Cassy found something.

My comments speak for themselves.

Think I’m a-gonna barf here.

Terry Paulson, writing at Townhall:

The basic assumption in Washington seems to be that politicians must do something—pass a bill, add a new regulation or create a new entitlement—in order for America to get better. President Obama agonizes, “I spend every waking hour, when I’m talking to my economic team, about how we are going to put people back to work.”

What if government leaving people alone is better than doing something that just makes matters worse? What if letting Americans be free to handle their own problems and earn their own rewards is better than watching government politicians micromanage something they know nothing about?

Congress recently passed legislation to fine airlines for leaving people on runways too long, only to find that now airlines prematurely cancel more flights in the face of pending bad weather to avoid possible fines. Cancelations leave more flyers stranded with no plane to fly in. Congress “cares” enough to make matters worse.

Give me a “Do Nothing…Get Out of the Way” Congress!

This used to be a mainstream idea. It’s been repeatedly proven right, and after being repeatedly proven right it has — somehow — become, in 2010, a not-quite-so-mainstream idea. Somehow, if there’s a building on fire Congress is the only fire engine in town with a working hose.

But this includes out wretched financial shape too. We’re seriously upside down, debt is completely out of control and Congress will…will…will pass a new program or two that will fix it?

Things are about to get seriously cockeyed and gunneybags, or a government program is going to do what no government program in the history of the republic has ever before done. There is no in-between.

Using all your firing synapses, Dear Reader, which one do you think is about to happen?

Victor Davis Hanson, in top form:

John McCain was damned for picking Sarah Palin who had not finished her first term as governor, and had previously only been elected to local political offices and served on a state commission.

Her middle American ‘you betcha’ twang, NASCAR persona, good looks, and occasional deer-in-the-headlines interviews with hostile anchor people, coupled with the kids, conservative creed, Christianity, and 19th century husband, sickened—there is no other word for it— the DC-New York punditocracy. Yes, they concluded, she really was from Wasilla. Yuk.

So we got everything in the media from the maverick McCain suddenly as cynical sell-out who settled for third-best, to Palin, the clueless Alaskan yokel.

In contrast, to this day, there is no in-depth analysis of Kerry’s disastrous pick of the first-term, uninformed Senator Edwards as his VP choice in 2004. And it took the National Enquirer to inform us of his later conspiratorial lying and bribery involving his illegitimate child—sordid facts apparently well known to—and hushed up by—the mainstream media. Remember, later presidential candidate Edwards was not just inexperienced, but as a confessed wonk, did not open a book. He was the owner of a mansion who preached about “two-nations” inequality, and he alternately used and humiliated his alternately heroic and conniving cancer-stricken spouse.

He’s asking why we tolerate such double-standards. I’ve been wondering this for awhile, so it’s good he came up with some answers.

Wireless extender.

Hat tip to Melissa, via Hot Air.

Over a month’s worth of dust on it, from SodaHead. But it really oughta stir the puddin’ because the control for the experiment is our current and 44th President.

Bush or Obama? Who’s smarter? SodaHead points to the village-idiot-from-Crawford, and they have ten decent arguments to back it up.

2. Bush identified and confronted evil

There was something very refreshing in George W. Bush’s Reaganesque interpretation of the world in terms of good and evil. In contrast, Barack Obama has viewed the globe largely in shades of grey, with a reluctance to describe who exactly America’s enemies are, from North Korea and Iran to Islamist terrorists.
:
6. Bush cultivated key allies

Granted, Bush was hardly the most popular leader the US has ever had in Europe. But he did invest a great deal of time and effort in cultivating a strong personal relationship with several key European leaders, including Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi. President Obama has largely ignored building alliances with European heads of state, and seems indifferent towards the transatlantic alliance. His administration has placed far greater emphasis upon backing the rise of a European superstate, than it has on strengthening ties wit close allies.
:
10. Bush did not send mixed messages in the face of the enemy

A constant theme of Barack Obama’s speeches has been to describe the war in Iraq as a “war of choice”, underscoring his own intense opposition to the war, hardly a message of support for the more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers still stationed in the country. He also spent months dithering over whether to send additional US forces to the war in Afghanistan, and when he finally did make an announcement of an extra 30,000 troops it was tempered by the simultaneous declaration of an exit strategy, and a warning that America could not wage war against the Taliban indefinitely. This was hardly a display of Churchillian grit by the Commander-in-Chief. In contrast, President Bush never failed to give his soldiers the full, unequivocal backing they deserved, and always spoke in terms of achieving victory, instead of artificial timetables that hand the initiative to the enemy.

