Keep an eye on the bastards

The Majority Tracker is a new website by Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann showing what legislative highjinks the democrats are up to and what republicans would have done differently (not necessarily always better, just differently).

This one is going on my blogroll.

The Californication of Energy

The post below is by my husband over at NRO - The Corner

Thanks to the esteemed Henry Waxman inserting a provision about "decoupling" into the borrow-and-spend/debt/European social model bill, energy consumers face paying the same for less energy. Jonathan Tolman has the full story. This is horrible.

Just One Minute

I like this website. I especially enjoyed their savage fisking of Paul Krugman.

The ending is just ooey-gooey fisking goodness....

LIBERTARIAN CORONARY ALERT: Krugman's column continues with this howler:

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

Well, the idea that tax cuts are *always" better is pretty bold, since corner solutions are rarely optimal. That said, what an absurd example - is it really inconceivable that a private system of air control could develop in the absence of a Federal government? The current system might well be more efficient that a private alternative but the notion that only the Feds stand between the flying public and frequent collisions is daft. But let me make a more forceful case for tax cuts, relying in this newly-developed Krug-logic: anyone who thinks that Federal spending is more efficient than tax cuts believes that the entire private system of restaurants and diners should be closed down in favor of government-run cafeterias located in every Post Office. Yeah! Chew on that!

Oh, I am chewing that up.

Taking without paying

Eminent Domain is bad. RealClearPolitics provides another example of why here.

BigHollywood's Environmental Advice

I think I whole-heartedly agree with all 10 of these Go-Green tips for Hollywood Insiders from BigHollywood.com.

I especially like ...

5. Don’t Reproduce. Many people are shocked when they learn that fewer than 25% of the Screen Actors Guild have been spayed or neutered. Sure, babies make great fashion accessories and it’s fun to give them awesome names, like Kumquat Wildebeest Paltrow and Toploader Enchilada Cage. But these miniature humans will eventually grow up and begin ravenously eating up the Earth’s depleted reserves of aux pairs and psychotherapists.

If you need a laugh, you'll get it there!

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Whenever a new environmental "study" comes out, like this one here from the NOAA, I always read very carefully where the source information is.

Because if the "scientist" is basing their findings on computer models, then the study is basically trash. Garbage in, garbage out.

Why do I say that? Because no computer simulation of Earth's climate has ever correctly replicated a historic weather pattern. What do I mean? Well, we know fairly precisely what the global climate was say in the 1980s. If the computer model programs were accurate, then all a "scientist" would have to do is put in the known data collected from the 1980s and the computer simulation would duplicate it.

But no computer simulation or model has ever even achieved this basic task because the scientists still don't fully understand how clouds function in the atmosphere, let alone how the ocean (70%+ of the earth's surface) impacts climate.

And they know they don't know it too - if you look at the article I linked to above, it only mentions "models" buried at the very end of the article. At the beginning, the article uses words like "scientific study", "pioneering study" and "findings" to cover up for the fact that since this article is discussing the climate's future, it must run computer simulations (aka computer models). While much data can be real and factual, a computer simulation is not scientific proof.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself this, if the accuracy of weather predictions breaks down 10 days out, why should you believe that "scientists" can predict what the global climate will be 100 years from now - or even 1,000 years as this study claims?

End Farm Subsidies

reason.tv has a great video explaining why farm subsidies started in the 1930s as a "temporary solution" are bad, bad, bad.

Consider these facts. Ninety percent of all subsidies go to just five crops: corn, rice, cotton, wheat, and soybeans. Two thirds of all farm products—including perishable fruits and vegetables—receive almost no subsidies. And just 10 percent of recipients receive 75 percent of all subsidies. A program intended to be a “temporary solution” has become one of our government’s most glaring examples of corporate welfare.

I'm so glad they also called the sugar lobby out because those jerks are nasty.

By the way, check out this reason.tv video on why corn for fuel is idiotic.

Stifling Dissent

Obama tells politicians to put aside politics in order to pass the (un)stimulus bill.

What arrogance!

This is the classic liberal double-speak where they say things "let's put aside politics" in order to shut down honest debate. Let's face it, politics is not petty. Politics is the discussion and debate over what means best achieve an end.

