CRU documents exposed and what it means, relating it to the Challenger disaster.

And on the blog roll she goes!

It's "Logical"

So this morning on Fox & Friends Geraldo weighed in on the CRU Email issue.   He said is isn't about the data being wrong ... (it's not?  Then why hide, obfuscate, and destroy?) ... it's about it "looking" bad, and it'll deal a body blow to the movement.

He then went on to say (correctly) that this doesn't mean there isn't global warming, it's just a blow to the case, but in saying that he blurted out something very close to  ... It's logical that there is global warming because of pollution.

NO!

How can you appear to be so close to getting it and just miss it entirely in the end?

Isn't that what this research has been all about?  To figure out what, if any, effect  man's contribution to earth's carbon budget has?  If it were just logical, then what has all this money been spent for, exactly?

He only says that because it's been repeated ad nauseum for 20 years on every newscast, every movie, every award ceremony, sit-com, newspaper -- because these clowns who can't explain the stabilization in temperatures, whose dire predictions keep getting pushed farther and farther into the future, whose models cannot reproduce past climate variations -- have systematically interfered with anyone checking or even questioning their work -- decree that it is so.

I'll admit, I heard "obvious" instead of "logical" at first, which is what got me fired up.  There is a line of logic (we call these things "theories" until they're proven -- that's what the scientific method is about) that says that since CO2 is a strong visible absorber and IR emitter,  more of it (up to a point) would contribute a positive temperature feedback.  In the absence of any other negative feedback that might be introduced by other factors.   Still, while "obvious" and "logical" aren't technically synonymous, they are in the minds of most lay people.

Maybe Geraldo's right about this.  It's not about the data.  It's about the whole process from beginning to end.

More Climategate (sorry, the AGW religion is one of our pet topics around here)

Via ICECap.

Watt's Up With That? digs into the kinds of "adjustments" that are made to, ahem, "hide the decline".

Note: my personal take is that in the last 10 or so years, we really can't say there's been cooling.  But nor can we say there has been any warming.  It appears that IPCC scientists politicians just tend to like hiding declines when they find them.

Speaking of "Hide the Decline", with my above note in mind -- Minnesotans for Global Warming have struck, stricken, strickificated ....  again:


I believe that's Michael Mann of Hockey Stick Chart fame's mug in the video.  And in the spirit of the season ....

Next Time the Obama Administration blames TARP on Bush....

Remember this:

• Senator Obama voted for TARP
• Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Henry Paulson wrote it
• Obama appointed Geithner as his Treasury Secretary
• Obama re-nominated Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman for 2010

But Bush! But Bush! Previous administration! I inherited this mess!

But nothin'. Big government, followed by vastly bigger government.

Demean, Ridicule, Repeat

John Gibson nails the Left's formula for argument.  Don't bring up facts.   Demean, Ridicule, Repeat.

The only thing I disagree with this guy on is that Swiftboating was fellow Swiftboat Veterans bringing up facts about John Kerry's service and record rather than finding 50 ways to call him a poopy-head.

Gore Dismisses Hadley CRU emails as "Old"

Via Drudge:

Gore dismisses the Hadley CRU emails that he says he hasn't read on the grounds that they're 10 years old.

Well, the oldest ones are 13 years old.  The most recent ones aren't even 10 weeks old.  Or even 5.

Great Global Warming Swindle and the Hadley CRU Documents

For those of you who missed it, or for those of you who have seen one "side", that is, "An Inconvenient Truth" ... and haven't seen the other side of the story, I post this from March, 2007. Watch it, and I do mean the whole thing. Then go read about the Hadley CRU emails, and ask yourself who is telling the truth here.

The Complex

Besides being an awesome Blue Man Group video ...

Remember the Industrial Military Complex (I believe first noted by Eisenhower but latched on to by Leftists for decades)?

George Will came up with a similar term talking about Climategate this morning (good article, btw.  When he's not talking about whether or not one should wear blue jeans, George is pretty good) ....

Actually, never in peacetime history has the government-media-academic complex been in such sustained propagandistic lockstep about any subject.

Heh!

Must Watch PJTV Trifecta

Video:  Trifecta on Climategate.

Steve Green is in rare form.  And Bill Whittle is his usual insightful self.

And the quote Bill Whittle unearthed from President Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex speech from 50 years ago rings true.

the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

And please consider subscribing to PJTV to keep it going.  It is a valuable service, IMHO.  $5 a month.  Well worth it to me.

Shoe thrower pelted with shoe by Iraqi in France

Heh.  Will this make MSM news?

 Via  Gateway Pundit (right in my back yard)....  There's video as well.  In other news, from the same blog, Obama's approval rating is down to 33% in my state.  I think we were technically a McCain state by a few thousand votes.  So down from 49.999% to 33%.

Peer Reviewed! Peer Reviewed! Peer Reviewed!

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  - Phil Jones, Director - Hadley CRU

Frankly, I doubt Ed Begley Jr. has a clue what "peer review" means. It's just a term AlGore's been throwing about lately, so Ed parrotts it.

If you get to define away scientists who disagree with you as non-peers, then peer review becomes meaningless.  Well all the people who agree with us agree with us!!!

