I'm about to spend my fourth, and final, night in Los Angeles, California, or Gollyvornia, as the Governator might call it, when he's not ramping up the state debt as much as possible and rolling over for the unions. And if you saw the original version of Pumping Iron you might figure there's some practice involved in that.

And what a culture it is. I stopped for sushi in Simi Valley at a place owned by a Japanese family. The son of the family was a healthy young fellow--read very big boned and running to fat. We talked about my Kindle. The music was Japanese hip-hop, which is probably better than American hip-hop only because if it talks about murder and hos I can't understand it.

All of the restaurants in Las Vegas and west sound just the same. Some energetic music which is entirely unmemorable and could be done by the offspring of an out-of-balance washing machine and R2D2. It is still more interesting than Philip Glass.

Gertrude Stein said of Los Angeles that there is no there there although perhaps too much has been made of that line. Phoenix is even more spread out than L.A.--you can drive 50 miles, in nearly a straight line, and still be in Phoenix and not see a single tall building. Los Angeles is much the same but even at 3 AM in the middle of every block there will be someone walking or driving.

But there are no American flags. I'm sure there are some on public buildings--I hope there are some on public buildings--but in Texas, the Midwest, Arizona and Utah you see businesses and homes flying them. And signs such as, "Support our troops." Here there are, as you'd expect, signs booming movies and television programs. But no American flags and no culture except that of the self.

The hotel is wonderful; the food great; the people polite; the weather, except for early-morning smog, clement and lovely, but that absence of flags alone makes me wish for an activist seismic fault.

I'm sorry. Really.

Must reading from two wildly different sources.

The first is an article on another borderline treasonous move from the current administration, written by Bob Owens at Pajamas Media.

The White House seems to be on the bewildering path of giving al-Qaeda terrorists who murder innocent women and children more legal protection than the very soldiers that risk their lives trying to bring terrorists to justice. The asinine court-martial charges being brought against three Navy SEALs based upon the word of a terrorist they captured suddenly make a sickening kind of sense.

The other is from one of the few people who could consistently find humor in the failures and disasters (man-caused, almost exclusively) of the past year, Dave Barry.

...Tom Daschle is forced to withdraw as nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services following the disclosure that he, too, failed to pay all of his federal taxes. He blames this oversight on the fact that his tax returns were prepared by Treasury Secretary Geithner.

Either article is a near 100% antidote for the other. h/t Glenn Reynolds.

I have a modest proposal--it is not, like Jonathan Swift's, that the Irish eat their babies. In fact I think that the Irish ought to have more of them and come over here to work and live.

My proposal is an improvement in driving tests.

Today driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles traffic slowed to 20 to 30 mph for nearly an hour. I thought it was the advertised road construction, but no.

There had been a wreck. Minor automobile damage. No bodies. Nothing blocking traffic. But the people were gawping enough to slow traffic for nearly an hour. At nothing.

My modest proposal is that driving tests be augmented. Give one in a simulator, and have a projected accident, not even needing blood and bodies lying on the ground. If the student slows down and opens his gob to stare at it, he fails the test.

And here's where it gets nasty: this might be a sufficient reason for eugenics to kick in. People who stare at a non-event and inconvenience literally thousands of people are the same people who twitch curtains. Who interfere in others' lives. Whose noses are always in others' business. If those people didn't reproduce, in a couple of years we might have a lot fewer interfering liberals.

But if that student did say, "We could stop this if we have a new policy..." that's certain proof that that bloodline needs to stop there, before we have a new Pelosi.

All right, all right. I don't really believe in eugenics. I'm just saying.

The genius of Mark Steyn, focused on the "health" "care" debacle:

...one can only marvel at Harry Reid's genius: government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

Go and read it all here.

I believe that anything remotely resembling this healthcare bill that gets passed in 2010 is a blunder of epic proportions, beyond even getting involved in a land war in Asia. And we will be paying for it for far longer, even as we live shorter, much poorer lives.

I have a friend, C., an American who lives in Japan and teaches English there. His roots are in Indiana, where he and his wife just went for a month-long vacation.