This is America, we have the inalienable right to debate what's best for our county. Telling the "loyal opposition" they should shut up, is not leadership, it is bullying.

Obama and The Senate Don't Get It

Rush Limbaugh is right. Conservatives WANT the Senate republicans to stand up to Obama. To grow a spine. Telling Rush to back off is ignoring their base and it will come back to bite them.

He may be meeting with conservatives in Congress but I urge them not to believe a word he says.

Obama may be meeting conservatives a bit by throwing out certain liberal agenda programs from the un-stimulating "stimulus" package, but that doesn't mean he isn't goal oriented. These bits of social-liberal agenda pork shouldn't be in an economic package in the first place.

And speaking of unspeakable earmarks for the liberal/socialists, what the hell is spending for the felonious ACORN doing in the stimulus package. Looks like blatent vote purchasing to me.

This stimulus package must fail. It is nothing less than funding of liberal socialism in America. Far more intelligent stimulus ideas are out there which do not need to be funded by American taxpayers. Ideas like a payroll tax holiday or reducing regulations on small businesses or forcing big companies to go into bankrupcy so they are forced to responsibly restructure their organization rather than live off of our tax money.

US News and World Report piles on with an anti-stimulus piece called "10 Reasons to Whack Obama's Stimulus Plan." Lots of really good and reasonable objections in there.

And of course, there are these riduculous new CAFE regulations being imposed bu Obama on the struggling US automotive companies. That's real Harvard brains you've got there, Obama. Put huge and stupid EPA regulations on a major industry (aka employer) already struggling to keep afloat. Real Harvard brains.

This guy gets it however the good Senator from Tennesse

First TV interview and it is with an arab tv station. Look's like Obama is finally owning up to his muslim upbringing (formerly taboo during the election).

Does anyone else remember Obama saying, "My muslim faith" during an interview with Geroge Stephanapolis and George having to correcting him with "you mean your Christian faith"? You don't - here it is...



Perhaps Obama is more than one "first". Truly an affirmative action presidency.

Cato by the way

In addition to the video below, Daniel Mitchell of CATO also has a great clip on how the Keynesian economic theory behind this stimulus package is wrong, wrong, wrong.

You're gettin an education here.

Cato Calls Out Obama

In the video below, Daniel Mitchell (from the libertarian think tank CATO) explains just how this stimulus package from Obama will NOT work and is bad for the American people. He makes a lot of good points, especially since this is the socialist history of failure repeating itself.

Calling for Names

Let's Stop Calling It the Stimulus
[by my husband and posted at NRO]

Further to my last post, I agree with others who've been saying we should stop calling the current pork bill a "stimulus" package. It stimulates only the Swiss bank accounts of the well-connected (all right, that may be over the top, but not by much). More accurately, it's a borrow-and-spend package or a tax-our-children-and-spend package. Other ideas welcome.

An Agenda For Congress

Posted at NRO by my husband.

If you're looking for an alternative to the various so-called stimulus packages floating around, check out CEI's Agenda for Congress, launched today. It presents a veritable smorgasbord of policy ideas aimed at growing the economy, advancing freedom and not-costing-the-taxpayer-a-dime. Remember: a philanthropist is someone who spends his own money to advance his version of Utopia. A socialist is someone who spends your money to advance his version of Utopia.

The Real Roe and Doe

The Boston Globe as an honest look at what Roe and Doe have wrought. Who'd have thought it?

Jay Nordlinger's Mail

Over at NRO, Jay Nordlinger published some bits of his readers mail - I particularly liked this.

Something humorous out of the military—specifically, out of our troops in Afghanistan: I received a list saying, “You may be a Taliban if . . .”—and here were three of the answers:

You refine heroin for a living but have a moral objection to beer.
You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launchers but can’t afford shoes.
You wipe your hiney with your bare left hand but consider bacon unclean.

Anyway, got a real kick out of those . . .

Boy Down

Will try to blog later but I am a mother first.

My youngest is ill with a nasty cough and I am furious because the FDA no longer sanctions the use of many OTC cold medicines for children under 6 years old.

One year it is okay, then next I have to watch my child suffer for some ridiculous precautionary principle dingus scientist.

Some idiot with no children of his own is telling me I have to watch my child cough until he vomits because of some slight chance a medicine might do more harm than good.

