So, turns out the life of even a red-headed "bear" prostitute is interesting. Meh. Pay your taxes, stay out of trouble, keep off my lawn, and I'm good. It does make for some interesting stories, I'll give you that.

A radical atheist endorsing Buddhism? It's more likely than you think. Distilling the faith to its four essentials allows the jettisoning of the quirkier bits of received Buddhist tradition (reincarnation, bodhisattvas, etc.), which in my opinion are the main impediments to widespread adoption in the West. The biggest worry I have with atheism is its horrible moral track record when applied to a large society (c.f. USSR, PRC, Khmer Rouge, etc.) Grounding atheism with a true, practical, and absolute morality could be just what the doctor ordered.

Making the rounds: DNA tests have confirmed that a prime suspect in the Bail bombings has been killed. Bagged by the Indonesian police, no less.

Problem: A poorly-managed city is dotted with abandoned property.

Market solution: Design zoning and tax laws to incentivize new development, allowing the problem to essentially cure itself.

Political solution: Come up with a bunch of social engineering laws to force what you want, and make the rest of the country pay for it.

Three guesses as to which route Detroit's leadership is taking. The first two don't count.

While it starts out with an utterly horrifying anecdote, this look at the unintended consequences of son preference in traditional families running up against the capabilities of modern medicine is still quite informative. One quibble: the author continually plays up how the preference for a son rises substantially after the birth of one or more daughters as somehow exclusive to the societies being studied. On reflection, I can't think of any family who would state they'd rather have more of one sort of child than another. Then again, I'm not sure just how far a western family would go to guarantee the outcome.

Top Gear is featuring this look at a car restoration shop. The catch? It's run by the state of Nevada. Specifically, the department of corrections. That's right, it's a prison restoration shop, filled with men who many times will never be able to drive a car like the one they're restoring.

It would seem even if that 'tard had managed to light his bomb off a few months ago, the plane would've survived. Wits and psyches of the passengers, probably not so much. Includes a video of the test! Fark comments are discounting the lack of pressurization. Best comment: "This test was flawed because the bomb was not strapped to a brown person when it was detonated. Everyone knows that brown people are unstable and likely to explode all by themselves. The added 180lbs of explosive material would have made for a much bigger (and holier) boom.

Plus Allah himself would have reached down and smacked the plane out of the sky when the righteous bomb went off."

As predicted endlessly by watermelon greenies, a city is now officially running out of water. Of course, this is a city perched on the edge of a desert, with a corrupt, rickity government subsidizing the growth of a water-intensive crop, but that doesn't matter! I'm sure climate change is behind it all! Quick! Destroy industry before another inefficient, controlling government is threatened with chaos! The nanny-state you save could be your own!

It would seem this year's census will be a game of "10 questions." I still remember the carpet-bombing of TV commercials the government financed for the 1980 census.

I've always thought Olberman was a complete douchebag. I've just never seen it highlighted in quite so effective a way.

Google has been approved as a wholesale energy buyer by the feds. The stated reason, to purchase power for its datacenters directly from suppliers, seems valid enough. I'd like to think they'll be smart enough not to let their executive branch run amok, as Enron did. I also like to think progressives will wise up some day. I guess I really am an incurable optimist at heart.

What happens when you let a bunch of foodies do a blind taste test to compare Wal Mart produce to that of a more prominent "organic" grocery chain? The results surprised them likely as much as they'll surprise you. We finally got a modern Super Center installed near us, and it's definitely a lot nicer than the ones I remember in Arkansas. It's even more welcome to hear they've figured out how to make "buy local, buy sustainable" actually profitable. Will it stop the far-left end of the peanut gallery from twirling in their towers every time they see a yellow smiley? Doubtful. "If both are against you, bang on the table," that sort of thing.

Leave it to a chick to come to the startling realization that dating women is not particularly easy. The comments about relationships and "patience" are so on-target it's scary.

I've long maintained that neither side of the peanut gallery has a corner on the wacko market. Now I have proof. Passionate conviction does not an intelligent constituent make.

After some sixty years of service, the US government is officially shutting LORAN down. Short for Long Range Navigation System, the ground-based facilities which transmit the high-power signals were largely shut down yesterday, with the remainder expected to be shuttered some time this summer. An example of bureaucratic inertia, or a valuable backup to the now ubiquitous GPS? The article doesn't seem to support either view.

Everyone's favorite artist/recluse Bill Watterson has granted his first interview in probably twenty years. A strange guy with a great sense of humor, seems like.

Leave it to one of my new TV heroes, Captain Slow of Top Gear, to propose an alternate explanation for global warming. Per standard English practice, he points out the problem without actually suggesting a solution, but at least this time I don't have to worry about a bunch of academics covering up a computer model that only makes sense to them. I'll leave the UN boys for that.

Climategate appears to be the gift that keeps on giving. It seems they've forgotten one of the keys to winning the game is to stop coughing up the ball. More's the pity.

Mike J. gets a no-prize trying to balance on the gunwales of a row boat for bringing us news that haggis will once again return to our shores. Before Alfa Romeo. There is no justice in this world.

Following Fiat's disappointing but not surprising announcement Alfa isn't really coming over here is a follow-on that the marque will be merged with Abarth and Maserati. Conventional wisdom is that Alfa will likely be sold or shuttered in the next five years as the auto industry continues to wind down and reduce capacity. We'll see...

As expected, a cheap coat hanger makes for a speaker cable indistinguishable from a high-zoot Monster brand cable. At root, these are all simple electrical signals. We've known how to carry electrical signals efficiently for probably more than 150 years now. To wit: thicker cable, good copper. The rest is just marketing. Which is why I've never thought twice about using cheap, thick copper wire to connect my expensive components.

Don't even get me started about the guy who gave a positive review to a $230 power cable!

It's the kind of notoriety I wouldn't mind: "He was fast becoming one of the most hated debtors in Dallas, and part of an especially loathed minority of debtors in the country." The law is the law, people, and as long as the debtors are abiding and the collection agencies aren't, well, it stinks to be them, eh? World's smallest violin, etc.

Beer-making got a major boost during the Industrial Revolution, when steam power and artificial cooling made beers quicker to produce and easier to store. Breweries subsequently became a big business across Europe and the United States - stymied there only temporarily during the Prohibition years of 1919 to 1933.

COOL!

Happy Birthday Canned Beer!

The mysterious visitor who's left roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Edgar Allen Poe's grave for the past sixty years didn't show up this year. As I recall, this guy really started to get attention about five, six years ago. The Post in particular gave the impression it wouldn't be very hard to figure out who this was if they got serious about it, but there was such a groundswell of protest at the idea they didn't really try. I think it's always been a harmless little mystery. It'd be nice to think whoever it is just had a cold this year.

Remember that hard-hitting investigative report about bible thumpers encoding secret biblical codes on the gun sights they make? Yeah, the gun folks have known about that for years. Turns out all the citations reference light, which, considering glowing tritium features prominently in their manufacture, seems appropriate. Funny, I don't remember reading any such thing in that sophisticated expose. Did you?

I'm sure all the rest of you knew Garibaldi from Babylon 5 is now a radio show host and author, but I didn't. It's good to see he's still getting work.

It seems that marijuana is replacing the poppy as a cash crop in parts of Afghanistan. I think the most important thing to note is that weed is (as I understand it) legal in most places, and no worse for you than cigarettes. Can't say that about heroin, eh?

S-c-o-t-t B-r-o-w-n. I'm such a politics nerd I'm actually excited that the very first step in rolling up the Democrats could be to take Ted f'ing Kennedy's seat away from them. It would be like, I dunno, Dan Snyder buying Cowboy Stadium for the Redskins.

3... 2... 1...

It seems even the porn industry is mulling over 3D. Ok, I'm not a particularly big fan of the technology anyway. The thought of Ron Jeremy's privates seeming to wave around in my living room? Yeah, I think I'll pass on that one.

Fewer fans hit the 11th AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, even with the Consumer Electronics Show next door.

Fan attendance at the 11th expo was down between 10% and 20% from a year, and there were 267 exhibitors this year, an 11% drop from 2009.

For some reason, I don't think pRon is going to have much of a problem.

It's been slightly more than a year ago that the SCOTUS struck down DC's gun ban. Contrary to political opinion, the city did not immediately explode in machine-gun driven mayhem. Of course, the other side of the peanut gallery would say it's because of all the restrictions. Personally, I think some of the things DC is doing are good, since I'm convinced the vast majority of accidental gun deaths are caused by stupidity, not the gun in and of itself. Of course, most of the things they're doing are stupid and infantile. Which means it'll fit right in with the rest of the crap the DC government pulls every year.

It seems even non-loony pundits are cautiously admitting the Dems might lose everything in play this November. Unfortunately, like most villains, they're on track to screw in the last bits of their Genesis Device (aka, "Obamacare") just before we're able to stop them.

It's not exactly an original story. A person is stuck in a crowd of people they don't know who act in unexpected ways. That person creates a bridge to the strange people by presenting them with a gift of food or drink, which allows them to see they have things in common. The stranger is then welcomed to the group. It's a story much older than advertising, and in fact works well in commercials, except when the stranger is white, the crowd is black, and the audience watching the commercial is American.

The one thing that can always be counted on is America's over-reaction to race. There are reasons for this, some good, most bad. That's why this ad was never intended to be seen here, and bravo to KFC for sticking to their guns and not pulling it from its intended market.

Mike J. gets another no-prize he'll have to hide from the climate change police for bringing us proof that protesting environmental policy will not stand up to big flakes of global warming raining down on people's heads. This current winter reminds me very much of the sorts of winters we used to get in the mid '70s. It remains to be seen if the trend will continue, or if we'll snap back to warmer seasons in the future.

Remember all the fuss about Second Life? Yeah, it'd been so long since anyone's mentioned it around me I'd forgotten about it too. Turns out it's still out there, and if you know where to look, it's just as seedy and weird as you'd expect.

It would seem The Next Big Thing in TVs will be 3D. Ellen gets tremendous migraines whenever we go to a 3D movie, so I don't see this ending up on our Christmas list any time soon.

It seems that on Friday, Houston could be colder than McMurdo Station in Antarctica. It's scheduled to stay below freezing all week over here. If it does this again next year, I'm expecting the media to start crowing about the coming ice age.

I'm sure we'll all remember the headlines trumpeting not one US combat death in Iraq in December. Because the media's all about honest reporting and keeping us all informed of important developments. Right?

People who claim to know how money works, i.e., diplomats and politicians, are famous for their ability to spend $10 on something nobody else would want for $1. People who actually know how money works, not so much. But by all means, let's give more power to the politicians. It's worked out so well up to now.

Mike J. gets a no-prize he better keep safely hidden from view when his progressive friends come over for bringing us news that Britain is facing one of its coldest winters in a century. Ah, but hang on then. Doesn't climate doomsday actually predicate Britain being turned into Eastern Iceland? Very well then, carry on.

It would seem that, when corrected for a variety of variables, engineers, across cultures and through history, make the best terrorists. A deep technical background, and radical beliefs held so strongly you could bounce rocks off them. A picture of an old college buddy suddenly swirls into view...

I found some sage advice from an Aviation week editor on things that might actually have a chance at preventing the next hajji from blowing up a plane.

Green energy, pristine deserts. Try as they might, they can't have it both ways. This doesn't make sense until you realize the actual goal is to empower the nanny state and make us all more reliant on government.

The last GM big-block V8 has finally rolled off the assembly line.

A computer scientist recently toured the Titan Missile Museum, and his observations are everything a gear geek could hope for. My dad helped run one of these things back in the 60s. Some of his stories are damned amusing. Others are downright terrifying. I'm glad this one is a museum. I can only hope one day they all are.

The on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again saga of Alfa's return to the US now seems to be on-again. I think. Personally, I think Alfa getting sold to a different automaker would not be apocalyptic. Far from it. But it is encouraging to hear at least some support for the idea of a return.

My main objection to global warming extremists is economic. Because they're all True Believers, they're well armed with arguments just sophisticated enough to throw off Johnny on the Street. So I'm very happy to return the f'ing favor. You talked a good talk, and scared a lot of people, but dude, let me tell you. They've been trusting you because you sound like you know what you're talking about. But they've never really liked you. And now they have a reason not to even trust you.

Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all.

And in the "broken clock" category, we have the ongoing de-facto legalization of marijuana, made possible by the quiet tolerance of the Obama administration's DEA. At the end of four years the business will likely be big enough to cause congressmen to squawk should a Republican end up the in the executive in 2012 and take a run at shutting it all down. At the end of eight it almost certainly will. I've thought marijuana was no more dangerous than cigarettes for years, and have the conventional libertarian desire to legalize (and tax) most if not all drugs, so I'm all for it.

Poms are quite tasty!

“I had stopped for the sign at East 29th and College when this dog came flying out of the sky right in front of my Jeep — right out of the sky,” says Jamie Padden, Davenport. “It dropped out of nowhere.”

The bishop was buried in the cathedral church in Myra, which became a pilgrimage site, but Irish historians claim the early crusaders brought his remains back to Jerpoint Abbey.

Pretty neat!

"It is a commonplace that [people] are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of avowed malice but from outraged righteousness."

-- Paul Johnson, Modern Times

Yup, I was right: the weird swirly blue thing in the sky earlier this week was a "Russian Missile Fail". Never ascribe to aliens what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Looks like the Army is exploring nuclear energy as a way to power their bases. I think it'd make an interesting stalking horse to see just how far the greens are willing to go to allow emissions-free power. Since I'm convinced green is the new red, I'm pretty sure they'll do everything they can to stop it. Since it's a military base, I'm not sure how far they'd get.

Shocking only to the MSM: Sarah Palin is now only 1 point behind in popularity polls. Yeah, I know, this has more to do with a popular president working with his Congressional buddies to ram unpopular legislation through than it does any resurgence on Palin's part. Still, considering how diligently the MSM tried to tear her apart when the book came out, the recovery is remarkable. I guess she kept at it long enough to last into the next news cycle.

Obama to the ISI: fix your mess or we'll do it for you. It's still not widely understood just how important, and culpable, Pakistan is in the hunt for al Quaeda. As with most effectively failed states, I don't see us demanding things as doing much good. But it does at least provide some political cover when we have to move against what will inevitably be portrayed as, "an unwarranted attack on another sovereign state."

While your regular variety of wacky leftists sit in yurts and complain about economic growth, the *real* business of climate change is being discussed by people who arrived on private jets and drove to the place in limousines. Thousands of limousines. Why worry when it's becoming common knowledge the only real way to "get things done" is to force us to do them.

That sound you hear is the left side of the peanut gallery nodding, and wondering just wtf the rest of us might have a problem with this.

It seems iPods have found a competitor in the vinyl LP. If the pressings are high-quality, the sound is actually quite good, and engineers worked out how to eliminate the clicks and pops just before CDs arrived. That said, albums are a royal pain to maintain, requiring more cleaning than an M-16 in a tropical jungle. I'll stick with CDs, thanks.

Hey, man, turnabout is fair play, eh? Yeah, this guy reeks of "kook in a castle", but dangit, he's our kook in a castle. When the left does this stuff, they end up with Oscars. I guess we'll just have to settle for, you know, being right.

It seems that the Voynich Manuscript may finally be solved. Wtf? Am I the only one who knows how to use WP? Personally, I thought the idea that it was a spy report for the future aging slowly in reverse was a much neater idea. Dan Simmons fan? Why yes?

Another year, another "computers don't save you a dime, you idiot story. My reply has, and always will be, "fine. If they don't save any money, let's go ahead and turn them off, eh?" And let's start with the authors of the study, while we're at it.

That said, this is very well received: The problem "is mainly that computer systems are built for the accountants and managers and not built to help doctors, nurses and patients," the report's lead author, Dr. David Himmelstein, said in an interview with Computerworld. To which I can only say it's not just health care which has this problem. We've been inflicted with not one but two expensive purchase order systems at my workplace that are an absolute horror to use simply because it makes the 3-member accounting team's job easier.

Nicholas Kristof writes this telling piece detailing the hidden costs, and willfully ignored implications, of Obamacare:

Sure, it would be great if John had health care insurance. But at what cost to everybody else? Should women under 50 be denied mammograms so as to hold down health costs so that John can have government-subsidized insurance? How about men over 70 with slow acting prostate cancer? Should we deny them treatment on the assumption that something else will kill them first, so that the government can afford to insure John?

The point is that Kristof and his ilk are basically running a con. They want you to focus on the most sympathetic cases, while ignoring the large and amorphous mass of individuals who will be adversely affected.

All the wishing in the world will not make the fact that we have scarce resources which must be allocated carefully go away. Trying to legislate it away courts disaster, and ensuring conservatives and libertarians are around to take the blame will not clean up the mess any faster.

Looks like Obama's learning the age-old lesson of the tired husband. That being, when one is in trouble for irrational reasons, being as angelic as possible won't change a damned thing.

Patrick Stewart, of all people, has written this detailed and heart-felt account of how domestic violence marred his childhood. A chaotic, unpredictable home is definitely something no child should ever need to learn to deal with. It's sad indeed that so many do.

Leave it to The Sun to find a guy who married the woman of his dreams even after he found out she was a he. Bonus: "wife-wants-to-take-notes-on-how-that-makeup-works" pictures. Reminds me of the first time I saw Poison's debut album.

Hello? Poison? "Every Rose"?

This "kids born when that album came out now have kids of their own" moment brought to you by, well, me.

At least one doctor is calling, "BS" on that story of the guy who was "trapped" in his body for 23 years. I did think someone who could stay lucid after going through such an ordeal was amazing. It may turn out to be far too amazing to be real.

Problem: Greedy, evil corporations heartlessly refuse to provide any sort of extended benefits to the workers they thoughtlessly cast off like so many unwanted puppies.

Solution: We are Democrats! Champions of the People! Behold, Vile Corporate America, The Power of the State Compels You!!!

Problem: Stage two? There's a stage two? Nobody told me there would be a stage two.

I don't expect the true believers sitting on the left side of the peanut gallery to even understand the point. I'm hoping those who got lured over there by the shiny trinkets they were selling you have now realized it was nothing more than paste and foil.

Jeff gets a no-prize shaped like a scale for bringing us proof the MSM will sell their soul for a good story, and then complain about the price as they're stealing it back when the story's done. It's almost enough to make me think about reading newspapers again. ALMOST.

While a gay leather master running for a state office is interesting, I'm not sure it's 2000+ words interesting. But hey, who am I to judge?

Seconded:

The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to non-existent congressional districts — which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one's nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.

I once quite enjoyed reading The Washington Post every morning. I stopped precisely because of this sort of thing.

Well they are rather large.

Read the comments how people are arguing between cows and bull. Pretty obvious that they are male.

Washington Post today featured this surprisingly detailed account of only the fourth execution by electric chair to occur in Virginia since 1995. Counter to my bloodthirsty neo-con reputation, I'm actually opposed to the death penalty on two accounts, one practical, the other religious.

It's been widely accepted for decades that it is in fact more expensive to execute a criminal in the US than it is to house them for life. Getting those last three decimals of certainty takes decades and costs millions. Anyone who doesn't want to be as certain as humanly possible risks becoming a murder by proxy themselves.

Spiritually, one of the reasons behind the special sanctity of human life in Buddhism is humans are held to be the creatures that, given enough time, have the greatest likelihood of finding enlightenment. Shortening that rare and all too brief span is beyond abhorrent.

That said, Buddhism also believes it is possible, even desirable, to find enlightenment even on a godforsaken mountain peak or a deep dark hole. Which is where I think the worst of the worst, suitably secured and provided with the tools for their own survival, should end up.

In other words, karma's a bitch.

The title comes from the fact that, aside from the motive behind it, I think stacking a whole bunch of buckets full of pig pee and poo in front of the US Capitol and using fans to blow the stench toward it is a good idea. It'd make the physical atmosphere match the moral and political one for the first time in, what, forever? This is a frakking Democratic administration, people. There's bound to be someone we can sue and/or guilt into making this happen!

It seems that there has been a significant expansion in how police will be using DNA evidence. Using a familial DNA database to prove probable cause seems straightforward enough. I'm sure the ACLU will fuss about the potential ways it could be abused almost as fast as the cops try to figure out actual ways to abuse it.

Regulars of the Udvar Hazy annex will know about the restored Japanese fighter designed to launch from a submarine. Turns out they've found the mother ship. Again. Seems we sank it 60 years ago. More's the pity. Still, it's a little strange to see something 20 or 30 guys spent 5 years restoring in a museum I regularly take my daughter to see, and then see the thing designed to launch it on the bottom of the ocean, buried with the crew who sailed it.

