In light of my previous post about the burden of an elite education, a discussion following this WSJ piece about Sarah Palin by Norm Podhoretz brought up the subject of intelligence versus the ability to get things done. A number of those commenting posited that a high IQ does not automatically mean a person is capable of governing. That certainly seems to be the case with the present occupant of the Oval Office. He may have a high IQ (and there's quite a bit of debate about that subject in the comments), but he's shown he is in over his head.

Probably one of the best analysis I've seen on this subject, particularly in relation to Obama and Palin, comes from commenter Jake Peachy.

There is this problem of confusing smartness, IQ, and academic achievement with wisdom. There is no fool like an educated fool that does not have the correct big picture outline to properly organize information, and you cannot start with the details themselves to create big picture reference points.

What is so often missing with this contrived theoretical knowledge is that sense of three-dimensional understanding--- that intuitive depth perception called the wisdom, (a lot of which is formalized in religious and cultural heritage and tested by history) that gives you the big picture framework to properly place the details. The unwashed masses are more likely to sense intuitively the correct big picture framework because of a closer relation to real world experience.

Intellectual folks are enamored with a theory of knowledge used effectively by hard sciences. Since there is no concrete definitives in the so-called "social sciences", these definitives are then invented through the use of rigorous logic that seems airtight. From this base, a lovely complex edifice of theory appears that is erroneous at the base. The intellectual folks fall in love with their handiwork and think themselves wondrously wise because they understand it, using great words with mysterious meanings known only to the practitioners, while the great unwashed masses do not bother with it ----- because it is obvious to them that it does not square with reality, a reality that is vastly more complex than the most sophisticated theory of intellectual derivative.

Sarah Palin's real-world experience gives her that intuitive depth perception, that she may not be able to effectively articulate. In the microcosm of her experience with Alaskan government, she understands very well the greed of power, the sense of entitlement by the political class who do not see themselves as servants of the people, but their masters. This gives her the correct big picture outline in foreign-policy because the single biggest driver of history is about the intoxication of power, that drive and will to power with the development of a belief system that justifies absolute power. It is these belief systems that allow men to become as gods controlling the lives of millions. Thus the endless wars of unrestrained quest of power.

She also understands very well, from real-life experience, that the cycles of economic growth and wealth creation that comes from a free trade free market economy, where participants connect horizontally versus top-down control. As of yet, her ability to effectively articulate is not equal to the skill of Ronald Reagan.

If she does become president, I have full confidence in her perspective and if she surrounds herself with very able advisers, she would do very well. A presidential candidate doesn't necessarily have to have full experience when very able experience is available for hire. After all, we can only elect humans, not an omniscient all wise deity.

"After all, we can only elect humans, not an omniscient all wise deity." Unfortunately it appears far too many of the Obama faithful seem to think he is a deity. But he is not. He is a man, and he is fallible, despite the Democrats claim to the contrary.

A side note: During the presidential campaign in 2008 the Democrats kept slamming Sarah Palin for her lack of experience. They made a bigger deal out of Palin than John McCain, not realizing they were not comparing between McCain and Obama, but between Palin and Obama. If one looked honestly at that comparison, Obama came up short in a number of areas.

Palin was a serving governor, meaning she was the commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard. It also meant she had some foreign relations experience, dealing with both Canada and Russia. Obama had only been in the US Senate for two years and had spent most of that time voting 'present' or running for president.

Palin cleaned house in Alaska politics, routing out corruption in state government wherever it was, not discriminating between Democrats or Republicans. Obama on the other hand is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine.

Palin is a successful businesswoman. Obama managed to piss away $110 million of Annenberg Foundation funds with nothing to show for it.

Palin speaks plainly. Obama obfuscates when he orates.

Palin went to a state university (Idaho). Obama when to Columbia and Harvard Law School.

Palin is just plain folks. Obama is an arrogant elitist, condescending to us 'plain folk'.

All that being said, is Palin more intelligent than Obama? No, probably not. But she is smarter, and that's what makes the difference.

Originally I had every intention of including this as part of my weekendly Thoughts On A Sunday post. But after reading the original article in more depth I realized it would be better as a standalone post.

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It as been said by smart men and women through the ages that we should not cripple our children by making their lives too easy. Unfortunately far too many parents have ignored that advice to the detriment of their children. It's just as true to day as when the first wise parent uttered that truism.

We experience the effects of this every day, seeing people with elite educations being incapable of performing or understanding the simplest things most of the rest of us take for granted. Far too often they also have a sense of entitlement created by the educational institution they've attended as if merely by attending such a prestigious school automatically bestows it upon them.

It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

I've seen this on more than one occasion among acquaintances of mine. Fortunately none of my friends have fallen into a predicament like this as most of them grew up in the real world, having had worked in the trades, on farms, or served in the military long before getting their college degrees, most receiving them at less than elite institutions, though a few have gone to Ivy League institutions.

