Ah….finally some good news.

Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.

Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead.

The watershed issue is, of course, that rancid carbuncle of a health care bill.

And the watershed issue of that, of course, is about the majority party completely marginalizing the opposition. Absolutely gelding them. If only for a moment…so they can pass this legislation a whole lot of people don’t want, and stick us with it. Forever.

That’s not Republican propaganda, it’s things the way they really are. And yet it doesn’t really sound “democratic” when it’s described that way, does it?

Update: The democrat party braces for impact:

Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. “I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers,” says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. “If she’s not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout,” the Democrat says. “So right now, she is destined to lose.”

Intensifying the gloom, the Democrat says, is the fact that the same polls showing Coakley falling behind also show President Obama with a healthy approval rating in the state. “With Obama at 60 percent in Massachusetts, this shouldn’t be happening, but it is,” the Democrat says.

Yeah, take that.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The way democrats choose their contenders during their off-elections — that is to say, during presidential election seasons, when the White House is occupied by their opposition — ought to arouse deep, festering skepticism in any true American who is thinking of supporting them. Since JFK, although the fanfare and the hubbub has changed in cosmetic content, the one consistent desire/fulfillment that is given unswerving priority in the nomination contest is this: Something about the individual that makes it likely he can sell product contrary to the interests of the buyer.

Usually it’s “charisma.” They call it by a lot of other names too. “Moral authority” was something John Kerry stole from Maureen Dowd, or Dowd stole from Kerry. Bill Clinton was someone who would be a hell of a lot of fun as a drinking buddy if you were a guy, and if you were a gal, you could sleep with him and later on watch Hillary beat the shit out of him. One way or another, Bill could sell you some crap that wasn’t good for you. Carter? He was a decent guy who didn’t have anything to do with Watergate. So he, too, had a gimmick for plying us with crap. And did. For a little while.

To say suspicion is what this should arouse, is an understatement and a disservice to suspicion. If selling is a test of sound policy, then the sale should be just as likely when it’s sold by an every-man. You shouldn’t need some extra-special, once-in-a-lifetime silver-tongue-demon to get it sold. This is the philosophical basis of Thing I Know #271. So after a year of watching the crap get sold, it just makes sense to say “yeah I like your guy a whole lot because He’s really likable…and your product still sucks.” Now, if Massachusetts can figure this out, what’s everybody else’s excuse?

I shouldn’t make cracks about them, I guess. They’re about to decide if the Declaration of Independence still has meaning for the other forty-nine states…and besides, I’m here in California.

So a group is going to have a sit-down with Avatar on an IMAX screen. I’m part of the group, and it happens I’ve already seen it this past weekend. It is, indeed, a stunning visual treat, and I’ve been wrestling with this decision, but ultimately I’ve decided to sit it out. It would be purely a celebration of “Hey, we’re a group, we’re together, isn’t it great” and I’ve never added much to those…and while by itself this is an excellent product of entertainment, when placed alongside all the others it shows serious gaping defects in originality.

It’s not good enough to see twice. It certainly isn’t good enough to own.

This reviewer speaks for me:

“Avatar” is a cool film. Stunning visuals. Staggering technology. It’s a true breakthrough. That’s the James Cameron way.

But this is the first time Cameron has stopped there — the first time I’ve seen him fail to turn a good-looking film into a great one.

In order to do that, you still have to provide things like a strong story, memorable characters, sharp writing, emotional connection and humor.

Even one or two. Something other than this formulaic story we’ve seen before, populated by two-dimensional types — including token military villains and heroic tree-huggers — stretched out over 162 minutes just to show off Cameron’s tech prowess.

This is not how you spend $300 million. Didn’t anyone learn from the well-spent $30 million of “District 9”? Or, heck, the $27,000 of “Clerks”? Or the $140 million of “Star Trek” that showed how big-budget blockbusters can still be done right?

This is why I’m not a film critic. In all honesty, I would have to give Avatar a very high rating; to pan it would be a disservice to my readers, most of whom would decidedly enjoy it.

It didn’t work for me. And perhaps it’s just me; I’m story-sensitive. And Avatar — there’s no getting around it — has a poor story. The scenery, stunning as it is, is bogged down by this Peter Jackson-ish feel, which is the loss of timing. A scene justifies ten seconds, perhaps fifteen at the most. Instead, it is stretched out to several minutes because it is so awesome.

The reviewer mentions “Star Trek,” which I assume is this year’s release. I have a vivid memory of “The Motion Picture” some thirty years ago in which Kirk and Scott climbed into a shuttle and took an entirely unnecessary back-and-forth sweep across the starship’s exterior. When I held a stopwatch to this it came in at just over four minutes. This particular scene, needless to say, has aged rather badly.

But I suppose there are two types of people in the world, those who like a good story, and those who are more enamored of impressive effects. You’ll certainly enjoy Avatar if you identify more strongly with the second of those two. You really need to ask yourself a serious question about what exactly it is you are trying to get out of a film experience.

Cassy Fiano has made herself lately into the go-to spot for news on this campaign and all the weirdness in it. Many other bloggers have put more energy into it than I have, and to them, we owe our thanks for news like this.