[T]he Mexican restaurants in Lafayette were being staffed by (illegal) Chinese, who were doing jobs illegal Mexicans wouldn't do.

And so it was. The Chinese built the Southern Pacific and Texas Pacific Railroads; every small West Texas town has an Orient Hotel, and I believe that the major case law for mechanic's lien claims on real estate was the Oriental Hotel in El Paso.

When I was growing up I'd see epicanthic folds in more than a few eyes of Spanish-speaking people here, genes left here by the coolies.

If they won't vote Democrat, I'll let them camp out on my land.

I noticed that most of the political cartoons that I liked were done by Ramirez--and I have a book of them. One of the memorable ones is a stone marked Couric drowning CBS news.

I am in Las Vegas at the Vdara, which is so empty that I fear for its financial survival. You can tell the cheeseparing that's going on.

Tonight I had supper with a friend from high school and his family. His wife P. works with a company which trains people to work in the service industry--everything from barkeep to barback to waitress. Or waitron as some PC idiot once said. And waitron isn't even marked as being a bad spelling.

Las Vegas has, as I recall, the seven highest foreclosure zipcodes in America, and Nevada leads the nation in foreclosures. P. was hoping that Las Vegas wouldn't follow the path of Detroit; I, entirely too rapidly, pooh-poohed that saying that the unions had destroyed Detroit. That was precisely her point. Evidently people who pick up empty glasses in a bar get $14 an hour and various union perks.

There's no question that there was a time and place for unions; mining is one of them, or was. And the mine owners who instituted the company store ought to have been dragged behind a truck until dead. But these days unions are the kiss of death, for they value people not by their productivity but by their length of service and their membership in a group.

I'm sure that in the last 30 years there are instances of unions performing actions which were good for all its members, not just the ones at the top, but I'm at a loss to name any. Can anyone?

UPDATE: Obama is down 18% in strongly disapprove over strongly approve--the lowest I've seen. Republicans are up 8% in the generic ballot--always a weak Republican point--even though about 3% more people call themselves Democrats than Republicans. The independents are watching the water reach the top deck of Obama ship of state and are jumping off. Too bad they got on in the first place.

Travesty upon treason upon stupidity upon maliciousness.

High value Guantanamo detainees are being being released. Into the wild as it were.

From Andy McCarthy at National Review.

Does Justice not appreciate not only how perilous but how unseemly it appears under the circumstances for it to be leading the charge to release the Yemeni detainees? And could anyone really believe that the supposedly noxious symbolism of Gitmo is more dangerous to Americans than is deporting terrorists to the places where terrorism thrives?

Go read the whole thing.

The more that the Obamanoids do, the more that I am certain that their unifying purpose is damaging the United States, both symbolically and in reality, as much as they can get away with in 4 years. And they believe that they themselves will not be affected by the damage done.

I'm on vacation now--the cats Calvin and Hobbes kept looking at my luggage, then at me, and then again at the luggage. An old joke but I like it.

I got an email from a friend Susi, and it made my day. In part it read

I unpacked some Christmas decorations a couple of nights ago (they were in the garage), and a large roach crawled out of the box. He was trying to survive the winter, and he was so hungry, he seemed transparent. I sprayed him with Raid.

Such are Houston roaches. I'm told they're not roaches but water bugs--a distinction without a difference. My freshman year at William Rice Marsh University they'd have a square dance on the ceiling above my bed; I'm willing to bet that there are more roach challenge callers than human ones. Allemande left, and fall on Theocritus.

I had a friend who would chase them with a flamethrower made out of Lysol and a cigarette lighter. Not effective but satisfying.

From Rianovasti......this could be big:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

But the science is settled!

As big a story as "Climategate" is and how meaningful it is to all of us 'proles who would find themselves under under the eco-ninnies twin hammers of tax and regulation, the national news wires still don't exactly bristle with activity concerning this issue.

Some things are starting to get through, however. And I suspect it has more to do with the decisions made locally to run some stories on this rather than any shift in views of Hearst Corporation proper.