I've cut lawns, milked cows, shod horses, worked as a bus boy and a server in a restaurant, driven a school bus, driven a forklift in a warehouse, worked on an ambulance as a driver and an EMT, been a track worker for NASCAR on the Speedy-Dry truck, a broadcast engineer and DJ, a land mobile radio technician, a radar technician, and an electrical engineer. I attended public schools and a state university. My friends are plumbers, carpenters, electricians, farmers, supermarket managers, butchers, mechanics, pilots, librarians, store proprietors, as well as doctors, lawyers, fellow engineers, bankers, academicians, and a whole host of other folks. As far as I know, none of them have been crippled by an elite education, having a good grounding in the real world and being able to rise above the brainwashing of such an education.

That being said, I'm not sure what needs to be done in order to break the grip of isolation and self-aggrandizement elite schools lay upon their students. How does one bring them to a realization that they really are no different, no better than those outside the ivy covered halls? I'm not sure there's an easy fix...or even a moderately difficult fix.

Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it's almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it's even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A's in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they're exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn't get straight A's because they couldn't be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés.

Too many of those leaving our elite institutions of higher learning figure they know everything worth knowing and believing they deserve success, whether they've earned it or not. After all, they went to all the right schools and have all the important social contacts. Never mind that they may not know anything important or how to actually talk to the plumber, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, or gardener.

And to think these people think they are the only ones capable of running the country when I doubt they could even run a day care center or convenience store.

I guess it takes all kinds.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Skip and I have made it through another week, with both of us continuing our downward trip to our goal of 195 pounds. Skip still has the lead but he hasn't managed to widen the gap (we started a little over 4 pounds apart and have, for the most part, maintained that spread).

Here's the latest results:


Click on image to make biggerer

After the lengthy spell of late-spring-like weather reality reasserted itself as colder temps returned to New Hampshire, being a little below normal. Only a few days after the official Ice Out declaration for Lake Winnipesaukee a skim of ice has reappeared on one or two of the bays that were entirely ice free this past week, showing how cold it's been the past few days and nights.

The cold temps have also required us to fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove again, particularly in light of the trouble we had with the Official Weekend Pundit Propane Furnace the other day. (It's not like we use it all that often and that might be why we had a problem. And, yes, we will be having it serviced by a qualified service technician.)

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Also in regards to Lake Winnipesaukee and Ice Out, during our travels late this morning BeezleBub and I saw one boat out on Alton Bay and another being launched at the public boat ramp.

Neither of these boats were the first out on the lake, however. At least one boater was out last Thursday, checking out the ice damage to the dock at his island camp.

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Our local CongressCritter, Carol Shea-Porter, is holding a town hall meeting later this week right here in the Lakes Region. That might seem like a gutsy move considering the widespread anger at her vote for ObamaCare. But it isn't as gutsy as it sounds.

As Skip notes in his post linked above, there's a certain irony involved.

Here's the rub: I bet that she sent out HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of those cards shown above.

You know how many people can fit in the City Council chamber ????

60.

Yup, sixty. And if it works out like last time, I'm betting that a lot of Purple Shirted SEIU goons from outside the district will be there early, let in by a side door, and take up most of the seats.

Potemkin Town Hall, redux?

Her previous town hall meetings have been anything but open forums, with very limited time to ask questions and what questions asked were vetted ahead of time to make sure CSP didn't have to take any questions she didn't want to answer. Unlike her predecessor, Jeb Bradley, she doesn't believe in open and free discussion, particularly with people that disagree with her world view. But then she doesn't believe in free speech...unless it's her speech.

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Speaking of Carol Shea-Porter and the SEIU, a TV ad paid for by the SEIU has been running on the local station, praising CSP's vote for ObamaCare. The ad closes with the line "We thank Carol Shea-Porter for supporting us." The irony? Almost everyone I've talked to - Left, Center, and Right - understood it to mean her support of the union and not her constituents in the First Congressional District of New Hampshire.

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Two accomplishments the Obama Administration can claim as all its own?

The destruction of the special relationship between the US and Great Britain and the purposeful alienation of Israel.

Obama did promise change by his administration. Little did we realize that the change would be the insulting of both the Prime Minister of the UK and the Queen of England as well as tongue-lashing of the Prime Minister of Israel when he visited the White House.

Obama promised smart diplomacy as part of his administration. So far he and his Secretary of State have a failing grade in this regard, pissing off our allies and cozying up to our sworn enemies.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Andrew Klavan tells us A Tale of Two Cities - Washington, DC and Hollywood, both of which are so out of touch with the rest of America that they are like totally alien cities, where every day sensibilities are sorely lacking.

Washington, D.C. and Hollywood are two cities suffering from the same condition: they've not only become completely alienated from the people they're meant to serve, they're bizarrely blind to the fact of that alienation. Like deranged narcissists in a hall of mirrors, both our lawmakers and our culture-makers blow kisses at their own reflections, see a million kisses coming back their way, and think, "Oh, look, they love me--love me!"