Fueled by the energy of conservative activists, a solid debate performance and a 24-hour, $1.3 million Internet fundraising haul, Massachusetts state Sen. Scott Brown (R) has thrown a major scare into the Democratic establishment in his bid to win next Tuesday’s special Senate election over once heavily favored Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The intensified activity around the campaign to fill the seat of the late senator Edward M. Kennedy (D) highlights the degree to which the race has taken on national significance. A victory, or even a narrow loss, by Brown in the competition for the symbolically important seat would be interpreted as another sign that voters have turned away from the Democrats at the start of the midterm election year.

More urgently, a Brown win would give Republicans 41 seats in the Senate and the ability to block President Obama’s health-care initiative and much of the Democrats’ 2010 congressional agenda. Strategists on both sides concede that a Brown victory would drastically reshape the calculus of the health-care debate, which is now in its final stages.

Of course, it bears mentioning that this all relies on the use of the filibuster, which I’ve said repeatedly should be done-away-with permanently regardless of “who it helps or hurts.” Somewhere, sometime, I should jot down my latest thoughts about this in light of ObamaCare. Like Bob Dole said once, a filibuster is an awful process unless you’re trying to stop something. I must confess that this made a lot less sense to me at the time I was watching him say it, than it does right now.

This legislation is downright repulsive. If I’m ever going to flip on that position of mine, just once, now would be the time. I’ll certainly admit that much.

Boortz says all that needs to be said…not a single word needs changing, adding or dropping.

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI

And a devastating one at that. High casualty numbers are expected. So, what happens next? America comes to the rescue, that’s what. American taxpayers will spend tens of millions of dollars helping the people of Haiti. The American military will soon be involved. The U.S. Southern Command was gearing up for a relief effort within hours after the earthquake. Why? Well .. because that’s just what we do, that’s why. Frankly I would rather see the money spent to help the innocent victims of an earthquake in a neighboring country than on enabling single mothers, drunks and druggies in this country. You see pictures of the children trapped in the rubble in Haiti and you can’t help but want the do something. Not only American government, but American relief agencies will be stepping forward. My wife is a Red Cross volunteer … If she wasn’t involved in another project she would have been packing her bags last night. Americans will step forward .. and the world knows it and expects it. Can’t help but wonder, though, what Hugo Chavez will be doing. How much aid will be coming from Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s socialist whack job? Token help, at best. And what about the United Nations? Care to guess whether or not the wonderful U.N.’s efforts will exceed that done by the people of America. Right. Didn’t think so. And the aftermath? Chavez and his ilk will continue to preach their anti-American rhetoric and Central American will continue to bask in its hatred of the United States. The United Nations will continue to work day-after-day on its anti-American agenda. Then … the next time a disaster strikes … we’ll be there, as usual.

This CNN link lists resources you can use to help the people of Haiti. I urge you to chose agencies that are identified with the people of America rather than agencies affiliated with the UN. We can help without strengthening those who revile us.

The comment international perception of The Ugly American is met with a challenge based on personal experience.

The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with this ferocious-sounding tribe, I learned that they were actually rather friendly. At university, friends who had traveled in the United States came back with more detailed stories, not just of the friendliness of Americans but also of their hospitality (which, in our quaint English way, was translated into something close to gullibility). When I finally got to America myself, I found that not only were the natives friendly and hospitable, they were also incredibly polite. No one tells you this about Americans, but once you notice it, it becomes one of their defining characteristics, especially when they’re abroad.

This is very strange, or at least it says something strange about the way that perception routinely conforms to the preconceptions it would appear to contradict. The archetypal American abroad is perceived as loud and crass even though actually existing American tourists are distinguished by the way they address bus drivers and bartenders as “sir” and are effusive in their thanks when any small service is rendered. We look on with some confusion at these encounters because, on the one hand, the Americans seem a bit country-bumpkinish, and, on the other, good manners are a form of sophistication.
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[F]or a week or so after landing, a form of what might be called Ameristalgia makes us conscious of a rudeness in British life — a coarsening in the texture of daily life — that had hitherto seemed quite normal.

For example. I pay a considerable sum of money to play indoors at Islington Tennis Centre. Eighty percent of the time, the next people to play indicate that your time is up by unzipping their racket covers and strolling on court, without saying a word, without a smile, without acknowledging your existence except as an impediment. In America that would be not just unacceptable but inconceivable.

What is the relevance of this anecdotal trivia to a serious debate about the status of America in the world?

Most of my American friends were depressed and gloomy about the Bush years. Several said that if Bush were re-elected in 2004, they would leave the country. He was and they didn’t. The bottom line is that given the choice, Americans love it rather than leave it.

Hat tip to Karol, who notes that the letter-writer needs new friends.

“…chronicling the most tested presidential administration in history, one test at a time.” Along with the most worn-out lazy journalistic bromide.

I do love seeing overused, hackneyed cookie-cutter cliches receive a righteous, long-overdue smackdown now & then.

Grateful tip o’ the hat to IMAO, who has some fascinating observations about the statistical analysis of this worn-out word-trope. It seems to have fallen out of favor for the time being. Test time’s over?

