"If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't."

(From Mark Steyn)

When Mr. Obama said that he'd talk to Iran without preconditions it ought to have told us that he would start bowing to anyone who might say "Boo!" to him. Too bad that the world cannot be understood in terms of Chicago politics, which although they're vile, are not as vile as, well, the rest of the world. Too bad that Mr. Obama has never learned to appreciate the country which made him possible, but such is his solipsism that he beggars the word "ingratitude."

But if Mr. Ahmadinejad ever did put a leash on President Obama, he wouldn't be teaching him any tricks. Tricks, that is, that he didn't know already.

Perhaps Michelle would find it necessary to hire yet another staff member to help her husband dance in attendance to a short, mad, racist, Jew-hating religious fanatic.

And I have another bone to pick with Mr. Obama. Even people not well disposed toward me would not say that I was this bitchy, before Obama.

From today's London Times:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals -- stored on paper and magnetic tape -- were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

Five things to take away here:

1. Climate change studies the world over are based upon research done at UEA's Climate Research Unit.
2. UEA's Climate Research Unit has been fudging their numbers to show warming trends not otherwise found in the data.
3. UEA dumped all of the raw data from which they derived their "adjusted" data so no one can go back and try to duplicate the results of their research.
4. Trillions and trillions of tax dollars hang in the balance based upon the "findings" of UEA's CRU and any other research based upon those findings.
5. You've seen virtually nothing about all of this in the mainstream press.

The precursor to today's internet (ArpaNet) was designed and built by the Department of Defense to detect damage in the system and to route vital information around the damaged node to keep that information flowing.

There is no way to look at today's mainstream national press other than as a damaged node.

As my brother blogger Walsingham has taken up the cause of Climategate (I preferred the name "Climaquiddick" myself, but it does not seem to have stuck) and it has been approximately 36 hours since our last post on The One, I shall take up the cause of the Flogging of the Administration for the moment.

Have you noticed any unemployment data recently that was broken out as to gender or "sex" as we used to call it? No? What a surprise. Did you know that somewhere between 3 out of 4 and 7 out of 8 jobs lost so far in the Obama Depression have been held by men? You didn't? That is a surprise, too, eh?

What if I told you that the alleged shovel-ready, infrastructure-building, creating-the-tools-for-future-wealth-creation kind of jobs that were supposed to come from the stimulus billions were nipped in the bud? By women's groups lobbying our Community Organizer In Chief.

What shouldn't be a surprise, but still is to me, is that this administration is SO disingenuous that it will not discuss that a high percentage of the stimulus money has been intentionally aimed and jobs in health, education and bureaucracy. Most of said jobs are held by women.

Christina Hoff Sommers from the Weekly Standard with a hat tip to Prof. Reynolds:

Here is a clue to what has happened. The op-ed attacking the "macho stimulus plan" invoked Abigail Adams's famous admonition to her husband to "remember the ladies" at the Constitutional Convention, and concluded, "Obama would be wise to do the same and balance the package." It is, of course, preposterous to think of Abigail Adams, or any of the illustrious feminists of yore, proposing to "balance a package," much less opposing an effort to put unemployed men back to work. The historical allusion is revealing.

Read the whole thing. If you know an out-of-work guy, especially a blue-collar guy, let him know you are sorry that the country elected a president that has intentionally put him out of work. And you can commiserate with him on the fact that this administration seemingly has no intention of doing anything to reverse the situation. Because it does not see that there is a problem.

No country for burly men indeed. Or for men with any significant masculine features at all.

Here is David Paul Kuhn in the Wall Street Journal with more current information.

Sad. And absolutely infuriating!

Simply brilliant.

And Winston looked at the sheet handed him:

"Adjustments prior to 1972 shall be -0.2 degrees and after 1998 shall be +0.3 degrees."

Winston wondered at the adjustment to the data. At this point, no one even knows if the data, prior to his adjustments, was raw data or already adjusted one or more times previously.

It didn't matter. All Winston was sure of is that one of the lead climatologists needed more slope to match his computer model outputs. He punched out the new Fortran cards and then dropped the old cards into the Memory Hole where they were burned.

"There!" Winston exclaimed to himself. "Now the temperature data record is correct again; all is double-plus good."