This would certainly explain a few things, none of it unexpected.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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An unexpected down side to one of the provisions of ObamaCare deals with seasonal businesses that hire workers for only a few months of the year. Here in New Hampshire one of the businesses that will be most affected by the provisions is the ski industry. Under ObamaCare, any seasonal business hiring on employees for more than 120 days must provide health insurance or pay a $2000 per employee fine.

The bill signed into law on Tuesday by President Barack Obama fines businesses that do not provide health insurance to full-time employees who work more than 120 days a year. The assessment is $2,000 per employee, which, according to SkiNH lobbyist Bruce Berke and group president Alice Pearce, could mean as much as $1 million in fines to the big ski resorts, some of which hire as many as 500 seasonal workers.

Pearce said the original Senate health care bill contained only a $750-per-employee fine, which kicked in after a worker was employed 150 days. That exempted most ski areas, she said.

But the House tightened it to $2,000 and 120 days.

If this can't be fixed what are the ski areas likely to do?

Either they will hire fewer workers or stagger their hiring and firing such that no employee will be on the books for more than 120 days, which means many seasonal employees will enjoy 30 days less employment and pay. Either way it will likely mean wait lines will be longer, lift ticket prices will be higher, and the skiing experience will be less enjoyable.

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Bogie reports her 7-year old TV has bit it, refusing to turn on any more. Considering the shakiness of the economy (and the stability of her Wonderful Spouse's job situation), replacing the failed TV any time in the near future is not likely.

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Tom Bowler gets into the reality of supply and demand under ObamaCare, and it's not good.

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As reported throughout the blogosphere, it appears CNN has problems with math, particularly when it comes to Tea party rallies.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where boating has already begun, thoughts of summer have started too intrude, and where the firewood pile is getting smaller.

Reading and watching the reactions to the passage of ObamaCare has been educational if for no other reason that it illustrates the differences between those supporting the poorly thought out piece of legislation and those opposing it. Probably the biggest difference has got to be an understanding of economics in regards to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Those supporting ObamaCare (primarily the Left) apparently have a poor or non-existent understanding of economics or the effects of laws, taxes, spending, and mandates. Those opposing it (primarily the Right and the Center) understand economics all too well and particularly in relation to ObamaCare. They also understand the aforementioned Law of Unintended Consequences and how it is already coming into play.

The first and most profound effects will have far-reaching consequences, with large companies like Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T having to pay hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars they might have used for other purposes...like expanding their businesses and hiring more people. Of course I expect the Left to say it's all smoke and mirrors and that heartless businesses are just using this as an excuse to hurt their employees. (Yeah, like successful businesses will purposefully hurt the very people they need to remain successful.) They don't understand that when you take that kind of money away from businesses they'll have no choice but to react in ways that will allow them to survive.

Another unanticipated effect of ObamaCare: Retirees presently receiving prescription drug benefits from their former employers may lose that coverage and be forced to convert to Medicare Part D. Why? Because ObamaCare just made it far more expensive for the former employers to keep providing the benefits by adding billions in new taxes on those benefits, which is one heck of a disincentive to keep doing so. By not providing this benefit they won't have to pay the taxes. It also means the government won't collect the billions in new taxes they expected and they'll have to spend billions more to cover the now benefitless retirees. Between the lost revenues and the new expenditures the government will come out the loser on this, meaning the rest of us will have to make up the difference. We just don't know exactly how it is we'll be paying for it but it won't be cheap.

Another not so unexpected unintended consequence: Some of the very people we'll depend on to provide all this health care will bail out of the medical profession because they'll be heavily taxed on their income, won't be the ones deciding what care their patients require, and won't be reimbursed enough by Medicare to cover their costs under the 21% cut in Medicare payments that are part of ObamaCare, just to name a few. This is the same thing that happened in the UK and Canada when their governments took over control of health care - doctors and nurses left the profession or left the country and practiced elsewhere...like the United States.

Will ObamaCare initiate a rebellion among health care professionals as has happened in Canada, where some doctors have refused to take 'national insurance' and opened private cash-only clinics? Some practitioners here in the US have already shed themselves of the headache of health insurance, taking cash-only patients and/or offering concierge medical services (patients pay an annual retainer in return for a certain number of visits and services, which in the long run can be cheaper and easier than insurance).

In light of this I have a question for the ObamaCare proponents - Just because an additional 30 million people lacking health insurance will get it in the not so near future, what makes you think there will be any doctors willing or able to take them on as new patients?

Some may claim the only reason doctors will do something like that is because they're greedy bastards who really don't give a damn about patients, only about money.

A lot of the times, they offer treatments and surgeries for cancer or whatever that might cost $200,000 and they KNOW that they will only help the patient live MAYBE 4 months longer. The doctors have seen it happen over and over. It sure does make you wonder if the doctors are offering these treatments more for THEMSELVES financially or for the good of the patient.