Hat tip to T-Shirt Guy, who also sports this delightful cartoon that reminds me of a certain kerfufflage that was taking place between blogger friends Buck and Andy on these pages a few days back…

Heh! I’m going to be keeping this one awhile. Judging by what I’ve seen over the last five years, it should come in handy quite often.

Like Andy says: “[S]omeone always takes it there. Every time.”

We were not alone in skewering that silly David Brooks column. Gerard tortured it with a devastating fusillade, simply by linking to this piece over here. And the author there makes a brilliant point about the folks in charge right now, and their lack of ability and experience with the all-important hard-hat logic.

I think the complexifying financial and political environment of the last few decades has simply outstripped the capacity of our “educated classes”, our cognitive elite, to cope with it. The “wizards” in our financial system couldn’t reason effectively about derivatives risk and oversimplified their way into meltdown; regulators failed to foresee the consequences of requiring a quota of mortgage loans to insolvent minority customers; and politico-military strategists weaned on the relative simplicity of confronting nation-state adversaries thrashed pitifully when required to game against fuzzy coalitions of state and non-state actors.

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein argued tellingly in their 1994 book The Bell Curve that 20th-century American society had become a remarkably effective machine for spotting the cognitively gifted of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds and tracking them into careers that would maximize their output. They pointed out, though, that the “educated class” produced by this machine was in danger of becoming self-separated from the mass of the population. I agree with both arguments, and I think David Brooks and Will Collier are pointing us at the results.

In retrospect, I think race- and class-blind meritocracy bought us about 60 years of tolerably good management by Western elites. The meritocracy developed as an adaptation to the escalating complexity of 20th-century life, but there was bound to be a point at which that adaptation would run out of steam. And I think we’ve reached it. The “educated classes” are adrift, lurching from blunder to blunder in a world that has out-complexified their ability to impose a unifying narrative on it, or even a small collection of rival but commensurable narratives. They’re in the exact position of old Soviet central planners, systemically locked into grinding out products nobody wants to buy.

The answer to the problem might surprise you. Keep reading…

Levels of environmental complexity that defeat planning are readily handled by complex adaptive systems. A CAS doesn’t try to plan against the future; instead, the agents in it try lots of adaptive strategies and the successful ones propagate. This is true whether the CAS we’re speaking of is a human immune system, a free market, or an ecology.

So as you go down the list of our confounding problems, you see each one has not just one, but two obvious solutions: A practical, reactive solution and a theoretical, proactive one. Our tendency has been to try out the theoretical, proactive solution first…when it doesn’t work, we try it again. We refuse to adapt. Ahmed the terrorist m-u-s-t not be “tortured” in any way, employers cannot ever be restored to the liberty to hire & fire as they see fit. Our fancy theories, many of which have been provided ample opportunities to bear fruit across the decades — and never once have — keep getting in the way.

Enter the complex adaptive system:

CAS hardening of the financial system is…[easy]. Almost trivial, actually. About all it requires is that we re-stigmatize the carrying of debt at more than a very small proportion of assets. By anybody. With that pressure, there would tend to be enough reserve at all levels of the financial system that it would avoid cascade failures in response to unpredictable shocks.

Cycling back to terrorism, the elite planner’s response to threats like underwear bombs is to build elaborate but increasingly brittle security systems in which airline passengers are involved only as victims. The CAS response would be to arm the passengers, concentrate on fielding bomb-sniffers so cheap that hundreds of thousands of civilians can carry one, and pay bounties on dead terrorists.

At this point I must veer off into two honorable mentions for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award. Pardon the topic drift, but there have been so many candidates for Best Sentence this week, they can’t all go walking away with one…those invisible gold trophies are expensive!

But these two have to be captured in the scroll before they drift on into oblivion. And the subjects are somewhat Similar. Similar enough.

“We’ve all experienced periods of economic hardship that far from ‘depressing’ us in perpetuity, have made us more wise as to how to succeed.”

And…

“The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people.”

Hat tip for that last one, to Proof Positive.

Hat tip to Kathy Schaidle, via Kate at Small Dead Animals.

I don’t have all the facts here, but they’re acting stupidly.

And no, I’m not going to hold a beer summit for these jackholes.

UrbanGrounds:

A new study that is sure to make Liberal and anti-death penalty zealots’ heads explode (which is, obviously, a good thing) showing that the death penalty in Texas might actually work as a deterrent:

HUNTSVILLE — As many as 60 people may be alive today in Texas because two dozen convicted killers were executed last year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state, according to a study of death penalty deterrence by researchers from Sam Houston State University and Duke University.

A review of executions and homicides in Texas by criminologist Raymond Teske at Sam Houston in Huntsville and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concludes a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas follows each execution.

“Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions,” the study published in a recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, said.

Whether the death penalty serves as a deterrent to future murderers or not is not my chief concern about the death penalty.

For me, the greatest argument in favor of carrying out death sentences is about justice. It’s acknowledging that some crimes are so horrific and the people who commit them are so evil, that the only suitable punishment is death.

Stossel edifies.