Meet Mrs. Herald who, at 2'4", is the world's smallest mom. The pictures are freaky, but the story isn't. We all make our own way, and they seem to be doing OK. I just hope they're not on the dole.

Pat gets a sadly predictable no-prize for bringing us the emerging details of the Fort Hood massacre. The Muslim angle is sad, but, now that I think about it, most of these mass-murdering lunatics seem to show clear signs of coming unhinged well before they pick up a gun. The trick would seem to be recognizing them in time.

I'm quite sure there are those on the left side of the peanut gallery who have no problem at all forcing us all to spend $15,000 or go to prison. Regular readers of our site will likely know where we stand on it. And now they're trying to force it through on a Saturday.

I've always liked John Ratzenberger, but now I *really* like John Ratzenberger:

"These are Woodstock Democrats," [Ratzenberger] said at the [recent DC Tea Party rally]. "We have to remember where their philosophy comes from. It doesn't come from America. It comes from overseas. It comes from socialism. And socialism is a philosophy of failure."

Testify!!!

Another day, another 40-something Gen-X'er bemoaning "kids these days." Meh. At least watching porn won't give you cancer. Totally SFW.

Yesterday Fiat finally unveiled its 5-year plan for Chrysler. Looks like it'll be what Fiat's been saying all along: a sharing of technology resources to jump-start the ailing automaker and set it on the road to recovery. Most of the Fiat will be clad in Chrysler badges, and the transition should be complete some time around 2012. Not a whiff of a mention of the ol' Cross-and-Serpent, but hope always springs eternal for Alfisti. We'll see...

Well I'll be darned, the KATV tower collapsed last year and won't be rebuilt. This thing was a landmark in every sense of the word in Arkansas when I was growing up. Channel 7 was the only station we could pick up at deer camp because of this tower, and it marked the half-way point between Pine Bluff and Little Rock on old Highway 65. Ah well, at least it didn't hurt anyone on the way down.

It seems there's a reason why every country, or very nearly so, uses its own electric plug. Problem is, that reason doesn't make a lot of sense. Except that it was really expensive to set this all up, and we all did it when nobody crossed borders all that often, and by the time people started it was all in place, and it's a helluva lot easier to burn out your laptop than it is to rewire a whole f'ing country, so there.

Thing is, I could swear I remember really weird plugs in really old houses back when I was a kid, especially around phones? Anyway, a bit of electronics trivia to brighten your Friday night. 'Cos you're at home just like me, right?

Hello? Oh, I see, I forgot to plug it-#$@$#@%%6

NO CARRIER

Does a new weapon system herald the end of the precision-guided era? On the one hand, I can think of no better sight than a rogue mortar shell being blasted out of the sky. On the other, I would find it really annoying if my fancy guided bomb got blown up just a few hundred feet before it hit the target.

The US Military has a new method of detecting Hajji before he plants his road side bombs in Afghanistan, and you'll never guess what they've named it. All this time I thought NASA was the king of the tortured acronym.

Could libertarians become the next significant group of swing voters? It would make my life a lot more interesting, that's for sure. "Fiscally conservative but socially liberal" describes a significant number of my friends. "Fiscally conservative and stay off my lawn" describes most of the rest, including yours truly.

Geocities, the once mega-popular free web site host service, is being shut down. AMCG's very first incarnation was as a Geocities website. I'll bet a majority of blogs our age were.

It's nice to see not everyone in the UK has swallowed the blue climate change pill.

It's not that I think global warming is fake or a sham, it's that all the currently proposed "solutions" either do too little and cost too much, or are thinly disguised retread attempts to drive the kulaks into the countryside.

In my opinion, a climate change solution that does not include China and India is DOA. Right now, economic growth in those two countries isn't making life better, it's SAVING THE LIVES OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

The simple truth is these same people, when presented with the vague and controversial death by weather some time in the future, and the concrete reality of death by starvation next week, do not see this as a particularly hard decision.

Until this concrete reality is addressed, I will never sign on.

Here... you go into the building first. *bOOt*

It seems a vaguely scientific test has revealed most people can in fact tell the difference between awful sound and not-quite-as-awful sound. That is not, of course, how they're pitching it, but my "yes, actually, there is a reason hi fi sounds good" interpretation is just as valid.

Me? Oh I can't stand any of it. All the music download sites I've ever messed with have been unbearable, so bad I've never really bothered to try and hook them up to my main rig. If they ever mainstream a lossless system, I'll be there with bells on. Otherwise, I'll be sticking with my oh-so-20th-century CDs for the duration.

Making the rounds: Obama's communications chief counts Mao Tse Tung as one of her two favorite philosophers. Ya know, I always called Obama's bunch a bucket full of commies just to make a joke. I guess proves the axiom, "the best jokes start from truth."

It would seem the Democrats have dropped all pretense and are simply handing money out to whomever they please, for no particular reason at all. Considering they're already spending trillions of dollars they already don't have, what's a few more billion between friends?

It would appear that, not only is the global warming apocalypse still not happening, it's not happening in the wrong direction. Now, I'm not the sort of person who thinks climate change is just a watermelon* conspiracy. However, anyone who doesn't see the parallels isn't paying attention, or is selling something.

All that said, what I think this reveals most importantly of all is that radical change is simply uncalled for. Should we all start being more conscious of carbon footprints, and work to lessen them? Sure, why not? After all, such voluntary, grassroots efforts are far more likely to succeed than anything a government could hope to do.

It's when people start proclaiming an imminent crisis which must be addressed immediately with the most radical solutions which can be imposed by unelected world bodies that I start having a great big 800 lb. gorilla of a problem. Because everything I've read from that camp makes me think people pushing that agenda are so solidly Citrullus lanatus they're crapping seeds.

----
* Green on the outside, red on the inside.

If it's in black and white, it's one pail tip from the dustbin of history. But when it's in color, it's suddenly immediate. Thing is, spending all these years altering digital photos, I know from looking at them that with just a little twiddling those photos could be much more clear.

God damn you, you bastards. You took every awful little thing from every dust-darkened corner long forgotten, distilled it, and made it famous. Bah. You stopped, and they've kept going. And they raise glasses in October to the world, and the world raises one back. Because, and in spite, of you.

"[Casting Columbus as a murderous brute] is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect."

This describes so many of my center-left friends so very well it's actually a bit frightening.

But only a bit.

Via Instapundit.

'For centuries, the State (or more strictly, individuals acting in their roles as "members of the government") has cloaked its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric. For centuries the State has committed mass murder and called it "war"; then ennobled the mass slaughter that "war" involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its armed battalions and called it "conscription" in the "national service." For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point and called it "taxation." In fact, if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.'

--Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty

I'm sure the idea of the state being the prime criminal actor in human life will be surprising, shocking, and perhaps even anathema to the folks sitting on the left side of the peanut gallery. Which is too bad. We're called "the right" for more than one reason, you see...

Via Econlog.

A Chinese auto company has purchased the Hummer brand from GM for the bargain price of $150 million. It remains to be seen if this is the move of a wily up-and-comer, or yet another case of the locals soaking a carpetbagger.

Mark gets a no-prize with a tuxedo on for bringing us news that Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No, really! I had to check twice to make sure it wasn't fake! Foreign policy is where presidents nearly always do best, in no small part because that's what the founding fathers thought should be a primary responsibility of the executive branch when they engineered it.

It seems Rush Limbaugh and Dave Checkettes are making a bid for the St. Louis Rams. NFL teams are expensive, but if managed well are a license to print money even if the team itself is only mediocre (c.f. Cowboys, Dallas; Redskins, Washington). Sports reporters nowadays seem to be slightly to the left of Mao himself, so I'm expecting ESPN to start hailing the angels as they arc across the sky trumpeting apocalypse shortly.

I know, I know, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many truths must be ridiculed out of existence, and dammit no matter how many mistakes get made, it's all Bush's fault until Obama says it's not. Not even when the basic tenets of the argument don't even mention Bush, and are hard to argue against all the same. I think my problem is I keep thinking past stage one. It's a dangerous habit to have when it's ultimately the state who needs to be looking after me.

Agreed: '"I'm a Palin fan, because she irritates just the right people for me," [Dennis Miller] said.'

I'm amused by the frothing that happens when Palin is mentioned in the presence of my lefty friends. I'm very puzzled by the amazing ferocity the mere mention of Palin brings out in my center-left friends. I think that, if she tones down the religious rhetoric, bones up on the issues, and fields her own campaign team she definitely has a shot. And if she wins the Democrats will have nobody but themselves to blame, because nothing drives people center-right quite as fast as putting a darling of the left in the oval office.

Let's just call it young woman: 1, terrorists:0. Bonus: The hajji sent to his 72 virgins may end up being a high-ranking leader of the local terrorist cell. Ice Cube may be a little disappointed, but I'd call it a good day regardless.

It's like I say the words, and they become news the next day. Fortunately for the country, one state trying to soak the rich to pay for their progressive policies merely results in those rich moving their deposits, and therefore their liquidity, to friendlier states. Said friendlier states will then be able to indirectly leverage the cash for all sorts of useful things, like bond issues for infrastructure and small business loans for all of us. Progressives get disciplined, and conservatives get cash. Everyone wins!

The real risk is tax-and-spend at the federal level. There's no place to run inside the country then, so off the cash goes to some tropical location to help underwrite some corrupt third world regime. But hey, as long as it ensures the rest of us are unable live free of the progressive state, it's fine for those ingrates to leave, eh?

It turns out that, yes, they really did create a doomsday device and yes, it was fairly automated and no, they didn't tell a soul about it. At least, that's what this article is claiming. People who think we came closest to nuclear war over missiles in Cuba need to read more about the Cold War. From everything I've read, Khrushchev's folly doesn't even rank in the top 3.

Often the best sources of "real, actual, and useful" information comes from people on the ground trying to help other people get used to the ground. Such is A. L. L., "Afghan Lessons Learned for Soldiers". While all to brief, its practical advice and information taught me more about the erstwhile "Graveyard of Empires" than a dozen Newsweek articles.

Rick gets a no-prize that prosecutes with absolute malice for bringing us this collection of Apaches bringing various hajjis to their 72 wirgins, or whatever it is. Flying whirlybirds at the sharp end of the stick means never having to say you're sorry. Or, you know, something like that.

So has the Obama administration legalized pot, or not? As with most things related to Democrats, the answer is complicated, unofficial, and likely only to last as long as attitudes don't change. Me, I'm a "legalize it, tax it" kind of person. I'd be a lot happier if that's what had actually happened instead of "don't ask don't tell" in a lab coat.

Now that Congress and the media have "done their duty" (by making sure we all understand Such is the Fate of All Apostates Who Question the Holy One), let's just examine why anyone would want to call Obama a liar. This information tracks exactly with what I heard a few months ago on, of all places, NPR, so far as I'm concerned the numbers are good.

Was it enough to justify being tacky in a public forum? Well, this is Congress we're talking about here. If crass and tacky were banned from those August chambers the place would be given over to the crickets. Was it enough to justify the epithet, "liar?" Well, one of the most famous squirms in movie history should be appropriate here... "So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view. "

It would seem there's no end to the mileage cable news can get out of ComiCon. All I needed to see was the crowding. We get that at the Smithsonians during tourist season. It's no fun, and there I'm not paying for it. Still, it seems the fattie-to-hottie ratio is much higher than it is at other cons. Proof positive, I guess, that with a glamorous enough event, no number of greasy gamers can keep the chicks away.

Ya know that hajji who just got sent to his 72 whatever? You'll never guess who signed the executive order approving that op. Is this the standard "even a broken clock's right twice a day" competence of your standard Democrat, evidence "the Chicago way" may have a bright side, or perhaps the harbinger that he might be good at foreign policy? I'm not hedging my bets. Still, when's the last time you heard of a Dem signing off on anything like this AND IT ACTUALLY WORKING? I'm thinking LBJ, but I'm a cynic.

So, how does one get rid of those wonderfully green hybrid cars when they reach the end of their life? Pretty much the way you'd expect... by cutting another pound of flesh off the US taxpayer. Well, pretty much the way *I* expect, being the card-carrying libertarian bastard that I am. The rest of you, maybe not so much.

So, the question is, what if they held a protest and nobody in the media showed up. It was certainly news to me that the whole of downtown DC was shut down this afternoon. If I'd known, I would've taken Olivia down there.

Mythbusters must be getting ready to start another season. First I had to clear a 24 hour marathon off the Tivo, now I find a new interview with the principles. This time Jamie even makes an appearance!

Snap into what's inside a Slim Jim. What I think is funny is this stuff is considered nasty and gross, while I'd wager the same people would consider giant bugs that eat trash and dead stuff off the ocean's bottom a delicacy, and pay extra for it. There's just no accounting for (pseudo) intellectual tastes.

So likely anyone following the health care debate for any length of time has heard of Cuba. The question is, why haven't we heard as much about India? What's that? Health care reform is just a stalking horse for giving people "who know what's good for us" more power? Well dang, if you'd just said so to begin with...

Problem: Afghanistan being, well, Afghanistan, is resisting the obvious charisma, hope, and change of the glorious leader all but the most seditious of us love with every fiber of our being by obstinately refusing to play along.

Solution: Move the goalposts, and blame Bush.

I'm not sure who this guy is, but he seems to get on French TV regularly enough. If that doesn't define the thin wedge of the defeatist left, I don't know what does.

I dunno. I think this guy is onto something. Driving a standard transmission in Virginia's legendary highway treacle fairly forces you to create large gaps ahead. I've found there are two real problems to this strategy: 1) once the gap reaches a certain size, the adjacent lanes "collapse" into the space, like waves of surf, and 2) psychopaths behind you flip their sh*t when they see you letting traffic "get away", and try to punt you along faster. Still, I think there's likely something to all this.

I see, I see now. When you all called Bush a new Hitler, that was Ok. But calling Obama a new Hitler, that requires some serious scolding. Go for the "it's-my-foil-hat-I'll-wear-what-I-want-to" conspiracy paranoia. Stay for the shameless "of course it's OK if we do it. We're the good guys" commentary.

"Glad to see me, boys?" Doda called out cheerily. She laughed, patted Bill Yankers on the cheek and, without missing a beat, picked up the next line of her song and headed back up the room toward her band.

Forty-five years after she donned a topless bathing suit at the Condor Club one hot summer night and started the national topless dancing craze, Doda is still packing 'em in at North Beach.

Read the rest.

As with most Hollywood fantasies of starting over, attempting to completely disappear is much harder than it would at first appear. There were a couple of times in my life, long ago, when doing just that would've been relatively straightforward. I discarded the idea for precisely the reasons stated in the article.

The Spectator: "My Grandma Is An Angry Mob -- And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." The guy who coined that "hell hath no fury" line obviously never knew a pissed-off gramma.

Fellow Arkansans may find Blanche's schedule of interest. Especially since she seems to be changing it a lot. I wonder why that is?

The conclusions of the Obama-appointed panel to review NASA policy are beginning to leak out. My memory may be failing me, but this sounds a lot like the options being kicked around before Mike Griffen took over and rammed the Ares concepts through. Regardless, things don't look real bright for Ares I fans. From what I've read, I'm not completely sure that's a bad thing.

It would seem the author of The Lord of the Flies wasn't a particularly nice man. I guess it's one of the requisites of the English upper class, to have one's dark past revealed after one's death.

Ok, see if you know the punch line to this one... four perps run into a store, handcuff the employees, and pistol-whip the one who resists.

This being America, the punch line goes the way it should.

To me, the fact they were handcuffing everyone is very significant, and dangerous. In my opinion, it meant the perps were going to make sure nobody would be around to identify them when they were done. Any violent death is tragic; that said, some are definitely more tragic than others.

I've often heard it said a person who doesn't break the law has nothing to fear from the police. I would counter a police officer who's doing the job correctly has nothing to worry about from a citizen who knows, and plays by, the rules. Plus, the chick who plays the homeowner at the end of the film is hawt.

Oink oink oink.

The BBC's F1 Mole has more details on why Michael Schumacher had to cancel his comeback. Sounds like he would be just one solid thump away from his head falling off. Yeah, I think that would make me reconsider, too. Because you know they asked me next, right?

Yes, I do know what "delusions of grandeur" means, thank-you-very-much!

Historian Victor Davis Hanson recently visited the Mediterranean and penned these various thoughts on his journey. Useful not only for the political insights, but also for impressions and tips from someone who's visited the area many times over many years.

Ron gets a rambling but no less entertaining no-prize for bringing us a bit of left-center disgust with the shambling mound that is the Obama administration. Oh, don't worry, the author does plenty of Bush slamming too. I don't want to take you people too far out of your comfort zone.

Hey, man, I'm not attacking anyone, I just have the same questions this guy does about recent "fishy" statements about health care. I mean, the Dems keep telling me to not believe everything I'm told, because some people out there have an agenda and might be prone to distort things.

I'm not pointin' any fingers, I'm just sayin'...

Looks like Schumacher won't be making a comeback after all. The injuries sustained after a previous motorcycle accident had been mentioned when his name was first being toss around. F-1 cars are capable of more than three G's of lateral force, so having neck or upper back injuries is a very real problem when trying to race in that series.

I have no idea what to make of this, other than it's got a lot of interesting pictures, which seem to transition from black and white to color. It was interesting enough for me to scroll to the bottom.

Note: contains nekkid people.

Looks like if Obamacare passes, after retirement we can all look forward to sorta-mandatory discussions about death and dying every five years Or sooner, if it looks like we won't make it to the next five year discussion. It's not the content in particular that bothers me. It's that the state has decided that it's a good idea to remind me I'm going to die soon. And it's decided to keep reminding me, you know, in case I forget. Because, I tell ya, if it's one thing seniors forget, it's that they're gonna die soon.

Via Instapundit.

US travelers thinking about going international may find this guide to "do's and don'ts" of various cultures of interest. The article is, of course, more interested in presenting colorful examples than it is in providing a consistent, useful guide, but I always find it fun to learn the details of exactly how specific countries differ from our own.

A Taliban leader in Pakistan may have been killed by a drone attack. This was the one Taliban press releases was saying killed his wife and a whole bunch of other innocent women and children. Hey, if it's in a press release, we gotta believe it, right?

Bah. Why mount up that crazy hunter's deer when you get get all artsy with it instead? Something tells me my mother-in-law would be less than pleased if one of these suddenly appeared on her wall.

So, was Van Halen's legendary "no brown M&Ms" really just a way to suss out careless promoters? Their shows always were known for incredibly complex staging.

Look out, everybody, they've turned Squeaky loose. By all the accounts I've read, she's still just as nuts now as she was more than thirty years ago when she waved a gun at President Ford. With a few notable exceptions, age tends to plane the edges off crazy, so maybe she'll fit back into society. Who knows?

Why don't I like Cash for Clunkers? This is why:

Cash-for-clunkers amounts to a rounding error in Tim Geithner's nose-hair at this point, which is probably why at least some liberals seem so genuinely baffled by the disproportionate criticism it has drawn. But for some of us it's also a nearly perfect symbol of economic statism run amok. The federal government is taking from the many, giving it to the less-than-many, destroying functional cars, funneling money to an auto industry that it already largely owns (at a hefty taxpayer price tag), then taking multiple (and multiply premature) bows for rescuing the economy and the auto industry in the process.

Now now, read the last paragraph too, because I agree with it as well. Strangely, this was not rated as "fascist" by the twirling moonbats who infest Fark's comment areas. The MSM is still on its knees in front of Obama's pants, but they now seem to be demanding a peck on the cheek before they do their duty. Could these things be marking the beginning of the end? Heck all I'm hoping for is the end of the beginning.

From the, "we-know-the-truth-lets-make-some-numbers-up-to-support-it" department, we have a report which claims kids today cost $221,000 over the (presumably) 17 year period you're responsible for. Which begs the question, who cuts their kids off when they turn 18?!?

See, Ellen? I told you we could've gotten a Ferrari!

It's nice to see that the right can be just as prurient as the left, and the political operatives of the left can be just as effete as those of the right. Those of you who think the whole business stinks and wonder why they can't all just grow the f- up should read up on how ante-bellum politics was practiced in this country. Then you'll discover the sad truth... they already have grown up.

The good news: Alfa is still working on some sort of crossover SUV. The bad: it seems we're only going to get that, and a top-of-the-line sedan, some day. If the 500 is a success, maybe that'll convince Fiat that the US is a potential market for its smaller, less-expensive cars.