A response to this piece of ignorant crap came from Dr. Ann Contrucci, MD, a pediatrician in Atlanta, Georgia:

Mr. Foster, I don't believe I saw M.D. behind your name? For those of us real doctors who assess real patients and make decisions regarding their treatments, your comments are nothing short of arrogant and insulting. Did you look this stuff up on, I'm sure, a reputable medical website so now you "get" what a doctor does and understand how he or she makes decisions? Do you actually have ANY idea how we make medical decisions? Do you have any idea what kind of education, training, and experience makes up what we do? We are given one of the biggest, if not the biggest, responsibilities of any job known and that is to heal. Unfortunately, despite even our best treatments sometimes, that is not the case. That is because medicine is still an art and not 100% exact science...therefore, bad outcomes still result. What used to be accepted as part of the circle of life is no longer so. Now it is patients coming in demanding this or that test, this or that medication because they "saw it on TV" or read it on the internet. If something bad occurs, well it must be the doctor's fault. There is no trust in physicians and with the bottom dwelling plaintiffs' attorneys lurking, frankly there isn't much trust in the patients. If I had a dollar for the number of times I've heard, "if you don't do the CT scan, I'm going to sue you," I'd be one of those "rich doctors" I always hear about. Funny, none of the docs I know are those "rich doctors."

I canNOT believe you would actually think that "doctors are offering these treatments more for themselves financially..." If you actually think that most physicians are of this mindset, you are a sick, sick man and there is no hope for you. Thank God you didn't go into medicine!

Here's the "DIRTY LITTLE SECRET" - physicians want to do the right thing for our patients, we do our best every day under, oftentimes, extreme circumstances and in stressful, chaotic environments with a risk to benefit ratio that is nearly always not in our favor. We do all of this while being held to an impossible standard of accountability while the politicians who are making all the decisions have none whatsoever. Perhaps your time would be better spent looking into those dirty little secrets... By the way, I truly hope that you or no one in your family every needs a physician's services for anything - you really wouldn't want to have to trust one of us to help you, would you? If, God forbid, you or someone you love has to be rushed to the ER for, say, a heart attack, what dirty little secret do you think your ER doctor will be harboring? Hmmm, I would bet that you will be given any and every treatment there is to SAVE YOUR LIFE! But that's just a guess...

Unfortunately the attitude of the first commenter, Dan Foster, is all too common, particularly among supporters of ObamaCare. As Dr. Contrucci says, too many people like Foster have no idea what is involved in becoming a physician and the pressure they're under every single day they're treating patients. The problem is there are far too many others out there with the same attitude as Mr. Foster, which might be why they support ObamaCare - pure ignorance. It would also explain why they have overlooked the unintended economic consequences of ObamaCare.

I'll be watching basketball tomorrow. Something I haven't done since last year watching State beat Connecticut and Louisville.

I suddenly realized reading this Lawrence Auster post my new-found depressive feeling. It's the feeling I get when traveling to Massachusetts with my family.

Speech only needs to be protected when it is in fact unpopular. I think we've got the Left in full-throttle attack on the First Amendment. But it appears an act of desperation.

How can ideas be prevented from dissemination in the age of the Internet? But maybe something more sinister is happening, as John Derbyshire writes of the shutting down of the American Renaissance conference, "How Liberty Dies."

It is a shameful thing that the AR conference was shut down -- an ominous thing too, in that this is the first time it's happened. We may be losing our freedoms of speech and association, as they have in Britain and Europe. So much for American exceptionalism.

The Left has certainly been emboldened. Seeing those creatures wearing that Palestinian towel is disgusting. And for a guy the Southern Poverty Law Center must consider a dangerous white supremacist, Jared Taylor makes an awful lot of sense to me, esp. towards the end of the interview.

I'm one of those whites who could have settled and worked in Washington, DC, or Detroit, Michigan--where homes prices are compellingly low--both places I have indeed lived, but for certain unstated reasons prefer New Hampshire north of Concord. We think it but we're not allowed to say it.

Heresy, the word Taylor uses, fits.

POSTSCRIPT: Before the disgrace at Ottawa shutting down Coulter was the warm-up in Halifax shutting down Taylor. Don't give in to these goons. Lesson of history: weakness begets more weakness.

As I learned from Aristotle or Plato, childhood formation is key. That's when the ink written on a person's character is most indelible and remains clearest. Anything after that will never be as deep or trenchant.

It's a matter of public record that our President attended schools in Indonesia as "Barry Sotero," having been legally adopted by his second father, a practicing Muslim. While there, he was listed as a Muslim student and given approx. 10 hours of instruction in that religion per week in the public school he attended as was (and I suspect still is) the norm for that country.

This went on for ten years at a critical stage in anyone's development. I know, with four children of my own in that age bracket.