Even though [Ayn] Rand published “Atlas” in 1957, her descriptions of intrusive and bloated government read like today’s news. The “Preservation of Livelihood Law” and “Equalization of Opportunity Law” could be Nancy Pelosi’s or Harry Reid’s work.
:
The novel’s chief villain is Wesley Mouch, a bureaucrat who cripples the economy with endless regulations. This sounds familiar. Reason magazine reports that “as he looks around Washington these days,” Rep. Paul Ryan “can’t help but think he’s seeing a lot of Wesley Mouch”.

Mr. Miller’s comments, toward the end, speak for themselves. And liberals, woman-haters, conservative “intellectuals” et al, have heart pal(in)pitations about it.

Hat tip to Texas4Palin.

They have many reasons for hating her so much. And there are other things to notice about them as well. However, hesitant as I may be to condemn them…since I have friends, co-workers, acquaintances I consider to be brainy, et cetera, who count themselves proudly among the Palin bashers…

…the actual point is intellectually vacuous. That Sarah Palin is some kind of a lightweight or a dimbulb. They all set out confidently, ready to “participate in debate,” really lay the smack down on her. But in the end, they can make it convincing only by hurriedly changing the subject to “I wonder if you can help me with a problem I’m having with my computer” or “So have you seen that new Avatar movie?”

The more people get to know her, the more they like her.

And the more people get to know Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer and Ben Nelson…the more they like her.

Brooks places the movement under his microscope.

Over the course of this year, the tea party movement will probably be transformed. Right now, it is an amateurish movement with mediocre leadership. But several bright and polished politicians, like Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, are unofficially competing to become its de facto leader. If they succeed, their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics. After all, it represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.
:
Personally, I’m not a fan of this movement. But I can certainly see its potential to shape the coming decade. [emphasis mine]

I place him under mine:

I have had conversations with Tea Party people, and I have also had conversations with those who are antitheses of Tea Party people. The former tend to present pretty solid arguments. They present arguments that are complete. The latter, like Brooks who is “not a fan,” do not. Their arguments are full of contradictions, rough edges, passion elevated above logic. The most notable problem with what they say, is the apparent offering that the Vice Presidency demands all kinds of sophistication when Sarah Palin is being considered for it but suddenly is a typical political-hack job that doesn’t demand anything when Joe Biden is actually in it.

That is the most glaring problem. There are many others.

They seem to be a lot more concerned with what kind of friends they’re making by thinking a certain thing, than with whether the certain-thing makes any sense.

I emphasized Brooks’ statements to illuminate the most simple of the many problems with the arguments I’ve seen him present over the past few months & years. The message of the Tea Party is “deeply rooted in American history” — and he’s not a fan of it? What’s that about, exactly? Isn’t that worth at least explaining? He doesn’t seem to think so; evidently his readers are just supposed to “get it.”

Get what, I wonder?

Dorgan…

“Although I still have a passion for public service and enjoy my work in the Senate, I have other interests and I have other things I would like to pursue outside of public life. I have written two books and have an invitation from a publisher to write two more books. I would like to do some teaching and would also like to work on energy policy in the private sector.

“So, over this holiday season, I have come to the conclusion, with the support of my family, that I will not be seeking another term in the U.S. Senate in 2010. It is a hard decision to make after thirty years in the Congress, but I believe it is the right time for me to pursue these other interests.”

Ritter…

A source tells Political Wire that Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) is ending his re-election campaign. A fundraiser scheduled for tonight was canceled and all campaign staff was sent home in the middle of the day.

The decision does not appear to be fundraising related which has reportedly gone better than expected.

Dodd…

Embattled Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has scheduled a press conference at his home in Connecticut Wednesday at which he is expected to announce he will not seek re-election, according to sources familiar with his plans.

Dodd’s retirement comes after months of speculation about his political future, and amid faltering polling numbers and a growing sense among the Democratic establishment that he could not win a sixth term.

Rats fleeing a sinking ship. Wow, that democrat party is really an unstoppable juggernaut, isn’t it? Really the wave of the future.

Hugh Hewitt rattles off the bullet points. A successful midterm campaign would capture each one of them, and make the best use of all. That’s not asking too much is it?

First, the government takeover of private life is deeply alarming. The massive thrusts of Washington, D.C. into the control of health care, the car business, the banks generally and the home loan industry specifically — all these are obvious and disquietingly huge intrusions of the federal government’s presence into private life.

Americans hate to be pushed around, especially by the federal government. The president’s plans for even more power grabs via the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior using “global warming” as an excuse haven’t yet touched most Americans, but they are out in the open and coming. Only a rebalancing of power in D.C. will forestall further metastasis of government.

A second reason to rebalance the House and Senate by voting for the GOP is the simple fact that must be repeated again and again: Lower taxes equal job growth. Whatever minor improvement in the unemployment numbers that emerges in 2010 — if any — will be threatened by the looming lapse of the Bush tax cuts in 2011 unless Congress obliges the president to abandon his “spread the wealth” gospel that views every tax increase as a form of economic justice, regardless of the cost in real jobs.
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The endless blaming of George W. Bush has also become an obvious dodge of responsibility, a childish complaint that satisfies only the hard Left. The president has played that card so often and in so many circumstances that the mention of Obama’s predecessor by any senior administration official has become a laugh line or a cue in a drinking game.