I have to give my kid honey and humidifiers instead of proper medicine that worked on my older child because some regulation-happy pencil-necked geek.

(Yes, I said dingus.)

My baby is ill and I am feeling a tad Mother-Bear-Ferocious right now.

What I tell my kids

As a mother, I have a few things I repeatedly tell my children.

I think we should say these things to our politicians as well.

"People shout when they think they aren't being heard."

"If you have to say you are sorry, then it's too late. You've already done something wrong."

"Better to do something slow and right, then fast and wrong."

"Life is a journey, not a race. If you go to fast, you'll miss stuff."

"Being good is as important as being right. Best to be both whenever possible."

"Doing what is good, makes you feel good. Doing something bad, makes your feel bad."

"Your mother is your boss forever."

Fisk Job

I'm too tired to do it but read this Opinion in the New York Times and simply get overwhiled by how much you could fisk it.

I may come back to this dross later but my kids are at a neighbors and I want a nap.

From TigerHawk

This was interesting enough to me to just copy it in full. Check out TigerHawk too.

In the middle of Evan Thomas' insidery campaign book, A Long Time Coming, there is a section on early conflict between John McCain and Barack Obama in the Senate, even before Obama was openly running for president. I thought this bit was interesting for more than one reason:

Obama further aliented McCain on the immigration issue. McCain took great political risks on immigration, defying the GOP faithful who wanted to build a wall across the Mexican border and arrest and detain illegal immigrants. Working with Ted Kennedy and a bipartisan group, McCain came up with compromise legislation to create a guest-worker program. Obama asked to join the group. The senators agreed to hang together to vote against amendments from both the right and the left. Some very conservative senators honored the agreement, voting against conservative amendments -- but Obama did not, voting in favor of a number of liberal amendments. After one meeting, Kennedy chewed Obama out for his fickleness. (Months later, asked by a colleague why he had endorsed Obama for president, Kennedy gave a one-word answer: "Caroline.")

Without reading too much into this anecdote, on immigration, at least, Barack Obama took care of his base and John McCain did not, and his base included Caroline Kennedy. She must indeed be a little bitter about now.

John Stossel's Cry For Sanity

In his article at The Weekly Standard titled, This Is No Time To Panic, the great John Stossel calls for measured thinking rather than crisis-mode panic.

I especially like his closing...

Of course some of those companies would fail, and suddenly letting that happen is a political no-no. When the automakers came to Washington to beg, Nancy Pelosi said, "We reject those advocating bankruptcy." Why? Bankruptcy can be a good thing. Kmart declared bankruptcy in 2002, but it didn't disappear. Filing for bankruptcy allowed the company to reorganize itself and reemerge stronger.

George W. Bush told CNN, "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." Why did Bush and Pelosi think they knew how to run the economy? F.A. Hayek famously termed this the "fatal conceit"--governments can't possibly know everything that's going on in an economy, and so while government intervention may delay some economic pain, it cannot stop it.

"The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled," said Cicero in 55 B.C. He was right.

Eating Their Young

The mainstream media must be starving because they are eating their young.

Howard Kurtz of CNN has called MSNBC, "The Obama Network" as reported by newsbusters.com.

We conservatives have been pointing out liberal bias in the mainstream news for years and years and years. Now one middle-left news outlet is calling a far-left news outlet out on its bias. You have to laugh.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

False Pretenses

BigTentDemocrat over at talkleft.com has posted his opinion on Obama's "ban on lobbyists". He calls it phony.

He's pretty right on that.

Affirmative Action President

Is Obama a victim of the media's affirmative action? By filling a quota rather than properly vetting Obama, Americans have received a leader who has neither the experience nor maturity to handle the position he has been put in.

Only time will show if I am right and if Obama will be able to rapidly meet the demands of office.

Given current performance levels, I'm pretty sure I am right.

Crazy Liberal Bias

Read this article from WTOP radio about titled "Coal Plant Becomes Issue in VA gov. Race" and spot the unbelievable liberal bias.

Did you read it?

Did you see the mention of the three democrats listed as running for Governor?

Was Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell, the only republican running mentioned at all?

Outragreous. It is as if they are pretending there isn't a challenger from another party,

Damn liberals.