This is one of the primary Architects-versus-Medicators questions: Do we even want our leaders to be vastly smarter than we are? Can’t remember where I saw it, but some very passionate Obama-backer was saying Hell Yes! I don’t want my leaders to be like me, I want them to be better than me!

Out here in the real world, we see a lot of problems with that.

If the leader is smarter than I am, and this is to present us with some kind of advantage, that would necessarily mean sooner or later there is a decision coming up on which the leader would make the right choice and I would make the wrong one. Now, perhaps what follows next doesn’t apply to those who lust after these “smart leaders,” but — my fate, every single day, depends on my ability to make wise decisions. If I can be counted on to make dumbass decisions that actually destroy things, then dammit I want to know more about that.

Not so with this other batch of human. They want Obama because He’s smarter than they are, He can be counted on to make the right choice where they’d just bollux it up, and that pleases them just fine. Put him in charge, and they’ll go back to living their humble little lives. One cannot help but wonder what kind of life they’re going back to living.

Also: How come when it comes to voting for our next President, suddenly they’re able to decide things just fine? They don’t know what smartz would do, but goldang it they know it when they see it?

What we have here, I think, is a confusion between wisdom and irony. If you listen to these people prattle on for a good long time, you’ll notice something rather shocking: The “smart” decision, with regard to each and every question that comes up, is never, ever, ever ever ever the simple one.

Global warming is more dangerous than radical Islamic terrorism.

Queen Latifah is sexier than Beyonce Knowles.

To keep from going broke, we’ve got to spend more money.

A real man is in touch with his feelings and isn’t afraid to cry.

If there is a problem, the best thing to do is to make sure no one can ever make a profit producing a solution to it.

If innocent people could be harmed by a terrorist act, and it could be prevented by bringing physical pain to an evil man, decent people will make sure this doesn’t happen and let the innocent people go ahead and die.

If you’re a baby and you’ve crossed that Magical Vaginal Finish Line you’ve got rights to womb-to-tomb health care, a living wage whether you’re competent or not, a vote in all our elections whether you have common sense or not — but if you’re not there yet, then you don’t even exist as a person. It’s a matter of inches, and that’s just the way it is!

This is the part that scares the hell out of me. These people are not capable of recognizing or responding to the situation in which the simple, common sense answer is the right one. Right, as in — go ahead, put on a magical thinking cap and boost your IQ by a thousand points, you’ll still decide it the same way. This doesn’t work for them, because in their world you have to show off your smarts by deciding the opposite.

Therefore, when this happens they will consistently demand the choice that is made by these smart people, is the wrong one.

And that is not an occasional happenstance. The common-sense answer being the right one…common-sense, recognized by someone with an I.Q. of 100, not a single point greater…is a situation that arises roughly 99% of the time. Tall tippy glass on the edge of the table? Move it toward the center. House on fire? Put it out. Cops are out in force today? Slow the hell down. Importing too much oil? Drill baby drill.

Fact is, if you show me ten issues that arouse all this contention in our national discourse, eight or nine of them are going to be things that shouldn’t reveal any disagreement at all. They are made that way because Medicators continue to feel this need to inject new variables into relatively simple situations, variables that make it “pseudosmart” to go the other way. None of them make so much as a lick of sense. This is how & why Eric Holder decided to try that scumbag in civilian court in New York City. He wasn’t able to defend the decision when called upon to do so. It was just that extra-variable-thing; he was used to hanging out with a crowd that would sing hosannahs to his superior intellect, if he’d just make a decision opposed to common sense. He’s not a lone voice in the wilderness here. Roughly half our country’s population is exactly like this.

As your I.Q. increases, every time it passes somewhere between thirty or fifty points, your decisions should flip around to the opposite so you can demonstrate that it’s happening. Even with regard to simple things, things in which we all inwardly know the answer shouldn’t be changing, like third grade math.

Someone hasn’t met the liberals & atheists I’ve been meeting.

Although, to be fair about it, I’m thinking specifically about the liberals-and-atheists I’ve been meeting on the innerwebs, not in real life. And the ones on the innerwebs are probably thirteen and under.

I thought this part of the story was kind of funny:

“The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward,” said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. “It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people — people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower — are likely to be the ones to do that.”

Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said.

Heheheheh…what’s Latin for BINGO? I see that in a lot of innernet-liberals-and-atheists. Some specialized intellect…a little bit of general density…theoretical brilliance and practical not-quite-functional-ness. But nothing really stands out quite so much as this eagerness to pass oneself off as a genius. Not just any genius. An unconventional genius. Unconventional…up to, over, and well past the point where unconventionalism provides any return on investment to the person being unconventional, or any goal he’s pursuing.

I think Mr. Not-Involved-in-the-Study just hit a home run here.

Probably just as well.

Thing I Know #203. Superman’s adventures are only fun to read about when Lois is still clueless about who he really is. As soon as Clark Kent lets her in on The Big Secret, everything gets lame.

My better half just read this sequence of events being presented on someone’s FaceBook page. And I recognized the plagiarism immediately. Not the entire episode…just the thing with the tranquilizing dart and waiting for animal control to arrive.

The Frisky, hat tip to Linkiest.

I hope it doesn’t start a trend, because some abortions fail. Others are abandoned. Can you imagine watching your Mom say this stuff about you, your age plus eight months previous, on YouTube? Yeah maybe eight out of ten of us are “oopsies.” But look at her cavalier attitude. Tell me that wouldn’t make you look at life differently if you knew she was talking about that face you see in the mirror.

The contradictions are really disturbing, too. She doesn’t want approval or disapproval, she just wants other women to know it’s not that bad. So they will be more likely to do what she’s doing. Which she doesn’t really care about. But clearly, she’ll feel a whole lot better about doing it if there are other people doing the same thing, so she does care. Non-values-judgmentalism…all the way down the line…and then “have a great and godless day” thrown in at the end.

Having grown up in a college town, I consider myself perfectly qualified to sum this all up in one single bumper sticker slogan: “Let’s force people to leave others alone.” Want another? “Nobody has the right to force their value systems on others…except cool people, like me.”

…foreign royal figure, that is.

With thanks to Daphne.

The guys on the radio are talking about this, and they’ve made an excellent point.

Guy didn’t even show up for his own immigration hearing to avoid answering questions under oath about his ties to Islamic terror groups. From NBC-Dallas/Fort Worth:

An immigration judge in Dallas on Friday ordered an outspoken Islamic leader deported after the U.S. government alleged he had ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Nabil Sadoun, a Dallas resident and former board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, was deported to his native Jordan after he failed to appear at his immigration hearing. He entered the U.S. in August 1993.

Sadoun’s attorney, Kimberly Kinser, said he was already in Jordan and was unable to return to Texas because the government had taken his permanent resident card, or green card.

She denied he was tied to any terrorist groups.

The excellent point is, that when something bubbles to the surface of the stewpot that is The News, and the something is an item that CAIR wants to discuss — you can’t get away from ’em. Wait until a Muslim is arrested for something and we’re all breathlessly awaiting an anti-Muslim “backlash,” feeling all kinds of guilt for something that hasn’t even happened yet. Turn on the cable teevee, to any channel. There will be a CAIR representative on there talking about the backlash.

This tidbit, on the other hand, is an item CAIR just might not want to discuss: their ties to radical Islamic terror.

If you don’t live in D/FW, you have to go to someplace like My Pet Jawa to get the story. Which is not intended as a slight against the Jawa, but ideologically-leaning blogsites like ours are not supposed to be quite this important. Are we (they)? Aren’t we supposed to have some resources for getting ahold of the news that matters to us? By which I mean, both sides…not just the side certain overly-enthused advocacy groups want us to have.

There are stories that are easy to get, there are stories that are hard to get, and then there are news blackouts…and news blackouts sometimes border on the surreal. This is a little bit surreal. I would think a lot of people would want to know about this.

FrankJ says the reality is so comical and so poignant that you can’t make parody out of it.

I can certainly see where he’s going with that:

People are comparing Obama’s foreign policies to those of Jimmy Carter, and Carter is offended.

The best comment has to be the one from hwuu (#2):

Carter gave the panama canal back, gave mixed signals to the shah of Iran inciting a revolution.
Canceled the Olympics on the basis of Soviet Russia being too mean in their war with Afganistan, Gave the communists a toehold in El Salvador, and got Taiwan thrown out of the UN. And thats just off the top of my head without bringing in domestic agenda issues like the dept of education or Hyper-inflation.