American health care: expensive, but darned well worth it. I think point #10 can't be emphasized enough. In fact, I have a theory that one of the reasons why our health care is so expensive is because we're actually subsidizing all these other nationalized health care schemes. I'd like to think we could put a proviso in some policy somewhere that would prohibit the export of any US-developed medical innovation for 10 years, just to see what would happen. I can't figure out how to really enforce it, unfortunately.

Via Instapundit.

[T]ake away the profit motive, and what's left doesn't deliver results quickly or efficiently, if at all.

I've said this elsewhere, but it deserves repeating... we all expect government to f- it up. If government f-'s up the roads, I'm stuck in traffic jams for the next 10 years. If government f-'s up health care, I die.

Me? I'm counting on the boomers' legendary narcissism and shrieking lack of spirituality to fund us all to immortality. Obamacare is going to get in the way of that, either through taxation or the oozing amber of government regulation. You only disagree with me because you think most of these people shouldn't be alive anyway.

Via Instapundit.

The glamour has long faded from the job of a flight attendant, but the occupation still captures the imagination of a public fascinated by the constant travel and work above the clouds.

"A lot of passengers complain that flight attendants don't smile, but I can't tell you how many times I've stood at the boarding door with a smile on my face greeting people and they will just ignore me," said Heather Poole, a flight attendant for 14 years who writes for the travel Web site Gadling.com.

So much for my next career.

One of the few "radical" libertarian points I strongly support is the repeal of the minimum wage. However, I've had a hard time finding a succinct way of explaining why. Problem solved.

Go read the whole thing first, then come back and tell me, exactly, how wrong it is. And hold this sign while you do.

Yes, yes, I know your name is not E. L. Eetist, but trust me, you'll have a hard time convincing people it isn't.

Via Instapundit.

Today's "from cringe to cure" history of medicine is brought to you by the pictorial history of dentistry. The early pictures are exclusively of tools, so it's safe-for-stomach, if not for -imagination.

I've often wondered just how market forces could be leveraged to create sustainable health care reform. Now I don't need to wonder anymore. The thin edge of the wedge is already there, and working, with health savings plans (at my workplace, at any rate). If the dollars the government takes from me for various health related entitlements, and the money I and my employer pay for "regular" insurance, were placed in a similar sort of account, I know for a fact I'd have more money to spend on my own health care than I do now.

Careful now, when you disagree with me, that you're not doing so because flyover country is too stupid to do the same. Elitism is in many ways nastier than racism, because it allows you to discriminate against the people you think aren't worthy.

The Russians have started production of a new attack sub. The first of this class was laid down in 1993 and isn't expected to be finished until 2011, so it's not like two advanced Soviet Russian attack subs will be prowling around any time soon. Still, something to keep an eye on.

To the surprise of basically nobody, the first screaming liberal to be appointed to the Supreme Court in, well, a long damned time has been confirmed. Meh. The court's raving conservative, Scalia, has been there for 27 years, and the world hasn't ended. This won't be the end of the world, either.

We've just tipped over the edge of the first hill on this donkey of a roller coaster, folks. Hang the hell on, it's gonna be a bumpy, scary ride.

Now they're saying the MiTo won't be the first Alfa to reach our shores. Which sort of makes sense, in a way. The protections fencing the US auto market make it really quite difficult to sell a low-cost car that's not built here. Still, the new Milano is looking quite interesting. It's also nice to be seeing a, "which one?" question, instead of "are we getting any at all?"

The thing is, he's not out to convince you, he's out to help people like me give as good as we get. Which is why I'm certain this will either be ignored or pilloried in places that think they matter. The truth too often ignored is, times have changed, and the places that matter, well, don't matter quite as much anymore, if at all.

John Stossel: "It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August." What's not mentioned is this is the 15 percent of the U.S. economy that keeps you from dying. Yeah. Congress is definitely the organizational body I want to be responsible for the health of my own body. They're doing such a good job at everything else, after all...

Sometimes it really is this simple:

In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?

And of course, without these developing countries on the bandwagon, you know, the ones with well over half of the world's population, nothing anyone else can do will help. Except, of course, increase misery, slow economic growth, and ensure the only place where real job growth will occur is in the public sector.

On second thought, no wonder the Dems support it so strongly.

Being a cop is all fun and games until the @#$@%'ing convenience store owner refuses to erase the surveillance tape. Even better are all the super-macho Fark comments about how this particular policeman should be a) suspended, b) fired, and c) shot.

Sorry, folks, it doesn't work that way. He kept his job because he's union, and if unions are good for anything it's making it essentially impossible to fire anyone easily, no matter how justified it is. The lady sat in jail while the cop roamed free because thousands of sh-theads accuse cops of doing all sorts of awful things every day, and it's too expensive to believe (and investigate) them all.

The truly brave person in the story is the store owner, who if nothing else now faces the prospect of a store with no police protection whatsoever. At best.

Unfortunately this is the only way it can work. Freedom of the press doesn't just keep the feds from tossing us in jail for no reason, it also keeps the local cops from doing the same. Sometimes. When it's interesting, at any rate.

Is it consistent? No. Is it perfect? No. The sad truth is, however, that this is the only system proven to be compatible with human nature. We are imperfect beings, and least-worst is often the very best anyone can hope for.

One only has to compare what police are like in more "enlightened" states to see just how good "least worst" can be.

Mark gets a run-out hourglass of a no-prize for bringing us news that some very interesting tombs in Rome will soon be for sale. They ain't cheap, and if you're not local don't even bother, but if you're well off and live in the area, well, you can buy a place that'll give you a place when you're eventually neither.

I wonder if an Anthropology student could make a Masters thesis work with this thing? "Twitter pictures posted by millions of humans reveal startling data about behavior" would be the imaginary headline, I suppose. As far as I could tell it was SFW, but I only watched it for a few minutes.

Oh, look, it seems Al Qaeda has a spy problem on its hands. Poor little hajji. The problem with attacking rich people is, if you don't kill them the first time, they spend all their money trying to kill you back.

And you see, hajji, we have so very, very much money to spend...

When I got on the airplane heading into San Francisco, the cover of The Economist was Obama heading into the Russian bear's mouth. It was going to be a big deal. Since I long ago gave up on The Washington Post as being anything but a high-class Democratic mouthpiece, I've been using Google as my news aggregator. I can honestly say the utter, and complete, lack of coverage made me forget Obama'd even gotten on an airplane. This, however, reminded me. One of the ways historians judge whether or not a chronicler, of any era, is in the pocket of his or her employer is how they report failures. The ironic thing is that the gaps in the record tell us quite a bit.

When one considers that the Russians are the ones with all the nukes, this is a very big gap, indeed.

Finally someone has done the legwork required to point out just how differently the MSM reports economic news when a Democrat is in the White House.

I like it because it really seems to take the shape down to its basic principles. Most end their lives cut into pieces. Just not pieces this interesting.

And all this time I thought it'd be the B-52 that would be the weapon system to see active duty in its 100th year:

The U.S. Army was developing a new, semi-robotic, tracked howitzer, as part of the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates killed FCS, in April. The howitzer — the so-called Non Line-of-Sight Cannon — was funded separately from FCS, so wasn’t subject to the FCS termination.
...
Anticipating NLOS-C’s death, the Senate just voted to spend an extra $60 million, to keep the Army’s existing, M-109A6 Paladin howitzers, in service until 2050. That’s nearly 100 years after the first M-109 entered U.S. service, and 70 years after the A6 version reached the field.

I just wish the Wikipedia article detailed why it's such a long-lived system.

Remember all the righteous indignation at the Bush administration "suppressing" various government reports that confirmed climate change? Yeah, about that:

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

See, I'm a cynical bastard and a card-carrying member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I expect politicians and bureaucrats of either party to do absolutely anything to advance their agenda. That's why I'm never surprised by these things.

I am, however, endlessly surprised at how diligent and clever are the efforts of both the MSM and personal acquaintances to excuse the man behind the curtain, now that he's a Democrat.

Remember that chick who got all those stars by "teh horrible" tattoo artist? Yeah, the truth was about what you'd think. Leave it to the media to actually believe anything that comes out of a teenager's mouth.

After 74 years in production, Kodak has announced it's ceasing the production of Kodachrome film. We actually have a film-based SLR, one of the last "prosumer" models Nikon ever made. Olivia will likely take it to school one day as the ultimate example of "old tech."

Ron gets a no-prize that'll twirl impressively in its bell tower for bringing us two bits of evidence that the radical left, at least, is beginning to get worried that The Wrong People may end up getting credit for whatever good may come out of the Iranian, well, whatever it is going on there:

Proof... PROOF!!! that Israelis are attempting to destabilize the existing Iranian regime. And this is bad BEEECAUUSE???

A level-headed attempt to link Israel's fascist mistreatment of those peace-loving Palestinians who are peacefully protesting their peaceful desire to peacefully push all the Jews into the sea with Obama's non-handling of the situation in Iran. Money quote: "[A radical Israeli politician who I don't like]'s expressed eagerness to bomb the Aswan dam is at least the equivalent of Ahmadinejad’s reported desire to wipe Israel off the map. "

Ok, Sparky. Here's a ruler. This is something that will provide you with something called "perspective." Equating bombing a dam with nuking a country means you really, really need it.

Ok, pop quiz. What party is this guy talking about, and when did he write it:

During campaigns, they want our money, our support... but once they win, we're not needed. Even worse, they view us as a problem. Many of them forget that they have their tax-payer financed jobs and benefits because of the work so many of us did.

The honest answers are, "any active party", and "any time after 1787." I'm just about certain I can find comments like this any time in the modern era. It's likely the same sentiments will be found all the way back to the beginning, or shortly thereafter.

See, you guys just figured it was the Republicans who acted this way because, well, most of you wavered between "they're stupid" and "they're evil." Guess what, sparky? It's not Republicans, it's politicians, and it'll only get worse this time around because everyone seems to want so desperately to love this guy.

Original article is here.

Via Instapundit.

See, I'm never surprised by these things, since (contrary to popular perception) I think there's a certain type of person who's attracted to politics, who knows how the game's to be played, and party affiliation really only affects the color of the lapel pin. Therefore this doesn't surprise or bother me that much. The rest of you, quite obviously, will likely feel differently:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll comfort yourself with some "but the Republicans are much worse!" pap. Don't forget to be smarmy when you mention it. I love it when you do that.

No, not you. The other one.

A Chinese sub recently collided with a US destroyer's towed sonar array. Those things are, as I understand it, highly classified. I'm not sure anyone knows what they really look like. This could've been a "love tap", or it could've gotten tangled up, or it could've been bashed around pretty good. Who knows?

... Mah Incentives:

Education really does pay.

An overwhelming number of schools participating in a controversial program that pays kids for good grades saw huge boosts -- up to nearly 40 percentage points higher -- in reading and math scores this year, a Post analysis found.

Since public education's true goal is indoctrinating the poor masses into the Church of Secular Humanism, the left is predictably moving the goal posts from "getting a good education" to "education should be valued for its own sake." If this shows even the slightest sign of catching on, expect identical MSM "in depth" stories about rampant cheating and kids spending their education cash on drugs. All, of course, based on the same NEA press releases using data from the same NEA-sponsored studies.

Bitter? Me?

And now, 10 cars that some journalist thinks last forever. The only real surprise was the lack of a Mercedes diesel, which are utterly legendary in their stolid virtues.

Hmm? Oh, you can make an Alfa go that far. Several have. You just need to fiddle with them more.

A lot more.

Rumor has it the Tata Nano may be heading to our shores. I'm not at all sure how. According to road tests I've read in the various popular magazines, the Nano has no modern safety features. No air bags, no side-impact bars, heck I'm not even sure if it has seat belts. See, in India, doors and a roof are considered big upgrades in safety already. Everything else is expensive gravy they don't need. As the US auto market experience in the mid 70s proves, it's hard to add these things to a vehicle not engineered for them. And those add-ons were relatively straightforward, things like battering-ram bumpers and big bars inside the doors.

Nowadays the safety features often involve things that go, "bang." Sometimes in your face, and are sophisticated enough not to kill you, your grandmother, or your toddler doing it. Can the engineers at Tata handle the challenge? Can they make money on the result? Who knows? There will always be a market for cheap cars, even in the US. The trick is making money off them.

While I agree the other side of this whole late-term abortion thing needs to be told, in my opinion I think the article's author does her own fair share of glossing in the other direction. Still, I will readily admit I had a very one-sided idea of what late term abortion really means in the US until I read this article.

Me? Well, all I can really say is abortion is legal in this country, and as such a person practicing it according to the proper guidelines is completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The perpetrator of the murder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The rest is too complex for me to pass judgment. I only wish the criminal who decided to take the law into his own hands could've decided the same.

Via Violins and Starships.

Update: I guess I shouldn't be surprised the perpetrator isn't the brightest bulb in the bunch. That's another thing. If you're going to be an asshat and break the law because of your principles, suck it up and take the punishment like a man. One thing that annoys the s- out of me about protesters, be they right, left, violent, or peaceful, is how so many of them turn into whiny biatches the moment the cuffs go on. Hey, sparky, the whole point of being a martyr for the cause is dying at the end. At least Hajji has the decency to blow himself to bits.

Ron gets a no-prize that just looks suspicious for bringing us these 10 examples of news photographs that've been altered beyond all reason. What surprises me is how prominent the perpetrators are. I guess they're just more examples of people who are smart in one thing thinking they're smart in all things.

I'd always wondered just what Google Earth might be revealing about The Hermit Kingdom. Turns out, it's quite a lot:

A group of amateur spies has used Google Earth to provide a rare glimpse inside North Korea, one of the world's most secretive countries.
...
Among the most notable findings is the site of mass graves created in the 1990s following a famine that the UN estimates killed about 2 million people.
...
Also visible is the stark contrast between the living conditions of North Korea's elite and the general population.

~ Keep spending all our lives / Livin' in the worker's paradise... ~

Now that they're actually building the long-awaited Metro extension through Tyson's Corner, they're beginning to cut "black" wire. Definitely not the same sort of wire that makes the Milano's electrics go all wonky when it gets dirty.

The sad thing is, considering the level of debate amongst the "adults" of the internet lies somewhere between a screaming toddler and a poo-flinging chimp, this guide to "teaching children how to argue" should be required reading for, well, everyone. I know that's about as likely to happen as the MSM not asking, "what color?" every time the Obama administration yells "Sh*T!", but I can hope, can't I?

So, is the Obama administration deliberately targeting Chrysler dealerships who contributed to the GOP for closure, or is it just more paranoid ravings from the right? The Obama administration definitely has the arrogance, and the inexperience, to pull a stunt like this. After all, they doubtless have no expectation of being caught. Certainly the MSM will do nothing until the evidence is so colorful it starts to sell other people's newspapers.

I'm not sure it ever would occur to me that ebay was even in competition with sites like Facebook and MySpace. The former is for shopping, the latter for chatting. I troll ebay because I own an obscure pair of cars for which parts are difficult to find. Picking up weird stuff for fair prices was always what I thought ebay was for.

Policy wonks: the real solution to increasing and increasingly deadly mortar and rocket attacks is lasers. Which is all well and good, but nobody's managed to make an SSL that'll meet all the criteria for an effective defense. They're beavering away at it, so it may just be a matter of time.

The way most people get arrested is because of what they say to the cop. It gets interesting when a state law makes it permissible to say incriminating things to the cop, without getting in trouble. See, Ellen... all those times I've babbled at the TV about circumstantial evidence? I was right! The Mentalist, FTW!

While long on hyperbole and a bit short on actual facts, this account summarizing the theft of some of NASA's precious moon rocks is still worth a look. Considering how expensive NASA programs really are, I can't see how selling even previously contaminated rocks would make a difference. The feds took a dim view of someone using that excuse as a defense in fencing some stolen samples.

They're funny that way, eh?

One of the few people still relying on a full-body iron lung for breathing assistance has died. I remember when these things featured prominently in any number of TV shows or movies, mostly from the 60s. As noted in the article, nowadays it seems almost nobody uses them.

So, the next time someone from Japan gets in your face about how harmonious and safe their society is compared to ours, you'll now have something ask them about when they're finished. Yet more proof that our society has no monopoly on the dark side. We just talk about it where others can hear.

Mutual fund debt holders have torpedoed the Chrysler bailout plan. From various reports, it seems this was half expected, and there definitely seems to be a "Plan B" that will keep the main deal intact.

Just in time for GM's announcement of Pontiac's shuttering, Jalopnik has picked their ten greatest models from that marque. People familiar with automotive journalists probably won't be surprised to find a few models from other "ten worst" lists. Long term memory has never been much of a strong suite with journalists of any stripe.

Well, it's nice to know rice really doesn't hurt birds. I always thought that was a dumb one, but stopped noting it after it became obvious the various Bridezillas I had the temerity to contradict took it way too personally. If there's anything more dangerous than getting between a bride and her Perfect Wedding^tm, I'm not sure what it is.

Via Violins and Starships.

It would appear something's going to happen to Pontiac. It's not clear to me, from the article, if they're shuttering the brand outright, or if they're planning on spinning the division off. My brother always enjoyed the fact he had the last of the Firebirds in his '01. I'm not sure anyone expected it'd be one of the last Pontiacs.

Another day, another person without an axe to grind losing weight eating only McDonalds. Spurlock's film was a fine piece of entertainment, but a lousy documentary. Any viewer with even a lick of sense sees that in the first five minutes. Small wonder then that almost all MSM outlets portrayed Supersize Me as a serious, important commentary on our times.

Assuming the Fiat/Chrysler merger actually goes through, "what-goes-where" talks seem to be moving forward. More back-channel rumors indicate new big-3 assembly lines are extremely efficient, to minimize the impact of union-imposed restrictions. If Fiat can get the more onerous policies peeled away, it would seem to be possible to produce high-quality Italian cars here in North America in a perhaps surprisingly short amount of time.

I think it says a lot about, well, something, that a media publication thinks it can convey a meaningful portrait of an entire country through exactly eight pictures. Then again, the results are rather compelling.

Miguel P. gets a patrician no-prize for bringing us this perceptive look at what American government is, and is not. Yeah, it's a little long, but like most worthwhile lectures you really don't notice the time going by.

Even if the MSM continues to largely ignore the tea party movement, the radical left press sure isn't. Hey, you guys have Marxist wackos showing up to your rallies*, we have Fascist wackos showing up to ours. It's all good!

----
* Oh yes you do. Oh yes you do! Don't you make me get out the pictures of the hippies to prove it. You know what those look like...

Problem: Pirates are attacking our ships, but our liberal philosophy says we can't just shoot them outright.

Solution: Use expensive high tech!

Problem: Not so fast, moonbat-boy.

Pirates are plying their trade because, even with all the risks, it's cheaper and more profitable than any other trade to which a Somali can aspire. Only when the costs of being a pirate obviously exceed all other available options will attacks cease. Unfortunately when the risk of dying is already factored into a profession, its cost can only be raised by turning that risk into an actuality.

In other words, shoot the bastards. It's the only way to be sure.

Why don't we all just drive around with mattresses on the hood:

A Europe-wide collaboration led by Roger Hardy of the Cranfield Impact Centre at Cranfield University near Bedford in the UK has developed an experimental system for cars that aims to cut this death toll and reduce the severity of injuries. When the system detects that the car is about to hit a pedestrian, it automatically raises the rear of the bonnet (hood), releasing a giant airbag in front of the windscreen.

Legislation to protect pedestrians is already responsible for the "high forehead" look of new European cars... they have to meet a certain set of crush guidelines to ensure someone doesn't, well, get crushed. This'd make, what, eight or nine airbags in a well-equipped car? These are not cheap devices!

Fiat to UAW: DROP DEAD.

Well, ok, maybe not "drop dead", but definitely "stfd and stfu."

It should be kept in mind that it's not always bad when the US Government prints money. I'm especially glad this got addressed: If that new money is supposed to make the dollar worth less, then why is the rest of the world fleeing to the safety of the dollar, instead of fleeing away from what you say is the soon-to-be-worthless dollar?

It's a question that's been bugging me for some time.

Mark gets a mysterious no-prize for bringing us news that the on-again, off-again status of the Shroud of Turin is, well, on again. Scientists will likely not be given access to the shroud again until they come up with a non-destructive dating technique, so it'll be awhile before they can re-test. Not that it'll make much difference to the True Believers, on either side.

North Korea successfully attacked the Pacific Ocean with its latest rocket. Which was all well and good, except they were actually trying to loft a satellite. Boosters do a lot of things well. Bouncing isn't one of them.

