Dukakis Redux

clipped from online.wsj.com The memo urges Democratic candidates to force their opponents to answer a series of questions: "Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? . . ." If a Republican candidate says no to any of the questions, the memo says Democrats should "make their primary opponent or conservative activists know it. This will cause them to take heat from their primary opponents and could likely provoke a flip-flop, as it already has several times with Mark Kirk in Illinois." If you want to read the rest of the questions, click through to the link atop this item. We truncated the list because the first item is absolutely jaw-dropping. Are we given to understand that the Democrats intend to run for office by raising questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president? That has got to be the most brilliant campaign strategy since Michael Dukakis and Max Cleland raised questions about their own patriotism.

On steroids methinks.

Norman Borlaug R.I.P.

clipped from www.youtube.com

You Will Be Equal

clipped from www.yeahrightblog.com

Him

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Rep. Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat, has decided not to seek re-election. Berry told ABC News that he fears a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections. According to Berry, the White House does not share this concern: "They just don't seem to give it any credibility at all," Berry said. "They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.'" UPDATE: Berry's anecdote reminds me of something a friend told me about Obama. This friend met Obama when they were both summer associates at the same law firm. Years later, as Obama's campaign for president was picking up momentum, he gave me his impressions from that summer. Since my friend is not inclined to say harsh things about others, I expected him to give a favorable account of Obama too. Instead, he described Obama as "the most arrogant person I've ever met."

Peerless

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest. This is to be found in Chapter 13 of the Working Group II report, the same part of the IPCC fourth assessment report in which the “Glaciergate” claims are made. There, is the startling claim that: At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees: The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed. It gets even better. The two expert authors of the WWF report so casually cited by the IPCC as part of its, ahem, “robust” “peer-reviewed” process weren’t even Amazon specialists.

Reset Button

clipped from www.politico.com Russia Today, the slickly produced, often comical Russian government propaganda arm is up with an ad campaign in Britain that sticks a thumb in Obama's eye, merging his image with that of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. British airports have reportedly refused to post the billboard.

Stimulating Unemployment

clipped from www.american.com Using data from the administration’s website Recovery.gov and from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this accompanying chart shows the monthly increase in the number of unemployed workers and the shrinkage of the civilian labor force in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending. In other words, it shows how not only that many workers have lost their jobs since the administration started spending stimulus funds, but also that many more workers have exited the labor market. The civilian labor force shrinks when individuals who were looking for work or were employed decide that their labor market prospects are not good enough to keep looking for a job or to stay employed. Two things are sure. First, if it weren’t for workers’ mass exit from the labor force (600,000 workers exited in December alone), the unemployment numbers would look even worse that they already do. Second, government spending cannot create jobs.

Change Update

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CHANGE: December home sales down nearly 17 percent: Home sales plunge nearly 17 percent in December after tax credit deadline extended. “Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, sinking more dramatically than expected after lawmakers gave buyers additional time to use a tax credit.” More dramatically than expected, eh? UPDATE: Bill Gates Says Recovery Will Take Years: “Although there have been signs of economic improvement in recent months, as well as a collective sense of optimism in the IT industry that spending could rebound this year, there’s little concrete evidence to indicate that this is anything more than wishful thinking. And if unemployment remains high, the dreaded ‘S’ word — stagflation — could begin to creep into discussions about the economy. Gates said even when the economy does improve the government will have to institute systemic changes in order for any real rebound to take root.

RIght Again

clipped from www.redstate.com Do you remember how many conservatives spent months trying to figure out why the leadership of the American Medical Association signed the nation’s doctors up in support of Obamacare? Many conservatives argued that the AMA was being shortsighted - that Congressional Democrats would ultimately betray the AMA We said that Democrats would use the AMA endorsement and then turn against the group when they had the chance. Well, we were right: ‘Doc Fix’ Could Be Left Stranded as Health Care Overhaul Founders Those who follow the long-running doctor payment saga say the poisoned atmosphere surrounding health care spending makes it difficult to see how Congress will agree to the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to make a permanent change in the payment formula. The Senate has rejected attempts to pay for the 10-year cost without offsets.

Nope

clipped from www.qando.net

That's Why There Are Tea Parties

clipped from pajamasmedia.com FROM HOPE AND CHANGE TO THIS, IN THE ECONOMIST: Stop! The size and power of the state is growing, and discontent is on the rise. America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement. The Economist will return to these areas in coming months. All raise different issues; and different countries may need to deal with them in different ways. But one large general point links them: a great battle about the state is brewing. And, as in another influential revolution, the first shot may have been heard in Massachusetts. Read the whole thing. And I love the illustration . . . . UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “I think deep down inside the rest of us are beginning to understand how that little fella in the illustration that’s about to get eaten feels. Heretofore it’s been the journalist’s job to level the playing field for him. Now he has to do it himself. That’s why there are tea parties.”