Perhaps he still thinks of himself as one. His memorable slip of the tongue (Freudian?) with George Steppie on ABC was perhaps revealing in more ways than one.

That so-called Christian church in Chicago with Jeremiah Wright? Pluuze. More Black Power than anything. Becoming a Christian, taking on that facade, may have been an act of convenience to make his political career viable.

It's all starting to come together as Gateway Pundit shows. We have our second anti-semitic president in my lifetime. Carter is the other. As a commentator to the news that Obama treated Israel, our staunchest Near East ally, as a pariah, says at Lucianne.com:

Reply 6 - Posted by: RedGoose,
Please excuse the oafish Marxist buffoon who has lied his way into our White House. I, and a great many like me, respect you [Binjamin Netanyahu] greatly and wish nothing but the best to you and your country [Israel].

Some thinkers in the future, after Obama has been booted after one term--unless he can get the illegals to vote for him--will view him as the true impostor he is increasingly showing himself to be.

Making America weaker. That's Barry. Helping the permanently disadvantaged minorities. That's Barry. Telling white America: Your day is over. Pay up.

Here's an example. Same-sex marriage in DC? Yes, based on some nebulous penumbra of privacy or some other cockamamie approach one can read in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that discovered the right to homosexual acts to be protected in the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment. They just made it up.

Incest? Masturbating in front of the Capitol in Concord? I hope not.

Now onto the "palladium of the Bill of Rights" (Justice Joseph Story's phrase), the Second Amendment. Concealed carry, now an acknowledged personal right, in DC? Absolutely not. And I thought that right was staring at me from the Bill of Rights all this time.

This is something I've written about in the past, that being the declaration of Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee. On average it usually occurs right around April 19th, though it's been as late as May 12th (1888) and as early as March 28th (1921).

This year I expected it would be earlier than the average due to the warm weather this month, but I didn't expect it to be this early.

Ice Out was declared at 2PM yesterday afternoon, beating the old record by four days.

I expect some of the AGW faithful will cite this as proof that human caused global warming caused it. But I can counter with the rather late Ice Out back in 2001 (May 2) and the average Ice Out declaration over the previous 10 years occurring around April 16th.

To those of you out there insisting it is AGW all I have to say is something you've said to me whenever I've pointed out the cooler global temps over the past few years: "It's not climate, it's weather."

People were aiming to do her harm. This is her response to a canceled speech at the University of Ottawa.

Dennis Prager and Thomas Sowell, two of my favorite commentators, both opine in ways that are remarkably similar: American traditional values are directly under siege for the obscene and disastrous health care legislation that like a nightmare or gruesome painting, such the Francisco Goya one above, Saturn Devouring One of His Children, has become law. David Harsanyi says we've experienced a mugging of our liberties.

Our _last_ chance to turn the tide, says Dr. Sowell, is at the ballot box this November. Carol Shea-Porter, your political career is over. Over.

What killed Detroit, Gary North says, is gubmit. He's got mind-blowing statistics on housing prices, too.

Get ready for it with health care which, as John Dingell says on WJR, Detroit's WRKO, is that it's going to "take a while to control the people."

What did the great Ronald Reagan say are the most dangerous words one can hear? "I'm from the gubmit, and we're here to help." No thank you. Time to get back to the Constitution, folks. We are at a vital moment in which to do that before it's too late, says Seth Lipsky in his new book, _The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide_.

I really enjoyed his conversation on Chicago's WGN with Milt Rosenberg.

You can take your infinitely elastic Commerce Clause--which has given us the no guns in schools, whether they be public or private, regardless of state laws--and shove it up where the sun usually doesn't shine.

Resistance to ObamaCare at the state level is growing. AG's of a dozen states have already said they'll bring suit to the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare, in particular the part making to mandatory for American citizens to purchase a service or be fined (or imprisoned). Some states are working on or have passed legislation negating that requirement, seeing it as a violation of the Commerce Clause and the Tenth Amendment.

New Hampshire State Senator Jeb Bradley has filed such legislation here in the Granite State, making mandatory health insurance illegal without due process, meaning a court could order someone to obtain it as part of divorce/custody/child support agreement, but only then.

I wonder if the Democrats, and specifically Obama, will get the message that this piece of legislation is hated by a majority of the American people. No need to answer that as we already know they know, but don't care.

Now that I've had a chance to cool down a bit and think more upon the effects of ObamaCare, I can see my initial thoughts about it were, if anything, far too optimistic.

While masquerading as a health care reform bill, ObamaCare is nothing more than yet another means to slowly achieve the socialist revolution rather than having to fight a bloody insurgent campaign. It's kind of like the old saw about boiling a frog - Don't drop the frog into the boiling water because he'll hop out. Instead, put him in a pot of cold water and slowly raise the heat. By the time he realizes the water is boiling he's already been cooked. And that's what ObamaCare is really all about, boiling the frog (or in this case the American people, our freedoms, and the Constitution).