Richard Lindzen Speaks

Haven't seen much from MIT's Richard Lindzen lately (probably by design ... what with the IPCC "scientists" and the media shutting out anything outside of the now clearly manufactured "concensus"), but he is the single scientific voice I respect the most on the subject.

Go.  Read.  Be enlightened.

If you can't beat 'em ...

This morning on Fox and Friends I was surprised to see a familiar face ... a face that I don't believe has been on Fox much if at all over the past several months during the White House's Anti-Fox News campaign ...

Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs appeared good natured, had well-worded, canned answers to the not incredibly light questions being asked of him ... almost as if he knew exactly what questions would be asked (this is probably fairly normal in the News Business these days especially for high-ranking White House officials from what I understand).   In other words, he did his job. 

I couldn't help but notice that at least twice he threw in very thinly veiled jabs at the Bush Administration.  But that is, sadly, what we've come to expect from this administration (you know, the one that's getting us away from the politics of the past).

Anyway, if you're going to try to control the message, which is your job as Press Secretary ... there's no better way than to go on yourself.

Two Kinds of People

Quote from Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell I really like....

"There's two kinds of people.  You either call 9-1-1, or you are 9-1-1."

Gonna be quiet around here the next few days

Happy Thansgiving and see you next week.

Canada Free Press article on Hadley CRU Documents

Larry sent me this one.

Apparently none other than "Science Czar" John Holdren (you know, the guy who was going to return us to policy making based 'science and facts' rather than 'ideology') is complicit in this as well.

Yeah ... from "Change.Gov"

“The truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry,” President-elect Obama said. “It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

Protecting free and open inquiry?  Facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!

Is Obamacare worth buying votes?

 CNN's John King asked Sunday

"To get Senator [Mary] Landrieu's vote, just to proceed, just to go across the starting line, language was inserted in the bill that gives her state up to $300 million. To get Senator [Ben] Nelson's vote, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] agreed to drop a request that you take away the antitrust exemptions for insurance companies...[Is healthcare reform] important enough to buy votes? "

Senator Sherrod Brown answered

I want to see this bill pass. Nobody likes these kinds of -- any kinds of deals. I think anything that's done needs to be in the best -- in the best interest of those states and this country. I think those probably helped, if that, in fact, really happened -- I have no way of really knowing if it did. I suppose that helped a lot of people in Louisiana that don't have insurance, and so I think we move forward.

Only 38% of the population supports this bill, the health care reform direction this administration & the Democratic congress is taking.   They bought votes to get it to the floor for "debate" where hold the "nuclear" option in their back pocket to ram what they feel is in the best interest of [..] this country -- no matter what 62% of the country thinks.  This is ruling class arrogance.  I'll tell you what's good for you and you'll take it.  And that's the way they'll run health care, too.

Why are we trying Khalid Sheik Mohammad in Civilian Court again?

• Because it's wrong to try him in a military tribunal as an enemy combatant?
• So we can show the world our confidence in our fair civilian court system?
• Because we are holding him to long without a trial?

Well, let's see, Obama stopped the military tribunals to address that first issue, which meant that we were going to hold him still longer without trial in contradicion to the third point.  They got the civilian trial in New York, where Attorney General Holder is saying that he will be convicted, and failure is not an option, plus even if he is acquitted he'll never be set free because we'll then hold him as an enemy combatant, which blows point number two out of the water and puts us right back to point number one (not to mention number three again), meaning Bush was right in the first place.

They can't have that, so it's gotta be something else.  And my guess it will be to put "torture" and Gitmo back out front and center for another round of Bush Administration flogging, because that's what got them elected and they've got nothing else -- and we're going into an election year.

But they've overplayed their hand, and the result of all of this, I think (besides serving up a large recruiting campaign for Islamist Terrorism and some Democratic fund raising) will be that the American people are pretty much going to throw this on the pile of the many reasons they are going to dump the Democrats in droves.

I'm right.  And you know it.

RCP Article on the Hadley CRU Documents

This should blow the lid off of the Global Warming movement once and for all.

This is all very Alinsky, I hate to keep bringing this up ... but these are exactly the tactics they've used over and over and over again.

• Ignore all criticism of your position.
• Marginalize anyone who disagrees with name-calling ("deniers", "big oil stooges") or ridicule ("they're not published!")
• Exert pressure on "authorities" to distance themselves from or refuse to recognize opponents.

You can also see from these e-mails the scientists' panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, "It's one thing to lose Climate Research. We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there."


Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that "All of them know the sorts of things to say...without any prompting."


So it's no surprise when another e-mail refers to an attempt to keep inconvenient scientific findings out of a UN report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow-even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Think of all of this the next time you hear someone invoke the authority of peer review-or of the UN's IPCC reports-as backing for claims about global warming.

:
:

The picture that emerges is simple. In any discussion of global warming, either in the scientific literature or in the mainstream media, the outcome is always predetermined. Just as the temperature graphs produced by the CRU are always tricked out to show an upward-sloping "hockey stick," every discussion of global warming has to show that it is occurring and that humans are responsible. And any data or any scientific paper that tends to disprove that conclusion is smeared as "unscientific" precisely because it threatens the established dogma.