All in all Carter was pretty effective at being a Bad president. He should be offended. It would be like comparing Timothy McVeigh to the Underwear Bomber. [emphasis mine]

Daniel Griswold:

The weight of evidence indicates that, for most firms in most sectors, unionization leaves companies less able to compete successfully. The core problem is that unions cause compensation to rise faster than productivity, eroding profits while at the same time reducing the ability of firms to remain price-competitive. The result over time is that unionized firms have tended to lose market share to nonunionized firms, in domestic as well as international markets.

After studying the effects of unions on company performance, Barry Hirsch of Georgia State University concluded that unions will typically raise labor costs to a firm by 15 percent to 20 percent, while delivering a negligible increase in productivity. As a result, “Unionization is associated with lower investment in physical and intangible capital and slower growth. The combination of a union tax and sluggish governance is proving debilitating in economic environments that are highly competitive and dynamic,” Mr. Hirsch wrote in a 2008 study.

He links to himself, and some other stuff, at Cato.

Hat tip to Boortz.

They should show this in tenth grade, just for the students to pick out the glaring misstatements about the original intent of the Founders. Why do we have a Senate? Why do we have two chambers? And which article/section/clause of the Constitution creates the filibuster? Anyone? Bueller?

Hat tip to Rick.

From here.

Klavan being a little bit silly.

Grateful hat tip to Westsound Modern.

The Hill:

Unions and liberal groups blast Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as ‘puny’

Unions and liberal groups have dismissed Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as “puny” while calling for larger stimulus measures.

More than two dozen organizations, including the AFL-CIO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and National Council of La Raza, warned Democratic leaders in Congress to avoid tackling the troubled economy through incremental action.

They urged the Senate to pass the $15 billion jobs measure, which features a hiring tax cut for small businesses, but called for much more legislation to bring down an unemployment rate the White House projects to average 10 percent this year, more than 9 percent next year and over 8 percent in 2012.

“If this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, on a conference call Friday.

You tax the money away from the businesses that created it, and “stimulate the economy” by siphoning it off onto the special-interest lefty groups. It doesn’t do a damn thing for the economy or for the employment rate, the public gets wise to it, but the liberal special-interest groups say you have to keep right on doing it and make it bigger bigger BIGGER!

It reminds me of that scene in Sideways where Miles insists that the bartender in the wine tasting room should pour him a bigger glass…something that simply isn’t done in wine tasting rooms. Then he insists that the guy leave the bottle, and then when all else fails he gulps out of the spit bucket.

Except Miles got thrown out. And, if memory serves, in his rage he offered to pay for the bottle…I think.

Republicans, if your brain-gears aren’t just spinning away coming up with campaign commercials to make out of this one…you really need a whole different line of work. Obama campaigned against the influence of “special interests,” and here he’s got a whole bar with drunks lined up at it, each one with the same demand: “Stimulus, single-malt, leave the damn bottle.”

The rest of us have to live within our means, and Obama’s pals just yammer away and complain until they get what they want, like spoiled little kids or rancorous drunks.

The Register. Killjoys won’t even wait for us to get to the questions about “So did Picard, Troi and Riker ever exist?” No, they want to go all the way back to Zefram Cochrane’s invention and shut down the party right there.

Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine explained to New Scientist that while interstellar space has just a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic centimetre, as the crew of the Enterprise hit the gas pedal, a compression effect would greatly increase the number of atoms hitting the spacecraft.

As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, “hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts”, which for the crew “would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam”.

This is a very bad thing, because humans in the path of this ray would receive a dose of ionising radiation of 10,000 sieverts, and as Bones McCoy would doubtless confirm, the lethal dose is 6 sieverts.

The result? Death in one second.

Basil at IMAO says the “Party Of No” label, if accurate, isn’t such a bad thing. And his argument makes some pretty good sense. He goes on to include this…

Missed this when it came out. Glad Neo-Neocon did a write-up about it.

Fox News:

Ron Paul has ended Mitt Romney’s three-year run as conservatives’ favorite for president, taking 31 percent of the vote in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll.

Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination.

Romney, former Massachusetts governor and also a 2008 GOP candidate, has won the last three presidential straw polls at the annual conference. This year, he came in second, with 22 percent.

Sarah Palin, who didn’t attend the conference, was a distant third in the straw poll, with 7 percent, followed by Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor, and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.