Am I being paranoid? Could be. But the question I pose to myself is, am I being paranoid enough? Because when a bunch of progressive jerk with little true understanding of the American people, the American economy, or of the Constitution of the United States start dictating to us what is good and bad for us, it's time to take up arms, figuratively speaking, and disabuse them of the notion that they are somehow our betters. And if they still don't get it, then it may time to take up arms, literally.

The Democrats in Congress ignored the wishes of a majority of Americans. They only paid lip service to bipartisanship. (Their definition of bipartisanship is to tell the Republicans to sit down, shut up, and vote the way the Democrats tell them to vote.) While many on the Left will cite Social Security and Medicare as social programs people said wouldn't work and would severely damage the economy (which they both will unless both programs are revamped top to bottom), both of those programs had true bipartisan support. ObamaCare had absolutely none.

Well, maybe I should clarify something about that last statement. In actuality there was bipartisanship in regards to ObamaCare. Unfortunately for Obama it was bipartisan opposition to the bill.

Across America the response to the passage of ObamaCare was one of dismay, shock, and anger. Some few applauded its passage, loving the idea of a massively dysfunctional budget-busting government-run health care system. One commenter to this WSJ piece is not one of them:

I'm sure most Americans, or at least thinking Americans, those that considered their heritage one of freedom and liberty, had already condemned Obamacare on a gut level from the start, as they should, but probably few know the exact details of this gross unconstitutional intrusion into their lives and what it will mean to them. Here are the highlights divided into three lamentable categories: increased taxes and fees, spiraling costs, and reduced services.

Marc's comment, which is excerpted above, is rather extensive and covers the salient points of ObamaCare and its major downsides. As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

Reading the Amazon.com page of Tommy Newberry, whose new book looks interesting, _The War on Success: How the Obama Agenda Is Shattering the American Dream_, he makes a point which I can also vouch for, having been a teacher of American literature for over a decade now:

The Judeo-Christian roots of America bleed through the founding documents and are unmistakably the greatest asset our country possesses.

The Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address by Geo. Washington, "The Liberty Song," "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Hail, Columbia!" the letters of John Dickinson, et al. It's even right there on the quarter.

It isn't that I don't have anything to say about the debacle that took place Sunday evening in the Capitol. Rather that it's I have too darn much to say about passage of Obama's Health Care Destruction Bill, and very little of it polite.

So instead of resorting to invective and a lot of obscenities, I figured it was a good idea to put off until tomorrow my thoughts on this socialist piece of crap foisted upon the American people against their will by other people without a shred of intelligence, integrity, or honesty.

It looks like both Skip and I are back on track, with a healthy downward trend in our weight. Skip has pulled ahead though not with a commanding lead.


Click on image to enlarge

Last Monday going to a well check-up for my nine-year-old son I encountered a lengthy checklist since he hadn't been in for several years.

Most were what one would expect.

But the last question--this is not the first time I've encountered it before--drove me nuts. It asked Yes or No. Do you have a gun-free home? The implication was clear: Having firearms in the home is an unnecessary and dangerous condition for the health and well being of the children. "It's for the children!"

Since many more children die by drowning, and no question was asked whether I've taught or had the child taught how to swim, I simply crossed off the offending question and inserted one about this.

According the Centers for Disease Control twenty children were killed in 2004 while playing with guns of family or friends while 900 were killed by that dangerous element, water.

Bathtubs kill more children than accidental discharge of firearms!

I almost had my oldest in fact drown when someone irresponsibly used our private beach to launch a large boat and the keel created a nearly three-foot furrow in the sand. Hard to see under the water.

I was geared to have push back, but I received none. These forms are created by others, and it seemed as if the medical staff was relieved or understanding of my concern.

But when the herd and unprincipled soccer moms who are far more concerned about safety than liberty see this, you can kiss the Second Amendment good bye.

That's an inalienable right, the last time I read the Bill of Rights in the light of the Declaration of Independence. Please excuse me for being an alarmist, since the so-called right to health care would have been laughed at as recently as the early 1980s.

It's ironic the first day of spring was the last day of late spring-like weather, with temps in the 60's and low 70's. Today cooler, but still above normal temps arrived, along with some occasional rain. BeezleBub and I made use of the good weather to move more firewood from our stacks outside to the garage, where it will finish drying in preparation for next winter's heating season. (The garage gets very warm in summer, speeding the drying process as long as we leave the windows open.)

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The first day of spring also brought a change in BeezleBub's activities at the farm. Instead of splitting more firewood for next winter or working at the sawmill to finish sawing timbers for new construction at the farm stand, he spent the day working in the greenhouses, getting pots ready to take transplanted tomatoes and peppers. Farmer Andy got the wood-fired boiler used to heat the greenhouses going, burning the first of the 80 cords of firewood he harvested for that purpose. (He used to use oil to heat them in the past, but changed over to wood when he realized it would cost far less to use his own renewable resources. The wood-fired system paid for itself in the first season, eliminating the need to buy 11,000 gallons of oil he usually used to heat the greenhouses.)