A search of the MyWestTexas.com site of "Climate", "East Anglia", and "CRU" (Clmate Research Unit) turns up nothing after the story of leading "Climate Science" research scientists at the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University in Britain* get caught (to review):

1. Trying to hide global cooling trends that they cannot explain.
2. Corrupting the usual science peer review process by both withholding their raw data and methodologies from "unpredictable" peers. Their words, not mine....and what they mean by that is scientists who are not in the tank for them already.
3. Discussing the deleting of raw data (which was already under a FOI request) rather than turn it over to the aforementioned "unpredictables".
4. Delibrately coding their climate models to make up warming trends not indicated by the data but that they just knew should be there.

We brought this up before, but it bears repeating: If Exxon/Halliburton/InsertFaveCheneyBogeymanHere had taken millions and millions of dollars in research grants from the government and had been caught doing all of this to hide a warming trend shown by the raw data do you think that it may have found it's way into the national news after five days?

Of course, it would. "Exxon" in this case would have been in the news on day one, subpeoned to appear before the House or Senate on day two, and had nine class action suits filed against it on day three. On day four, Al Gore would be-renominated for another Oscar for his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" in the category of General Awsomeness.

But it isn't Exxon. It's the theoretical good guys, quietly doing their research with nothing in mind other than the advancement of knowledge and the interests of the planet.

And coming up with the exact same solution for the "climate crisis" that is used for all others crisises be they social, environmental, or medical: A massive transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers all orchestrated by the guys who pay these same researchers.

For the record, the info on Climategate isn't being blockaded at 201 E. Illinois. It just isn't coming in on the national wires in the first place. Once Sarah Palin's new book is knocked off the best-sellers list maybe the national news wires can free up some reporters to look into the "science" behind proposals to extract and divert to the United Nations (essentially) trillions and trillions from the global economy.

But so far, nothing. Except from the blogosphere and, of course, Fox News.

I do wonder if there is some sort of feedback loop built in to the newswire system where local papers can ping back to those upstream and ask them just where the Hell they are on this story. Or any story for that matter. If not, there should be.

* If there is a war on against "climate change" the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University has been described as the "Pentagon". A lot of other research is based upon research from this group. If their data is cooked, then it corrupts all subsequent research based upon these...um....findings. That is why this is bigger than just the merry band of fudgers at East Anglia

Oh, come! Let us adore him!

My favorite of the "20 unfortunate lessons that girls learn from Twilight":

20.Vampires -- once among the great villains of literature and motion pictures -- are no longer scary. In fact, they're every bit as whiny, self-absorbed and impotent as any human being.

So, how does this segment of Twilight end? A thrilling fight to the death over the last bottle of Axe body spray?

Yeah, it was 2:30 in the morning and he hit two stationary objects backing out of his driveway and all that....but the big question is this: Wesley Snipes has a bigger house than Tiger? What's up with that?

The Facebook pages for Midland Supporters of Barack Obama and the Midland Chapter of Organizing for America haven't been updated since early June.

I blame Bush.

And Cheney, who probably shot them all in a hunting accident before they could meet and bring a sense of empowerment to West Texas.

That, or the bloom is off of the second coming and those that were volunteering before the election still are and those that weren't volunteering still don't.

.

....

.......

Naaaaaaah, that's crazy talk. It was Cheney.

How many times have the growing number of Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptics been summarily dismissed as either 1) non-scientists, or 2) those in the pocket of the energy industry? The idea being that in the case of the former they can't possibly be knowledgeable enough to offer an opinion* and in the latter case that, while they have the necessary academic and scientific credentials, their dissent is prima facie evidence that they have been bought by "big oil".

The second case is built upon the assumption that the only side of the argument which has an economic incentive in the whole question is the global warming "deniers" side. Researchers whose work merely suggest that the global warming alarmists claims of imminent global catastrophy are overstated are ostracized and ridiculed. And those whose research punch holes in any part of the theology that is modern "Climate Science" can be nothing but ninja planet assassins on the payroll of Halliburton/Exxon/Enron/Cheney/Whatever.

On the other hand, all of those whose work support and agree with the idea of man-made global warming are doing the Lord's work, are pure of heart, and are so gifted that it is actually impossible for them to offer up a bad hypothesis. Which is why data must be corrected when it doesn't affirm their infallible theories. Truly, how brilliant must these people be that we are able to use their mere theories to actually validate the accuracy of the raw data?

Oh, one more thing. These saints of science work for free. They must, right? It is not possible that those on the "Cap and Tax NOW! or we all DIE!" side of the equation have an economic incentive to promote their side of the argument.