Well, if this guy is right, the upcoming Fiat-Chrysler merger stands a very strong chance of working. Can a successful Italian company succeed where a successful German one failed? A lot will depend on both sides listening to each other about how strengths and weaknesses are perceived. This is reported to not have happened during the Daimler years. It'll be interesting to see if it does with Fiat.

If this list of "Top 5 Great Men who were Great Plagiarists" is to be believed, a few of our most cherished literary figures had some very sticky fingers. That said, this is a Cracked article, long on sophomoric mud-slinging and suspiciously short of citations. The case on MLK's Dream speech in particular strikes me a more of a reference than outright plagiarism.

And score one for me, who seems to know how to spell "plagiarism" without reference to spell check. Now if I could just consistently remember where I leave my keys in the morning...

Why stop at helping companies stay afloat? We obviously know better than they do what the consumer wants:

Obama has ordered GM and Chrysler to come up with a cost and product structure that focuses on making money on small, fuel-efficient cars, traditionally a losing proposition for U.S. automakers.

My advice: find the most powerful car that fits your needs and buy it now. The days of a 250 hp family sedan are over. Performance cars with 300+ hp are going to lead them into extinction. My prediction: when the economy recovers, say in 3-5 years, there will be an explosion in classic car values that'll make the runup in the mid-80s look like a wet bottle rocket.

Because, now that the government is deciding what is and is not a desirable car, the only place to turn for what you like will be the classic car market. Since there's no increasing supply there, prices must go up. They're available new or depreciating fast right now, but once people realize the best they're going to get from now on is a Smart, that'll change in a great big hurry. Buy low, because in five years you'll definitely be able to sell high.

Chrysler says it has reached an official deal with Fiat. The trick now is to make sure Chrysler keeps its doors open long enough for Fiat to route cars through it.

The latest iteration: Chrysler goes to GM, and GM gives Saab to Fiat as some sort of weird consolation prize. I'm not completely sure this'll work all that well either, since SAAB's lineup would seem to compete directly with Alfa's. Still, I've seen more news about Fiat coming back to the US in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years. Surely something will come of it.

Boy, am I glad Bush was the last president! Otherwise we'd have nobody to blame for these horrific budget deficits. Well, except for, you know...

So now it seems at least some women are coming forward saying they experienced orgasms during childbirth. Considering the human species has been reproducing the same way for the past 150,000 years or so, you'd think someone else would've noticed before now.

I quite distinctly remember reading news articles in the mid-90s about how crazy and unfair it was for southern states to "give away" money and rights trying to attract car companies to locate there. It was, after all, just corporate welfare, pure and simple. How dare they provide billions of dollars in tax incentives to companies making a profit!

Well, I don't expect anyone on the left side of the aisle to change their tune, but at least I'll have the ammunition to shoot down those ridiculous assertions.

The story makes me think about a related "how dare they!" scenario, legalized "riverboat" gambling. Mississippi "fell" to temptation, while Arkansas remained "pure." Ten years later the differences between the "is-this-1958-or-what?" poverty of the Arkansas side and the "was-anythiing-in-this-town-even-around-last-year?" growth on the Mississippi side was striking.

Funny that the left celebrates this as a "victory" of common sense over superstition, while excoriating what's effectively the same thing elsewhere as "corporate welfare." I wonder if they'd ever even acknowledge the distinction?

It would seem the messiah has fallen into the water. Finessing Congress is fundamental to the success of a presidency. Those who manage it are nearly always seen as successful, while those who don't, well, aren't.

I gotta say, this still looks a whole lot more like Carter 2.0 than it does Bill Strikes Back.

Personally, I think it would've been cooler for him to lose the other middle finger. Still, it does provide an excuse not to wear a certain sort of ring, eh?

Mexico appears to be poised to enter a trade war with the US. The cause? Democrats allowed a "pilot program" which enabled Mexican trucks to drive on US roads to lapse. The problem? This is an absolute darling issue with a very powerful core Democratic constituency (Teamsters), the pleasing of which runs right into our tough economic times. So, do you scoff at losing some or all of $151bn worth of trade, as well as the efficiencies of a free market, or do you engage in a bit of realpolitik and jettison a loyal cadre of voters?

Well, why not hold the funeral at your house? There are more, and more varied, traditions surrounding funerals than there are surrounding marriages, in both our families, so I don't know how well this'd play in our neck of the woods. Then again, considering how iconoclastic our own marriage was*, anything's possible.

-----
* An all-expenses package to Jamaica. Think elopement, with invitations.

Nothing like a set of century-old pictures to put it all in perspective, eh? Whenever I see collections like this, one of the more interesting things I think about is how every single person in these pictures, even (especially) the children are now long, long gone. Impermanence is the only permanent part of the human condition. We forget it far too often.

“I bet if the entire Obama Administration and Democratic Congressional Leadership were sentenced to hang on December 1, 2009, if the stock market were not above 9000 and unemployment were not below 7%, they would become raging tax-cutting pro-business libertarians overnight.”

Which is, of course, an interesting way of saying "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" and "do as I say, not as I do" at once.

Why worry about losing your wallet when something else that'll do the job can be implanted in your arm? I'm actually a bit surprised it's taken this long for someone to think it up.

Looks like Sunday will be the last day of business for Circuit City. I visited one a few weeks ago, and sadly found its selection rather similar to what it had been before they went bankrupt. What was there wasn't marked down to any remarkable extent. Yet another "I remember when..." I can tell Olivia about. If I remember.

Funny, I don't recall seeing this as a headline anywhere:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a newly elected president in at least 90 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"BUT! BUT! He's only been in office 2 months!" Well, yes, but wasn't this the president widely and loudly admired for his taut, disciplined, and organized transition team? You know, one which was, compared to the previous two administrations, what the Batmobile was to a pair of Chinese fire drills?

I mean, it's all well and good to engage in just a little more Bush hating; I'm sure at least one of you out there will do just that, but GW's train has definitely left the station and the heat from its engine can't last much longer.

But wait! There's more:

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Oh, that's right, I keep forgetting. Government is good. Economic justice is far more important than economic growth. If we engage in a dialog with the world we just won't need such an expensive defense budget. Our reliable allies will always be around to help! It's more important that gay people will be able to get married and abortion will never be threatened! People need clean air and renewable energy far more than they need jobs. It doesn't matter if you think so or not, they're the government and they know better than you, because they said so! Hey, that's what hope and change is all about!

Were all the lessons of 1977-1981 forgotten?

Heh...

Gotta love this quote: "I would have liked to have tried this experience on for size myself, but was told that only Mr Caballero is permitted to shoot prospective clients."

That's not "shoot" as in camera, but "shoot" as in gun. If it's good enough for the Messiah of the Democratic party, it's good enough for me!

So how well would your area fare if hajji managed to light a nuke off at a nearby landmark? Interestingly, both Ellen's and my workplace are just far enough away to be likely to survive everything hajji can carry in a backback. Friend Joshua's workplace, which is very close to the Air and Space museum, well, not so much.

The really big stuff would reach all the way out to the house, but I'd like to think something that big would be at least a little tough to sneak past customs.

What better way to start the day than playing with Armageddon?

Pat gets a tweedy no-prize for bringing us a rebuttal on a rebuttal to a climate change op-ed George Will published a few days ago. While wordy, I've always enjoyed this sort of slow-motion print flame war. Reminds me of my usenet days, stuck in treacle.

The Chrysler-Fiat deal continues to wobble its way forward, seemingly on press releases alone. The Italians are worried their tax dollars will somehow end up in Chrysler's accounts, while unions "concerned parties" are trying to torpedo the deal on this side of the Atlantic to keep American tax dollars ending up in Fiat's accounts.

To which I can only say, "where's my damned new Alfa at, anyway?"

Remember that "Darth Vader" ship that made the rounds on all those 90s tech shows? You want it?

Of course, the Navy is justifiably famous for placing unending rules and regulations about the "who, what, and how" of taking one of their now-obsolete babies. They also don't pay for anything. So I'm not expecting this one tied up to the dock of anyone I know, any time soon.

So how often should you change the oil in your car? This guy did some actual research and found that most Americans are probably doing it too often.

I think I've been tinkering with cars longer than this guy, otherwise he would've mentioned something most shade-tree wrenchers like me learned long ago... when factories first began touting longer oil change intervals, they also included a "heavy use" interval that really was only 3000 miles. A cursory reading of the owner's manual would reveal that, in order to qualify for the "normal use" category, a car essentially had to be driven warm all the time on highways at 50+ mph. Everything else was "heavy use."

Now, even the newest car we own today is nearly 10 years old, which (as I recall) was before all these new high-mileage oils started coming out. It may very well be one of the last vehicles to include this "heavy use" out. At any rate, we've run synthetic in everything except the Spider*. The Milano's on its very first oil change on our watch, but I'm pretty convinced of the new Mobil 1's protection and do not plan on changing it for at least 7500 miles. The Cruiser's always been treated as an "any time after 3000 miles" car, which usually translates to 5000-7500, and it's doing fine after 150k+ miles.

The point being? Well, as long as you let the car get fully warmed up on your regular drives, and are at least mindful of oil changes, nowadays you'll probably be fine. If you drive some goofy one-off Italian sports car that was never designed to last more than five years anyway, well, you're on your own!

----
* Whose engine is just about 40 years old. The oil leaked out like a mistreated opera star's mascara the one time I tried synthetic in it. Maybe after a rebuild...

Oh, goody:

Bloomberg is reporting that President Barack Obama's budget cuts rely heavily on reductions in military spending, and several other news organization said the same over the weekend.

Looks like it's time to order a few of these:

At least this one's clever: reactionary bourgeois tool of the capitalist system:

Well, the obvious point [of the Obama plan to prevent foreclosures] is that it represents a massive transfer to borrowers from lenders and the rest of us.

I'm rather fond of that slogan up there. I just might turn it into a T-shirt. Anyone else interested in one?

Ron gets a virtual no-prize for bringing us the latest news about the virtual dating scene. When Ellen and I met, the best you could do was text-based MUD wannabes. Now... I mean, geeze, what's next? Virtual rabbits boiling in virtual pots?

Lord, bless Wikipedia, without which I would not have known about a far more ancient holiday at this time of year:

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog. Next two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. This tradition itself may survive (Christianised, and shifted to Spring) in certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

On the one hand, it sorta makes putting Valentine's day cards into paper sacks look pretty tame. On the other, if given a choice between putting cards in sacks or being chased around the town square by bloodstained, half-naked lunatics flinging raw goatskin around... well, suddenly cards don't look so bad.

Ain't ancient history fun?

Actually, I doubt if seeing this budget graph will dent everyone's enthusiasm for Obama one little bit. Scary as it is, we're still close enough to the previous administration for them to take the blame.

From memory, it'll be about seven more months before I get to call fire and brimstone down on the current administration for the previous one's foibles. That's definitely what I remember happening, coming from people I actually know personally, with the last administration's first term.

It's left to the reader to remember which event marked the "in office, at fault" shift.

Those readers who've been to Amsterdam know all about it, but since I've never been this selection of red-light district photos was, well, I guess you'd say informative. The article is SFW, but the ads at the bottom of the page aren't.

Turns out that, when you consider the alternatives, working at Wal Mart really isn't as bad as you'd at first think. Readers on the far left of the peanut gallery (no, not you, the other one) may not like the conclusions the author reaches as to why Wal Mart has such a bad reputation.

It's been quite some time since I've read something this relevant, and good:

Two political figures dominated the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign. One was the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. The other had been unknown to all but 670,000 Americans only a few minutes before she was first introduced by the Republican nominee.
...
Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.
...
Nonetheless, Palin was embraced practically without reservation in many conservative circles. The very heat of the Left’s campaign against her made her all the more a darling of the Right ... Palin instantly became an icon of the pro-life cause.
...
Palin’s cultural populism put her at odds with the foe that did her the most serious damage: the nation’s intellectual elite, whose initial suspicion of her deepened into outright loathing as the campaign progressed.
...
Applied to politics, the worldview of the intellectual elite begins from an unstated assumption that governing is fundamentally an exercise of the mind: an application of the proper mix of theory, expertise, and intellectual distance that calls for knowledge and verbal fluency more than for prudence born of life’s hard lessons.

Sarah Palin embodied a very different notion of politics, in which sound instincts and valuable life experiences are considered sources of knowledge at least the equal of book learning. She is the product of an America in which explicit displays of pride in intellect are considered unseemly, and where physical prowess and moral constancy are given a higher place than intellectual achievement. She was in the habit of stressing these faculties instead—a habit that struck many in Washington as brutishness.
...
McCain’s advisers were right about Palin: she was a mirror image of John McCain. She was not a visionary politician, or a programmatic politician, but an attitude politician with an appealing biography. In the end, she was no more able than McCain to offer a coherent rationale for his presidency.

I've never read quite such a succinct summary of what my lefty friends really do appear to believe. Great stuff! Go read!

Pat gets a no-prize with a big magnifying glass attached for bringing us the story of Dr. Aribert Heim, one of the last remaining uncapture Nazi war criminals. It would seem he passed away in 1992 after living a quiet life in Cairo. Died of rectal cancer, apparently. If he actually did what he's accused of doing, well, can't say I'm all that sympathetic.

Good:

Media reports suggest Senate Republicans have become a key focus of stimulus talks, an acknowledgement that they appear to hold the balance of power in that chamber despite having only 41 seats to the Democrats' 58.

That's the way it's supposed to work, folks. It's why I was able to sleep at night after "the rapture." 60 seats and the Democrats run the world. 59 (or, here, 58) and they have to co-operate.

He'll either learn to coddle, caress, and cajole congress, or he'll fail. Will he be Carter II, or Clinton II? We'll just have to see.

Even though it seems all I hear about regarding the most recent Israel v. Hamas conflict is civilian casualties, I'm actually rather impressed at how low they are. I've been following that region pretty closely for some time. Back in the late 90s and the early part of this decade, headlines would read "Israel fires rocket, kills 1 terrorist and 30 civilians." Today it seems I'm reading headlines like "Israel fires rocket, kills 13 terrorists and 3 civilians. Now it seems I've found the reason for the sudden increase in accuracy. Not exactly a super-weapon, but it definitely seems to be more effective than a Hellfire.

US Naval Institute: "The Iowa class battleship is NOT the greatest battleship in American naval history." The article gets really technical, so I'll just nod sagely and let others get in a fight over it. Oh, and that site allows comments, so don't go posting no six page refutation here. My eyes'll cross at that just as fast as they did to the original article.

So are increase CAFE standards good for the environment, or are they simply a really crappy sort of tax on driving? Regular readers shouldn't have to try very hard to guess where I stand on the issue.

I'm sure it's harder than it looks, but this video demonstration of gun disarmament techniques still seems instructive. I've known about these sorts moves for some times now, because of a martial arts demonstration at (of all things) a sci-fi con back in 1996. A very small Japanese man, who's day job was as a physicist and who's two night jobs were dojo and sci-fi author, demonstrated that all you really need to do is move quickly and roll away from the weapon. They were using a toy gun, so the "perp" could pull the trigger, and each time said perp was simply unable to fire the weapon before the "victim" was out of the line of fire.

In other words, as the video demonstrates, guns are meant for distance killing. Get too close and you give away the only real advantage you have.

Haha... I'm NOT in the upper right corner. Eat that you Darth Vader wannabees.

My Political Views
I am a center-left moderate social authoritarian
Left: 2.3, Authoritarian: 1.44

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 1.39

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Culture War Stance
Score: -1.7

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 8.09, Libertarian: 3.74

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 2.98

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Culture War Stance
Score: -0.89

Political Spectrum Quiz

I'm a little surprised that it didn't score me more libertarian. I'm a bit disappointed that the authors chose to break things down by foreign policy and social issues, but seemed to ignore economics. It seemed like about half the questions were economics-related.

Via Daffodil Lane, who's scores only surprised in that both are nearly as libertarian as I am, and that the chart was wide enough to keep Jamison from falling off the left side.

It'll be interesting to see if it's wide enough to keep Ellen from falling off the right side.

Well, why shouldn't there be Christian nymphos. Far as I can remember, the Bible is pretty much silent on what can and can't happen between two married, consenting adults. Of course, what I know about the Bible could probably fit in a thimble, so if anyone knows better fire away.

It would seem no matter how much preparation you do, the first day in the White House is always really hard. Note the meat of the article concerns how the press office is, or rather isn't, handling the press corps. "We don't care where your office is! Give us a press release! Now!!!" Charming.

Hey, at least the Bush people left with class. No missing "O" keys on the keyboard this time.

Seconded:

Is there anyone who still believes the Constitution was created to ensure each citizen liberty and the ability to pursue happiness rather than a guarantee of happiness — and a retirement fund, health care, a job, an education, a house ... ?

That was a great, big, hairy stumbling block I had with Obama's inauguration speech. It's also, when you get right down to it, why I have such a great, big, hairy problem with liberal and progressive (L&P) ideals. I believe very strongly in the former picture of the Constitution, L&P's quite strongly believe in the latter. Very few of them seem to be students of the 1960s and 1970s, or the 1930s, otherwise they'd know all of this was tried twice before and all this has failed twice before.

Because we all know the real reason these ideas don't work has nothing to do with them being, well, wrong, and is instead because Kulaks like me refuse to understand them and try to sabotage them at every opportunity. I'm not silly enough to believe the Democrats will try to muzzle my side with Stalinesque brutality; I've had a belly full of that sort of bloviating coming from the left for the past eight years. I'm simply disappointed we're going to go through yet another round of L&P experimentation just a generation after the last round failed.

For it is the doom of men, that they forget...

Fiat appears to be in serious talks with Chrysler for some sort of cross-production agreement. Fiat would get access to the US, and Chrysler would get access to a modern set of small and medium sized cars and the international markets in which Fiat is doing very well.

Alfa tried a vaguely similar deal with Chrysler back in the '80s, and it was a disaster. 2nd time's the charm? Who knows. At least with this deal they won't be selling cars through a competitor's dealer network (a-la BMW/Mini).

Who knew Diamond Crater had such a checkered history? What? You didn't know Arkansas had diamonds? Four years ago, neither did Ellen. When she found out while we were vacationing there, there was this whoosh of air around me and then the car horn was honking, suddenly loaded with wife, child, and the fifteen kilos of gear Olivia required back then. Ellen didn't find anything, but boy, was there a lot of mud!

Remember when, briefly last year, Volkswagen was the most valuable company on earth? It was on paper, at any rate. Now you can read how that happened. About ten years ago Porsche was in such financial straights the survival of the company was in serious question. They've come a long way since then.

Fun for the whole family: play "I might be a Jew" with people who care and aren't sure. This one's subversive enough it might even be fun for a few of my atheist friends, who (obviously) don't care much for religion but enjoy goofing on those who do.

When I see fake medical procedures portrayed in a fictional drama, I either ignore it or laugh at it. When the fakes are in a "hard news story" by "the most trusted name in news", I get more than a little annoyed:

The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child’s sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can’t make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you’re not also ventilating the patient somehow.

I also noticed how the camera seems to very carefully avoid showing the victim. The second video (as noted, at about 1:40) makes the "procedures" look even less convincing.

Now, tell me again, and slowly, because like I've said before I just must be too retarded to understand... why I'm supposed to prefer CNN over, say, Fox news?

Ares has a couple of highlights from Israel's current project in assisting Hajji hooking up with his 72 wyrgins. The first video takes quite awhile to develop, but the end is worth it.

I had a feeling it would only be a matter of time before NASA released a detailed report of what it must have been like inside Columbia during its final breakup. Yes, it was over quickly, but not so quickly people couldn't react. Space can be a dangerous, scary place.

Everyone's favorite loopy-lefty cartoonist seems to be calling for Obama's impeachment over "broken promises" made about the Iraq and Afghan wars. To be real honest, I only recall the loopy right calling for Bill's impeachment after, say, six months on the job. Mind you, back then I listened to Rush Limbaugh every day, so I was pretty cognizant of what the fringe was up to at that time. Calling for your own candidate's impeachment before he's even taken office? Must be some sort of record.

Told you ordering extra popcorn for the show was a good idea!

Via Instapundit.

Never a country to let a binge drinking idea go untried, Australian adult beverage companies are now selling toothpaste tubes full of vodka. Now that, friends, is a professional party country.