WSJ picks up on Hadley CRU Hack story

From today's WSJ

Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

 Really!!?

No wonder there is a "consensus".

Hadley CRU Break In Update

It looks to me, from reading various articles on the net this morning, that the Hadley CRU folks are basically admitting that the emails and files are from them, that they are legit -- because it looks as though the tactic they're taking is to defend them or dismiss them rather than to deny them.

Good news is the London Daily Telegraph reports that this story is the top story being hit on their website, dispite, and perhaps because of, the MSM's refusal to critically cover the story -- displaying the kind of incuriousness they used to love to accuse G.W. Bush of having.

This morning's Telegraph story pointed me to this handy post that summarizes and bookmarks many of the various email -- among several other links to chase.

Joined Bloggers for Sarah Palin

This is big, big, BIG news

Let's see how well the MSM can smother it.  Or if it's ready to wake up and smell the coffee.  After all, they do SO love a scandal, and if they're forced not to ignore it (John Edwards) they actually kinda get into it.


Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails. <--- Go read and follow any links.

UPDATE: Here's the London Telegraph article Patrick Michaels was talking about on Nolan's show this afternoon.

Between the Thanksgiving break coming up and the KSM trial in New York and chasing Ricky Hollywood around with a mic & camera ... we'll see if the story gets buried.

It's important.  "We" may be about to sign our soveriegnty away.







Hyperbole? "Fundamentally transform"? "We are the people we've been waiting for"? "Redistribuitive wealth"? Did you read "The Forgotten Man"?  "Liberal Fascism"?  Ringing any bells? Any bells at all?

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?

Well, let's just remember that Maria was the herione in The Sound of Music, shall we?

But we should treat MSNBC as a News Organization

If Fox News is an "arm of the Republican party", then what do you call this?




Here we have the quite lovely but obviously just as biased Nora O'Donnell, whom Chris Matthews refers to as a "hard news" reporter, telling us that the crowd "has a connection" to Sarah Palin, "and I think it's an emotional one."  Sounds like opinion to me, however much truth there may be to it.  Of course, what you're supposed to take away from it is that there's no basis for that emotional connection other than the fact that she's white and Christian ... keep watching.

Another interesting thing is that as an example of how clueless these Palin supporters were, she said they liked her because she was against "the" bailout (there were multiple bailouts, but let's assume she means TARP) when "in fact" Palin "supported" it.  From which Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh jumps straight to "whopping lie".

Allahpundit over at Hot Air came up with a letter Palin wrote to the Alaska state legislature in January that evidenced her acceptance of the funds, but also, in the closing paragraph, clearly expressed her concerns about this kind of federal bailout and where they lead.

Although it is beyond my purview as Governor, I also urge you to consider how the economic stimulus package will affect the national debt and the future economic health of the country. The need for economic stimulus should not become an excuse for the continuation of the unsound policies of the past. The nation’s economy will never achieve long-term stability if we continue borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from foreign countries, all the while Simultaneously sending huge amounts of money overseas to OPEC countries for oil that could be produced domestically. In this regard, I am astounded by amounts of a trillion dollars and more that are currently being discussed in some quarters.

I believe our nation is truly at an economic crossroads. Properly constructed, the economic stimulus package will greatly assist in sending our country down the right road. Without question, you will be called upon to make very difficult decisions on behalf of Alaska and the nation, and I want to assure you of the cooperation of my administration in achieving the best possible result.

In other words, I don't like this, but since it's happening, I'm willing to try to make the best of it.  Sounds like the Palin I know.   And I think what it exposes (for the eleventy jillionth time) is the echo chamber of the liberal press.  Someone interpreted her acceptance as support, and said "you lie!  Palin supported it!"... and it's become so accepted as fact that reporters don't feel the need to look into the veracity, dare I say, even nuances, of her position and just come out and boldly call her a whopping "liar".  They like that word, "lie", I've noticed.

Matthews and the rest point out that the crowd is "white", "monocrhomatic" ... and say a few times not that there's anything wrong with that ... but they continue to repeatedly point it out as if there were.

• This is a largely white, almost no minorities in this crowd.             almost, eh? - ed
• Well they look like a white crowd to me, not that there's anything wrong
• but it is pretty, uh, monochromatic
• No surprise in terms of the ethnic nature of the people showing up, nothing wrong with that
• but it is a fact
• I think there's a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs other people

(Would they even go there if they were reporting on a crowd that was monochromatically black?)

Cut to Palin saying it was a mistake to avoid "profiling" a Muslim soldier in our army who had on multiple occasions expressed sympathy toward the enemy's cause and terrorist tactics ... and then from Matthews

• everybody knows what proviling means: it's driving while black
• if you come from a middle-eastern country, keep your eye on this guy

Funny, I thought she was talking about Islamists (not a race, a belief, and one we're actively fighting against).

Again, I've been to Tea Parties.  Nobody was there making sure you were white before they'd let you participate.  And I've seen footage of Tea Parties and there have been blacks there right along with whites, in solidarity because what mattered was the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

The "nastiness".  The attacks on the "little people" ... Steve Schmitt, Nocole Wallace.  Yeah, little people.  You know, you have lots of people who are prominent operatives at the highest level of a presidential campaign.  They're your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers.  "And at the same time [she says] she's looking out for little people."