Because we all know that governments the world over (and the United Nations for that matter) would all be totally indifferent and dispassionate about any plans to extract trillions and trillions of dollars from the global economy and re-direct them according their own priorities, don't we? They wouldn't think of it. It just isn't what they are about. But.....if that is the only way to save the planet (sigh) then they could probably be talked in to it.

Which brings us to Albert Gore, Jr. Former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Grammy Award Winner, Academy Award Winner, and who now has a net worth that is probably over $100 million or more.

A man who, absent the existence of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, has an actual utility to the marketplace of about zero. Not zero, literally, but in terms relative to what his sales of snake oil have brought him. No Nobel. No Grammy. No Oscar.

But don't ever suggest that he or others like him have any sort of an economic incentive to color their views on the matter. Only the "deniers" are so encumbered.

Al Gore has the net worth that he has right now for one reason and one reason only: Through his contacts in government and in the industry of AGW fear-mongering he has influence over the possible diversion and allocation of trillions of dollars into various interests that, absent market-corrupting influences like Al Gore, would not be so allocated. This makes him worth a lot of money to a lot of people.

A lot.

If you want to gauge how much Al Gore himself fears carbon-induced AGW, you need only look at his lifestyle. Private aircraft, monster energy guzzling houses, ginormous house boats, etc.

When Al Gore gives up his lifestyle for yours, only then should you consider giving up your's for someone else's.

What's that? You say he remains carbon-neutral through his purchase of carbon offsets from himself?

Don't beclown yourself so.

* I mean a dissenting opinion. An assenting opinion on AGW requires no credentials and is a sign of great caring if not outright moral superiority.

I gave up on them in 1981, but this fisking of Commander Zero is as funny as anything I've ever seen. And right to the point.

(If it's slow to load, try this.)

Oops. Did I say Exxon? I meant leading proponents of AGW theory at East Anglia University.

Caught. Outright. Inappropriately. Fudging. Temperature. Data.

So that their climate models would arrive at pre-determined results.

And that isn't all. In addition to cooking their numbers to overstate warming trends they were also caught trying to suppress the work of other scientists that did not agree with their theories on global warming.

That still isn't all. When other scientists came calling for their raw data and methodologies to review it and see if they could duplicate the results and conclusions.....because that is what real scientists do....the High Priests of Anthropogenic Global Warming denied them the data and even discussed deleting the data (which was already under a FOI request) rather than let the data get into the hands of those outside the church.

You will just have to follow this on the blogs or at Fox News because the vaunted Fourth Estate, the bedrock of our informed electorate...which can assign eleven reporters to go through Sarah Palin's book page by page but won't do the same for Harry Reid's Health Care Bill.....has taken a total pass on this story. One exception: CBS News has covered this. Not on their broadcast news, though. On one of their online blogs. Kudos to Declan McCullagh who may be out of a job by now, for all I know.

This story is already days old and as of this morning there is still nothing in the local paper (Hearst) on what should be considered a major scandal. Fudging information that could possibly cause the mis-direction of trillions of tax dollars used to be a major scandal, anyway. Not on the order of Halliburton stock going up two points but still major.

Want to follow this in detail? Go to the blog "Watts Up With That?"

Want a quick rundown of bullet points? Here they are:

And notice that in the three meetings--Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China--he was the only one bowing. At least he wasn't wearing a kimono in Japan or a Mao suit in China.

Next trip.

A man with brass balls but no real ones.

Listening to Chris Matthews is just embarrassing. Matthews had on Steve McMahon, a Democrat flack, and Kate Obenshain, Vice President of the Young Americans Foundation, and after agreeing with everything that the Democrat flack said, he wound up the show with

You know, Kate, people on the left who watch...let me just tell you, at Thanksgiving time with really a full heart, the reason people on the left sometimes ask me, 'why do you have so many Republicans on the show, and some of the other shows on this network don't have as many on like you,' I bring you on so that people can see what Republicans are like. Kate, thank you very much for coming on, Kate Obenshain, and it's great to have you on to remind everybody what a Republican looks like. Steve, thank you, you've been great tonight. I'm being a little sarcastic. You've been great tonight, Kate. You've made the point I wanted to make.

Well, that sent a tingle up my leg.

I think I may know why General McChrystal can't get his calls returned by the White House. He isn't hunting for Glenn Beck.

Read it.

Read the whole thing.

It is not what you think.

Then read it again. Then show it to your daughters and menfolk.