Stop the presses!!! The Pope thinks homosexuality is wrong! Is the church's attitude toward homosexuals backward and counter-productive? In my opinion, yes. Have they held the same attitude, consistently and without wavering, for the past 2000 years or so? Why... yes, yes they have. Personally I think they should concentrate more on helping the poor and using Jesuits as guided hajji-moves-to-Europe-hajji-converts-to-Christianity missiles. But anyone who is surprised or gets their panties in a wad over what the Pope thinks about gays needs to get out more.

So, what happens when a general news paper decides to take on the specialized and complex world of defense spending? About what you'd think:

Today, the NYT weighs in with its prescription for a 21st century defense budget, clearly written by someone with a hazy idea of the differences between various kinds of airplanes and ships. And like any prescription written by an unqualified person, it would make you ill.

Color me unsurprised.

But, like thousands of other credit card customers around the nation, he has been notified his rate is skyrocketing. "It almost borders on loan-sharking, from my perspective," he said. In the blogosphere, writers are livid at the instant rate hikes -- called "rate-jacking."

Citigroup seems to be the target of most bloggers' venom -- partly because Citigroup issues so many credit cards and partly because Citi began sending the notices at about the same time it was getting a $20 billion, taxpayer-financed government bailout.

No one at Citigroup would talk on camera to CNN about the matter. Instead, the company issued a written statement, which said: "To continue funding in this difficult credit and funding environment, Citi is repricing a group of customers."

Read full article here.

Cut them up while you can. Pay the minimum to more than the amount owed per month and start paying cash for everything.

Lesbian youth (in Canada, at any rate) are at much higher risk of teen pregnancy than the general population. I guess it proves liking your own team doesn't make you any smarter than anybody else.

Finally this family gets some peace.

Authorities announced that they've finally solved the 1981 killing of the boy whose father later gained fame as the host of "America's Most Wanted."

Wagner said Tuesday that after a fresh review, he is ending the abduction and murder case of Adam Walsh.

At an emotional press conference with Adam's parents Reve and John Walsh, Wagner said there is no new evidence in the case that began on July 27, 1981. Still, after what he called a meticulous review of the record and talks with the original investigators, he concluded that pedophile and convicted serial killer Ottis Toole abducted and killed the 6-year-old boy 27 years ago.

Read the entire article here.

I'm not sure just how seriously A Big, Dead Place should be taken, but if it's on the up-and-up it seems to be a candid look at what life's really like at the bottom of the world. Be sure to check out the "Ask an Antarctican" section. If it's for real, seems life is actually a little more boring than you'd think down there.

Ever wonder what it's really like for a reasonable citizen to gain and use a concealed carry permit? Wonder no more.

I'm actually surprised it's taken this long: an underwear company has created a line of "slimming" undershirts for men. Best bit:

At my first appointment, I bump into my friend Crystal. “Do I look different?” “You’re standing very erect,” she says, avoiding my panting chest, as Lisa, a fashion PR, joins us. I squirm as I tell them about the body-enhancing underwear I’m sporting, to which I quickly add, “purely for research purposes”.

Both pairs of female eyes drop to my groin. “Not down there!” I cry, cupping myself like a defender before a free kick. “You know, my body, does it look better in any way?”

Nice to see the "crotch-check" is a cross-Atlantic phenomenon. What, ladies, you don't think we notice when you do that?

Obama's NASA transition team has asked the agency to comment on the implications of canceling the Ares I launch vehicle. Executives at Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the Edina, Minn.-based prime contractor for the Ares 1 main stage, seem to be doing a ROTC traffic director "everything's fine!!!" sort of thing. Are they covering nervousness, or really do believe, once all the answers are in, Ares I really is the right answer? Only time will tell.

I thought I was the only one:

A wife’s sympathy for a partner with a cold lasts just five minutes, according to new research.

So, is the Navy's new latest-and-greatest actually stealthy, or have the dockyards and the service conspired to screw it all up? Again.

Being a pessimist, I don't think you'll like my speculation.

If we are in fact able to bring back the recently-sequenced woolly mammoth, and if we are in fact able to fully sequence the neandertal genome, should we take the next logical step, and just what would that imply?

Personally I think the two "ifs" are a lot bigger than the article's author seems to think. Still, it is an interesting ethical question. In my opinion, one of the many arguments against slavery is that it wastes the potential of someone who is in a very real sense no different than anyone else. Suddenly, at least on paper, we are rapidly acquiring the ability to create manifestly less capable beings, which are however still related to us.

To put it another way, we don't turn chimps into slaves because they're high strung, not that clever, and can bend cold steel with their bare hands. If we are able to create a much more capable, pliable, and less dangerous hominid, what would that imply about the morality of slavery?

To me, the answer is simple, but I've been called a moralist before.

Need a job? Move to the middle of nowhere. I'm not completely sure where a few of those cities are, but I do know Midland TX is deep in the heart of the Great Texas F-all. Of course, one statistic does not a desirable job make.

Nice to know Pointy Haired Bosses aren't confined to the US. Bonus: he's a she, and definitely not much of a boss.

I sometimes get a feeling, from my liberal friends, of genuine puzzlement about my political views. I'm clever enough to seem somewhat intelligent, I definitely have no love for the religious right, and yet I still insist on supporting Republicans. I've actually been asked, more than once, why?!?

This is why: (emphasis original)

[W]hile I find the anti-freedom strains of both parties equally dismaying, the Democrats are a lot better at implementing their big-government intrusions, and there's good reason to think that this will be the case even if the Republicans get full control of the government.

Since I'm probably a bit more socially conservative, I'll take it a bit further. I'm far less worried about the religious right making it harder for Stern to broadcast a homeless man sticking his toe in a woman's vagina, harder for some busybody to sue a local school over the pledge of allegiance, and harder for gay people to finance a divorce lawyer's third yacht than I am about the far left making it harder for people to find jobs, harder for our nation to defend itself, and harder for the country to grow and innovate as it always has.

Because, like Simberg, I've been watching this for a long time and while I know fringe Republicans would like all those socially conservative things to happen, I know they're about as likely to happen as me tagging a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover model. Also, like (well, something like) Simberg, I've read about what happens when Democrats get absolutely everything they ever wished for, and lived through the consequences of same*.

And now we're set to watch it happen all over again. Well, it took the debacle of Carter to bring Reagan to the fore. It'd be nice to think that '76-'80, the High School Musical Edition will bring someone of similar stature to the front rank again.

Via Instapundit.

----
* Which is why you should put your hand down and swallow that comment until you've actually read a book or two about LBJ, Vietnam, "Stagflation", and the school "reforms" of the late 60s and early 70s.

Well, one thing's for sure... putting yourself in ultimate peril can sometimes result in spectacular pictures. It's that whole "waking up dead" part that puts damper on the whole thing.

Lisa R. gets a no-prize with two very different sides for bringing us the "family friendly" sex shop. Me, I would've thought it'd be called "pre-family friendly", but whadda I know?

Nice to see the Democratic candidate isn't the only one with stories that tug the ol' heart strings:

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.

Oh, and for the record, I've never once claimed McCain was a messiah. That's what your side does with your candidate. The sad thing is it's the one thing your side has never once denied.

Push play. It's not what you think it is.

Give it 62 seconds before you turn it off. It's a point I try to make all the time, but I either get interrupted or have had too much wine to say it that quickly.

The rest, well the rest is just as good, but I have a feeling many of you won't want to hear it.

AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?

If the latest rumors have any substance, the LA Times is sitting on a bombshell. Yeah, I agree, video of Obama actually saying, "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" and that there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis" might just be a wee bit controversial.

That the LA Times would sit on something that explosive until after the election is unconscionable but not surprising. I wonder if it's even legal?

Roger Kimball:

I’ve written about the “déjà-vu-all-over-again” phenomenon before in this space. Bill Ayers? Haven’t we done that? Jeremiah Wright? Haven’t we done that, too? Haven’t we tried Obama’s “soak the rich,” anti-business economic policies? Haven’t we tried his “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” foreign policy? Don’t we know that economics is about the creation rather than the redistribution of wealth, and that low taxes and strategies that encourage productivity and investment are best calculated to make the entire society, including the less fortunate, more prosperous? Don’t we know where appeasement and capitulation get us in foreign affairs? Don’t we remember Jimmy Carter? Haven’t we learned anything?

I rather strongly believe most of the people who are enthusiastic Obama supporters are too young to really, or even actually, remember the Carter administration. All the ones I've seen standing on street corners with signs certainly seem to come from the college student crowd. The dark side (the dem side?) is seductive, especially if one lacks first-hand memory of what it was really like the last time around.

Will the people who do remember, and take seriously, the malaise, depression, uncertainty, and humiliation of America between 1976 and 1980 turn out in greater numbers than those who don't, can't, or won't? Well, the old traditionally turn up at the polls in greater numbers than the young, so that's something. Will it be enough? I think it just might, certainly enough to give the MSM pause before they trumpet in their long-ago anointed savior.

Remember that whole, "95% of Americans will receive a tax cut" that isn't really a tax cut, but the government writing checks that may or may not have your name on them? Yeah, it's even worse than that. The Democrats, once again, are going to try complex legislation that inadvertently creates incentives for people NOT to work. Color me completely unsurprised.

See you next Tuesday!

It's going to be closer than you think. The only thing that keeps me up at night is if the Democrats gain a big majority in the Senate. The last time it all lined up for them was 1964.

Ah Christ. If any of you really understood what 1964 meant...

Don't ask me... ask the 58,0000.

Oh. Wait...

I've always known that when a media outlet runs a story about how Americans are just one card swipe away from debtor's prison it's more about how slow the news is that day than it is about any real debt danger. Now I have proof. Disappearing frogs have been a harbinger of imminent environmental collapse since at least 1981 (when I first remember reading about it), and the growth of consumer debt in the US has been the final signal of economic end times since at least 1985. Like most apocalypses, history's stubborn refusal to end as scheduled simply causes our prophets to move the goal posts and start ringing their bells again.

It has, I suppose, always been thus.

After researching previously sealed reports and reams of old records, scientists have determined the bombing of Dresden did not in fact result in the deaths of half a million people. Instead, it was "only" about 18-20,000.

So Obama says he's cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. Presumably being one of those 95%, I suddenly find myself feeling "not so fresh" in my support of McCain. Then I find out what the Democrats call a tax cut is not at all what the rest of us think is a tax cut. Jerry Pournell put it much more succinctly:

Obama's "Tax cut" will actually be a payment to a rather large number of "taxpayers". That is, anyone who sends in an income tax form is considered a taxpayer; but about 40% of those pay nothing. Some number of that 40% actually receive a "refund" although they didn't actually have taxes withheld; it's called "earned income credit" although how that income was "earned" is not clear to me.

Tell me Obama's cutting my taxes and hey, I'm all for it. Tell me he's going to take more of my money but give more of it back later and while it sounds icky, yeah, I guess I'm still with him. It's only when I realize what he's really going to do is take more of my money and give it to other people, people who won't be paying any taxes at all anyway and that's when I start having a big, fat, hairy problem with his idea. That's when it starts sounding a lot less like government being nice to me and a lot more like government knows best for me. That's when it starts to sound a whole heaping bunch like he's taking my money away and using it to provide even more benefits for people who won't stop having babies and who won't get a job.

In other words, it makes him sound a whole lot less like a reasonable, charismatic moderate and a whole lot more like the old fashioned big-city political boss people who've been paying attention have been calling him all along. In other words, a Democrat.

See? Feeling fresh and clean now, eh?

Like Joe the Plumber, ACORN, and Ayers, this one seems to be sticking. Will it be enough? It just... just... might.

Via, in various ways, Instapundit.

Mr. Chavez's appointment with a public square* gets closer as the price of oil gets lower. Maybe instead he actually will end up sipping drinks on the Riviera. All I can hope is it happens sooner rather than later, because the damage caused by "real, practicing socialism" gets harder to fix the longer it's in place.

----
* Think this.

So, is ACORN a nefarious left-wing organization which systematically committed voter fraud, or is it a an innocent community organization getting smeared by The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy^tm?

I'm not all that sure the Republicans are going to get much traction on this one. After all, the left has been crowing for nearly a decade now about how various Republican electioneering efforts "stole" the past two elections.

The trick, I suppose, is just how much evidence there is, and whether there are actual laws being broken. Unlike activists on the other side, I know both parties do absolutely everything in their power, legally or otherwise, to ensure a win for their side. It just seems that the Republicans are better at keeping just barely in-bounds. Will the Democrats prove as adept? Hard to say. If history is any guide the Republicans seem to get busted long after the score, while Democrats seem to cough the ball up long before they're anywhere near the goal line.

Ron asks, and we provide:

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Ayers and Obama worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. "CAC translated Mr. Ayers' radicalism into practice," notes the Journal. "It required schools to affiliate with 'external partners' " for their funding.

"Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers," such as ACORN.

I mean, didn't we all learn long ago that things like math and science take care of themselves when one's children have the proper ideology and politics? I mean, it's worked so well in the past, why not try it again?

Via Instapundit (who finally seems to have seen the traction on this, even if he doesn't give proper credit!)

A Turkish creationist is offering [pinky to mouth] 7.5 trillion dollars[/ptm] to anyone who can produce an actual transitional fossil. Of course, it's "transitional" by their definition, not anyone else's. Heck, I'd offer that much money in a contest I got to judge. He's probably as likely to actually have said cash as I am.

The Obama-Ayers connection doesn't seem to be going away:

Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

...

Obama and Ayers are neighbors and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

...

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former '60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven. She's often a go-to quote for reporters to knock down the Ayers-Obama story.

...

Clearly, if she wasn't a good soldier for [Mayor Daley] her list of clients would be quite small. Katz is often aggravating, but she's also funny and smart, so I called her to submit my theory: That by buying off the political left—through PR contracts to Katz, through his own support for Ayers—Daley maintains control over message and symbolism.

"I don't see it that way," said Katz. "As kids, our issues were schools, the environment, housing—and these things are the same things that the mayor cares about. So we have this in common. The agendas that drove us pulled us together. It's about respect for each other's point of view, not what we did when we were 19."

So lemme get this straight here. Ayers doesn't count because Obama was just a kid when Ayers was running around blowing stuff up. We know this is true because one of Ayers's associates, who is a "go-to" person for a quote and helps run the Obama campaign tells us so. They just all have the same views on a range of issues like public education, that's why they've crossed paths recently. This is completely not a story, because we all know radical progressive experiments in education have turned out so well in the past.

Definitely not a story here. Not at all. Because, after all, the Obama campaign people tell us it is not.

Via Instapundit, who frequently mentions Ayers' terrorist credentials while too infrequently mentioning the destructive, recent, and (IMO) far more relevant connections with school policies.

I know he reads his trackbacks, hopefully he'll check out where the real traction is in this story. It ain't terror, it's schools.

Yeah, ok, I get it. Lots of people were radical in the 60s. A few of them even blew up the occasional mail box. You may have known some of either type. But when's the last time you talked to any of them:

"He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005" (New York Times, 10/3)

Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 — when in 2001 Ayers gave widely publicized interviews claiming he had no regrets about the bombing, indeed regretted that he had not done enough, and did not necessarily have any remorse either about his Weathermen career?

I take this all so seriously not because Ayers was a bomb-throwing nutjob in the 60s, but because to this day he supports radical progressive experimentation in public schools. The only place progressives really got to implement their agendas in the '60s and '70s was in the public schools systems. The results were disastrous, igniting riots and consigning who knows how many children to unemployability all in the name of their intellectually pure agendas. The echoes of that failure ring across school systems to this day.

Progressives had their shot and it failed. Now they've picked a candidate who pals around with one of the remaining relics who refuses to admit that anything ever went wrong. It is my opinion Obama is vulnerable here because of the education angle, not because of the terrorist angle. I can only hope the McCain camp starts running with this ball, because we're already past the two minute warning and we only have one more time-out left.

Via Instapundit

As expected, as soon as one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, and only when one candidate shows signs of pulling ahead, the MSM stampedes in the opposite direction:

I'm becoming increasingly convinced they're treating this as I would a football game played by teams I don't care about... they just want it to be close, and (in their case) they root for whoever is playing defense on that particular play. Ball changes hands, they change sides. Except, of course, when I do that it doesn't actually influence the outcome of the game.

Via Instapundit.

The latest news on Alfa Romeo's return to the US, well, isn't. Other than calling the 2010 deadline "firm", the rest is old news, and not particularly heartening. Putting your vehicles in the dealerships owned by a close rival and then using excess capacity in Detroit to produce them sounds like a perfect storm of "fail" to me.

I guess I'll have to amend my saying to, "most people turn to a life of crime because they're too stupid to do anything else":

Monroe police are searching for a man who robbed an armored-car guard Tuesday morning then fled with the money — down a nearby creek on an inner tube.

Police say the robber also may have recruited a host of unwitting decoys through a Craigslist ad.

As with most genuinely smart crooks, this guy hasn't been caught yet. I still think it's only a matter of time. Sending out lots of e-mail messages to decoys and having an accomplice or two most likely will leave enough of a trail to follow. It's also my understanding that a high percentage of these sorts of robberies are inside jobs, so it wouldn't surprise me if this one is too. I wouldn't want to be employed with that particular armored car company this morning, that's for sure.

The Skeptical Optimist: it's not funded by the taxpayers. This one includes nice, simple pictures for those of us who's financial knowledge is roughly at the "you have more paste to eat than I do" level.

And then he followed it up with something even Dora could understand

Fark (of all places) linked up the best explanation of the sub-prime meltdown I've found so far. Don't worry, this one's nice and neutral and doesn't mention the Clinton administration even once.

Ironically, it seems very close to this much earlier, and more colorful, explanation.

I'm not at all surprised that the NRA is going after Obama. I am surprised that the Obama campaign seems to be returning the favor. You can take the man out of the Chicago political machine, but...

At least one pundit thinks the administration's recovery plan could end up making lots of money for the government. Before the rhetoric really started heating up, I definitely read more than one economist making "buying low selling high GOOD!" comments. Still, this whole thing is so complicated I'm not sure who to believe. And Lord help us, we've got nothing but Congress to be our guide. Jesus wept.

What he said:

But we're in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the "Diversity Recession" (if this doesn't work, make that the Diversity Depression).
...
Therefore, I propose any bailout bill start with these words: "It is the sense of Congress that credit is not a civil right."

Somehow I don't think it'll work out that way.

While this article is so far the most comprehensible account of what's going on in the financial markets right now that I've found, I still couldn't get my head completely around it. Which, I suppose, is why I don't work in the banking sector, eh?

Just about everyone knows who Andre the Giant was. I'm not sure how many know just how big he could be. I don't know how many of the stories of Andre's legendary capacity for alcohol consumption and mischief are, but they were entertaining to read. It's good to know that in the short time he had he lived his life to its fullest.

It would seem it's actually government policy, not "market failure", which is the root cause of the current financial chaos. Color me completely unsurprised. Just about every large-scale "social engineering" attempt by Democrats starts out well-meaning, and usually works for a brief time. Unfortunately, and inevitably, the wheels fall off in spectacular fashion when all the other incentives their policies create come home to roost. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single instance where this didn't happen, all the way back to the New Deal. Those who can are welcome to comment.

"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. "
-- Milton Friedman

Everyone sees these things happen, yet most of you still persist in believing, "if only we could create the right program, and actually allow it to be fully funded by taxing all those billionaires and corporations out there a little more, by golly we'd get our government to do something right for a change."

I'd like to think it's not possible to hold a belief founded on so many false assumptions at once.

I would, of course, be wrong.

It's official, the Post ran an over-the-top attack on the Republican ticket every single day this week. I wonder just how long they'll keep it up?

Nevermind, I know. November 4, right?

Is it just me, or are the right's hysterical reactions to criticism of Palin starting to sound a lot like the left's hysterical reactions to criticism of Obama? Is this some sort of bizarre tit-for-tat "you started it!" sort of thing, or is it that everyone on the fringes is just plain nuts no matter which direction you look?

Another year, another big-money bribery scandal involving third-world leaders. Unfortunately, other countries (*cough* France *cough*) consider themselves much more "enlightened" when it comes to dealing under the table to get what they want, so this may just end up helping them instead of stopping corruption entirely.

The Post's attempts to smear Sarah Palin are getting a little more desperate:

... what the story ultimately reveals is that Palin (a) billed the state for most expenses allowed by law, including per diem when she stayed in her own home ...; (b) didn't bill the state for other expenses, when she could have done so lawfully, such as per diems for her children; and (c) spent a lot less money on expenses than did her predecessor, especially on travel and by ridding herself of the state's personal chef.