So far, the only story turned up on the MyWestTexas.com site using the search term "Climategate" is this commentary in the Fat-Cat Planet Raper Oil Section of 12/13/2009 from Michael Economides and Art Horn.

Another trickle comes today in the form of an editorial piece from Jonathon Gurwitz.

Still, it is a trickle. I'll take it.

And it could be even bigger today. There are reports out that the Russians are saying that all of the temperature data provided by them to the Climate Research Unit was horribly cherry-picked to begin with and what data was used was essentially water-boarded to show a warming trend.

The Russians have all of this raw temperature data that hasn't been massaged by the Warm-mongers and it shows no warming trend. Now, a lot of times these temperature readings are rightly adjusted for other factors to try and get an accurate reading. But the CRU depends heavily upon these after-the-fact adjustments to get their "warming". When asked for the raw temperature data that they used the CRU said that they had thrown it all out due to a lack of storage space and that only the "adjusted" data remained. How convenient.

How can the CRU defend it's "science" when it lacks the original data with which they could show their methods and practices when adjusting the temperature data?

And here is the interesting thing: How can the Climate Research Units guys refute what the Russians are saying about the temperature data readings when they themselves...theoretically...threw all the raw data in the dumpster years ago?

It will be interesting to see how this goes. But for some reason I like the "print-like" layout AND the ability to get the text electronically.

UPDATE:
For some reason, I can't get the ID and Password combo they sent me to work.

If you've seen the the South Park episode "Smug Alert!" you'll have a better appreciation for the monkey house in Copenhagen now. In that cartoon episode, the people of South Park decide that only a Toyota Prius will do, or a Pious, as a friend calls it. It's not enough that the people of South Park drive them, but like Laurie David, they accost people who are not similarly smug. Finally the Marshes cannot abide the rednecks, who are not as enlightened as they are, and move to San Francisco to be with like-minded people. They have a party and pass out wine glasses, empty of wine. They use them to capture their farts and sniff them.

Just so in Copenhagen. There are over 1,200 limousines booked by the delegates to this smugfest. One hundred and forty private jets, more than the airport can handle. All the good hotels are booked, at over $1,000.00 a night. Well, not to worry--it's OPM after all. The hookers' union has announced that its members will give a free roll to anyone with a delegate's pass; I doubt that these people would understand prostitution without being paid. At least the ones who are espousing the "science." Because it's settled, you know.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu will be there, along with Leonardo diCaprio, and many other people who have no idea what they're gabbling about but enjoy taking center stage.

And over all of it will be the cant of the censorious leftist, who will give you the hair shirt off his back.

I just wonder if these delegates, since they're going first-class on OPM, will use Waterford wine glasses to smell their farts.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, states were awarded a boat-load of money to fund home appliance rebate programs to spur "White Goods" manufacturing and promote energy conservation in homes.

In typical government fashion, Texas' share of this "we have to have to pass this in February to keep unemployment under 8%" got approved by the DOE on December 11, 2009, and the rebates aren't active until a ten day period in April 2010.

So, just in time for Christmas, the State of Texas has just announced a program that will lead to declines in "White Goods" sales and manufacturing for the next four months, for a mere $23 Million ($300 Million nationwide). Way to go there geniuses.

Unlike "Cash for Clunkers" the prospects for congress allocating billions more as people score $45 to $1,675 rebates seems slim. So slim, the State is already announcing their rationing steps:

Consumers will have an opportunity to reserve an appliance rebate by calling a toll-free number or registering online approximately two weeks prior to April 16, 2010. After the reserved mail-in rebates are awarded, any remaining funds will be rebated to consumers on a first-come, first-served basis. Shoppers will be limited to two appliance rebates and two recycling rebates per household.

Yep, you read that right, to get the rebates that apply to purchases in a 10 day time window, you have to call a toll free number, or goto a website "approximately" two weeks in advance and pre-register for the rebate, which means that $23 million is going to be spoken for way before the actual purchase window occurs.