I recall the election of 1980; I was 25 and riding in the country with my father listening to the election results. We couldn't believe our good fortune. After the malaise of Jimmy Carter, the national embarrassment which keeps on giving, here we were, with a president who was proud to be an American. Such a heady time. The Congress was still in Democratic hands, but in those days the Democrats were a good deal more responsible than today.

Reagan was called an idiot by the left. The History Channel has some documentaries on the presidents, and they are fairly good until they come to Reagan, when the historians sniff about Reagan being in the right place, at the right time. In other words, people don't matter; it's the social context that makes it all possible. I expect that Alexander the Great would not agree, nor Caesar, nor Augustus, nor Leonidas. Nor in fact anyone who has ever been around someone of ability and who is not steeped in leftist resentment.

I wonder if this blind view of Reagan wasn't conjured up because Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, the greatest diplomatic coup in history; doubled the wealth of America; and made us proud again, and he did it ignoring liberals. Which grates intensely. After all, these are the people who believe that people don't make history but are there when it happens, because it explains how they are, well, what they are and nothing more. It's the curmudgeon critic. The dog in the manger.

When a Roman conqueror was given a triumph, he rode into Rome in a chariot, and a slave whispered in his ear, "Sic transit gloria mundi," or "Thus goes the glory of the world." It was meant to keep him humble. So many of today's histories seem to be written by the slave, and a nasty one too.

After President Reagan's death some essays he'd written were found and they were intelligent, which was greatly discommoding to the people who thought that he was an amiable dunce.

In these days of pretentious blather about "Hope" and "Change," we let cheapjack sloganeering, which disguises truth, substitute for aphorism, which can illuminate truth. And Ronald Reagan was a master aphorist.

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose." Contrast this to "We must understand the Muslims who want to kill us."

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." And their loud mouths are to drown out the cognitive dissonance.

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." Guess who didn't bow to the King of Saudi Arabia?

A friend turned me onto Mike Kaminski, who does voice-over work and is good at it. My favorite movie is Patton, and every time that I see George C. Scott walk up on the stage in front of that huge American flag I get goosebumps. Kaminski has done a take on that, as though Patton hadn't died. He's telling the troops about winning in Iraq. It's wonderful.

Here, however, is what I wish that W, who looks better by the minute, said to the United Nations:

Enjoy.

Click for a larger picture

Whereas the stupidest, crookedest, meanest president in the world went, with his wife, directly to Fort Hood and spent hours with the soldiers. This is a private photo, not a photo op.

Canyon Clowdus, Army vet, rancher and businessman from the Burnet area will challenge Mike Conaway for the 11th Congressional seat from Texas.

He has "Tea Party" leanings but will be running as a Republican. This obviously has some other Republicans concerned.

I don't know for sure, but after reading Mr. Clowdus' web site I would venture a guess that Canyon Clowdus has been a Republican for some time. But the attempt is already being made to paint him as a "Tea Partier" in the pejorative sense.

Case in point from the article by Hearst's Lynsi Burton:

The grassroots Tea Party movement is comprised of conservative anti-government anti-tax activists.

Really? Anti-government and anti-tax? Not just "limited government", maybe? And perhaps just anti-gargantuan deficit?

No. To Democrats and Hearst reporters Tea Partiers are just Guy Fawkes in a pickup truck. With a Confederate flag bumper sticker on one side, and NRA sticker on the other, and have only ever read two books in their entire lives: The Bible and Going Rogue. To them, any resistance to their taking your money and re-distributing it to others really does seem like some sort of anarchy.

To "Establishment Republicans", Tea Partiers are a great grassroots movement and the voice of the true American majority.....right up until they start pointing out stuff like all of the deficit spending done while the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and all of those "fiscally conservative" Republicans voting for TARP bailouts. Then they become "distractions" with "mis-directed frustrations".

What the Tea Partiers are essentially saying is that the size and scope of government needs to be rolled back, not just slowed.

And after several years of Republican rule there isn't a scrap of empirical evidence that shows that they are willing (or at least able) to do that. "The Republicans" as currently constituted spend money like drunken sailors and any argument to the contrary is laughable. The only thing that they have going for them is that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid troika spends money like three drunken carrier groups.

Cold comfort, indeed.

It is true that, as stated in the article, Mike Conaway is one of the most conservative members of Congress. But that is one Hell of a qualifier, isn't it?