The story's headline? "Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home"

And that, dear friends, is just about the clearest case of MSM bias I've seen in this campaign season to-date. Unfortunately it's just about a certainty it won't be the last.

Via Instapundit.

While the MSM has fallen back to the more standard "let's cast the Republicans as religous nut-jobs" strategy, enough people are still trying to attack Sarah Palin in whatever way they can this article separating fact from fiction was still quite useful to me. The fact that many commentators still bring up her disabled child as some sort of impediment to her ability to perform the job of Vice President is to me the epitome of unacknowledged sexism. Any time I hear it, I say the same thing, "what, suddenly she doesn't have a husband?"

I guess stay-at-home dads are only relevant when you're trying to pry more tax dollars out of the system, not when, you know, they empower women or something.

Via Instapundit.

It looks like official France is finally admitting French is no longer the, well, lingua franca of the developed world. Only took them, what, a few hundred years to get around to it?

Ever wonder what a town hit by a tornado looks like on Google maps? Wonder no more. On a lark I decided to look up my old home town of Dumas AR to see if Google had updated their picture cache of it with hi-res photos. They did, and (judging by what's there) they did it because of that tornado a few years ago.

At least, I hope they've actually cleaned the place up since then. With SE Arkansas, you just never know for sure.

The Skeptical Optimist recently posted this review of the "super-important" movie, I.O.U.S.A.. Definitely not for the "debt = deficit" crowd, but everyone else may want to check it out. In a nutshell: it's economic growth that's important!

Another Olympics, another article about how they're boinking each other stupid in the Olympic Village. I first heard about this in college from a guy who actually attended the 1984 Olympics. He only stopped bragging after we threatened to toss him out a window.

It seems the Olympic medals of disgraced athletes have a pretty interesting story to tell. Who knew?

I've seen various refutations of the sensational "corporations pay no taxes" study that came out recently, but so far this one is the best. FTW:

The politics behind the GAO report are transparent—to undermine the momentum that’s building to cut corporate tax rates. As I wrote several weeks ago (“In the U.S., Selectively Applied Capitalism,” July 28), the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate among 30 countries in the Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development. That matters because, as economists for the OECD recently concluded, the corporate tax is the most harmful to economic growth of all the levies most commonly used by member nations. That’s why GOP presidential nominee John McCain favors lowering it, but so does the powerful Democratic Chairmen of the House Ways & Means Committee, Charlie Rangel. The Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, has also said in newspaper interviews that he would consider cutting the corporate tax, but he hasn’t made that an official part of his platform.

Now, however, labor-friendly legislators egged on by union leaders are trying to derail calls for a corporate tax cut by manufacturing outrage against U.S. businesses. That’s not hard to do when you have so many journalists reporting and commenting on these issues who can’t get behind headlines that are spoon fed to them, like the editorial writer at Newsday who found the GAO report “jaw dropping.”

I wonder how long it'll take them to declare that anyone who doesn't work for a union is rich and gets taxed much more because of it? Yeah, I don't think it'll happen either, but I bet they'd sure like to try.

Kathleen M. gets a no-prize that must be rocked to sleep carefully for bringing us a different look at infant mortality rates and what they really mean about the quality of health care. Hint: people who tout them as a boost to socialized medicine "managed health care" are selling something.

One of the most common convictions of social right-wingers is that relaxing the divorce laws in the 60s and 70s in the US lead to higher divorce rates and a very long list of social ills. Like most common convictions, it would appear this doesn't stand up to close examination:

The first surprise is that looser divorce laws have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall apart. Economist Justin Wolfers of Stanford University, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that when California passed a no-fault divorce law in 1970, the divorce rate jumped, then fell back to its old level—and then fell some more.
...
In short, nothing bad happened. But in another NBER paper, Wolfers and fellow economist Betsey Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania report that in states that relaxed their divorce laws, some very good things happened: Fewer women committed suicide, and fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners. In addition, both men and women suffered less domestic violence, compared to states that didn't change their laws.

The only thing I find surprising is it took this long for someone to run the numbers. Once you think about it, it all really does make sense.

When human idealism runs up against human nature, the results can sometimes be a really great deal on eBay. Homeless people trashing public facilities created for them. Nope, I didn't see that coming at all. Ha!

I'm sure lots of other people knew about it, but I definitely didn't understand the ANWR region was about as big as South Carolina. I did, however, know most of it was a barren wasteland frozen solid in the winter and covered in literal fog banks of mosquitoes in the summer. A place only a watermelon could love.

It's something I've thought a few times myself: if it's just about impossible to police athletic doping, why bother? There would absolutely have to be some changes in policy regarding age of participation. We don't want 14 year olds messing with this stuff, after all.

The best counter argument I saw over at Slashdot was "well, if we make it legal, they'll dope themselves to within six inches of death because they have to." While valid, I did think of a counter. Many auto racing rules* are meant to address exactly this sort of thing: if they didn't exist, teams would run patently unsafe vehicles simply because they had to in order to win. By making your rules pro-safety instead of anti-something (speed or dope), the incentives get turned around and, at least in auto racing, the rules work.

Would it work in people like it does in machines? I dunno, but it might be worth examining.

----
* Oh stop groaning! You knew I was going to say it! Sit down and listen.

Same song, different singer: politician confesses to just what he's been caught at, then gets busted again. The Post featured nothing about the Edwards scandal until the Kurtz article a few days ago. I'd make a comment about how they sang from the tops of their towers over a suspicion that McCain had an affair, but it's already been said much better in different places.

Well, except for the MSM, that is.

I love this....*sigh*

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending my money than I would.

I'm voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

I'm voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

I'm voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves and their families. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the GOVERNMENT sees fit.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe five elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, when they come over here.

I don't want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with because someone, who had an unhappy childhood, may get hurt.

I'm voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 7% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 18% isn't.

Makes ya wonder why anyone would EVER vote Republican, now doesn't it?

Suck it Obama! I hope you only have 19 year old tree huggers voting for you. I'm sure the housing foreclosures will only grow since they have no idea what owning a house is like... or rather RESPONSIBILITY!

I'm JUST SAYIN'! Utter bullshit. Let's see how the boomers feel.

Making the rounds: It's easy to have amazing fireworks displays if you let the CGI guys take a crack at them:

London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But -- hold on -- it's not necessarily as bad as you think.

NBC gets caught doing crap like this what, every three or four years or so? You'd think by now they'd know better. This being the M-est of the MSM, you'd of course be wrong.

Update: Looks like NBC didn't have a choice. My apologies.

The revelation that certain kinds of high-security locks can be picked with plastic cut into a key pattern is, on the face of it, pretty embarrassing. However, on further reading it would seem to require an extensive knowledge of how the locks themselves are engineered before this sort of thing can even be contemplated. This is not the sort of thing a thief would really concern themselves about, since an eight pound sledge will do the deed much more efficiently.

... it's not painted red:

The Italian Navy has finalized a contract with Fincantieri, worth about EUR915 million, for two more Todaro-class submarines.
...
Currently, Todaro is in the US, taking part in a six-month Atlantic training mission. After having called at Mayport and Norfolk, it is due to go to Groton and will conclude its US cruise in October by joining Columbus Day celebrations in New York.

Fun!

Two words: inflatable church. What will those spunky Italians think of next?

This time, I found our previous reference. Lordy, this place has been around awhile.

It would seem that, once again, the McCain camp has gotten its house in order and seems to be on the road back. He, like the rest of us, will have to be forgiven for not understanding the MSM properly elected Obama about a month ago, with the upcoming election merely a formality. I'm heartened by the success record of the other four or five candidates they "elected" during the run up to and running of the primaries. One can only hope it marks a real trend.

Via Instapundit

The guy who brought the suit that ended the last DC ban is bringing another to stop the new one. The "emergency law" the DC city council rushed through is rightly seen as "banning by other means," and it's such a heavy-handed attempt only the nincompoops on that council would think it had any chance of working. Instead, it will embroil the city in another presumably very expensive and drawn-out series of lawsuits they cannot hope to win.

The 2nd amendment's language may make its intent seem ambiguous, but a perusal of the founding fathers' other writings (especially Jefferson's) clear this ambiguity like blowing fog off a mirror. Like it or not, individual gun ownership is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Seems like Russia is getting ambitious about its blue-water navy. Wanting six new carriers is, of course, not the same thing as actually getting them. However, after years of delay it does seem that the Great Bear is getting new weapon systems into production, so who knows?

Ares: "Austria has cleared the last of 50 buried 105-mm. tank turrets, installed in 1983 as an anti-invasion line of defense in one of its eastern provinces." With pictures!

Sit inside a little metal box with a big gun strapped on, while the hordes of the Red Army pass through. Yeah, Fritz, you have fun with that!

It seems "white flight" is no more. The article contains the standard leftist hand-wringing over the wrong sort of change, as well as a bit of statistical misinterpretation for spice. Personally, I wonder if it's not a sign that we really are, very gradually, learning to live together? That self-appointed "representatives of the black community" would bemoan this is disappointing, but not particularly surprising.

Fresh from the "making sh*t up to keep the press release interesting" department comes the prediction that the computer mouse will go "extinct" in five years. Gartner has been saying goofy things about the IT industry for as long as I can remember, and this is no exception. My prediction? The mouse isn't going anywhere, but alternative input devices will most likely prevent it making inroads into any other computer-like system.

Welcome to America, home of the 300 lb. "poor person." Now that, friends, is an inconvenient truth.

Via Instapundit.

Michael Totten recently filed this detailed report on conditions in that other war-torn chunk of the world, the former Yugoslav territories. It seems that, like most places when people are allowed to do so, they're moving on. It is, however, nice to see a pro American part of Europe. Muslim too, no less.

Suddenly the decision not to import the "Mini-killer" MiTo makes a lot more sense:

German carmaker BMW AG (BMW.XE) said Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Fiat SpA (F.MI) regarding possible cooperation for their Mini and Alfa Romeo brands aimed at reducing costs.

Leave it to Italians to design a car specifically meant to go head-to-head with a company they just signed a co-operation agreement with.

Tossaud's in Germany is putting a wax model of Hitler up. They're portraying him in his last days, and have the statue under heavy security to prevent vandalism. When I visited the New York version of the museum, I thought it was most interesting when they had them standing up, so I could see how tall (or short) they were. Sitting down, and behind rope no less, would seem to me a bit of a letdown.

Now, I know this will shock... shock you: in order to get a really fizzing-good documentary, a production team played fast-and-loose with the facts. The horror!

To me, the controversy regarding the Gospel of Judas and National Geographic's handling of it sounds a lot like sour grapes from a group of academics quite patently not familiar or happy with the huggle-buggle dashing around of all these flamboyant commoners! Working for money, no less! The rest is the standard slow-motion slugfest common to just about any collection of academic journals when something really new shows up.

Which does absolutely nothing to dim the astonishing discovery of an entire ancient book previously known only from a single throw-away sentence written by a disapproving bishop nearly two thousand years ago. Amazing!

While not the original, Larry Harmon, the man who was responsible for the popularizing of Bozo the Clown, has died at the age of 83. We had a Little-Rock based Bozo while I was growing up. It never occurred to me there could be more than one until WGN brought in an alternative. That Bozo mug of mine might still be out there somewhere.

Annie gets a modest and well-made no-prize for bringing us news of how the FLDS ladies are making ends meet. Have sewing machine, will travel!

Personally, I've always thought it was quite possible for women to rape men. Hasn't happened to me (sound of wood knocking), but just on principles I could picture it happening even before I read this article.

The fact that more than one member of the peanut gallery has scoffed at the mere mention of the subject is why I'm linking it here. Since self-correction is something most gallery members think only happens to me, I'm not counting on much. But I can hope!

Via Instapundit.

And yeah, Jason, you're pretty much going to hell. On the bright side, we have jackets!

While I'm nowhere near as optimistic as this guy, I do think it's time to break down and admit we may have started to (finally) make solid progress on the war on terror. He definitely makes some good points, in my opinion.

Via Instapundit.

They subtitle says it all: Can emergence break the spell of reductionism and put spirituality back into nature? I've thought for quite some time that there are some awfully peculiar coincidences in physics and nature which could not be explained by science. It's nice to see someone much smarter than I am apparently has done a much better job of explaining them, and what just might be "behind the curtain."

Globalization worked because transportation was so cheap it allowed businesses to leverage foreign labor for domestic goods. Now that transportation ain't cheap, globalization is slowly reversing. It's happening slowly and without as much dislocation as, say, protectionist policies advocated by labor unions and various watermelon environmental groups.

It would seem the on again, off again attempts by the Army to replace its main carbine is on again. Advocates of the 7.62 round shouldn't get their hopes up... the Army long ago decided the 5.56 is the way to go, and no amount of shouting has made them budge even the slightest in, what, fifty years?

Interest on the national debt: there's a lot more to it than you'd think:

Next time someone is wondering what we bought for the interest [on the national debt], I wish they'd also wonder what we bought with the principal that interest is supporting. Although it's impossible to pinpoint, I bet we have a Nimitz carrier, a few intelligence assets, several thousand more college-educated GIs, and a few more Head Start activities in the works because of the principal we were able to borrow -- all because we have been steady and reliable in paying interest on our debt.

To paraphrase a favorite song of mine, debt isn't always evil, and it is not always wrong.

I'm not quite old enough to remember it, but I've read enough different histories of the times to agree with this without question:

I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon's orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy. Opponents of the Iraq war, including Obama, seem to have been doing the same.

Sounds a lot, a lot like the conversations I've had with certain members of the peanut gallery. Even ones who agree that Abrams got the short end of the stick.

Historical perspective is, after all, something that happens to other people when The Gallery is proven wrong.

Leave it to California to take a small mess, grow it into a medium mess, and then make it a big one. I'm ambivalent about gay marriage, but I am certain on one thing: this is a matter for legislative, not judicial, action. Put it another way: it's not like you need to give the lunatics on my fringe another set of targets to bomb, eh?

whats on the other end of a 900 number.

The Skeptical Optimist:

Why aren't we hearing more from the candidates about how their proposed policies would help to grow the economy, and therefore the average worker's take-home pay -- as well as the government's tax receipts? Why doesn't Obama take the muzzle off Austin Goolsby? Why doesn't McCain fire the Concord Coalition from his team, and get them out of Jack Kemp's way?

Bonus: a brain teaser that even the luddites on the left side of the peanut gallery may finally get. Then again, I won't hold my breath waiting on them.

So just what would happen if each side of Congress had it all its own way trying to lower the cost of oil? About what you'd expect. Of course, Republicans would figure out how to piss away our money in a different way. If it weren't the world's largest demonstration of a Chinese fire drill, it wouldn't be Congress!

Mark gets a no-prize which he'd do just as well tossing for bringing us this article on seven things most people think are recyclable, but really aren't. Ellen is absolutely obsessive about putting just about everything in the recycle bin. Now, maybe not so much.

Self-professed atheist Terry Pratchett seems to have walked right out the other side and found something there. We all come to faith in our own way and our own time. While not as spectacular as meeting the savior on an old country road, finding it while walking down the stairs will definitely do.

India has premiered what it bills as the cheapest car in the world. No, it'll never play well in Peoria, but it should do the trick in the choked streets of Bombay. And get a load of the build quality when they show the inside door handle. Gaps are not your friend!

Seconded:

The core belief of Masonomists is in spontaneous order. We embrace change that emerges from an evolutionary, trial-and-error process. We trust the process of entrepreneurial creative destruction, market solutions to market failure, and technological progress. What we distrust is central planning by experts. And I am sure that Pete Boettke would want to remind me of our intellectual debts to Austrian economists.

If this seemingly even-handed look at the Bakken oil formation in Montana is on the right track, it would seem we're a few generations of drilling technology away from a very significant oil deposit right in our own back yard. Of course, there will be a ton of "ifs" involved, not the least of which is an environmental movement which will vehemently appose any attempt to expand supply. Will the state of Montana use it's famous "going-to-do-it-my-way-f-you-very-much" attitude to stymie the watermelons' ongoing efforts to strangle the kulaks? We'll see.

Via Instapundit.

After years of big subsidies, India is being forced to raise fuel prices. This is one of the 800 pound gorillas which is actually causing the spectacular and sustained rise in gas prices. The other is China. Both heavily subsidize fuel prices, helping their countries sustain spectacular growth rates, but at the same time insulating their populations from supply signals prices provide. They do not conserve, they do not become more efficient, because they have no incentive to do so. And, as long as their respective governments continue to insulate them, they never will.

The story was, of course, buried deep inside the Post. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it wasn't reported at all in other places. It doesn't fit with the "it's the Evil Oil Companies / Vast Right Wing Conspiracy / Wasteful Lazy SUV-driving Americans that cause our suffering!!!" theme. It's not us, it's them, and until economic pressures squeeze their government subsidies on fuel out, things won't change.

Of course, Indian people aren't really that much different than American people or European people or any other people, so instead of bucking up, tightening their belts, and using less fuel, they're raising hell, blocking traffic, and jangling the cage of every politician and reporter they can get their hands on. It'll be even worse in China, because that nation does not have the mechanisms in place for peaceful regime change or even (relatively) non-destructive civil disobedience.

In other words, it's not over yet.

The Navy has finally admitted its role in the discovery of HMS Titanic in 1985. It seems Ballard's original mission was to make detailed surveys of the lost submarines Thresher and Scorpion. Ballard finished ahead of time, and, since Titanic was thought to be between the two wrecks, he sort of took the long way home.

I'm not completely sure this is all of "the rest of the story," as I recall reading vague references to Ballard's mission being used to "send a message" to the Soviets about certain capabilities the Navy had developed. Nobody that I know of has been specific as to what these were.

Another "Western Union by Other Means" test that I've heard of is STS-2, space shuttle Columbia's second flight. According to things I've read, the widely-publicized radar test which revealed the presence of ancient riverbeds crisscrossing the Sahara was actually meant to demonstrate the US's ability to image hidden Soviet bunkers and missile silos. At least, that's what I've heard at any rate. YMMV!

If The Washington Post is running unabashedly positive reports on Iraq, something good must be going on over there, eh? Lately I've noted a certain amount of bitter admiration of the Bush administration from several of his other implacable critics. However, the left side of our own peanut gallery continues to collectively roll its eyes and froth on cue whenever our not-quite-departed president is mentioned, so at least something is still right in this world.

Were it otherwise I'd start rushing outside to see if angels were arching across the sky.

Via Instapundit.

A recent effort to clean up a northern California canyon overlook site has resulted in the recovery of more than 50 vehicles. Some were simply rolled down embankments, others were quite obviously launched at high speed by drivers looking for a shortcut to the start of the reincarnation line.

This sort of thing would seem to be rather common. I remember reading years ago about a murder investigation involving the search for a woman thought to have been murdered, whose body was stuffed into the trunk of a car which was then rolled off an embankment into a nearby river. A search of the area didn't find that vehicle, but it did find some dozen or more others which had been... disposed of... for many other reasons.

People will just toss any damned thing in a river, it would seem.

Annie gets a no-prize that'll shriek at her in drag for bringing us news of a sales increase in everyone's favorite "pork product", spam. I used to eat that stuff a lot when I was a little kid, and then (for reasons I can't remember) just sorta stopped. Olivia's pretty passionate about bologna, something tells me she'd probably like spam too.

I've railed against the various Democrat-sponsored (or left-wing endorsed) health care ideas many times on this site. It would appear that, finally, people have found a state-run alternative that works:

Americans have grown used to buying every kind of product from overseas. So why not “buy” foreign ideas or social institutions? Why, for instance, hasn’t the United States adopted the same healthcare system as Europe, Canada, and nearly all the rest of the developed world?

While the United States is portrayed as the outlier, the truth is that another developed nation has eschewed the European government-payer model—with a great deal of success. That nation is Singapore, a city-state with a population of just 4.6 million but a lot to teach America.

Can we create something like this? Well, in a sense I think we already have, albeit in a limited fashion, with "thrift savings" medical accounts (at least that's what I think they're called, at my workplace anyway). Not being Singaporeans, we most likely can't duplicate it, but at least it provides a template to start with that doesn't have a reputation for making its victims beneficiaries wait six months for an important operation. Stick that in your "why can't we have a system like Canada's or Britain's" pipe and smoke it!

Via Econlog.

Another day, another lunatic preacher learning that it's just not a good idea to take on TV professionals on their home turf. The twist: this time it's a Saudi woman reading a "learned doctor" the riot act.

Everyone knows "unconventional" warfare doesn't get a whole lot of cash from the federal government. Well, until you realize "not a whole lot" needs to be put in perspective. $23 billion dollars may not seem like a lot stacked up against, say, the F-22 program, but something tells me it'll buy a whole bunch of nifty widgets for secret battles.