So, everybody gets rooked in this deal, manufacturers and retailers start taking the hit now because the Government has signaled for people to defer buying goods because a hefty rebate is coming in the spring, and unsuspecting consumers who heard government officials tell them a rebate will be available for qualified purchases starting on Earth Day, only to find out all the money was allocated "approximately" two weeks prior.

And I thought the hoops to score a $20 Black Friday rebate on a thumb drive were almost criminal.

It's not the MDC, but the ODC..

...things have hit some snags with Odessa's promotion on "Inside Business," a five-minute segment that airs on national cable networks. ODC is paying $19,000 for the piece. Callicoate said a rough copy of the segment showed a quality-of-life scene featuring stock footage of "a huge lake with some beautiful pine trees" as well as towers from a nuclear power plant.

There is only one rule for determining the eligibility of an official "cause" of climate change:

There must be massive amounts of money and power over the citizenry involved in its regulation.

Any cause not meeting this criteria need not apply.

From Today's MyWestTexas.com:

The John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute announced Wednesday Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance is the 2010 recipient of the Outstanding Texas Leader Award.

Hance was nominated not only for his current role but for his previous service as a Texas senator, U.S. Congressman and railroad commissioner. As chancellor, Hance is the chief executive officer of the 12 campuses of Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Angelo State University. He is focusing his energies on continuing the quality growth, enhancing the research in areas of excellence and accentuating the programs and opportunities that prepare students for success in life. Foremost on the agenda is fund-raising for scholarships, professorships and endowments as well as capital contributions.

Congratulations to Chancellor Hance for this award from the JBS Leadership Institute. He is well deserving of the honor.

That said.....he has to feel a little let down. After all, the last three Americans to win the Nobel Peace Prize were selected, essentially, because either they weren't George W. Bush or that their selection would somehow embarrass George W. Bush.

And to deny the only man ever to beat George W. Bush in an election the Nobel Peace Prize is quite a departure for the Nobel selection committee, don't you think?

Hance wuz robbed.

Anyone with the self-awareness of a cat knows that Time magazine is an organ of the left--manned by and written by the left. Margaret Carlson makes me weep for the electrons pushing her bilge.

I was looking for news about Climategate; evidently even calling it that is proof that you're wrong. The True Believers, that is True Progressives, call it Swifthack, in reference to that odious time when the swift-boat veterans, er, exposed John Kerry. Well, I quite agree that what the swift boaters did was intolerable. After all, when a ray of sunlight falls into a pig sty I, for one, always blame the ray of light. If I'm invested in the pig sty that is.

Time here proves that it is completely delusional.

The truth is that the e-mails, while unseemly, do little to change the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of man-made climate change.

This stands by itself as the single most dishonest, or psychotically wrong, statement ever written by a major news organ.

UPDATE: some wits, and very good ones indeed, are calling them the CRUTape Letters. I'm sure that C. S. Lewis would be amused.

December 7, 1941, was the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

December 7, 2009, is the day that the moonbats, the one-world politicians, and dishonest scientists are meeting at Copenhagen to extort money from rich nations and stifle the world's economy, while ignoring the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia which prove that the First Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming is an utter fraud.

Looks factitious to me, but it's good. Travolta owns five private jets, including a 707.

And yet the glitterati, which are increasingly the ignorantsia, still keep on in their hypocritical, self-righteous, gaseous eructations. The Times On Line has an excellent article. A few snippets:

The supposedly green Barack Obama had a St Louis chef flown 850 miles just to make pizza at the White House.

My personal favorite [italics mine] is

Harrison Ford, who is vice-chairman on the board of Conservation International, voices public-service messages for an environmental federation called EarthShare, and once shaved his chest hair to illustrate the effects of deforestation, is another hobby pilot. He once owned a Gulfstream but now makes do with a smaller Cessna Citation Sovereign eight-seater jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.

And let's not forget all the carbon which will be emitted at Copenhagen. Which is more noxious? The CO2 or the flatulence?

First the famous "Hockey Stick" and now this. Another splashy claim from Al Gore's so-called documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" runs up against some inconvenient research.

Remember the melting icecap of Kilimanjaro being laid at the feet of man-caused global warming?

Um......not so much.