The takeaway should be that a challenge from a "Tea Party" sympathizer should not be read as something like, "Mike Conaway is no different than Charles Rangel". Mike Conaway is different from Charles Rangel. Profoundly different. Rangel is a crooked, ultra-liberal pol who is part of political apparatus that spends way too much money. Mike Conaway is an honest, conservative pol who is part of a political apparatus that spends way too much money.

No, the question being asked by "Tea Party" candidates is simply this: If Congress were made up of 535 Mike Conaways would we then see a rollback in the size and reach of the Federal government? When they think the answer is "No", then they run.

For those that answer "Yes".....have you seen the newly re-designed Centennial Plaza? It's FedTaxstic!

And besides, in a free and vibrant representative democracy shouldn't every race be a contested one?

And some advice to the Republican National Committee, and any other Republican campaign committees who help fund candidates: Stay out of the primaries.

We've all seen this--the White House said that the Saudi King is short and so Barack Hubris Obama had to bow to him. We fought a war over 200 years ago which proved that Americans don't bow, and in particular American presidents. The nastier bits of the world, on seeing this, realized that Obama is a frail reed and instantly showed the contempt that he invited. I actually felt sorry for Hillary, trying to advance American interests and getting kicked, when the President won't. But then Obama is a narcissist, intent on changing the only country on earth which makes him possible, and America is full of his enablers. All prominent narcissists need enablers. The world at large, seeking its own advantage, is not enabling Obama's narcissism. This is if you discount a Europe so culturally insecure that you must discount it. No doubt one reason for Obama's bowing is to curry the adulation which he so needs. After all, most of the world is not as analosculatory as the lapdog, and therefore legacy, media.

And here we have Barack Hubris Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan.

But in a capitalist society--for now--there is always a way to make some money:

Get your Bowing Obama! So you don't forget, send $10 trillion dollars before midnight tonight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.! Do it before midnight tonight!

Click to expand image.

Again, it could be Photoshop product but it's so true.

My last car and the current one have the excellent Acura navigation system, which presumes that I am sentient. I don't program it in traffic. I should however be able to get some use of it.

My father, at 81, bought a red, two-seater Cadillac convertible, which has a satellite navigation system which presumes you are an idiot. This was before Government Motors and there are opinions that buying a Government Motors vehicle presumes that you are an idiot, but that's another story.

To program it, you have to put the car in park, get out, circle it three times, and bow toward Detroit, then get back in, put your tongue in your left cheek and then program it. This is done in the name of safety. It's lip service to the nanny state.

Another case of posturing. If car makers were serious about drivers not being distracted, they'd jam cell phones when the car is not in park, and even put the driver in a soundproof lucite cage. In my experience the two most dangerous drivers are a man on a cell phone in a Ford F-250 and two women having an earnest conversation.

According to Al Gore, the temperature at the earth's core is several million degrees.

If this is true, then the whole climate change/global warming thing can be explained by the fact that the earth is about to change from a planet to a star.

Follow the link to see Carbon BigFoot Al say it himself because you won't see it anywhere else much....like you would if Sarah Palin had said the same thing.

First, nanny-stateism gone wild with the introduction of the new Safety Stasi:

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to "collect data" on properties where children are thought to be at "greatest risk of unintentional injury".

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

It would be easy to laugh here, but New York's Mayor Bloomberg probably thinks this is just brilliant governance.

Second, former Brit soldier finds shotgun, turns it in to the police and.....wait for it....gets a five year prison sentence for possessing a firearm.

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

"I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

"At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

I have travelled to Britain and Europe several times and seen much of its greatness. The problem is that it all seems to be stored in their museums now.

To be fair....in the same amount of time that the Brits have gone from Lady Thatcher to here we in America have gone from Reagan to....well.....where we are now.

In between denunciations of collosal Obamaian spending, local Congressman Mike Conaway and U.S. Sentaor Hutchison have managed to funnel around three-quarters of a million federal tax dollars into a project for downtown Midland.

The immediate question is: Of what possible national interest is a renovated Centennial Plaza?

The only non-ridiculous answer is, "None whatsoever." Credit will also be given for "Zilch", "Zero", and "Nada".

Having now had two of our three elected federal representatives stand at a podium and refer to federal involvement with our downtown Centennial Plaza as something more or different than just the usual wasteful pork barrel spending it is easy to see why more and more folks can look at the GOP and at the Democrat Party and see less of a philosophical difference and more of difference in scope and scale.

In short our hard-core, "fiscally-conservative", red-blooded Red-State pols are driving down the same road as the Democrats.

Only slower.