Michael Yon: "Pornography and propaganda are closely related, as they are both cynical attempts at manipulation, rooted in a lack of respect for humanity."

Even though that's not what his article is about, to me it represents a pretty accurate and concise definition of what separates erotica from pornography. Well, it does in my opinion at any rate. Deciding what represents "respect for humanity," and when that line is crossed, is unfortunately rather open to interpretation. Were it otherwise, I think the whole adult industry would most likely have a much easier time doing business.

Alternate title: Paging Elliot Ness, white courtesy phone please. Of course, since Elliot almost certainly didn't speak Japanese, he'd probably be just as interested in finding out what being a beat reporter following the seamy underbelly of Japanese society is like as I was.

Horror film fans may be happy to find out a new, and perhaps the only, biography of Nosferatu star Max Schreck is now available. It would seem that, like many early film stars, there's not a lot to tell at first. However, it definitely seems to lay to rest the old "he was really a vampire" legend.

It would seem all those "myths" about eagles taking children just got moved from "busted" to "plausible."

Warning: The video is definitely a "nature, red in tooth and claw" sort of documentary. If you're upset by that sort of thing, the very least you should do is turn down the sound. The narration isn't in English, so you won't miss anything.

Via Ares.

Remember that little boy a few weeks back who raised a ruckus because his parents claimed he was trans gendered? NPR has th edetails. For me, the money quote is: "Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? ... I don't think we would..."

Problem: A new study provides evidence that people who identify themselves as conservative are in general happier than those who identify themselves as liberal.

Solution: Spin, damn you, and faster!!!

That one is twirling so fast I'm surprised it's not smoking.

It would seem Hillary has finally found an economist to support her gas tax cut. I agree I don't think Hillary's campaign staff will be calling Brian any time soon.

Public relations agency: 1, News reporters: 0. For any other race driver, even Danica Patrick, an F-1 test ride is roughly equivalent to getting a ride on a Blue Angel F-18 or Thunderbird F-16. Except you're solo, and get to twiddle the controls. In other words, it's nice, it's fun, it obviously generates good publicity, and that's about it.

I'm only now getting back into Indycar now that they've merged with CART, but the few road races I've seen with oval-trained IRL drivers in the majority are... amusing. And not in a good way (well, maybe a little). The skill set required to be fast on a speedway will help a little on a road course, but not much. It's possible she'll be quick, just like it's possible for me to jump into an F-22 and fly a successful combat mission. Both have the same likelihood.

Still, it is quite a bit of fun to watch a driver used to actual race cars try to wrestle one of these starfighters around a track. The look on the crew cheif's face when they pitch a multi-million dollar example into the weeds is worth the price of admission alone.

But it's not something to bet half of a race team's season on. Even if you are as slow as Honda.

Via Instapundit.

Remember that cargo ship with all the Mazdas? Turns out it's more challenging to get rid of 5000 cars than one would at first think. I completely understand the company's motivation. It's a shame human nature prevents these things from being recycled as complete cars, instead of shiny metal bits.

Citizens of Israel, like those in the US, seems to be more than a little neurotic about their success. So much so that sometimes it's good to get a reminder of just how good things really are. I used to do this a lot with some (not all) folks I know, but got tired of being sneered at because of my politics. Meh. F- 'em if they can't take a joke, eh?

Via Yourish.

Remember that prediction I made that fuel might one day be brewed instead of refined? It's much closer to reality than even I thought.

Making the rounds: P.E.T.A. has announced $1 million prize for the first company to create "in vitro" meat. According to the article, this was a hard-fought idea within the organization itself. Considering the loopy politics too often associated with PETA, I'm not surprised.

Something tells me there's a man with a pitch fork and a tail wearing a parka and an extremely annoyed expression knocking on the office door of PETA headquarters.

While perhaps cerebral, this defense of gun ownership was nevertheless one I'd not heard before.

Liz recently featured graphic evidence for why vaccinations are a must-have for children. I didn't have the courage to actually watch the video, but if the text description is even close, I can only say that if my kid started to make noises like that there'd be one of those Road Runner-like flaming trails from my driveway to the emergency room.

Ours got her shots on schedule, BTW.

The movie Expelled is looking more and more like a Michael Moore film every day. I generally respect and agree with Stein when he's talking about things like liberty and economics, but his rants for intelligent design and against Darwinian evolution leave me cold. Yet another example of "smart in one thing != smart in all things", I guess.

Like I needed reasons to vote for the guy:

The big policy-wonk news was that [McCain] called for some new initiatives, including doubling the personal exemption for dependents from $3,500 to $7,000, an alternative and supposedly simpler two-rate tax code, a one-year spending freeze for all government programs other than defense and entitlements, some sort of wage insurance for displaced workers, a summer suspension of the 18.4-cent gas tax, and making wealthier seniors pay more for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D. He also reiterated the need to do away with the alternative minimum tax, cut corporate taxes, and allow immediate expensing of business purchases.

To repeat: any president who promises to cut taxes and shoot terrorists will always have my vote. I'm simple, sue me.

Mike P. gets a no-prize that will squirm impressively when the data go wrong for bringing us yet another watermelon proclamation about global climate change:

China has already overtaken the US as the world's "biggest polluter", a report to be published next month says.
...
"Our figures for emissions growth are truly shocking," [Dr Max Auffhammer, the lead researcher] said.

"But there is no sense pointing a finger at the Chinese. They are trying to pull people out of poverty and they clearly need help.

"The only solution is for a massive transfer of technology and wealth from the West."

Absolutely! No problem! Let me go get my checkbook, just let me know who to write it out to.

Just because you're smart about one thing does not make you smart about everything, eh?

Problem: You've been outmaneuvered by the administration and forced to debate a bill all your powerful friends don't like.

Solution: change the rules.

Clinton was justly famous for corralling a Republican-controlled Congress into endorsing legislation they didn't like, especially in his last years in office. I can't recall them ever pulling a stunt quite like this. Then again, since my own opinion of Congress would need to look up to see the proverbial snake's belly, I wouldn't be surprised if Republican congresses did actually try this and I just don't remember.

Ain't government grand?

It would seem speculation that Vista may end up "the next Millennium edition" may be true. Then again, considering how long it takes MS to come out with any new version of their main operating system, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the new version.

Mark gets a no-prize that'll convince him to crack open an innocent battery for no reason for bringing us the urban legend of the 6 volt battery. Just missed April Fool's day, too!

While suspiciously rah-rah in tone, this look at Switzerland seems to prove at least some parts of Europe work quite well indeed. Like a watch, if you will.

Pope John Paul II is widely credited with having made a substantial contribution to the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union. Will Benedict XVI contribute as much to the fall of radical Islam?

One does not fight a religion with guns (at least not only with guns) but with love, although sometimes it is sadly necessary to love one's enemies only after they are dead. The Church has lacked both the will to evangelize Muslims as well as the missionaries to undertake the task. Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, has thought about the conversion of the Muslims for years, as I reported just before his election in 2005 (The crescent and the conclave, Asia Times Online, April 19, 2005). Where will the Pope find the sandals on the ground in this new religious war? From the ranks of the Muslims themselves, evidently. Magdi Allam is just one convert, but he has a big voice. If the Church fights for the safety of converts, they will emerge from the nooks and crannies of Muslim communities in Europe.

The papacy has an uneven record risking its collective neck defending faith against modern opponents. That said, it's sometimes worth remembering just how risky John Paul's stance against communism really was in the mid-70s. Will Benedict risk a car bomb in St. Peter's during Easter to take on the West's most dangerous existing threat? I can only hope he's up to the task.

In my own opinion, the world could do a lot worse than adopting a religion that learned how to cope with the modern world long ago.

Via Instapundit.

Mark gets a very earnest no-prize for bringing us this essay on what the author considers the fundamental differences between Catholics and Protestants. It unintentionally provides a graphic demonstration that Christianity's monomaniacal focus on doctrine is alive and well. All other religions believe it's important for the poor to be fed. Only Christians are concerned that it be done for the right reasons.

No, really, it's a porn school:

Sometime this weekend, at some sexy, unknown location in Tampa Bay, a woman named Courtney Cummz will show two-dozen prospective adult filmmakers how to make a porno.

The film shoot is part of "Porn Camp," a weekend-long, $4,000-a-head seminar that'll cover everything from porn-star pay scales to set design to proper Web site design.

Considering that I've been told* the vast majority of sites are poorly designed sticky-traps that barely render at all, just about anything that improves the situation should be good.

----
* Mah story, sticking to it. U go wai.

According to this Instapundit roundup, it would seem the media are suddenly discovering that basic economics still applies to the housing market. We've got some friends who quite recently reaped the rewards of their house purchase timing, so this tracks well in our own experience.

Idle more than 10 seconds? Turn the motor off, save tons of gas money. According to the article, modern fuel injection stops the big start loss associated with carburetors. Discuss, please. :)

Pat gets a no-prize that'll worry her to death trying to get that last dime for bringing us this story detailing the return of haggling to even big-box retailers. I'm usually too much of a sap to actually try to bargain, but maybe if I come armed with info I won't feel too gobsmacked to try.

Annie gets a sad but important no-prize for bringing us a tragic tale of disease and death that's triggered a huge controversy in France. I'm quite deeply conflicted about things like assisted suicide, to the point I can only really say I'm very glad I'm not the one having to make such a decision.

I was wondering how long it would take Drew Carey to wander across a libertarian issue that'd send the left howling to the bell towers. I'm not wondering any more.

Legalizing the sale of organs is one of those issues that makes complete sense on paper but runs the creep meter right up to the peg. In my own opinion, I think it would almost certainly end the shortage of many organs available for transplant. With a judicious bit of oversight, I think it could work, even well.

But I do understand why people would be apposed to it. So, for now at least, let's at least start a discussion. If the country decides it's a good idea, we'll get legislation moved through. Ain't democracy grand?

While this diagram of .net classes confuses me more than it illuminates me, the trolls in the comments are an absolute scream. Anyone who thinks software engineers are mature and sophisticated need only peruse them to understand you can easily take the nerd out of high school, but you can't easily take high school out of the nerd.

As with most big media panic stories, a little historical perspective on the current value of the dollar is quite illuminating. Since Chicken Little never was much for history books, I'm not surprised we hear nothing like this.

A Christian who doesn't "believe the Establishment or Free Exercise Clauses created any such doctrine called separation of church and state,” seems to have had an epiphany:

If a Muslim teacher visited your kid’s classroom every week to give a Koran lesson, what would you do? I wouldn’t like it. I’d probably file suit.

Which is more or less what everyone I've ever known who argues for an explicit separation of church and state arising from the First Amendment has been trying to get across for years. The sign of a good design is its adaptability to tasks for which it was not originally intended. I think the usefulness of the First Amendment quite handily demonstrates its good design.

But that's just me.

And let's hear it for someone I respect, but at the same time think can be a bit reactionary, for coming to the logical conclusion!

Now we have video of the robotic gas station. Only in Europe (and perhaps New Jersey) would something like this be competitive with self-pumped gas.

Pat gets a no-prize nobody really wants for bringing us this summary of Microsoft's latest woes with Vista. It looks very much like the marketroids got just enough decision making power to comprehensively wreck expectations about the product. In other words, business as usual.

Neverland Ranch: a sad, abandoned husk of its former self. Spending yourself bankrupt will do that to a person, donchaknow?

Students of Vietnam-era history may be happy to learn the gung-ho attitude of combat helicopter units seems not to have changed all that much:

The pilots were about a half mile away from their parking spaces when the Predator relayed coordinates and the laser code to pilot CW3 Tom Boise ... and the left-seater was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Carlos Lopez ... [Earlier] Lopez introduced himself to me as an Iraqi interpreter. First I thought, “Why does a Kiowa unit need an interpreter?” And then, “This guy doesn’t look like any Iraqi I have seen.” Lopez must have seen the strange look on my face because he cracked up laughing. The pilots, when they aren’t killing terrorists, apparently are great practical jokers. Captain Brad Warr, an excellent medical officer I got to know in 2005, told me how the pilots stole the adult-tricycle he rides around base. What Brad failed to explain was how he had first stolen the pilots’ van, and then painted it pink and put hearts all over it. They might not seem like killers. .

Via Instapundit.

There are secrets, and then there are secrets:

She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors.

Many times over the years I've read in articles and been told by acquaintances in a position to know that Columbia is a uniquely violent, chaotic place. All I can say is it definitely won't be on my list of places to visit any time soon.

Meryl quite rightly points out the glaring double standard regarding reporting of the most recent events around Gaza. Every time I read about how awfully the Palestinians are being treated, how terrible the injustice and violence, I can't help but think to myself, "well, if they'd just stop shooting glorified bombed-up bottle rockets at Israel they might actually get some peace." And it's not just the media, there are some people I know personally to whom I'd say the same damned thing.

It doesn't matter the Palestinian rockets hardly hit anyone and the Israeli bombs always do. Were I to trade places with an Israeli, it'd be just my luck to pull the short straw and walk underneath the thousandth one that actually managed to hit something. I can't imagine waking up every day for weeks at a stretch worrying about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'd actually be damned pleased my boys shoot straight, and horrified only that these Palestinian kids don't seem to understand being next to someone poking a tiger in the ass is a Bad Idea. Where the f--- are their parents?!?

The problem is I already know the answer, and so do the Israelis. I can only hope they finally manage to field one of the tactical laser ABM systems they've been working on, and soon. I have a feeling it'll take making the wall around Gaza infinitely high before the rockets will finally stop.

Only the music industry would be shocked to discover that when value is added to a product, people are willing to pay (and pay more) for it. I've long thought the reason why music is so readily pirated is because it's too damned expensive for what it provides. I think it'll probably take several big names to be successful in this route, and at least one unknown becoming a big name in the same way, before the paradigm will finally shift.

Those who think artists will be too greedy or beholden to record companies to make the attempt obviously haven't known very many musicians personally. You will never find a more contrary, risk-taking, just plain weird bunch.

"Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber."

One of the most bedrock common-sense axioms is that mothers protect their children. Everything goes pear-shaped when this fails.

It's when I read things like this, and only when I read things like this, that I think the sentiment in the title may be the only real solution. Which pisses me off more than you might think.

Via Instapundit.

After a period of relative quiet, it would appear combat submarines are seeing a surge of interest. Includes the new (to me) term "air-independent propulsion," which turns out to be more an improvement to diesel electric than it is a replacement for nuclear.

CBS gets itself into another political reporting scandal:

The chairman of the Alabama Republican Party sent a letter to "60 Minutes" producers asking for a retraction unless they could provide evidence backing up a segment on former Gov. Don Siegelman's prosecution- Birmingham News.
...
"Our staff has done an exhaustive search of Alabama Republican Party records going back several years, and we can find not one instance of Dana Jill Simpson volunteering or working on behalf of the Alabama Republican Party – as stated by 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley."

It's like they've got the gun superglued to their foot, and just can't stop pulling the trigger.

Via Instapundit.

At first I thought Obama might be a Democrat I could at least trust not to run the economy into a wall. Now I'm not so sure:

There are two general themes to his message that he has begun, to be fair, to articulate in more detailed fashion. At home, there will be an increase in taxes—income, estate, payroll—to fund more government health care, education, and general entitlement programs. The old Reaganesque notion that government subsidies can make one more dependent, angrier, and envious is forgotten, along with the notion that lower taxes stimulate economic growth and encourage risk-taking, innovation, and independence. I worry especially about the lifting of income caps (how far?) on social security taxes inasmuch as they were part of the original covenant justifying the caps on benefits paid out.

Distortion, you say? Prove it.

Steve Warshak, owner of the company which makes a number of herbal enhancement drugs such as Enzite, has been found guilty of mail fraud. They got his mom, too. Both are looking at some serious time in federal prison, as well as losing all the money they made bilking gullible men out of millions of dollars.

It deserves saying again: If you could get bigger boobs from pills, every woman's bra selection would start with C. So would about a quarter of the men.

If you could get a bigger wang from pills, most men would have to coil it to fit it in their pants. The rest wouldn't be able to leave the house.

Fling a rocket, bag a satellite, and suddenly every foil-hatter in the world comes twirling out of their tower to yammer at any newsie close by. We've had anti-sat capabilities for twenty years, people. Just because one system gets retired and you don't hear about a replacement, is not the same thing as there being no replacement around.

I love the sound of cages rattling in the morning. Smells like... victory...

It appears Toshiba, one of the last HD-DVD holdouts, is throwing in the towel. I'm still not going to pull that particular trigger, mostly because the players are still pricey and, except for the PS-3, don't even support the latest Blu-Ray standard. It is nice to know things seem to finally be sorted out.

And it's not really bad news for HD-DVD owners. Prices for existing titles should drop nicely, and it may be quite some time before studios stop releasing things in that format. By which time Blu-Ray may be down in price and ready to become your next upgrade!

Computer scientists have created a program that is apparently quite good at predicting terrorist targets in Iraq. On reading, the software sounds rather similar to what the New York City police department used in its successful fight against crime in the 1990s.

Hey, anything that puts Hajji in closer contact with his 72 wirgins is all right by me!

My own suspicions about what causes long term poverty just got a boost:

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C.
...
During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

A few on the left side of the peanut gallery may sneer about sex and skin color, which to me is a demonstration of just how fast goalposts can be moved when a score would threaten to upset someone's most deeply held misconceptions.

Via Instapundit.

It would appear the Air Force is mulling over a shoot-down of the failed spy satellite that's been in the news lately. If it keeps the thing from falling on someone, I'm all for it. But it will definitely be interesting to see just what, exactly, is used to do the deed.

Bitchy employers:

Mike Bunner calls it a ''cowboy mentality,'' the attitude he sees in so many people who come seeking jobs from him.
...
''They don't want to follow rules, and in a workplace there are certain rules,'' Bunner said. ''It's almost like it's a cultural thing.''

A culture where labor is subject to market forces just as any other commodity, and in which Mr. Bunner's area appears to have switched from a buyer's to a seller's. Which reminds me of a connection you get to make when your head is stuffed full of useless history...

What struck me was how much this whining sounded like the whining of Abbots and Lords about what happened after the Black Death. Then, a terrible disease tightened the labor market by at least 33% (perhaps 50%). Since, unlike the Ottomans or Chinese, Europe was unable to simply bludgeon its peasantry into working without wages, European employers had to pay a premium for good workers or settle for less. Since a medieval boss was not much different from a modern one, the chronicles of the day are filled to bursting with complaints about how it was impossible to fill jobs and the workers you could get were awful and how the king or the Pope aught to do something about it. The fact they couldn't is one of the fundamental forces which created our modern world, and why it started in Europe instead of anywhere else.

Fortunately today it's economic growth rather than the scythe of disease tightening up the labor market. However, as long as that market is allowed to function, no matter how bitchy employers get or how arrogant employees become, not only will the economy continue to function it will grow faster and more efficiently than any government program ever could.

Which is not to say people will like it.

Pat gets a no-prize that just won't go away for bringing us news of just how difficult it is to delete one's Facebook account. To me, this indicates more of a design problem than anything else. Their system's back-end is most likely cobbled together from a lot of disparate applications, and nobody's had time to write the requisite scripts needed to get rid of it all, all at once.

An interesting question: If as many factors are figured in as possible, which impacts the environment more, a dog or an SUV?

It's not as simple a question as you'd at first think.

Hugo Chavez's "socialist paradise" continues down its depressingly predictable path to destruction:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in an effort to deal with food shortages nationwide, threatened today to expropriate farms and raised the price rice producers are permitted to charge.

Old-guard Bolsheviks like Lenin or Stalin would've responded by stealing confiscating all food resources in the offending regions and letting the farmers and their families starve. Millions would end up dying in what was, to fans of Communism, a justified pogrom against traitors to the state. Fortunately, Chavez is no Stalin. At least, not yet.

Watch carefully. This is where radical socialism always leads.

Via Instapundit.

While the Republicans, by design, now have a single candidate and nearly a whole damned year to campaign against the Democrats, it's becoming increasingly clear the Democrats will be campaigning against each other until at least August. That's right folks! While the Republicans will be spending their time telling everyone about their platform, and how awful the Democrats are, the Democrats will be... explaining to everyone how awful the Democrats are. This too, is apparently by design.

Sorta says it all, eh?