Newspapers and news sites in the Netherlands today extensively broke the news of the findings of a research team led by Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damste -- a leading molecular paleontologist at Utrecht University and winner of the prestigious Spinoza Prize -- about the melting icecap of the Kilimanjaro, the African mountain that became a symbol of anthropogenic global warming.

Professor Sinninghe Damste's research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) -- a governmental body -- shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.

But the science is settled, according to....well...anyone who profits from the science being settled.

It needs to be pointed out that there is a Hell of a lot more money to be made by those pushing the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming than by those who are arguing against it.

That is why you hardly ever hear about nuclear power as an answer to a cleaner environment or as a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It is because building nucelar power plants to replace coal fired plants don't involve massive transfers of wealth from one set of folks to another.

All directed by one-worlder types in Washington, Turtle Bay, and Brussels. You know, the guys who are paying for all of the research that shows that there (Is. No. Doubt. The. Science. Is. Settled. So. Shut. Up.) man-driven climate change.

And who are telling us that the only way to avoid a planet-wide catastrophe is to let them cut up and re-distribute the wealth of developed countries.

Which, you should notice by now, is the solution for every "problem", be it social, technical, environmental or natural.

As Walsingham noted, the Goracle has cancelled a personal appearance at the snatch-and-grab at Copenhagen on December 16, Beethoven's birthday.

Friday, Vice President Gore gave a press conference.

It is unfortunate that the organizers and I could not come to an agreement about my fee. Any agent gets 10% of a performer's fees; if it weren't for me, anthropogenic global warming would be gathering dust like the Flat Earth Society, and those people in Copenhagen would have to do heavy lifting, like real research or governing.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is my lie and I want my $16 billion a year. It's hard to make ends meet with all my private jets and limousines.

To continue in a vein that Walsingham started,

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it's at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it's Very Likely. Just 26% say it's not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.

Climategate on the whole is wonderful; it might save the world's economies. Even Obowma has stated that "utility bills would skyrocket." Either he's telling the truth or he's being deliberately evasive. On current form I'd vote for number two, but it's the grimmer alternative.

But Climategate has the possibility of destroying belief in science--after all, if, as I fervently hope, these scientists recognized worldwide to be utter crooks and frauds, science might have an inverse-halo effect. And since people do not believe in nothing, they will then believe in anything, leaving the door open for even more demagogues.

And still a a deafening silence from the legacy media.

Senator Boxer, in her inimitable fashion, wants to shoot the messenger. This from www.thehill.com:

"Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting. "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."

The e-mails, from scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained through hacking. The messages showed the director of the university's Climate Research Unit discussing ways to strengthen the unit's case for global warming. Climate change skeptics have seized on the e-mails, arguing that they demonstrate manipulation in environmental science.

Boxer said her committee may hold hearings into the matter as its top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), has asked for, but that a criminal probe would be part of any such hearings.

Boxer saying that the leaked emails "allegedly undermine climate change" is as delusional as Nanski Peloski saying that the November election was a win for the Democrat party.

Periodically my brother and I have a conversation ruminating about the stupidest Washington politician. I know that it is nearly irresistible (and solipsistic) to calumniate the intelligence of people you disagree with, but in this case I think that stupid is le mot juste. Always at the top are Jay Rockefeller, Harry Reid, Sheila Jackson Lee (who asked NASA if they'd find the flag that they left on Mars), Maxine Waters, and Barbara Boxer. With this I think it's Boxer. By a nose. Or a neck.

From an article on Tiger Woods:

I am not going to opine about whether Elin should or should not stick with her husband (although early reports are saying she's planning to stand by him, after a revision of the prenup). Instead, I say that she should do whatever it is she has to do. If that is taking the tool of her husband's trade to smash the window of his Cadillac Escalade, so be it.

I suggest that a special sort of revenge is in order.

So, Elin,....um.....call me.

In Walsingham's last post he easily got confused by which board was taking which action on a local Transit/Transportation project. It's pretty simple to get all confused, because there are quite a few boards with overlapping authority that seek to influence transportation in the Region.