And with their right turn signal stuck in the on position....indicating a movement that never actually comes.

I really have to ask the Downtown Fan-Boyz: What interest in our Centennial Plaza should the federal government properly have?

And while we are on the topic of Downtown and asking questions, here are a couple more:

1. Now that the entire half-block on which the old Midland Savings Building was located has been turned into private paid parking who is getting the money for the parking rentals? I haven't even seen a telephone number to call posted there.
2. Perhaps they are waiting for the next break-through in parking garage technology to ensure that we truly do get a "state-of-the-art" facility for our $2,000,000 in tax dollar subsidies....but is it just me, or has the work on Basic's Petroleum Place development slowed to a crawl?

As we all know, thirteen people were murdered by Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. Hasan was well known as having anti-American, Islamist views, but no one turned him in, fearing to be branded as racist. Better to allow a massacre I suppose than to be thought a racist. I'm surprised that he was even admitted into the Army; Nidal means warrior, and is a fairly new Islamic name. Hasan ranted openly about the evils of America and had given entire talks about American evil. Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" (The God is Great) as he murdered people.

In 2007, Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation on Islam suggesting that infidels should be force-fed boiling oil. "If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the "infidels"; ie: enemies of Islam [sic], then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc." With other Islamists he said, "We love death more then [sic] you love life!" Two years later he murdered people in Fort Hood.

Evan Thomas of Newsweek wrote, "I cringe that he's a Muslim...I think he's probably just a nut case." A nut case who praises Allah as he shoots people. Joe Klein in Time fretted about "odious attempts by Jewish extremists...to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." You have to be as stupid as a Time or Newsweek contributor to believe this explanation. If for example Hasan had been named Christian Williams and had had a student ID from Bob Jones University, we'd have heard endless howling about right-wing Christian fundamentalist extremists. Evan Thomas, however, has a long record of soft-headedness which telegraphed this particularly embarrassing flight from the truth:

But the Legacy Media is a cesspool for useful idiots like Thomas and Klein--a hothouse for people who cannot see their hands in front of their faces. How hard is it for them to ignore things which are that blatant? Is this what a modern journalism degree is? Politically correct repression of the bloody obvious?

But the rot is a good deal worse. General George Casey is the current Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The top soldier. He is "concerned" that "speculation" about Hasan's motivation might provoke a "Muslim backlash." Earth to General: it's not speculation when it's obvious. You turn a rock out of your hand and it falls to earth. We don't speculate why it fell to earth. It is obvious that it did.

General Casey is worried about diversity and and doesn't seem to be worried about, oh, the biggest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

I expect the Legacy Media to be obtuse and dangerous for America. I do not expect America's top soldier to be obtuse and dangerous for America. General Casey is either obtuse or, and pardon my French, a pussy. Or both.

This from a doctor friend.

A French doctor says "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks."

A German doctor says "That is nothing; we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks."

The Russian doctor says "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks."

An American doctor, not to be outdone, says "You guys are way behind. We recently took a man with no brains out of the state of Illinois, put him in the White House, and now half the country is looking for work."

HillBuzz is not a conservative blog; in fact they adore the Clintons. But after the performance of Barack Hubris Obama after the Fort Hood shootings, where he gave a shout-out before he announced the tragedy, they did some soul searching.

If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of "Dubya" nearly every day...parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker.

[Writing about W's performance after 9/11]

Well, we told you before how much the current president, Dr. Utopia, made us realize just how wrong we were about Bush. We shudder to think what Dr. Utopia would have done post-9/11. He would have not gone there with a bullhorn and struck that right tone. More likely than not, he would have been his usual fey, apologetic self and waxed professorially about how evil America is and how justified Muslims are for attacking us, with a sidebar on how good the attacks were because they would humble us.

Honestly, we don't think President Gore would have been much better that day. The world needed George W. Bush, his bullhorn, and his indominable spirit that day...and we will forever be grateful to this man for that.

HillBuzz notes that the Bushes went to Fort Hood and talked, without publicity, with the families, and stayed for hours. They note that His O'liness couldn't be bothered. [Update: I found that he did, five days after. Slow reaction time? It took him over two minutes into a speech in which he gave a "shout out" to mention the massacre. A cold fish.]

HillBuzz goes on to recite a list of people whom they do also admire. Unfortunately, the Clintons, but also Dick Cheney, and elsewhere, Sarah Palin.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks...you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes...and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

The article is here, and I found it moving. What I found most moving though is that here are people who are by nature people of the left but who have eyes and who will see. At last. Some people that you could have an honest disagreement with, if you do, and know that they were not merely toeing a party line.