A formal report has been released after a state investigation of the fatal explosion at Scaled Composites last year. Unfortunately, the investigators seem to have shrugged at what might have caused the disaster at the company known for its innovative SpaceShipOne and Two vehicles. The evidence has now been turned over to the district attorney to see if anyone may be liable for the deaths.

The thing that makes a good sulk so enjoyable is you get to ignore everything that contradicts it. Like, you know, this:

American "decline" is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House.

...

Now take military expenditures. Yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal for 2009, which includes $515.4 billion for the regular defense budget. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this would be the largest defense appropriation since World War II. Yet it amounts to about 4% of GDP, as compared to 14% during the Korean War, 9.5% during the Vietnam War and 6% in the Reagan administration. Throw in the Iraq and Afghanistan supplementals, and total projected defense spending is still only 4.5% of GDP -- an easily afforded sum...

(Emphasis added)

The key to real prosperity for everyone is economic growth. Whichever party most consistently supports policies which enable growth will always have my vote. Any party that chooses to emphasize an agenda that impedes growth (pushing agendas like "fairness" or "living wages" or "progressivism") won't.

Which should make my party choice, well, rather obvious.

Via Instapundit.

Seconded:

Much is said about principles, and since I am not able elect anyone BY MYSELF I have entered into this pact with the group of people who I feel most comfortable with in terms of values. If they, as a body, choose a candidate who is not my first, second, third or fourth choice, then I can look to the Democrats. There I find views so antithetical to everything I believe that I realize there is indeed something to this idea of party loyalty.

I have misgivings about McCain, but only because other people who I respect have misgivings about him. When it comes down to it, I have had misgivings about all the Republican candidates. But they're nothing compared to the flat-out fears I have about what would happen if the last bulwark preventing the Democratic congress from running amok were removed.

So I will quite confidently cast my Republican vote this November, because even though whoever is running won't completely represent my values, and even though that party sometimes says or does things I disagree with, it agrees with and does things I do value and agree with far more often than the other side ever will. You can, most of you do, disagree with me. That's fine. That's what elections are for.

See you at the polls!

F- the current candidate roster. I want the team who's producing this stuff:

But hey, we all know how accurate and well-meaning our MSM is. Why listen to anyone else?

Via Instapundit.

Michael Totten: "I met a young Marine named Austin — he did not give me his last name and he wasn't wearing his rank – who grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. “I'm from a really bad area,” he said. “I didn't even go outside when I was a kid. Fallujah is a lot better.”

Via Instapundit.

Now that the media has bequeathed the Republican nomination to McCain, it's time for the loonies to lock on to their new target. At least if, and until, McCain loses said nomination. One need only ask previously "anointed" candidate Clinton on the accuracy of media bequests.

I wonder how the card-carrying Bush Derangement Syndrome Club members in the peanut gallery, who are generally McCain fans, will react when a picture of their "good" leader is being carried on a sign with a toothbrush mustache penciled in?

Via Instapundit.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who notices how ridiculous MSM's coverage of the economy is.

What I remember most was, during the Reagan administration, at the ripe age of 13, how the media kept harping on how awful the economy was two years into Reagan's "revolution." The stock market had tumbled, interest rates were truly astronomical, and it seemed everyone was either in an unemployment or gasoline line. And then suddenly, say, around 1983, almost overnight the reports stopped being about how bad it was and started crowing when "the recovery would end." Addled as I was with teenage hormones, I quite distinctly remember shouting at the TV, "end?!? When did you sonsofbitches ever admit it'd started?!?"

I'm pretty sure my yellow-dog mom tossed a shoe at me. She still does.

After all, being right (in more ways than one), doesn't mean you get to swear.

All those "work from home, earn $$$" signs you see around the neighborhood? Yeah, they're scams. Look, people, if someone asks you to set up a chain in which money gets deposited in one place, is moved around one or more times, and then is withdrawn from a different place, they're trying to use you to launder money. No matter how legitimate they may seem, this multi-step process is always the sign of something fishy going on. These are not nice people, so don't think about doing something clever like accepting the money and then just disappearing. You may end up disappearing more than you wanted!

If this test is to be believed, "my" candidates for the upcoming presidential election are McCain, Giuliani, and (gulp!) Huckabee. The other Republicans are pretty close too. In other words, no surprises!

Via Daffodil, who likewise received no surprises, albeit from the opposite side of the aisle.

It's 1940 all over again:

The democratic Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan ... frequently irritates Chinese leaders with calls for greater independence from the mainland. But while the American military mulls its options, Chinese missiles hit runways, fuel lines, barracks and supply depots at U.S. Air Force bases in Japan and South Korea. Long-range warheads destroy American satellites, crippling Air Force surveillance and communication networks. A nuclear fireball erupts high above the Pacific Ocean, ionizing the atmosphere and scrambling radars and radio feeds.

This is China’s anti-U.S. sucker punch strategy.

It’s designed to strike America’s military suddenly, stunning and stalling the Air Force more than any other service. In a script written by Chinese military officers and defense analysts, a bruised U.S. military, beholden to a sheepish American public, puts up a small fight before slinking off to avoid full-on war.
...
Because the American public is “abnormally sensitive” about military casualties, according to an article in China’s Liberation Army Daily, killing U.S. airmen or other personnel would spark a “domestic anti-war cry” on the home front and possibly force early withdrawal of U.S. forces.

No, dumbass, launching a comprehensive pre-emptive strike on US interests which decimated our Pacific defenses with large military casualties would precipitate WWIII. Ask Japan what happens when you surprise the US and roll them up all the way to the California coast. Hint: it's not pretty, and it's not fun.

Reading past the blunderbuss opening and the confident "plan survives contact with enemy" naivete, the article appears to be based on a press release intended to rattle the Air Force's cage enough to get them to beef up base protection. Which I guess would be all well and good, if they had any money to pay for it.

Look, we plan on taking them down just as often as they plan taking us down. It's how the game is played, and China more than anything else wants to be a Player. However, unlike the USSR, and 1930s Japanese before them, China's prosperity is deeply rooted in the world economy, and they are extremely aware of it. Kicking the biggest member of that economy in the nuts over an island off the coast does not a prosperous country make, donchaknow?

But I gotta tell ya, this would make for a cracking good military thriller. Get Tom Clancy on the phone!

I'm sure someone in the peanut gallery's heard of the battle of Khalkhin Gol, but I sure hadn't. I'm not sure we'll ever know exactly how decisive this battle was to the course of the war, but considering how many times outcomes hinged on slim margins, I would think it would be significant.

In my own opinion, one of the biggest blind spots in both Ellen's and my own basic education was in the handling of money. While we make our own way reasonably well, neither of us are extremely rational about it (I try to reflexively save every dime; Ellen panics whenever she deals with money.)

I think a lot about how to teach Olivia spending, saving, and investing in a more rational way, but don't know exactly where to start. I'm thinking this book might be of assistance. It's certainly interesting enough to go on my wishlist, so I won't forget about it. She's already quite capable of making deals*, so it'll most likely not be very long before she's able to grasp the rest of it.

Via Instapundit.

* Actual conversation at a recent visit to a train museum:

Me: "Let me see your new bandanna, Olivia, I'll show you how to make a mas--"

Olivia: "NO! DADDY NO! BWAAHHH!!!!" Much wailing & crying ensues.

Three minutes later, Olivia: "Daddy, let me through, I want to see that train!"

Me, in a gentle voice: "Let me see your bandanna."

Olivia, in cheerful voice: "Ok!"

Personally, I think Glenn got it wrong. It should've been...

They told me when George W. got elected, government would take over our lives. And they were right!

Via, appropriately enough, the puppy blender.

It would appear a photographic archive of ancient manuscripts, long thought destroyed, may represent the next "fatwa" target for guardians of the "religion of peace". Barring a few famous but extremely small fragments, the oldest well-dated Christian manuscripts only go back to the 3rd century. Discovering a cache of manuscripts made only sixty years after Jesus's ministry would be a remarkable find indeed.

However, as noted in the article, Islam is tied much more closely to its foundational document than is Christianity on its Testament. Christianity's foundation in mysticism, its legendary flexibility, and its ease of adaptation (to the point of bloody schism), have allowed it to withstand scholarly critique of its foundational documents.

Not so Islam, whose structure was quite obviously informed by the blood-drenched religious chaos of seventh century Constantinople. Having read it myself, I can say many parts to me definitely seem to have been composed by someone who knew both Christian and Judaic traditions, albeit second-hand and garbled. It would be ironic indeed if, by so very carefully engineering itself against the weaknesses evident in the Christianity of its time, radical Islam left itself open to its eventual undoing in the face of modern inquiry.

However, I feel quite realistic in not expecting a "Mohamed Seminar" similar to its Christian counterpart to appear because of all this. After all, if one claims not all of Paul's letters were in fact written by Paul, and provides convincing evidence to prove it, one does not need to worry about the embrace of lunatics wearing complicated vests.

I only hope the relevant German authorities quickly take steps to secure (or at least create many copies of) the archive. While I doubt I'll see it in my time, Islam won't always be this loopy, and it would be a tragedy to lose such an important collection of ancient documents due to carelessness or sabotage.

Update: More info, from a more innocent time, is here. It would appear the manuscripts are from perhaps the first few decades of Islam's history, making them even more important and remarkable. It would at first seem outrageous such a find would be barely known, and (as far as I know) never published. An intact, original gospel or an original Pauline letter collection would rightly cause a sensation in the West. Then I remember who we're really talking about, and it's not so outrageous after all.

So you tell me, did we fake that whole "When Mooji Boats Attack" incident or not? I didn't doubt for a second everyone's favorite Persian Pranksters were spoiling for a fight. Now I know they also have no trouble lying about it.

Then again, considering how schizophrenic Iran's government is, I wouldn't put it past them to have the mullahs pull something like this without telling anyone else. Personally, I don't care. A few rounds from the ol' M2 should stop hajji in his tracks next time around.

I guess I'm just a little strange (shocking, I know), because I think this photo exhibit would probably be quite interesting:

Why are the Japanese couples in Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photographs having sex outdoors? Was 1970s Tokyo so crowded, its apartments so small, that they were forced to seek privacy in public parks at night? And what about those peeping toms? Are the couples as oblivious as they seem to the gawkers trespassing on their nocturnal intimacy?

...

The series, titled “The Park,” is on view at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea, the first time the photographs have been exhibited since 1979, when they were introduced at Komai Gallery in Tokyo. For that show the pictures were blown up to life size, the gallery lights were turned off, and each visitor was given a flashlight. Mr. Yoshiyuki wanted to reconstruct the darkness of the park. “I wanted people to look at the bodies an inch at a time,” he has said.

I don't think I'd much appreciate the whole "sneaking through the gallery with a flashlight" bit though. A guy's gotta have standards, eh?

(All pictures in the article are SFW.)

It would appear Dragon Skin armor isn't all it's cracked up to be. As it were. I've seen this stuff demonstrated a few times in various "Futureweapons"-like shows, and it was consistently portrayed as The Next Big Thing. Then again, pretty much everything those shows demonstrate is. I'd always suspected such programming was little more than a video press release with commercials thrown in. Now, it seems to me anyway, I have proof.

While this description of DNA as a sort of organic software is inevitably geeky in places, it does provide a certain amount of insight into just what makes biology tick. Well, insights for a sysadmin or developer at any rate. Those who aren't may not get as much out of it, but hey, it's my blog, I'll link what I want :).

It would appear there is at least one place quite a bit more dangerous than Iraq. Not much of a distinction, but I suppose you have to take what you can get.

Via Instapundit, who's point about Mr. Chavez's fans is well taken.

While this mash-up of a speech from Naomi Klien and clips from various Milton Friedman appearances can only barely be called a debate (and dude... volume matching!), it still provides a nice side-by-side comparison of what Friedman has actually said versus what leading lights on the left claim he said. Straw men don't exist just for Dorothy, don't ya know?

Go watch the whole thing (it's really only a few minutes long). It should definitely provide fuel for thought, if not fire.

TSO: "Think the interest on the debt is a problem? Well, in the mid-1990s, it took around 15% of federal tax receipts to pay the net interest on the debt; but now, it only takes 9%."

But well all know the real problem is... umm... well?

Wanting to put his money (as it were) where his mouth was, a seemingly self-confessed conservative decided to find out just how bad waterboarding really was. The verdict: it's pretty damned awful. The author seems to consider it inhumanly so.

Being a student of European history makes gaining knowledge on the myriad and manifold techniques of man's inhumanity to man essentially inevitable. Knowing these things (albeit in the third-person context), I have to say waterboarding really doesn't sound that bad. Since all serious forms of torture will eventually result in capitulation, a method which acts quickly and causes no permanent physical injury would seem ideal for everyone involved.

In other words, waterboarding would seem to have it all over being pulled on the rack. But I've always had problems with moral relativism. Like you didn't know that.

US economy: 1, Anti-globalization doom-and-gloom luddites: 0. Money quote:

"For a long time people thought of globalization only as the loss of jobs," said Elliott Howard, who fills and labels the brown bottles of chemicals distilled in Tedia's eight large stainless-steel stills. "Now, I think of it as expanding the company."

Diversity, growth, and trade are what keeps the nation strong and going. The trick is to make sure the Democrats aren't able to take it all apart as a sop to their Big Labor backers.

Having just spent an extra two hours on the Jersey Turnpike for no discernible reason, I find this explanation of just why mysterious traffic jams happen rather timely.

Yes, I am being held prisoner in a Chinese laundry a Yankee paradise Indian country the inlaws for a holiday visit. Why do you ask?

It would seem that, under the pressures of combat, the underpinnings that made the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy seem logical are slowly being dissolved. I've always been ambiguous about the whole thing, seeing as how I'd never end up "live fire testing" any of it. But if it really is the case that combat units are comfortable and effective with openly gay members in their ranks, it would seem to me time to re-evaluate the policy. We need all the talent we can get, and if GI Joe/Jane's preference for a bed partner isn't affecting their own or their unit's capabilities, why should we care?

Graphs are nearly always interesting, especially when the trends are breaking your way. Iraq's still got a long way to go, but people who think they've made no progress whatever are selling something.

The Skeptical Optimist reminds us not all debt is bad debt. One of the things I've found quite difficult in my own politics is coming to terms with the fact that not all government initiative is bad*. Likewise, Steve makes some excellent points to the effect that not all government debt is bad. Personally, I think projects which enable people to spend government funds for their own benefit (c.f. G.I. Bill, The) are best, but that's not always an easy thing to engineer, or get people to agree with.

----
* Ah geeze. Someone go pick Joshua up off the floor. Wave some vodka under his nose or something.

A German company is making a pitch to create parachute-powered freighters. I seem to recall this idea as being bounced around for years, and still with no working prototypes. Vaporware? Vaporship? You be the judge.

Glenn Reynolds: ...it's important to understand that to the Framers the "militia" wasn't some specialist unit of government employees, but a group consisting of the armed populace; one that, though in some ways organized by the government, was also in some ways set against the government, as a check.

The pro-control argument that the 2nd Amendment is too vague or would never have been put in place if modern weapons were available only seem valid when considered just in light of the text of the amendment itself. When one reads the supporting documents from the people who framed the Constitution, it's quite easy to see they did in fact mean the populace should be able to arm itself without interference from the government. While there were no machine guns back then, large caliber weaponry was still quite common, and yet there is no, "except for big shotguns and cannon" in the amendment. In fact, from what I've read, the framers of the Constitution most likely would've explicitly included our right to own Howitzers and .50 caliber machine guns, if they'd known such things could exist and that the citizens of their country would be able to buy them one day.

Looks like the deficit most likely won't balance out in time for the elections. Then again, since it's only 1.4% of the GDP, why worry?

Democratic process: 1, trying to do an end-run around it: 0

The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples who marry in Massachusetts, the only state that allows same-sex marriage, may not divorce in Rhode Island.

In a 3-to-2 decision, the court ruled that it was up to the legislature, not the court, to determine whether same-sex marriages and divorces would be recognized in Rhode Island.

The narrow margin is disheartening, but we've all gotten so used to the courts making policy instead of adjudicating law I guess it's a victory nonetheless. For the Constitution, at any rate. Members of the peanut gallery who think it's OK for unelected retired lawyers to rule us all will, I imagine, not even completely understand what I'm talking about.

Definitely reads like something Ellen would do:

Charlie is a wild-born coyote who was unexpectedly delivered to my doorstep this past April after both his parents were shot for killing sheep. Whatever reservations I had about raising a wild animal simply didn't matter - couldn't matter - when I realized his survival, at least in the short term, depended on me.

Then again, vets know most of all that coyotes and cats don't usually mix, so I'm not sure what Ellen would do.

Oh who am I kidding. We got so many different kinds of animals around here nowadays I'm not even sure I'd notice.

DARPA is looking to field some networks as "firing ranges" with which to test their electronic widgets. I suppose most large software development offices have (or have access to) things like this, and if they're sitting around doing nothing most of the time, why not?

The Skeptical Optimist has a neat post that shows no matter which way you slice it, the US Government's debt just doesn't matter. That is, as long as we keep pursuing pro-growth policies. I've long known that even though the public debt is a really astounding amount, it's size is dwarfed by the GDP of the country. You can have the biggest truck in the world, but if you park it in the VAB it's still going to look small.

We've been mulling over whether or not to see The Golden Compass for about as long as it's been advertised. Now I find out that, in the opinion of at least one person, at root it's all about an attack on Christianity. Catholic Christianity, to be precise.

I'm never particularly good at seeing subtexts, and I imagine, had I not known beforehand, this particular set would've gone right over my head. I still think the deciding factors for us will be a) does it suck? and b) is it scary? The former will prevent us from seeing it, the latter will prevent us from taking Olivia. The option c) it portrays Catholics as jackbooted thugs I guess I'll have to reserve for after I see it, if I see it.

*Shrug*

Via Instapundit.

Casualty numbers in Iraq continue to fall. Keep in mind the numbers come from a well-known anti-war organization. When the absolute worst source shows real improvement, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny, eh?

Almost a third of the questioners [at the recent Republican candidate debate] seem to have some ties to Democratic causes or candidates. It's almost as if they don't want a Republican to win this time around.

Hey, at least with Fox News they're not trying to hide it or anything.

Military history buffs in the peanut gallery (you know who you are) should find this photo essay on constructing a "Dark Ages" short sword worth a look. When it starts out a bunch of metal strips and ends up something you can wave at Grendel, well folks, I call that built from scratch for sure.

Another economist is sounding warning calls about the Euro. One problem with predicting a chess-like series of moves toward disaster is that global economics is not a two-dimensional game played on a board. It's fantastically complex, interrelated, and plays out in four dimensions. Disaster could happen, but it can also be averted.

I've been following predictions of the Euro's collapse since before its adoption. I can say they do seem to be getting more frequent, and rather more specific. Will it run into a wall? I can only hope not. Such a crisis in the heart of the developed world will have repercussions for everyone, and nobody can predict exactly what they will be.

Well, other than no good at all, I'm afraid.

Via Instapundit.

Instapundit linked up this middle-length piece detailing the "turning" of a Baghdad neighborhood from an Al Qaida stronghold to an island of relative calm. The warning that we may be setting up private armies loyal to men instead of country is well made. Then again, just like in the US, not liking the government is not the same thing as not liking the country. The Iraqi commander's comment that the biggest remaining enemy is Iran also tracks well with several different sources I've read who either are Iraqi or have spent a very long time there. Maybe now that the situation in-country seems to be stabilizing rapidly, they can begin to concentrate on their border to the west.

And I think it's very important to keep in mind the current Iraqi government is not the country. If this bunch can't get things done, eventually (and perhaps soon) they'll vote themselves in a new bunch who might.

It's also important to understand even with the very best of outcomes, the Iraqi government will never be as decisive as our own. A parliamentary system, with proportional winners, usually spends a lot of time grinding against itself with occasional (but comparatively frequent) turnovers of power. Think Israel, not the UK or Canada.

However, in the long term such democracies have proven far more resistant to takeover and dismantling than have those with organized, and separate, executive branches. I've heard it said the worst gift the US has given to the democratic world is the concept of the presidency, and from my readings that's not too far wrong.

In my own opinion, the only really dangerous government is an efficient, effective one. The best judgment of a particular democracy is how well it keeps the busybodies occupied while the rest of us get on with running things. Oh, the press and the chattering classes will definitely wail and moan at how little is being done by the government. This is, after all, another aspect of keeping the troublemakers busy. However, as long as the economy grows, and the rule of law is enforced, it will all work out in the end.

“It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”

I've always thought the whole, "American worker's wages have gone nowhere this decade" argument completely wrong, b