Hitler and ClimateGate...

Thanks to reader Mr. Xyz:

The Audacity of Hopelessness...

Mark Steyn.  Obama.  SOTU.  Go read.

Two of my favorite bits:

In Britain, a research team at King's College, London, has declared that the female "G-spot" doesn't exist.

In France, a group of top gynecologists dismissed the findings, asking, "What do you expect if you ask Englishmen to find a woman's erogenous zone?"

Har!  And:

Mr. Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliche, to "double down." What's the endgame here? Mr. Obama gave it away in his student loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college loan debts will be forgiven because public service is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into public service?

Why? In the past 60 years, the size of America's government work force has increased five times faster than the population. Yet the president says it's still not enough: We have to divert more of our human capital into the government machine. He's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swelling bureaucracy.

That's not quite so funny, but it's very well put...

Well, This Was Predictable...

Last year the (formerly great) state of California ran out of money because the freakin' idiots running the place up in Sacremento couldn't pass a budget that spent less the taxes received.  The state started issuing IOUs instead of checks, and apparently even the Democrats got the message that they actually needed to DO something about this.

But what they did was a liberal political masterpiece: they used all sorts of one-time-only accounting tricks to magically plug the holes in the budget.  They did absolutely nothing to address the actual problem (to wit, they're spending more than they're making).

So, completely predictably, we're running out of money again.

It's difficult for me to imagine what sort of tricks they're going to pull out of their butts this year – but I've little doubt that foul-smelling tricks are what we're going to get, and not any kind of the structural reform we so desperately need at the state level.

The Scott Brown phenomenon gives me some hope about politics at the national level.  Unfortunately I don't see any sign of such things at the California level...

Sometimes...

Sometimes (actually, quite often) I question the wisdom of allowing certain members (approximately 93%) of my species to continue living.  This is one of those times.

The story, in a nutshell: two doctors were treating patients in their office a couple weeks ago, when a meteorite crashed through the roof of their building.  Luckily (I think) nobody was injured.  The doctors (the good guys in this story) donated the meteorite to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where it would be put on public display.  The Smithsonian planned to give the good doctors $5,000 in appreciation, and the doctors planned to donate that money to the Haitian relief efforts.

What a great story!  Win - win- win!  What could go wrong?

A lawsuit, of course,  Greed and avarice.  And landlords.  Read it and weep for humanity...

Satirical Must Read...

IowaHawk.  Satire.  Obama's SOTU.

I'm sure I need say no more, but just in case you've somehow been cruelly punished by missing IowaHawk's previous satirical masterpieces, here's a bit out of this one:

Such was his triumph that I and my guests were rendered emotionally spent, the tears cascading down our awestruck cheeks. Nearly overcome, Brooks likened it to the the best works of Rimsky-Korsakov. I objected to this silly assessment, as I have always found the Russian too cloying and self-insistent for an educated musical palate. No, I replied, in this speech Mr. Obama proved himself Mozart incarnate, against which the Republican Salieris could only respond with their same inane repertoire of off-key tax cut polkas.

After regaining our collective composure we found ourselves in unanimous accord that Mr. Obama had finally discovered political oratory's legendary lost chord, satisfying both to the trained ear of the discerning connoisseur and the primal aesthetics of the lower castes. If Congreve was correct that music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, then Mr. Obama's clever paeans to populism will hopefully tranquilize and chastise the savages of the Tea Party, that they can once again be put safely back in their proper pens.

Bonus in this piece: a punny final line...

On That Mental Health Mandate...

Megan McArdle (the world's tallest female economics blogger) does her usual succinct evisceration of a bone-headed politician's attempt to manage health care.  My favorite bit:

On a more serious note, I feel like we could have achieved the laudable goal of ensuring that serious mental illnesses are not left untreated (at least, in cases where the patient wants to get treatment), without guaranteeing cheaper psychotherapy for America's ennui-laden affluent classes.  Of course, then we'd have to recognize the fact htat this stuff has to be paid for, rather than pretending that benefits can somehow be magically generated for free with just a wave of the regulatory pen.

I have this fantasy that Megan (or her identically equipped and informed twin sister) runs for statewide office (governor, preferably) out here in California.  I'd pay good money to watch what happened when her well-informed intelligence and level-headed perspective runs up against the lameness that permeates our state, county, and local governmental institutions.  Heads would explode, and I'm certain none of those heads would belong to Megan...

Global Warming: Record Ice in China...

Juhua Isand in northern China is experiencing the heaviest ice in more than 30 years.  If I was a warmenist, I'm sure I'd see that as proof positive of AGW...

Moon Mission Dead?

It's looking likely that the Obama administration will implement a policy that I support.  This is such a rare event that it calls for special celebration around here.  Woo hoo!

That policy?  Abandoning the “return to the moon” objectives set by President G. W. Bush.  Implicitly this also means abandoning the next step: a manned mission to Mars.  Obama is angling toward commercialization of space, by encouraging NASA to use commercial launchers instead of NASA's (outrageously expensive) launch vehicles.

It sounds wonderful.  It also sounds like something a fiscally conservative Republican or Libertarian might do, and most unlike something a leftie like Obama would do.  I think this might have been slipped into his plans by some jokester.

But there's a big caveat.  Any such proposal would have to pass Congress, and we have a surprising number of congresscritters in thrall to the NASA powers-that-be.  This is because since it's origins in the 1950s, several bureaucratically-savvy NASA administrators have cleverly located NASA facilities supporting the manned space program all over the danged place.  There are darned few states that don't take home some yummy NASA pork.

So don't hold your breath.

But I'm sure keeping my fingers crossed...