The greenhouse growing season has started.

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The House vote on ObamaCare is slated for today. While some members of the MSM are already crowing about success of passage (Bill Weir of ABC being one of the worst, not bothering to hide his liberal bias), others are saying it's too close to call and are unwilling to predict the outcome of the vote.

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Glenn Reynolds has a round up of yesterday's anti-ObamaCare protests.

While claims of racism have been leveled against the protesters, primarily TEA party supporters, it's been the anti-TEA party folks slinging the sexual and racial epithets towards TEA partiers. It's the old double standard being applied...again.

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Zombie tells us why most of America hates ObamaCare: no one wants to pay for the medical care of those unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions in regards to their health.

As Zombie writes:

A built-in false assumption with the health-care debate is that sickness is always no-fault sickness. It's never socially acceptable to assign blame for people's medical problems -- especially blame on the patient.

But I'm not afraid to confess that I'm a judgmental person. And I'm pretty confident that most Americans who oppose socialized medicine share this same judgment: that some people are partly or entirely to blame for their unwellness.

Zombie also provides a number of telling examples, showing us some patients are entirely at fault for their condition, but blame their doctor for telling them the truth.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Bogie lays a twofer on us, giving us a view of a "real hardy New England gardener," and reasons why riding season hasn't started yet in her neck of the woods.

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Rocketman shows us a visual guide of how Obama's politics work, including going outside constitutionally defined means to get his way on a host of issues. Then again, he's never really liked the Constitution because it limits what he can and cannot decree, meaning he can't just proclaim himself President-for-Life like so many of his socialist friends and allies.

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Right Truth offers some interesting health care statistics that should give anyone supporting ObamaCare some pause.

But then ObamaCare has never really been about health care reform, has it?

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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Powerline reports the latest Rasmussen poll shows a majority of Americans (54%) are still against ObamaCare. This despite all of Obama's appearances - primarily in Democrat strongholds - to push this steaming pile of manure.

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David Starr has important advice for hand tool manufacturers, specifically those making screwdrivers, chisels, and scribes.

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One of the biggest lessons learned by the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The traditional physical training used by soldiers needed to be changed to reflect the realities of combat.

Heeding the advice of Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans, commanders are dropping five-mile runs and bayonet drills in favor of zigzag sprints and exercises that hone core muscles. Battlefield sergeants say that's the kind of fitness needed to dodge across alleys, walk patrol with heavy packs and body armor or haul a buddy out of a burning vehicle.

Good training always increases the prospect of survival in combat.

(H/T Granite State Pundit)

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Let this example be a cautionary tale when it comes to refinancing your mortgage, particularly when the 'refinance' offer comes from someone you don't know.

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Topless gardening? Oh, yeah, bring it on!

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Is New Hampshire in danger of becoming a welfare state like California, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York?

Yes, if the state legislature keeps adding all kinds of 'essential' services - essential being defined purely by the Democrats - and boosting taxes and fees to unsustainable levels. The legislature seems incapable of learning lessons from our surrounding states, all of which have expansive welfare systems and below par economic performance in relation to New Hampshire. They haven't made the connection between welfare benefits and economic performance, where as one goes up the other goes down.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where spring as arrived, planting has started, and where preparations for the coming boating season have begun.

Filled with dogma and what's completely absent is a realistic--even if politically incorrect--look at the races' intellectual endowment. The egalitarian cant crumbling under science make parsing the editorial an easy task. Lawrence Auster, for example, does it with devastating ease.

But don't worry, the jam-down gubmit healthcare monstrosity will no doubt have affirmative action policies mandated, much as the ill-named Community Reinvestment Act. That worked swell, didn't it? Mona Charen writes about it here.

I'm so depressed that I had Goodwife make a call to Shea-Porter the Buffon to tell her to vote no on socialism, then we've alighted for the Seacoast and a pet-friendly hotel for an overnight stay. I'm going to read Homer and the Jewish Bible and am taking in the ocean breezes. I'm naturally pessimistic about democracy, "the menace of the herd," holding it in the disdain the Founding Fathers likely did.

The idea that people who are recipients of "government largesse" could vote was considered wrong by even a gold-plated Victorian liberal like John Stuart Mill. How far we've degenerated!

It seems Nicholas Kristof is confused about health care reform, thinking it's all about making sure everyone has access to health care. Obviously he has not been paying attention to the debate or the proposed legislation.

Poor Nicholas. Apparently he can't tell the difference between access to health care and health insurance.

Everyone in America has had access to health care by law since the the 1980's. No one needing care can be turned away, even if they can't pay for it. ObamaCare has nothing to do with access, at least not directly.