Oh, and in the FAQ they answer people who complain that their posts may not have been aired that if they have a two-minute hatefest, take it to the Daily Kos.

Just so.

I hope that this is not photoshopped.

I'd love to put him out. With napalm.

Or I could pretend that I work for the U.N. and could form a committee. It would be of course the fault of the United States that a terrorist caught himself on fire burning an American flag--the flags ought to have been made more flammable and therefore not require so much accelerant.

This fetched me. One of my all-time favorite television programs was Dragnet. "Just the facts, ma'am." Not the stuff of the Lifetime Movie of the Week, or Dr. Phil. And XM Radio has Old Time Radio, which plays the old radio shows. I prefer them to all others.

Here's some fun with Dragnet and Barack Hubris Obama:

I've seen videos of Dobbs on YouTube, with snippets from his CNN show. Here he comments on the Immigration Bill, and if you have a tendency toward hypertension, don't click that link. It's the most arrogant legislation that I've heard of in this country.

One theory is that Dobbs will move to Fox, as did Glen Beck. Beck's viewers, after his shift from the lonely Headline News, went from 400,000 to 2.6 million. Roger Ailes runs Fox News and he has a green, in the best sense of the word, thumb.

As the world knows, Nidal Hasan murdered at least twelve people in Fort Hood, Texas. Dr. Val Finnell was his classmate at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. Both attended a master's in public health program last year and the year before. They both took a class in environmental health and part of the classwork was a final presentation; there were expected papers such as dry-cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell says Hasan's topic was whether the war against terror was "a war against Islam."

According to Finnell, Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second." Well, I'm a Texan first and an American second but that doesn't mean that I want to shoot Americans. Evidently Hasan's presentation tried to justify suicide bombing--a bootless task--and Hasan believed that the war on terror was indeed a war on Islam. Well, if Islam is bringing the terror to us by murdering innocent people, I'd say there is nothing wrong with that. What are we supposed to do? Fall on our stomachs and convert? Oh yeah. That's exactly what we're supposed to do. No thanks, Hasan. I have no desire to mutilate women. Or have a wall fall on me.

Multiculturalism has spread its cancerous roots into the very fabric of America; according to Finnell, several students were worried about the anti-American vitriol spewed forth by Hasan, but they were afraid to file a formal complaint lest they be considered bigoted. And so this man continued, unchallenged, until he went postal, primed by radical Islam, and murdered at least a dozen people. When he ought to have been frog-marched off the base quite a while ago.

President and Mrs. Bush traveled to Fort Hood and spent a quiet two hours there, visiting with people, and they did not want any press coverage from it. They departed quietly, with the style and class that I so sorely miss. (I recall seeing W.'s parents being interviewed in the middle 90s and missing their class compared to the Clintons' crass.)

President Obama, on the other hand, took himself to Camp David to rest from the travails of the House's passage, by a squeaker, of its version of socialized medicine. President Obama is exhausted after legislative action, and cannot find it in himself to do anything about the biggest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. W. was excoriated by his not immediately flying to New Orleans after Katrina. Do you think that the legacy media will hold Obama to the same standard? Don't hold your breath.

But this is no shock; we've known the Obama's essential character for some while. When candidate Obama was in Berlin he took himself to a night club instead of visiting wounded soldiers in an American military hospital.

What a low-class man in a high-class office. But then the solipsistic are always, in the end, low-class.

From the bill itself, placed here no doubt with an obviously racist cut and paste maneuver on my part:

"H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax." [page 1]

- - - - - - - - - -

"If the government determines that the taxpayer's unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply..."

"Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 - misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 - felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years." [page 3]

These people are insane.

As everyone in fly-over country knows, Jeff Dunham is a very talented ventriloquist, which is quite an achievement for the art is out of favor, and justifiably so. He's got a show on Comedy Central which I lost patience with in the first fifteen minutes, but don't take that as a review. I could lose patience with a train wreck unless it was a special train filled with the DNC going to Massachusetts.

The New York Times deigned to notice Jeff Dunham. I read the article so you don't have to, if you're fastidious about where you click. The title is Comedy for Dummies, which is barely tolerable because Dunham does work with dummies. The picture, though, is an embarrassment. It's been sharpened to caricature. No doubt they meant something snide. Without doubt they look amateurish.