Big Government:

From the time he launched his campaign for president three years ago, Barack Obama had to consider how he would react to the first serious act of terrorism during the campaign, or if he won, on his watch. His fellow Democrats had been thinking about the moment even longer – since the September day in 2001 when attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon defined George W. Bush’s presidency and gave Republicans a decisive advantage on a defining political issue.

And yet the White House’s response to last week’s attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit could rank as one of the low points of the new president’s first year. Over the course of five days, Obama’s Obama’ reaction ranged from low-keyed to reassuring to, finally, a vow to find out what went wrong. The episode was a baffling, unforced error in presidential symbolism, hardly a small part of the presidency, and the moment at which yet another of the old political maxims that Obama had sought to transcend – the Democrats’ vulnerability on national security – reasserted itself.

Hat tip to Jawa Report.

It’s an even bigger weakness when you stop to consider what it will take to turn it around: The democrat method of fighting terror, has to succeed in a situation in which it can be asserted, in fact it is undeniable, that the opponents methods would have manifestly failed.

Which means — we have to actually see certain disaster averted because some Great Compromiser had the courage to sit down and Talk Out Our Differences With Our Enemies. The “Picard Maneuver” has to actually work in practice, not just continue to drift around as a theory among those who live out pathetic lives to avoid confrontation.

In other words — it’s not changing. And if anyone is tasked with the job of changing it, they should ask themselves who they pissed off to get that job.

Blog geniuses at work:

I sent my fifty predictions for 2010 off to Cassy Fiano on New Year’s Eve Day, as she requested. It would appear the last of those, #50,

California to become our first bankrupt state. To be followed by New York.

…may end up the first one to come true. If we are to go by the word of this Review & Outlook column in the Wall Street Journal.

Remember how $200 billion in federal stimulus cash was supposed to save the states from fiscal calamity? Well, hold on to your paychecks, because a big story of 2010 will be how all that free money has set the states up for an even bigger mess this year and into the future.

The combined deficits of the states for 2010 and 2011 could hit $260 billion, according to a survey by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ten states have a deficit, relative to the size of their expenditures, as bleak as that of near-bankrupt California. The Golden State starts the year another $6 billion in arrears despite a large income and sales tax hike last year. New York is literally down to its last dollar. Revenues are down, to be sure, but in several ways the stimulus has also made things worse.

This is so much bigger than Barack Obama. It is the peril of investing authority in those who are most fun to watch.

See, for the fun-to-watch to be actually electable, they have to have some idea about what they’re going to do when they got in. Even Obama had a little tiny bit of this going on during the campaign. Just enough. And their ideas have to be fun too.

What makes an idea fun? Well, it has to be theoretical. Which means it has to be untested. “Put water on that burning house” is not sufficiently theoretical because it is not sufficiently untested. Therefore it isn’t fun.

And, sadly, it has to have some irony involved too. It has to have an element of “you wouldn’t think this would work, but…” In this case, the irony is that we can get ourselves out of a fiscally unsound situation by spending lots of money on bullshit. You wouldn’t think that would work, but… And that’s the plan.

Well, more than half the time the initial impressions are correct. Bailing water into a sinking canoe is not an effective way to keep it from sinking…spraying gasoline instead of water on a house fire is not a good way to stop the fire…spending lavish sums of money on nonsense is not a good way to cure a financial headache.

The irony doesn’t serve us well. But it is fun, so we keep doing it. And we’ll do it some more, until Prediction #50 is fulfilled.

Blogger friend Cas wants our predictions for the year ahead. The Congress stuff seems so easy, that in my reply I just stayed away from it entirely and still spouted off fifty other items. Republicans will take back the House; they’ll fail to take the Senate, although it’s a practical impossibility for them not to pick up seats. The media will instruct us to believe that this is not, repeat not, a repeat of 1994 because of this failure to take back the Senate.

President Obama won’t really do anything besides give wonderful speeches and spend money. He’ll talk a lot about what “we” have done wrong; He and His friends aren’t included in that, they do everything perfectly. Anyhow, that’s the government policy throughout 2010, give wonderful speeches and spend lots of money. On the media side, it’s do a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing about how wonderful the speech was and that it was the BEST ONE EVAR.

Those aren’t even predictions. They’re just observations of a stationary object. They involve no calculation-of-trajectory, no risk.

These are predictions. They were so much fun, I had to send along a thank-you-note when I finished with them.