If you're gonna watch the game, you need a roster:

• The Midland Odessa Transportation Organization - Metropolitan Planning Organization aka MOTOR-MPO. Federal law requires that a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) be designated for each urban area with a population of 50,000 or more.


• Midland Odessa Transportation Alliance, Inc. aka MOTRAN. MOTRAN lives as a non-profit supported by our communities, Economic Development Boards and several local businesses for the purpose of keeping the La Entrada al Pacifico Trade Corridor project alive. MOTRAN makes sure La Entrada projects keep at the top of the MOTOR-MPO list, ie they Lobby.


• Ports to Plains Corridor Though not really supported by our local entities, this is what La Entrada ties into and MOTRAN and MOTOR-MPO have tried to swing the route from Big Spring to Midland several times. This entity is akin to MOTRAN


• Midland Odessa Urban Transit District aka EZ Rider. I think you know well enough about these folks.


• La Entrada al Pacifico Rural Rail District. No links for them, they don't have a website, nor a transmodial container facility agreement with UPRR.

Ostensibly, these organizations exist to channel local input and priorities into the spending of Federal and State transportation dollars or to directly lobby Federal and State legislatures to drop millions of dollars on local transportation projects. There are lots of duplicated memberships on these boards and a there are a lot of duplicate planning dollars spent on stuff for each entity.

All these boards and all their planning and studies generate a lot of business for out of state consultants. Too bad they give out advice and statistics that result in EZ Rider, a La Entrada Rail District that couldn't get a container facility contract with UPRR and a La Entrada Corridor group that got their ass handed to them by Alipine and Marfa.

Your Federal Tax, State Tax, Local Tax and ED Tax dollars at work.

From the Washington Times:

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nation's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

Gee. Al Gore, the Pontif of the Holy Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming has decided to forego the church's "Christmas Mass" in Copenhagen.

Why would he do such a thing? I mean, I haven't seen anything in the papers about it.

Story here. But in fairness to the current administration they did, in fact, inherit that very gate from the Bush Administration.

From today's MyWestTexas.com:

Midland International Airport stops to be included if MOTOR gets federal funding

Come summertime, Midland, Odessa and Midland International Airport may have the connecting bus routes that transportation officials have mused about for years.

And everyone knows that the musings of transportation officials equates directly to actual demand.

And this combination of official musings and demand for a new route is so strong that the amount of money they need from the Federal Transit Administration is only $1,000,000.00.

I sense the consultation of experts here.....oh, look!

[MOTOR Executive Director Melba] Owens said her state and federal contacts indicate MOTOR's chances with the Jobs Access Reverse Commute application are good given the burgeoning need for people without other transportation to travel between cities and reach the airport. She said her board took action when Wilbur Smith Associates of Columbia, S.C., reported the plan would succeed.

Which plan would succeed? The establishment of a bus route to take people who generally can't afford other means of transportation to....wait for it...the airport? Or the plan to get a federal grant to keep this house of cards propped up?

Let's face it. Those routes with the most demand and utility to the ridership have already been determined. Further, those routes are still lacking in demand and utility by any metric which is why the system requires such heavy taxpayer subsidies. Any additional routes will impact the system negatively as far as the cost/benefit ratio.

The system has had plenty of time to establish itself but according to this MyWestTexas.com article from October 8, 2009, ridership was down 14% from the previous year.

It costs $3.2 million dollars per year to operate. I'm guessing that actual income from fares is not more than $200,000 per year. Another $500,000 of "income" to the system comes from local taxpayers.

The gap between the $3.2 million dollar per year operating cost and the $700,000 we will generously refer to as "income" is called "pork barrel spending".

At least it is called that when it is done on a non-local basis.

A question: When it comes time for the City Council to vote on the amount of money they will spend to subsidize the EZ Rider system, are the two city council members who also serve on the Transportation board required to recuse themselves from the vote? And, if not, why not?

UPDATE (Or why I should leave the EZ Rider/Transportation Beat to Os):

It is a bit of convoluted reporting, but the Inter-City route would be run by a private contractor, All Aboard America. I can't tell what involvement EZ Rider would have in this. Even the EZ Rider representative quoted said he "ascertained" they would just pick up riders at the Malls and have an increased business.