Laughing Stock

clipped from www.ft.com Japanese car companies, which overtook US ones in the early 21st century, leading to the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler last year, used a method of industrial innovation called kaizen, usually translated as “continuous improvement”. Meanwhile, Detroit perfected the technique of occasional improvement. As the Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – slid deeper into trouble over decades of complacency, union obstructionism and mismanagement, they would occasionally stage a temporary recovery, with some new car or initiative prompting books and magazine articles about a Detroit revival. This all proved to be illusory, with Detroit’s detour from making cars (ground that it had in effect ceded to foreign rivals by the mid-1990s) to producing “light truck” sports utility vehicles as the biggest deception of the lot. These were just upward blips on a long, steady descent from technological dominance to global laughing stock.

Ouch (For You Part 2)

clipped from althouse.blogspot.com "Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?" That's Chris Van Hollen, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meaning to help Coakley win Teddy Kennedy's seat, and running right off the road into a ditch called Chappaquiddick.

False Prophet

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Obama spoke to 6th Graders in Falls Church, Virginia on Tuesday January 19, 2010. He brought his TelePrompter.

COTD: The Story O The Three Envelopes

clipped from pajamasmedia.com 99. Don51: The story of the three envelopes.

I had heard this one before but forgot how relevant it is to Obama.

The story:

When a newly hired exec bumps into his fired predecessor on the way out of the office, the individual is offered three envelopes. The predecessor advises that each consecutively number envelope is numbered and only to be opened in sequence when the proverbial crap hits the fan and nothing else is working. The new manager smiles, takes the envelopes but quickly puts them in a drawer and forgets them. That’s until months later things are still not running well and senior management is looking for scalps. Then the envelopes are remembered. The manager dutifully finds and opens envelope marked ‘1′. It contains a simple note saying – ‘Blame everything on me”. Not having any other real ideas, the manager does exactly that which buys him a reprieve from the powers to be. Things are still wonky, but the new manager barely keeps the office afloat. Many months later, things still haven’t significantly improved and senior management once again is looking to make someone walk the plank. The stressed manager remembers the envelopes and rips open the one marked ‘2′. It reads “Reorganize”. So a plan to reorganized is formulated and given to senior management. That buys our manager several more months to try to deal with the crisis at hand. Of course the problems being intrinsic to the organization, they only fester. Senior management now summons the manager to a meeting which anyone could understand may well be his last. So the manager digs to find envelope numbered ‘3′ to open, only to read the advice “Prepare three envelopes”.

Pleased To Be Both

clipped from network.nationalpost.com Scott Brown’s win was the real report card on Barack Obama’s one-year presidency. He may have given himself, in an interview with Dame Oprah of Afternoon Fluff, a B+. Voters of Massachusetts were more clear-eyed and rigorous. They went, let us say, with a “gentleman’s D.” How did this happen? Obama was a chandelier presence in a world of political moles. Obama is a parochial politician. He emerged from the small pool of the university environment and Chicago politics -- the former, I think, more significant than the latter. Take his jibes at Scott Brown’s pickup, which he delivered repeatedly in Boston two days before the vote. Only the thickest of tin ears could imagine that slurs and putdowns about driving a pickup have any appeal beyond arugula snobs trading nose-in-the-air witticisms about rednecks. With a persona that oscillates between professor and hipster, he patronizes -- he’s either smarter or cooler than anyone else in the room, and, worse, looks very pleased to be both.

The Gang That Couldn't Hire Straight

clipped from ace.mu.nu Three different White House officials gave out three different numbers for jobs "saved or created" on three different morning shows today. Fools: Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs came in between them, saying the plan had “saved or created 1.5 million jobs.” Five dollars says that President Obama uses a fourth number in the State of the Union speech.

Great

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BRUCE SCHNEIER: U.S. Enables Chinese Hacking Of Google. “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access. Google’s system isn’t unique. Democratic governments around the world — in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.” Great.

More Climate Corruption

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America's leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU.

Wind Wakes

clipped from www.popsci.com Turbine Contrails: Clouds form in the wake of the front row of wind turbines at the Horns Rev offshore wind farm near Denmark.  Aeolus Clouds stream in the wake of wind turbines arrayed at the Horns Rev offshore wind farm in this stunning photo. But David MacKay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, sees the image as illustrating the common problem of back-row wind turbines losing power relative to the front row. Downstream wind turbines may lose 20 percent or even 30 percent of their power compared to their fellows in front, according to a study on wake effects at Horns Rev that MacKay highlights on his blog. The paper also emphasizes that different wind directions make it practically impossible to gauge an overall "steady state" for large wind farms, unless researchers can sample wind speeds and directions at multiple points throughout the array.