Now Joan is not a hard news reporter, although she probably considers herself that -- goes down her talking points list, and you can actually hear her set them up, and then repeat them just in case we missed what she was saying.  "She [Palin] is a very divisive, mean-spirited person".

Really?

She's fighting down (sic) with her 19 year old ex-future-son-in-law, who should really be ignored. 

I'm sure she'd love to.  Can we?  Would the media stop covering that self-centered idiot and stop asking her questions about what he's saying to keep "Ricky Hollywood" in the spotlight?  Is that a promise from Salon never to mention him again?  I sure hope so.

When her supporters say they believe that she'll "defend the constitution", they're "babbling".  For good measure, she adds "as if Obama won't."  (Clearly, from what Obama has said on more than one occasion suggests that he considers the Constitution merely a "remarkable" historical document that "paved the way" to where we are today ... but -- the guy says he wants to "fundamentally transform" the United States of America.  Since the Constitution defines The United States of America, it's not a huge leap to figure he's ready to depart from that definition significantly.)

Here's what you're supposed to come away with from this piece.  Palin's fans are ignorant, white, Bible-thumping racists, and Palin is a "nasty", immature, mean-spirited, divisive liar who really isn't for the "little people" who the "general public" doesn't trust and sees this kind of "mean girl" persona that she's "never grown out of" which is why "she'll never be President."  Be afraid.  Those are the talking points.

That just doesn't jive with what I see.

What They Really Believe

I came home today to a column in our local newspaper by NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman.  It was teased thus:

Don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away.

Thanks, Tom. Considerate of you to "let" me.  Two things.  One, I don't own a beach house.  And judging  by the Red/Blue political maps, I'd say that most people who do are not your "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd.  Further, unless your house is about 25 cm (IPCC number) lower than the lowest safe height above sea level, you have more to worry about from coastal storms than you do about rising sea levels.  And that's IF the IPCC is right about what's going on.  And it hasn't been so far.   The models can't seem to predict climate at all, really.  It's been quite embarrassing.  Besides, you don't seem terribly concerned about it in practice.  Take another page out of the Gore book of do as I say, not as I do?

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax. 

 And both are demonstrably true, though the cooling hasn't been much.  Then again, neither was the warming.  And I note that while you infer that these "claims" are ludicrous, you didn't take those arguments on, but went on to other things instead.  Why?  Because you can't take those claims on and win.  They're true.

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

(What?  Black Death Panels???? They're not in the bill!!!!!)

Huh, and here I thought that they believe that as countries become developed and prosperous, their birth rates drop, and that the whole point of drilling was to tap our own domestic resources instead of buying it from countries that hate us, and that we love the idea of clean power and believe that the free market will take care of that on its own as the kinks get worked out of it.  But who am I?  Just one of those crazy people who think that when you vastly inflate your money supply, it becomes worth much less, effectively taxing your citizens by whatever percentage that devalues the dollar, ruins your credit, and puts you in a very tight position with ... oh yeah, countries that you counted on to buy the debt you printed up, exacerbated by the fact that you couldn't find buyers for all of it so you started buying it yourself.  A tactic that has never, ever, ever worked and has always ended in disaster.

And THEN you plan on putting a further drag on the economy you want to tax by making energy much more expensive, making it more expensive to employ people, and tack an additional trillion or three of money we don't have onto the national debt for a road to nationalized, single-payer health-care which will be even more expensive and give most people less access to it.  Yeah, we're freakin' idiots, aren't we Tom?

Thank God we have you here to tell us what we believe. As I recall, the Drill Baby Drill crowd was calling for an "all of the above" approach, not just "drill, baby, drill".  The "Drill, baby, drill" bit was to counter the climate/enviro Chicken Little's position of continuing to buy so much of our oil from other countries -- or doing without and guaranteeing that the economy will crater.

The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050."

It's just about 2010.  What was the world population supposed to be by this time by 20th century doom and gloom population bomb Chicken Littles?  I'll go look that up and update later.  Point being, why should I believe you?  Did you see Al Gore's chart?  What should global temperatures be by now?

The world keeps getting flatter — more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.

 Academics love linear extrapolation, don't they?

First of all, there are different cultural and market forces elsewhere in the world than there are here.  Secondly, I don't know a single soul who is for abandoning clean and efficient energy development.  Third, whoever does is going to make a metric sh*t ton of money ... unless the government takes 90% of it.  In which case their incentive to do so will be significantly lower.  Third, as I mentioned before, as nations become more developed, their birthrates drop.  Fourth, market forces will force people to change their consumption habits as things become more scarce.

There is not a finite amount of wealth to "spread around".   And there is not an infinite amount of wealth in government printing presses.   Wealth is created, and it has a way of spreading itself around.  Sure, more tends to stay near those who created it -- which is what gives them the incentive to create it.

For my speal on Anthropogenic Global Warming, please see my speals starting here.

Which One Are You Drinking?

I have no idea who this lady is (right).  But I really like her sign.

Found here.