You have to remember, this article comes from the MOTOR-MPO board, which is not the M/O-Urban Transit Board that runs EZ Rider.

Regardless, MOTOR-MPO is moving forward based on an out of state consultant report and an "indeterminate" increase in daily commuters abouve the 4,000 identified by the 2000 Census.

This is just part of the $24 Million in requested ARRA funding for transit projects in Midland Odessa MOTOR-MPO is tracking (may not be funded) See Page 30 of this report for details.

In the meantime:

1. The head of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit has stepped down until the completion of an investigation.
2. Penn State will be investigating climate researcher Michael Mann (of the temperature hockey stick fame). You remember the famed "hockey-stick" graph don't you? Al Gore used it in his Academy Award winning movie. It was all the rage until a statistician not inside the Church of AGW showed that you would arrive at the same result by using any randomnly generated data.
3. John Stewart has even weighed in on this when Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and the ABC talking head who I can't even remember have not and will not.

So far, the dinosaur media's response to the Climategate scandal has been to say, "We are currently investig......hey, look!! Tiger Woods!! Look! Look!"

This guy wonders at one of the reasons this may be going un-reported:

Lastly and as a slight aside, why so little from the MSM? That one is easy. You need to have a decent analytical brain just to deal with the chain of events. You need to have a decent analytical brain, a mathematical/scientific mind and a good grasp of some very hard statistics to understand what is being done to massage the numbers and to see how significant it is to the chain of events.

Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you're going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown--in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand--that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact "at it" and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.

I would find that hard to report too.

Oh, but how can they change the world and make it a better place by reporting such things?

As of today, 39% strongly disapprove of Obowma's job performance, while 27% strongly approve. This from Rasmussen.

These results are collected from nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The overwhelming majority of interviews for today's update were conducted before the President's speech on Afghanistan last night. Prior to the President's speech,35% gave him good or excellent marks for handling the situation in Afghanistan while 41% say he's doing a poor job.

Seventy-one percent of Americans are angry at the Federal government, up five points from September. Although this may be meaningless; I'm angry enough to account for four of those points.

It's not good for Congress, either. There are six polls, Fox/Opinion Dynamics RV, CBS, AP-GfK, Gallup, Ipsos/McClatchy, and CNN/Opinion Research that are fairly close, and the average is Congress, down 38%.

Republicans are leading on the generic ballot by seven percent. This is encouraging; Republicans usually do badly on the generic ballot. Even though the number of people who identify themselves as Democrats fell by two points in November, to the lowest number since December 2005, still it's 36% Democrats, 33.1% Republicans. The advantage that Democrats have over Republicans is 4.7% smaller than the gap they had during November of 2008.

I find most interesting that although more people admit to being Democrats, more people are going to vote Republican.

I wish that the Republicans were more deserving of the honor.

Q. What's the difference between this and Brokeback Mountain?

A. Jack Twist didn't mind it.

Unworthy of its audience.

From CNN:

President Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan but plans to conclude the war and withdraw most U.S. service members within three years, senior administration officials told CNN Tuesday.

Just wonderful.

A recruiting poster for the University of East Anglia?

"Come! Work at the Climactic Research Unit, where you can lie, distort data, throw away original data, blackball scientists, destroy the idea of peer review, get lots of lovely money, and make an entire planet miserable! What could be better?

"What's that? Integrity? Hey, John! This fellow asked about integrity! Bud, that went out with the hoop skirt. We're all Gorobots now."

Is anyone really surprised by the fact that a guy who cancels the account of anyone who disagrees with him on his blog but still maintains a Plus/Minus rating system for his posts doesn't have any problems with the way East Anglia's CRU processed their temperature data?

And, Charles, you may break with me on this also: I'm not big on creationist theory either. But unlike you I don't equate this with actual scientific training or knowledge. And obsessively bashing those who do believe in it doesn't make you Richard Feynman.

Like to Ace of Spades, not LGF.