1. Obama’s popularity to dip some more, especially among the extreme left, over gay-marriage, the Nobel speech, the public option thing.
2. Janet Napolitano will head home to spend more time with her family. It will become a popular figure of speech to say “this is so bad Janet Napolitano would say it’s perfect.”
3. GOP will become more fractured over is the earth burning up…is Sarah Palin stupid…is profiling wrong…
4. Speaking of Palin, she will stump for five GOP candidates, four of them will win, everyone will talk about the one who didn’t.
5. Morgan and his gal will go out to a nice restaurant with Cassy and her guy.
6. Oprah will have lots and lots and lots of farewell tours, just like Barbra.
7. We’re going to have some kind of environmental action, as Obama seeks to repair relations with His base.
8. Lots and lots of new jobs that don’t actually produce anything…”green” jobs…career bureaucrats…union hacks.
9. Some new bailout plan will be passed, for institutions of higher learning, and for newspapers.
10. Lots of scandal plaguing democrats and Republicans. All the Republicans will be forced to step down, all the democrats will survive.
11. Gold will pass $1750 an ounce.
12. A new reality teevee show is introduced, revolving around the family of the “Balloon Boy.” Yes, there is an injunction or parole condition that checks this, but they’ll get around it somehow.
13. Hooters loses a lawsuit and has to hire male waitresses in all their restaurants.
14. A new “health craze” is going to emerge, by way of a new book, that revolves around not-overthinking things. This has actually been going on for quite some time now, but in 2010 it will become overt and in-your-face. It will be something like what the running craze was in the 1970’s. Emotions will become much more important. Self-centeredness will become the new currency. “Mood rings,” in some form or fashion, will come back in style.
15. The Government will commission some software designer to come up with adware that pops up reminders to computer users that they need to work harder at leaving a smaller carbon footprint. It will be illegal to sell computers that don’t have this installed, or to try to remove it. The Commerce Clause will be cited as the constitutional authority for this kind of regulation.
16. Speaking of constitutionally questionable regulation, Someone will be fined and jailed for failing to buy health insurance, and only the bloggers will talk about it. Keith Olbermann and Andrew Sullivan will make fun of us. Then Sarah Palin will put up a Facebook entry mentioning it, and they’ll make fun of her too.
17. 2010 will be all carbon, all the time. The democrats will understand they have squandered all the politcal capital they ever had, and more, passing ObamaCare, and they’ll see the climate “crisis” as the one way they can get more.
18. Iraq could go in either direction. But if it is neutralized as a safe haven for terrorists, Obama will get the credit, and if it turns into a meat grinder it’ll all be Bush’s fault.
19. Iran will chug merrily along building nuclear weapons. This won’t work out to a horrible climax just yet, they’re going to be biding their time throughout 2010.
20. Those scooters people use when they’re genuinely handicapped — or just plain fat and lazy. They’re going to start putting chemical toilets into them. Just like that guy’s easy-chair in “Idiocracy.”
21. Voice recognition software will be built into keyboards. It will become as common as webcams, so everyone has it. And they’ll use it. You’ll walk into a coffee shop and the cacaphony of people “typing” will completely overwhelm you.
22. There will be some kind of successful court action that is the first step to getting “IN GOD WE TRUST” off of our money.
23. There will be some kind of congressional action making it illegal for anyone under a certain age to enter a national park, accompanied by an adult or not. Because of this, Boy Scouts will no longer do any hiking or camping, and will become an urban sing-a-long.
24. Womens’ fashions will become awful yet one more time. No bare legs, no elegant dresses, no skirts of any kind. Baggy sweat pants will be all the rage, even at formal occasions. Any woman not wearing a frumpy sweat shirt will be hissed at by other women, and said to be “dick-whipped” by her boyfriend or husband.
25. Speaking of which, they’ll make a Wonder Woman movie and she’ll be wearing ugly overalls. The story will be like one half of “Thelma & Louise,” crossed with “Erin Brockovich.” She’ll stop a mega-corporate conglomerate led by some evil man that is conspiring to (somehow) make a zillion dollars overnight by dumping toxic sludge into a river making all the adorable woodland creatures sick. Her sexuality is no longer a mystery and they make sure it’s clearly established that she’s a les[bi]an every ten minutes.
26. Oh, and ditto for Tomb Raider. She, too, will stop some middle-aged white guy who wears nice suits in the middle of the night from dumping toxic sludge into the river killing all the woodland creatures, and she’ll be out-and-proud gay.
27. Foreclosures will plateau out and then they will spike again as the interest rate goes up and up and up.
28. The occult will become popular, as people feel a need to believe in something, and feel stigmatized from believing in anything else.
29. Gene[a]logy will make a comeback. Look for a remake of “Roots.” Google will release a web-based app that will store and organize the results of personal research.
30. Watching movies at work will become commonplace, as employment fulfills less and less of a practical purpose.
31. Delivery services will become “clouded,” just like “cloud computing,” meaning there will be companies in the business of providing the delivery of groceries, bottled water, hot coffee drinks, etc. provided by other companies. And then we’ll be on the fast track to becoming the bloated floating egg-humans in Wall-E.
32. The “bonus czar” will absolutely, positively be reviewing “executive bonuses” for all firms, whether they received bailout money or not, be they publicly traded or not. And then the definition of “executive” will trickle down. And then it will be salaries, not bonuses. The government will be wanting to review resumes of network engineers and systems analysts to see if they’re worth their salt, before it’s done.
33. We’re going to try out France’s failed program of forcing everyone to work 30 hours or less per week, in an effort to force companies to hire more people.
34. The U.S. Mint will issue yet *another* awkward dollar-coin with a woman’s image on the face of it…and, just like the last three, it will be unpopular, awkward, refuse to work in vending machines the way it’s supposed to. It will be recalled and the feminists will complain. Bitterly. Again.
35. There’ll be some crisis in the middle east, gas will get more expensive, and then they’ll advertise it by the liter to make it look affordable.
36. Obama will put a solar panel on the White House. Welcome back, Carter.
37. They’ll make another Superman movie, and this time he’ll — all together now — ACTUALLY FIGHT SOMEBODY.
38. The Atlas Shrugged movie, on the other hand, will see another year come & go without getting made.
39. A talented young black guy who looks kind of like a white girl will appear on the scene and will be vigorously promoted as “The Next Michael Jackson.”
40. Secretary of State Clinton will resign, and start writing a tell-all. She’ll be responsible for starting a whole new wave of feminism, to be informally known as “Our Turn” feminism or “We’ve Waited Long Enough” feminism. It’ll have all the paranoia of all the previous waves of feminism.
41. Timothy Geithner, adieu.
42. Modesty Blaise movie.
43. They’re going to breed an even smaller dog. It’ll be informally known as a “pocket puppy.” They’ll make special sweaters for stupid girls and women who can tuck several pocket dogs away along the length of their arms. And she will have music wherever she goes…
44. Because the people who make Saturday morning cartoons absolutely loathe parents, these forms of entertainment will become even louder and more headache-inducing.
45. It will become fashionable to remake period classics, like Of Mice and Men, and Tale of Two Cities, for the present time, just like that fad of remaking Shakespeare plays for the present during the early 2000’s. In this version of Grapes of Wrath, look for the Depression to be George W. Bush’s fault. Tom Joad will be played by Ice Cube.
46. “Obama” will become a popular slang term to describe a manager who is constantly giving wonderful speeches and organizing “summits” but never actually doing anything to improve any situation besides spending lots of money.
47. Apple will come out with a new device that can store as much music as an iPod, but clip in place behind the ear so you can’t tell if someone’s listening to you or rocking out.
48. Employers will be forbidden from discriminating against people who can’t show up on time.
49. Cable television companies will be required to make sure no more than 50% of their channels are in English because that’s racist.
50. California to become our first bankrupt state. To be followed by New York.