Oh!  How did I miss this one in the comments (below)?  That's great!

Perpetual Apology Machine

Just for fun.  Hey, it's one of the Community Organizers' "Rules for Radicals".  "Ridicule is man's most powerful weapon."   Or "potent".  Or something.  This was Morgan's brainchild, the propeller bit.

Going Rouge

I ordered the book weeks ago.  It shipped Monday.  I watched the Oprah interview (yeah, how often would you catch me watching Oprah?)  I watched the Barbara Walters interview (ditto).  It should be here by the end of the week.

Loved what Mark Steyn had to say about the eleventy jillion fact checkers the Associated Press sicked on it.  He's right.

And so is Rush.

I guess only conservatives need the AP fact-checking treatment.

Apparently an estimated 1500 people showed up 12 hours in advance to wait in cold Michigan weather for Palin's book signing event in Grand Rapids.  This is driving the liberals absolutely mad.

Most of the MSM reports you see on the web, anyway, put the number at "hundreds".  But they put the 9-12 march on the Capitol at "thousands" or "tens of thousands" when it was clearly hundreds of thousands, and the same with Michelle Bachmann's hasty "Kill the Bill" rally a few weeks ago, where numbers in the MSM were minimized.

Incidentally, found a post with some good shots from Kill The Bill.

---

UPDATE:  Sarah's book arrived in the mail today, but I can't start it until I finish that Progressive bastard's book I'm currently reading.  

Yeah! What HE said!

"To suggest that men and women that are taking a stand for fiscal discipline and traditional values in the national debate today only speak for quote, ‘grassroots activists' is absurd.  As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands that filled town hall meetings this summer and the nearly a million Americans who gathered here in Washington in September - millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents are worried about liberal social policies and runaway federal spending, deficit and debt." - Rep Mike Pence

Rights & Mr. Dooley

In the beginning of our Republic, we listed out some inalienable rights granted by our creator when we were created, rules for governance, and tacked on 10 specific rights the government was not to mess with.

One of them being, by the way, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  But I digress.

Knowing Mr. Alinsky's ideology, I doubt he read into the following words what I did, even though I found them in his book.

Apparently there was a Chicago humorist and columnist back in the early 20th century named Finley Peter Dunne who wrote articles from the viewpoint of a fictional Chicago Irishman named Mr. Dooley.

And Mr. Dooley, in one of them, apparently said the following:

Don't ask f'r rights.  Take thim.  An don't let anny wan give thim to ye.  A right that is handed to ye fer nawthin' has somethin' the matter with it.  It's more thin likely it's only a wrong turned inside out.   -- Emphasis, mine.

Keep that in mind when our governing class makes up "rights" such as health care for us.

I haven't read any other words from Dunne that I know of, so I don't know what the rest of his writing is like.  But I like that bit in the context of our Constitution.

In Alinsky's context of so-called "social justice" and equal outcomes, emphasis on democracy over republican structure and amoral tactics, not so much.  As you might suspect there'll be a review of Rules for Radicals coming up when this slow reader (and I'm reading this one even more slowly) finally finishes the relatively short book.

But I just ordered Mr. Dooley in Peace and War ... the collected Mr. Dooley columns.  It was only a couple of bucks and I have a feeling there's more than a few Irish Will Rogers gems in there.

Counter-Revolution

One thing Alinsky warned against is over-reach and setting off a counter-revolution to your own revolution.   Maybe we're fortunate that the kinds of people who are attracted to progressivivsm tend to be childishly impatient... dare I say, demanding.

It's no secret among those who know me that some of my favorite rock music comes from the late 1960's and early 1970's ... a lot of it written for and by those who re-launched the drive to socialism after having been radicalized by their professors.  A lot of these kids read and studied Alinsky.

Grateful Dead.  Crosby, Stills, & Nash.  Early Bonnie Raitt.  Spirit.  Moody Blues.  Canned Heat.  Jesse Colin Young.  Byrds.  Jefferson Airplane.  Kind of ironic considering where I am today.   And I still like most of that music.  But then again, so does Ann Coulter.

Recently the song Long Time Gone came on my MP3 player and I realized that it pretty much applies to the Tea Party movement of today -- mostly because the lyrics are too vague to reveal what they were speaking out and fighting against.  I figure if you change the line:

Don't you try to get yourself elected, cause if you do you had better cut your hair  to
Don't you try to get yourself elected, cause if you do you'd best not be caught sayin' a prayer

and it would apply even better.

You know there's something that's goin' on around here, the surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of day.

I mean, come on.  Tell me that doesn't apply to the shenannigans this administration is pulling ... and it's just on a larger scale than what's been going on behind the scenes for many, many years.

At any rate, apparently I mondegreened the lyrics to Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers,  and like many others thought they were saying "counter revolution, counter revolution" (when in fact they were saying "got a revolution, got a revolution")  but it was because of the misheard lyric that I dug the album back out again today after years and years.  And years.