Thus ends any credibility of CPAC. They just put a crazy man on top. Good job, guys.

Holy crap, now if she’s serious that’s what I call “balls”.

Prediction: Barack Obama Will Choose Not To Run Again; Primary Race Will Be Hillary Clinton & Evan Bayh

I do have to ‘fess up, though, that — although I’m not seeing this as the most likely sequence of events — if things really do go this way I’m not going to be completely surprised. I can envision Robert Gibbs saying at a press conference, “the President views His achievements as so complete and so definitive that second term simply isn’t needed.” Things are just going swimmingly, and if you can’t understand that then you’re just stupid.

Then we’d have a big ol’ shouting match, from sea to shining sea, about whether or not there is in fact anything wrong with being a one-term President. The democrats would all line up to tell us in that bullying way they have, that Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, et al were some of our country’s very finest. We just haven’t been sufficiently sophisticated to understand it before now.

And of course that horse’s ass Carter. He had the courage to get his ass kicked! So let’s get started. Show what a GoodPerson^TM you are. Follow this superior example that’s been given us by Barack and Jimmah.

Yeah. I can definitely see it.

Update: According to my archives…we already have some indications that this type of hairpin-turn thinking is nothing new for them. Nothing new at all:

That is the purpose of education. Charlotte Iserbyt asks, somewhere around 6:20, “you thought it was readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic??”

You can download the full e-book here. And you can also read her summaries on how and why she became a whistleblower, and some of the things she’s seen personally:

There are many talented and respected researchers and activists who have carefully documented the “weird” activities which have taken place “in the name of education.” Any opposition to change agent activities in local schools has invariably been met with cries of “Prove your case, document your statements,” etc. “Resisters”-usually parents-have been called every name in the book. Parents have been told for over thirty years, “You’re the only parent who has ever complained.” The media has been convinced to join in the attack upon common sense views, effectively discrediting the perspective of well-informed citizens. Documentation, when presented, has been ignored and called incomplete. The classic response by the education establishment has been, “You’re taking that out of context!”-even when presented with an entire book which uses their own words to detail exactly what the “resisters” are claiming to be true.

Thirty-six points too high.

Socialism

Socialism had the lowest percentage positive rating and the highest negative rating of any term tested. Still, more than a third of Americans say they have a positive image of socialism.

Exactly how Americans define “socialism” or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans’ reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them — an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.

There are significant differences in reactions to “socialism” across ideological and partisan groups:

* A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.
* Sixty-one percent of liberals say their image of socialism is positive, compared to 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.

Capitalism

“Capitalism,” the word typically used to describe the United States’ prevailing economic system, generates positive ratings from a majority of Americans, with a third saying their reaction is negative.

As was the case with “socialism,” there are differences across population segments.

* Republicans are significantly more positive than Democrats in their reactions to “capitalism,” although majorities of both groups have favorable opinions.
* Opinions of the word by ideology are divided in an unusual, though modest, way. Conservatives have the highest positive image, followed by liberals. Moderates have somewhat lower positive ratings than either of these groups.

This nation, contrary to what’s being bullyingly implied in all walks of life, is actually about something and it isn’t just about the freedom to be an atheist. If that’s all the freedom you want, you can do that just about anywhere now.

It’s about having your own turf, and running it as you see fit so long as you abide by the laws and pay your bills. Being governed and not ruled.

This vision is not compatible with socialism, not even a little tiny bit.

Having 36% of us say socialism is okay, is no better than having 36% of us saying white supremacy is okay. It is every bit as alarming and every bit as much an offense to our founding principles. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You want socialism? There’s over a hundred other spots on the earth you can go. Keep it outta here.

Hat tip again to Miss C.

Obviously it’s an attention-getting ploy…so let’s accommodate her.

Without further comment.

Willa Ford, who starred in the Friday the Thirteenth remake. She’s appealing enough we decided to go ahead and rent it…

Xenia Seeberg, known as Xev Bellringer, half-lizard pleasure creature in the dark science fiction non-anthology Lexx.

Which one?

We-ell…tough choice. I would say Willa easily beats the later Xenia, with her her all cropped down. On another note, how come it is that actresses do that? They get a successful gig going, men start tuning in just to watch them — and then the hair gets chopped.

In fact, I would say with the longer locks, Xenia just b-a-r-e-l-y squeaks out ahead. Just barely. Photo finish.