Reading down you get

MAYBE YOU HAVEN'T heard of Jeff Dunham. It hardly matters. For decades, when he played comedy clubs and small theaters, his most loyal audiences were in middle America.

I recall the commercials for that same fish-wrap paper flogging the weekend edition. "How many sections are you fluent in?"

Well, let's see. None. And I'm solvent and they're not.

Jeff Dunham, who has a right to exist, is very solvent. And they're not.

Fox News, whom they abhor, is solvent, and they're not.

Survival is the best revenge.

Joke of the day.

What is the problem with Obama jokes?

His followers don't think they're funny and everyone else doesn't think they're jokes.

In the late 70s, under the administration of Jimmy Carter, the second-worst president in American history, I sported a bumper sticker with the Texas flag and the word "Secede" on it. Looking back it was droll that it was on a Triumph TR-7. One of my hopes is that the people in Washington will go on a binge of gun-grabbing; their explanation will be of course to protect us, but it will be to protect them from the citizenry. The Second Amendment was to let citizens feel more secure from their government.

Gun-grabbing in Texas would require a SWAT team for each house, I fervently hope, and would lead to a strong secessionist movement. Count me in.

A friend sent me this:

A very gentle Texas lady was driving across the Pecos High Bridge in Texas one day. As she neared the middle of the bridge, she noticed a young man fixing to jump. She stopped her car, rolled down the window and said, "Please don't jump. Think of your dear mother and father."

He replied, "Mom and Dad are both dead; I'm going to jump."

She said, "Well, think of your wife and children."

He replied, "I'm not married and I don't have any kids."

She said, "Well, Remember the Alamo"

He replied, "What's the Alamo?"

She replied, '"Well, bless your heart, just go ahead and jump, you dumb ass Yankee."'

I well recall reading the John Le Carre novel the Spy Who Came in from the Cold and shuddering at the idea of the East German police state. The Lives of Others, one of the most touching movies I've ever seen, is also concerned with the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security, the East German state security service and how it spied on everyone in East German, having partners spy on one another, breaking into flats and planting bugs. Controlling all information and being, well, secret police. This movie, by the way, is a big hit, secretly viewed of course, in totalitarian countries like China.

Notice it's "Freedom" instead of "Freiheit."

On November 9, 1989 the East German government announced that its citizens could visit West Germany. The prison-camp state was ended. I recall watching this on television and was somewhat embarrassed, even in private, to find my eyes leaking. Since the early 60s the desire for freedom of people stuck in a Communist, spy-riddled state was so great that the East Germans had to erect four separate walls to make one which was nearly impenetrable. After President Reagan's invocation, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"; after the inability of the Soviet Union to keep up with our defense spending; after years of restive satellite states, the wall did indeed come down. And people just--walked--across Checkpoint Charlie as the East German police stood there. Moving. Very moving indeed.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is throwing a huge bash to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of a wall more emblematic of totalitarian oppression than any other divider on earth; the entire country will be celebrating. The world will be celebrating, as it should. And she issued an invitation to Barack Hussein Obama to attend. Mr. Obama is, after all, one of Mr. Reagan's successors in office.

I've referred to this before. It's Keith Olbermann completely misrepresenting a tea-party event, and then he drags on Janeane Garafalo. She cranks up at 3:15 and someone called it "hard-wired ignorance," which is as good as I can do. A friend made a graphic of her, spiting herself with her inattention to her looks, and entitled it, "I am miserable and hate myself and it's your fault." Just so.

Their conceit is of course that anyone who disagrees with Barack, Lord Obama, is a racist, because the very act of disagreeing with him is racist. No difference of opinion is possible; his very skin color insures the validity of his views.

Is that not racist itself? If someone cannot be wrong because of skin color it means that no achievement is possible for him. I will bet you that this same logic doesn't apply to Clarence Thomas. If you asked one of these people about the infallibility of say Walter Williams, based entirely on his skin color, you'd be treated to a farrago of deflection, which they probably in their own minds, believe. I heard one black liberal tell Juan Williams, no conservative, "to get back on the porch." Unbelievable.

But the numbers prove that disagreeing with His O'liness is not racist.

Notice how at the first of the year his strongly approve numbers were many times higher than strongly disapprove. On July 4 they met and since that time Obama's been running a deficit.

Either it's a lie that disagreeing with Obama is racist or since the first of the year he's changed color.

I'll let you in on a secret: it's a scurrilous lie.