So I'm listening to the first track on the album, which I'd never really listened to closely, and I hate it.   It's a communist revolution anthem.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge f*ck hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
We should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life's too fine to let it die and
We should be together
All your private property is
Target for your enemy

Yeah. You should be together.  Nasty and proud of it, and Marxist to boot. It could be the ACORN anthem. Can't remember where I heard this, but it was from a guy who briefly worked for ACORN in the 70's ... and he said they had boxes and boxes of "Rules for Radicals". So it's pretty clear that's an Alinskyite organization.

"Volunteers" is still vague enough, probably, to serve as a generic "counter revolution" anthem today, especially if we changed the lyrics to the misheard "counter revolution".

I still like Long Time Gone, though.... probably because I'm a bigger CSN fan.

Anyway, ain't we full of contradictions?  There's my thoughts for today.

I have another post brewin', but it's gonna take some time.  It was a major OMG moment I had while reading Mr. Alinsky's book.  Explains sooooo much about what we see from the Left.

Earl Blumenauer Not Getting It

Complaining in a NYT editorial about his end-of-life counseling provision in "the" health care bill lead to that horrible "lie" about "Death Panels", Rep Blumenauer wrote

The most bizarre moment came on Aug. 7 when Sarah Palin used the term “death panels” on her Facebook page. She wrote: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”


There is, of course, nothing even remotely like this in the bill, yet other politicians joined the death panel chorus.

Once again -- we are talking about the differences between "what's in the bill", presumably the bill's intent,vs the consequences of the bill becoming law, which include many things that are not in the bill.   Most, if not all bills have this problem.  Which is why government is supposed to be limited according to our Constitution.  I don't believe (and maybe I'm wrong, but I sure don't remember) -- I don't think that Palin  said it was in the bill.  Or even that it was the bill's intent.

"I didn't mean to kill Grandma. I didn’t even mean to create death panels."  the article  begins.

Progressives are only concerned with intent, not with consequences.  In the arrogance self-importance tht  comes from academic speculation taken as "fact", consequences are assumed to match intent.  If they do not, they will either say that more must be done, or blame their opponents.

Perhaps some latched on to Blumenauer's language in the bill to provide evidence of the kind of thing to look out for -- but it's not end-of-life counselling that is the problem.   It's government-controlled end-of-life counselling ... especially when the government is in charge of the purse strings -- that is the problem.

It is the fact that the entity that makes the rules and controls the purse strings is in charge of not only what it will pay for, but what treatment you will be allowed at all at any price -- which is what has happened in all other countries with government-run health care -- that is the problem.

What's So Wrong With Socialism?

Of course, when you point out that this administration has an unabashedly socialist bent to it, you get "it does not!!!!  Stop calling Him™ names!!!!"

But invariably you'll run across people saying that and then saying "and what's wrong with socialism?"

Something Joe Herring at American Thinker ran across.   And this post is to bookmark his post for me for future reference.

With a big hat tip to Morgan, who expounded nicely on it himself ... so I'll point you there for further ... uh ... expounderating.

Me, I just thought this was a very good, short, concise way of answering the bulk of that question:

... for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan. -- F.A. Hayek.

I mean, that really sums it up there, and all of the horrible things that follow, follow from that.

But that would never happen here.  Jail time for not having health insurance?  Well, it's really not about that .... nothing to see here ... move along ...

A Problem

Read today that the New York Times, champion of all things progressive on most of its editorial pages, in addition to laying people off, is moving editorial jobs to Florida ... well, we'll let the story explain why....

The plan for the news service calls for The Gainesville Sun, whose newsroom is not unionized and has lower salaries, to take over editing and page design. Ms. McNulty said new jobs would be created at The Sun to handle the work.

Also, how much you wanna bet employment/business taxes in Gainesville are lower than in NYC?

On a related note, I read in a comment on a blog somewhere today from a guy in Pennsylvania that people were moving out of the big cities where liberal social policies have driven taxes through the roof ... out to places with lower taxes outside the city ... and what are they doing?  Voting for more liberal candidates and policies than the people who already live there ... thus bringing the same liberal polices that led to the conditions they fled in the first place to people who don't want them.

Thanks, libs.  You're all heart.

Or you just see government as the route to the illusion of something for nothing by stealing from your neighbors.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." - Frederic Bastiat

My Pew IQ?

Wife sent me this quiz today.

Not bad.  Didn't know who the chair of the senate finance comittee was.  Other than that...

Guess not too bad.  No cheating!

Thank You, Veterans

Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is the subjugation of evil. Tyranny, even in the absence of war, is not peace. Few of us in this country have experienced tyranny up to this point, and most of those immigrated here from China, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and other such places where the liberty of its people has not been valued by those in power.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Let us never forget the men and women who put themselves in harm's way that we may sleep that peaceable sleep.

Ms. Mao is stepping down

Funny how all these people that "liar" Glenn Beck keeps exposing keep ... um ... "stepping down".

The latest:  Anita Dunn.

Not that they won't still be involved through other "coalitions of power" ... that can "bring about redistributive change".

Tides, perhaps?  Apollo?   Center for American Progress?  Soros has the dough to keep paying these people, no matter what their titles become.