Without Comment

clipped from www.ncdc.noaa.gov

COTD: sOciopath

clipped from pajamasmedia.com 60. maineman: As a psychologist with almost 30 years of experience in psychodiagnosis, my read of the interview posted by zhombre is that this is the description of a sociopath. I know narcissism is a longstanding assumption, and I don’t disagree with that, the two syndromes being closely linked. The difference seems to me to be susceptibility to stress. The sociopath is narcissistic but is likely to be less vulnerable to destabilization than a pure narcissist when the approval or adulation ceases. Take Marilyn Monroe when she lost her looks as an example of a classic narcissist. Obama seems more arrogant to me than a garden variety political narcissist like Clinton, who was clearly able to regroup and make adjustments to keep the approval coming. There’s a megalomaniacal sense about this guy that makes me think he’s going to keep pushing with the expectation that he’ll prevail — not only has he always done so, but the stimulation derives from him beating the system and prevailing.

Shields Up

clipped from easyopinions.blogspot.com Robinson: You wrote in Forbes in Oct 2008, I know Obama through our association at the University of Chicago Law School and through mutual friends in the neighborhood. We have had one or two serious substantive discussions, and when I sent him e-mails from time to time in the early days of his Senate term, he always answered in a sensible and thoughtful fashion. And yet, for assessing the likely course of his presidency, I don't know him at all. How can you say such a thing? Read more ... Epstein: It's very easy. Obama has the world's most perfect human disposition. He can sit in a room with you, he can listen to you, and he can talk to you, and you really get the sense of a man who is in complete self control. But, that's the very feature that makes him so hard to read. He is so much in self control, that if he doesn't want you to know in a conversation what he is thinking, you can be there for 30 minutes and never be able to figure out what he believes.

The Day Obamacare Died

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Open Letter

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com

Good Luck With That

clipped from hotair.com Message: I care, you bitter clingers! Since his party lost the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat, pundits have been proclaiming President Barack Obama in need of a new message. As this week drew to a close, he offered some samples of what it will sound like. Turning up the volume on the fiery populist rhetoric he’s been deploying against the Wall Street “fat cats” that have become a favorite target, Obama signaled that he intends to pursue new Wall Street regulations as well as health care reform, despite his party having lost its 60-seat supermajority in the Senate. Of course, Obama played the faux-populism card in the 2008 campaign, too. The reality was a bit different. Barack Obama’s first major step on the campaign trail — in December 2006 — was to Wall Street, where he snagged the backing of convicted inside trader George Soros and investment banker Robert Wolf, who became CEO of UBS Americas.

This is a concise RTWT about O's faux financial populism.

Being There

clipped from www.qando.net It is so obvious it frustrates me that others are too ideologically or politically blind to admit it.  The reason the Democrats are in the shape they’re in today has to do with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his obvious lack of leadership. Let me give you the latest example found in a Politico article today.  It is, in fact, all about why the legislative agenda is in trouble and Democrats are skittish. Congressional Democrats — stunned out of silence by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts — say they’re done swallowing their anger with President Barack Obama and ready to go public with their gripes. If the sentiment isn’t quite heads-must-roll, it’s getting there. And they want the White House to step up — quickly — to help shape the party’s message and steer it through the wreckage of health care reform. Shorter version: “Where’s the leadership from the President?”

You Have To Repeat Yourself A Lot

clipped from www.qando.net Brutal.  And from the leftosphere to boot. TPM:

O Jack-sses And Dumbos

clipped from online.wsj.com If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the red, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency. In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations—health care, cap and trade—and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, "Uh-oh, he's a Nut!" Which meant they were left with the Creeps.

Limitless

clipped from www.investors.com But Wall Street didn't cause the collapse — government did . And this call for tougher rules is yet another attempt to escape blame. All Glass-Steagall did was let bank holding companies buy into investment banks. What undermined the financial system was a fanatical application of rules aimed at getting banks to lend as much money as possible to facilitate homeownership among minorities. It was the government, not Wall Street, that created the subprime market by compelling banks to make bad loans and urging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to cash out the banks by putting more and more of the toxic mortgages on their balance sheets. hasn't given a thought to limiting, let alone blocking the proposed expansion of, the Community Reinvestment Act that started it all. Or to reining in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-created monsters that aided and abetted the meltdown. No, the Obama administration is back on its quest to take control of as much of the private economy as it can.