Jules Crittenden is among those happy to see the last decade go. He has many strong arguments on his side, including some personal tragedies, and some others having to do with things that happened to us all. They’re all based on truth.

And the common thread amongst them is this: In the last ten year we seem to have become awfully fond of the idea that all others must agree with us on this issue or that one — lock-step — or else they’re evil. And, of course, this divisive situation is all the other fellow’s fault. Where’d we get this? Since Y2K, this funny idea has been in a full, and none too pleasing, bloom.

What is it? Did Bush vs. Gore really do that to us?

God damn the naughts.

God damn the Naughts. It was a perverse decade, in which that thing so many responsible people had agreed was the right thing to do, the removal of a dangerous, mass-murdering dictator, was strangely rendered not just unnecessary but an evil act, by an unexpected twist of fate. The accusations of lies were themselves lies, all of it built on a tyrant’s framework of lies, that together became an unquenchable fire that just burned hotter. It was as revolting as the stench of death, the way they tried to make it meaningless and wrong. Except that death is honest.
:
God damn the Naughts.

It was odd, how people turned to the kind of naivete that got us into all of that in the first place. Maybe they expected a cheap kind of messianic deliverance. That’s not so odd. In dire times, people have always wanted the easy out. I remember as well the unexpected feeling of relief when they had their way. They wanted it, let them have it, as one friend said. That feeling wouldn’t last long.

Hat tip to blogger friend Buck.

Julie Newmar in Monkees Get Out More Dirt (1967)

A good idea from Boortz, who links to Shane Gilnes’ Cartoon Retro.

This one has a whole lot of dust on it.

I was looking for something else. Specifically, I had heard or seen somewhere that Bo’s parents were in the same accident as Luke’s parents and they were in the same accident as Daisy’s parents and they were in the same accident as Coy and Vance’s parents…I figure it had to be a flatbed truck on a bridge that got washed out. In fact Jesse was supposed to be the eleventh one and he got his directions mixed up or got a case of measles or something.

I can’t remember where I saw this. Or if I read it somewhere. Or if I simply arrived at it by process of elimination (all the particulars, together, don’t really allow for anything else).

Anyway. I didn’t find the legend of the Duke tragedy at the river-bridge washout. But I did find this. It’s a decent list.

Noemie Emery writing in the Weekly Standard:

For years now, those on the left have conflated resistance to any item of their agenda–high taxes, extravagant spending, laxity on crime, what have you–with motives of a dark nature: racism, nativism, fear of “the other,” and various species of “hate.”…But it was the appearance in 2009 of the real first black president that lifted this theme to a whole new level: The left, which invented first “hate speech” (opinions they didn’t like) and then “hate crimes” (crimes judged less on the criminal’s actions than on what he was presumed to be thinking), has now gone on to its epiphany, which is “hate” defined not by your words or deeds but by what other people have decided you really think. “Hate” is no longer what you do or say, but what a liberal says that you think and projects on to you. You are punished for what someone else claims you were thinking. It hardly makes sense, but it does serve a political purpose. You could call it Secondhand Hate.