It's not Anita Dunn.  It's not Van Jones.  It's not Yosi Sergant.  Or the women at ACORN.  It's not Mark Lloyd.  Or Cass Sunstein.  It's not any one of them in particular.  It's the whole mindset, the whole world view of the Alinskyites who have taken over the Democratic party.  That's been their goal, and they've done it.   Check this paragraph out:

Out of this [middle] classs have come, with few exceptions, the great world leaders of change of the past centuries.  Moses, Paul of Tarsus, Martin Luther, Robespierre, Georges Danton, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Nikolai Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, and others".
                                                             - Saul Alinsky - Rules for Radicals

They're all the same to them, or they want to elevate their real heroes to the level of ours by mentioning them in the same breath.   They do this all the time.  Dunn is not an anomaly.  It's part and parcel to the whole way all of them look at the world.

Did you know Hillary Clinton wrote her dissertation on Saul Alinsky?  Did you know that?  And that it was until recently off-limits to the public?   Even the Clinton wing of the party is infected.

Out! Out!  Foul Marxists!

Out! Out!  Foul Organizers for "Change"!

You know you don't have any good argument...

... when you argue that "the worst thing to do is nothing".   That's not an argument, that, as usual, is an argument against having an argument.  "No matter what I do it'll be better, so just let me do it."  Or, in other words, once again, "Shut Up".

"So I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as they can. But I think the most important thing is, it’s the right thing for America. We just simply — the worst thing to do is nothing. The worst thing to do is to keep dragging around a 16.5 percent of G.D.P. health care system that doesn’t sent cover everybody — doesn’t get the right results..."  - Bill Clinton

You mean that wouldn't be worse than spending still more on it  ??? (because government social programs are always over budget and always expand 3 to 50 times their initial intent) ... which would thus make it a still larger percentage of the GDP, and the increase in taxes and mandated fees to pay for it would shrink the GDP, because that's what taxes do, making health care a still larger percentage of our GDP .... (for the math impaired a bigger number -- how much we'd be spending, divided by a smaller number -- the new GDP -- makes a bigger percentage).

In other headlines, I see..."The Fillibuster is Blocking Needed Change"

Needed?  The Right Results?   Who gets to decide these things?

Public "Option"

Morgan uses a .50 caliber nail gun to make this point:

I’d sure like to exchange some ideas with them right about now — find out what in the hell is going on in their head, how it makes sense to call a new offense punishable by hard prison time a “public option.”

RTWT.

Kill the Bill Rally

Has anybody seen any coverage on this anywhere by any of the traditional media?

How much coverage do you think there would have been if it were a pro-bill rally?

I have found some stuff on the net about it.   I've read reports from "thousands" to "at least 10,000" in one  report, 20,000 from a Fox News story, and I've seen outlier ones saying from 20,000 to 45,000.

For the record, I was hoping beyond hope for 5,000 on five days notice.  Sounds like my expectation was exceeded and then some.

So here's some of the stuff I've found.

New York Times (Monday, before the rally)

Heritage Foundation
Gateway Pundit
World Net Daily
Associated Press
Politico
North Jersey
Big Government (Breitbart -- this one covers the arrests at Pelosi's office)
Malkin
Fox NEWS (Greta VanSustren's show)
NewsBusters (on the coverage)

CNN (on Saturday's rally, not the big one)

Of particular note is in the New York Times story, Fox News is referred to as "Fox Television", apparently in keeping with the White House's ... discouraging ... others to treat Fox News as a News organization.  Apparently the NYT has signed on with the White House... no surprise there.  The second thing to note is that the story refers to the 9/12 event as being attended by "thousands" -- technically correct, but it is generally agreed upon that it was at least hundreds of thousands.

"Historic" does not necessarily mean "Good"

Remember, the Holocaust was "historic" as well.

A proud Pelosi compared the passage of the House Health Care Takeover bill to the passage of Social Security and Medicaid.

Well, yes, in fact, it does compare.  There's two programs that are in debt, bankrupt, even -- meaning we're living off of future generations' money.   Since all of these programs are recurring entitlement funds, they all put a drag on the economy forever.  It's more of the same, and adds to our burden.

And this one has dangerous implications for laws controlling our behavior.  Our liberty.  Our persuit of happiness.

I heard from C & Jeffmon after her trip to DC.  There were a ton of people there.  I saw an AP report that said at least 10,000.  Other reports range from 20,000 to 45,000 ... anything over 5,000 I would consider a success with 5 days notice.  Judging from pictures, I'm inclined to buy the 20,000 figure.  However many, it was a lot of people.

If this passes the Senate ... with THAT be The Day America Died?  Or was it Saturday evening's house vote?  Or will we just go ahead and trace it back to last year's election day?

"Naughtbama"

Read in a comment on the London Telegraph site by commenter Dan Collins.

He is an empty sign, a sonorous slogan, a thing of nothing: Naughtbama.

Now that there's poetry. :-)   I love it.

Robert Gibbs Can't Imagine....

.... people holding up Hitler signs a few years ago.   Mary Katherine Ham helps him out.

"Smith"

This morning my wife asked me when I returned from the basement to where she had the news on, "guess what the guy at Ft. Hood said when he opened fire?"

"Praise Jesus?", I asked sarcastically.