The Best Option

clipped from online.wsj.com More fundamentally, even if the logistics can be mastered, the President's plan would not have prevented the credit chaos of 2008. Bear Stearns was not a bank, could not borrow from the Fed's discount window and wasn't even all that big, yet the government still wouldn't let it fail. Under Mr. Obama's new rules, Goldman might simply decide to sell its bank—yet investors and its own traders would still assume it is too big to fail. That problem still needs to be addressed. Mr. Obama also keeps peddling the illusion that the entire crisis was caused by the bankers. But the root cause was a credit mania, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. The mania was concentrated in the housing market, courtesy of Congress and several Presidential Administrations. If we are going to have a Fed and a political class as reckless as we have, then we need a more comprehensive answer to financial risk. Bankruptcy for risk-takers who bet wrong is the best option.

Put Them Out Of Your Mind

clipped from ace.mu.nu But is Obama to blame? Of course not. You are, champ. Obama's like Reverse Jesus. You will, collectively, assume his sins so that he is cleansed and untainted.* * Yes, I know there's another word for "Reverse Jesus." I don't think that's really a good thing to say. When I was in college, some guy -- a transgressive sort of guy, a guy who liked causing reactions and doing shock value stuff to spook the "straights" -- was goofing around, claiming he was actually the Anti-Christ, to this guy who was Christian. The Christian guy was just shrugging along at how silly it was. Eventually the Transgressive Guy said, "How do you know I'm not the Anti-Christ?" The Christian guy smiled. "Easy. Satan wouldn't be so fat." So funny. Transgressive Guy, to his credit, busted a gut at that too. Anyway, if you had suspicions Obama was the Anti-Christ, put them out of your mind. Satan wouldn't be such a fuck-up.

There you have it.

Did I Forget To Mention That Hockey Stick? (Part 84,937)

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Smith also discovered that in California, only 4 stations remain – 1 in San Francisco and 3 in Southern LA near the beach, and rightly observed that: “It is certainly impossible to compare it with the past record that had thermometers in the snowy mountains. So we can have no idea if California is warming or cooling by looking at the USHCN data set or the GHCN data set.” That’s because the baseline temperatures to which current readings are compared were a true averaging of both warmer and cooler locations.  And comparing these historic true averages to contemporary false averages -- which have had the lower end of their numbers intentionally stripped out – will always yield a warming trend, even when temperatures have actually dropped.

And Who Would That Be?

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com More pushback: But officials who have worked on the issue said Blair was wrong on almost every count. Abdulmutallab couldn't possibly have been questioned by the HIG because the unit doesn't exist yet. The task force had recommended it be created to handle the questioning of "high value"  Qaeda leaders who might be captured overseas—a criterion that clearly doesn't apply in Abdulmutallab's case. But the proposal is still being reviewed by the National Security Council, and the actual unit has not yet been created.  And we learned from FBI Director Mueller's questioning that responsibility for the decision to switch gears from intelligence collection to criminal processing lies with an unnamed high-ranking official at the Department of Justice. So who is the unnamed DoJ official?

Crony Capitalism Corruption Coincidences

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com And Democrats wonder why the American people are upset?? BTW, instead of calling this "crony capitalism", I'd call it "creeping fascism."

Nothing to see here. Move along now...

Klaus On Uncriticizable Dogma

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com

Taxing Congress

clipped from business.theatlantic.com First, I was really surprised how adamantly opposed Buffett was to the bank tax. I wasn't shocked so much because it's such a great idea. Actually, I think it's a pretty ridiculous idea, for the same reason that Buffett does. He says about the tax: No, I don't understand that. If it's some kind of a guilt tax or something of that sort because banks were among the whole United States that were saved back in 2008, everybody was taken care of then. And the banks, basically, somebody like Wells, it's cost them a lot of money to be in the TARP and it was basically forced upon them. Or if you look at Fannie or Freddie. Are you going to go and tax the members of Congress who ran Freddie and Fannie?

O Avatars And Moonbats

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, reveals what delusional dimwits Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell have surmised all along — the Muslim atrocities of September 11 may have been staged. Opines Mahathir: I am not sure now that Muslim terrorists carried out these attacks. There is evidence that the attacks were staged. How does he know? If they can make Avatar, they can make anything. Likewise, if an unhinged kook like James Cameron can get the whole planet to watch his dopey leftist propaganda, people can swallow anything. Mahathir is also miffed that Comrade Obama hasn't managed to rid the world of Israel. With even nuts like this turning on him, Dear Reader won't need his teleprompter to tell him that his days of coasting on hype are over.