Commentary on Palin...

Suddenly there seems to be a lot of commentary on Sarah Palin.  Specifically, why the left hates her with such a passion.  Here are three takes on that (one of these via my brother Mark D.): one, two, and three.

One thing that occurred to me as I read these: “Sarah Derangement Syndrome®” is a pretty darned good diagnostic for unthinking progressivism.  That is, if you're trying to gauge how well informed someone is (politically), and whether they think of themselves as progressive, the answer to a single question (“What do you think about Sarah Palin?”) is probably all you need...

Repeal of ObamaCare...

A nice piece in the WSJ this morning.  The lead:

Democrats are deriding last night's House vote to repeal ObamaCare as "symbolic," and it was, but that is not the same as meaningless. The stunning political reality is that a new entitlement that was supposed to be a landmark of liberal governance has been repudiated by a majority of one chamber of Congress only 10 months after it passed. This sort of thing never happens.

More House Members—245 in total—voted to rescind the new entitlement than the 219 Democrats who voted to create it last March. That partisan majority narrowly prevailed over all 178 Republicans and some 38 Democrats. The three Democrats who favored repeal yesterday confirmed the bipartisan opposition to the kind of vast new social program that historically has been built on a national bipartisan consensus.

Republicans across the country campaigned on repeal last year, and yesterday's vote showed refreshing respect for the often invoked, rarely consulted American people. Meanwhile, six additional states have asked to join the momentous constitutional challenge to ObamaCare in Florida, bringing the total to 26, plus Virginia's separate suit. A majority of states resisting this mandate is another "symbolic" threshold.

More like this, please, Republicans...

Walks...

Last night, around 7 pm, I took the four dogs out for their evening walk.  It was magical outside – we were completely enveloped in a thick, dense fog – the kind that fills the air with tiny droplets so small you can't see them, but if you wave your hand through the air it gets wet.  Visibility was down to just a hundred feet or so.  You can see this on the chart at right as a “pulse” of high humidity a few hours ago.

The three field spaniels went on an ecstatic tour de odeur, madly sniffing at anything and everything, drinking in the enhanced odors of the evening.  Race chased pine cones both real and imaginary; he didn't even notice the fog.  The dogs fur quickly was covered in tiny little droplets, giving them a diamond-encrusted appearance in the dim light from our front porch.  There was a full moon high overhead, but the fog so dimmed and diffused the light that I could scarcely tell it was there.

This morning was a completely different story.  We got up a bit early, around 2 am.  Everything was damp outside, but the sky was completely clear and it was much warmer than last night.  On the chart above, you can see that an hour or so before our morning walk, the humidity dropped precipitously (from near 100% to under 10%) in the span of a few minutes, and the temperature jumped 10°F at the same time.  A beautiful full moon was high in the sky, and it was very bright outside.  No flashlight needed this morning!  Off to the west I could see the top of fog in the lower reaches of Lawson Valley, bright white in the moonlight.  Colors were easily visible all around us, even in the distance.  The stars were largely washed out by the moon, but this was more than compensated by the beautiful views of the moonlit landscape.

The dogs were excited, too, but by something completely different and unknowable.  They spent our entire morning walk – all four of them – being very quiet, staying close to me, and sniffing at a dozen or so particularly interesting spots.  It was hard to get them off those spots.  A couple of times the four dogs made a perfect "plus" sign, with all four noses smelling the same square inch of ground, 90° apart.  I'd sure like to know what they were smelling!  It had to be something really, really interesting to get Race's mind off pine cones. 

I'm looking forward to seeing that fog in the moonlight as I drive into work this morning...