Fourth Check Raise gets the hat tip on this. Some naughty language.

He forgot the big one (although he brushed up against it in certain places in the seventy minutes): Necessity. Nothing in the plot was necessary, for anything. It wasn’t necessary to leave Naboo, it wasn’t necessary to go back, it wasn’t necessary to bring Jar Jar Binks along to get through the Planet Core, it wasn’t necessary to file a no-confidence motion against Chancellor Finis Valorum, it wasn’t necessary for Padme Amidala to sign a treaty, it wasn’t necessary to enter the pod race.

Well alright, it was necessary to enter the pod race. But there was no suspense involved in that one at all. The audience was given no time to ponder to themselves “yikes, what are our heroes going to do about this problem?” Not like…Han and Luke wondering how they’re going to go about rescuing the Princess…or Han, Luke and Leia wondering how they’re going to make it to the Millenium Falcon with all those stormtroopers surrounding it.

This goes back to the guy’s very first complaint: It doesn’t have a protagonist. That’s the definition. Protagonist = “I want to do this thing, how am I going to do it?” Antagonist = “I want to stop that guy from doing this thing.”

On the plus side of things, I disagree with the caustic, prostitute-murdering critic about the lightsaber fighting. This was unbelievably cool, I thought. And with “conventional” sword fighting, it wouldn’t work; this was strictly Jedi choreography. The Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Maul three-way? Nobody cared about that? You kiddin’?

Andy Kessler’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

The House has passed a $154 billion jobs bill, and the administration has announced a plan to spend $50 billion of repaid TARP money to “create” jobs—this time its green jobs, “shovel ready” infrastructure projects ($27.5 billion for highway construction and repair) and a tax credit for small businesses.

More infrastructure? Recycling Great Depression-era projects is lame. My advice? Put down that shovel! It’s time to try something else.

We’re in a knowledge economy now; we use high-tech tools to efficiently and effectively design, make, market and sell. Building roads and bridges willy-nilly won’t make us more productive; and without increases in productivity and the associated corporate profits, there can be no sustainable job creation, no increase in standards of living, and no real economic recovery.

Given that real tax cuts are off the table and a new stimulus (even if it isn’t called that) is inevitable, the best we can hope for is to use the power of the government to clear a path that private enterprise can’t, via one-off projects that end and disband. Stop thinking concrete and massive construction projects. Think small—photons, electrons and proteins.

He continues with six ideas…creative, promising, business-friendly ideas. Ideas that would make business, as well as everyday tasks like education, more effective and more efficient. They get back to that old pre-Obama paradigm of “do more with less.” Remember that? It treated us pretty well while we were treating it well.

Rush Limbaugh had another idea. School textbooks are currently loaded with lies about “climate change,” and someone needs to go through them all and correct them in the wake of ClimateGate.

I’m sure we can all think of some more ideas if we really try.

No need to ask Dana Milbank…or for that matter, his critic Ann Coulter.

Irritated at the bumps on the road to the Democrats’ Thousand-Year Reich, liberals are now claiming that Republican Sen. Tom Coburn requested a prayer for the death of Sen. Bob Byrd during the health care debate last Saturday night.

Here is what Coburn actually said: “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”

After reporting Coburn’s remark, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank added: “It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.).”

Contrary to Milbank’s claim, I find it extremely easy to get away from that conclusion. In fact, I’m a regular Houdini when it comes to that conclusion. That conclusion couldn’t hold me for a second.

There are a million ways a senator could miss a vote, other than by dying. Ask Patrick Kennedy. At 1 a.m. on a Sunday night in the middle of a historic blizzard in the nation’s capital, I don’t think the first thing that came to anyone’s mind was death. More likely it was: “Last call.”

I’m confused. I thought when you find it desirable to call out the less desirable aspects of new legislation…PATRIOT Act, ObamaCare…it was execrable for others to leap to the conclusion that your motives were nefarious, or even anything less than pristine. Unpatriotic…wanting Robert Byrd to be dead. I thought it was an obligation everyone else had to presume the very best and noblest of intentions out of you. Did something change?

Or is it yet another double-standard, just another way to leave the most left-wing ideas unchallenged — the only way they can survive — and inflict death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts on all other ideas. Is that the end goal, and however you manage to get there…is just however you manage to get there.

Torrey DeVitto, bested a couple weeks ago in a head-to-head against Scarlett Johansson.

Bollywood superstar Urmila Matadonkar.

I like Urmila. In fact, for the Wonder Woman live-action film, she’d be on my short-list. Sure you could say her nose isn’t shaped “right”…but I think it’s perfect. Amazon means — someone living on an island off the shores of Greece, right? That, and an awesome way to avoid shopping malls. Exotic beauty. Trying, and failing, and trying again ot make a home for herself in modern America. Urmila would be great for that.

Bu-u-u-ut…in tonight’s match-up, I’m afraid Torrey wins. In my opinion anyway. We’ll see how the Bollywood beauty does next week.

Have to jump out the door real quick and go get all the stuff I really wanted.

Image from here.