ABC's  Diane Sawyer reported through ABC's Martha Raddatz say that the wife of a soldier said "I wish his name had been Smith," so no one would have a reflexive question about that.

Yeah.  Me too.  Because that would've meant his chances of doing it would have been about 99% less.

Denial.  It's not just a river in Egypt.

Anti-Socialization Rally at the Capitol Yesterday

The DC rally yesterday was overshadowed by the Ft. Hood incident, and it's hard to come up with much on it.

I read something about a crowd of 20,000 .... but I haven't corroborated that yet.  Still looking.

But this post over at Gateway Pundit has some good stuff ... pictures, some video.

We'll see what C has to say about it when she gets back.

Arguing With Idiots

There's a contest to promote Glenn Beck's latest book, "Arguing With Idiots".   I bought it.  It's really very good.  Well written, well sourced, interesting, and entertaining.  It is better than I expected.

Anyway, here's my pick for the top reader promo video.




For those not in the know, "Sally Muckenfutch" is, I believe, a fictional name that Glenn came up with to use as a substitute in stories John Edwards told on the campaign trail to pull heartstrings for socialized medicine.   In Glenn's version, she was born without a face.

Ft. Hood

Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" before he opened fire.

I'm sorry ... that is significant, or people wouldn't have gone out of their way not to report it.

Here's all I have to say about it.

All military personnel should be required to carry at least a sidearm (loaded) at all times while on duty.

Thatisall.

The Attack of the Attack Ads

I saw an ad on TV this morning smearing our Republican congressman Blaine Lutkemeyer who was elected only last fall.  I was stunned.  I mean, the guy's not up for re-election for another 3 years.

I had to see who paid for it.  It turned out to be "The League of Conservation Voters".  And they were taking him to task for accepting money from "Special Interests" ... but the clear implication was that he's in the pocket of "big oil" as everywhere he walked he left oil footprints, and oil on everyone's hands he shook, and on crying babies he greeted (hey, should the League of Conservation Voters be called to task for exploiting a baby?  I mean, it's clear the baby was distressed, and they must have intentionally distressed it to get the shot they wanted.  What did they do to distress it?  Can the baby sue?  Just sayin').

And this likely boils down to the fact that he's voted against the "Climate Change" Hysteria bills.

The ad said he has a "stain on his record" (at the beginning of the oil-stain filled ad) They didn't say anything specific other than the fact that he got, *gasp*, a whopping $28K from oil interests for his campaign.   Well big fat hairy deal, frankly.

I guess only interests aligned with progressive causes are allowed to donate money to political campaigns.

And of course, the implication is he's beholden to them for the money, rather than them donating to him because they know what his views already are, which means ... huh, just like he represents me, he represents them.

From their website:

Big Oil has launched a multi-million dollar smear campaign to stop clean energy and climate legislation from passing in the U.S. Senate. We need your help to fight back.

 Of course, when Big Oil tries to defend its side of the story, it's a "smear".   But when a White Knight Environmental™ special interest group does it by shady implication, it's just fine.

I hope people are waking up to this kind of crap.

Congress Funds Study on How To Avoid Constituents, Stay in Office

Congress Funds Study on How To Avoid Constituents, Stay in Office

They don't like it when real people wake up and give them a piece of their mind.

"Deepening" split?

Growing.  Worsening.  Deepening.  Increasing.

These are all words used by the media in stories where they are pushing a narrative.   If oppositon to the Iraq war was growing and increasing every day, every time it was brought up during the Bush administration, opposition should've been up to about 260% by the end of his term.

So I see story this morning about the NY-23 race...

Democrat Bill Owens took a surprising victory in a special election Tuesday in Upstate New York, winning a House seat that Republicans had controlled since 1872 and, in the process, potentially deepening a split that emerged within the GOP during the campaign.

A split, you say?   51% of the vote went to someone other than the Democrat.  Of that 51%, 88% went to Hoffmann, and 12% went to Scozafava.

For that split to deepen, the GOP base would have to move farther to the left.   I would call this a surface crack that has improved dramatically since a year ago.

One question I have is how many of the Scozafava votes were cast before she dropped out of the race? If it were a significant percentage of her 6% of the tally, that would show even less of a "split".

I think this race sends a pretty clear message to the GOP.   To win, stop trying to be Democrat Lite™.  Had you not tried, this seat would likely have remained Republican.

Go, "C", Go!

My sister-in-law, who doesn't exactly appear to be your poster-child for originalist conservatism, is on her way to DC to meet Michelle Bachmann on the steps of the Capitol this Thursday at High Noon, then to go in and look her congresscritters in the eye and Just Say No to bigger government.

I almost feel sorry for those critters.  She'll probably disarm them with her Haight-Ashbury style, and they won't know what hit them when she says, "Enough!"  My brother says it's almost as if she's going under cover.  But no.  That's her.   She's an individual.   As am I.

She had called me Sunday to see if I wanted to go.  That's pretty much a whole week of not working, as we'd be driving.  I'm not sure how much politicians realize it means for people with jobs to sacrifice their vacation time or paychecks to go to Washington and tell them to knock it off! At any rate, it was too short-notice for me.

You go, "C"!  Kick butt, take names ... and pictures.  We'll want a report when you get back!