According to the Democrats ObamaCare is all about is health insurance, something entirely different. Of course once everyone has insurance there will be an effect on health care access, just not the one they expected - there will be less of it. Doctors will be unwilling or unable to take on new patients, just like in Massachusetts under RomneyCare. So even if you have insurance there's absolutely no guarantee you'll be able to find a doctor to take you as a patient.

See the difference now, Nicholas?

In light of the increasing pressure from the President and the Congressional Democrat leadership to pass the overreaching and economy-busting health care destruction bill, a number of states have been proactive, working to short-circuit the Left's attempt to grab even more power over the lives of their citizens.

Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

Constitutional law experts say the movement is mostly symbolic because federal laws supersede those of the states.

With Washington closing in on a deal in the months-long battle over health care overhaul, Republican state lawmakers opposed to the measure are stepping up opposition.

[Idaho Governor] Otter, a Republican, said he believes any future lawsuit from Idaho has a legitimate shot of winning, despite what the naysayers say.

"The ivory tower folks will tell you, 'No, they're not going anywhere,' " he told reporters. "But I'll tell you what, you get 36 states, that's a critical mass. That's a constitutional mass."

Considering Congressional Democrats and the President have been ignoring the will of a large majority of the American people, is it any wonder state legislators are taking measures to send a message to them, telling them we won't stand for having this version of health care reform shoved down our throats? The states are rebelling against the Left's arrogant belief that they know better than we what it is we need.

Throughout history such belief by the self-proclaimed elite has always led to grief, misery, and tyranny. They can justify any action as being for "the good of the people" even when it was only good for the elite. And so it is with Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the other members of the Leftist cabal. They do not believe we are capable of running our own lives, that we aren't smart enough to make our own decisions, that if we don't follow their leadership that we must be deranged and need to forced to surrender our will to the State.

That's what this whole ObamaCare kerfuffle is all about - Power.

While browsing the news today, I came across an interesting story on Fox. Evidently, I must be old-fashioned. I always thought debate and free thought were integral parts of the American way, and all aspects were to be considered before a decision is made. Evidently, the President disagrees.

President Obama is not worried about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday. 

Now this is interesting. Rather than just note that there are others (a majority, in fact) that happen to disagree with the President's ideas on socializing improving healthcare, he simply writes off this disapproval as a "procedural" event, almost as if those who oppose don't really oppose - they're just playing the part. This, in my opinion, just shows the true arrogance of a man who clearly does not see reality. I'm sure in his world this is a cut and dried deal, just waiting to be sealed with a tally. Unfortunately, for the millions of us who can't escape reality on Capitol Hill, things may be a bit different (like, really different... Really, really different).

President Obama is not worried -- and doesn't think Americans should worry -- about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday. 

So, let's get this straight. The debate against your plans is just a "procedural" event; yet, your primary plan for passing this measure is bypassing the traditional voting method? Logic seems to be telling me that if there are only routine "devils-advocate" debates against you, why not put it up for a real vote, and enjoy near-unanimity? Oh, wait. They can't do that, because the debate is real. I'm sorry, but when your voting tactics are raising legal questions, one of your own floors' whip is in disagreement with your methods, a 12-point margin is calling your plan an outright "Bad Idea", and you have to come eerily close to buying votes, it may just be time to give it up.

 

---TNJ

My goodness.

I don't know if she had a life worth living. All indications are that she didn't. But the whole affair was a horrible thing.

I remain convinced that she wasn't given the proper benefit of the doubt and her husband seemed a person who may not have had her best interests at heart.

Here.

Scott has obvious fun with it.

Or is it the "whinerines"?

Following up on this post, particularly the additional information about ObamaCare Lite (also called MassHealth and RomneyCare), it this op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal, covering the abject failure of 'mandatory' and subsidized health insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ObamaCare used this as a model. Unfortunately it's a bad one.

As one commenter put it:

That RomneyCare is no better than ObamaCare should be undeniable. The chief problem with health care is COST. The second and third most significant problem with health care is COST and COST. Litigation drives cost, defensive medicine drives cost, bureaucracy drives costs, a price regulated public marker drives up costs in the private market, shortages of primary care physicians and nurses drives up costs, complex regulations which prevent an emergency room from sending a non-emergency patient to urgent care or a retail clinic drives up costs, mandates drive up costs...

The other problem with ObamaCare is that no one knows what the real goal is. At first it was the uninsured, then it was health care itself, then it was insurance reform. Not once has one elected member of government said in once concise statement what the goal is. Not once, and I think this is totally doable, has congress or the white house gone to the private market and said, price out the rates and benefits for the policies you intend to sell.

If the goal was reasonable access to quality health care at an affordable price that limited government and insurance company bureaucracy and maximized choice of plans and providers...then we could have a discussion...for example, what is reasonable access? What determines this? Most certainly it is not 44 days to get an appt with a primary care doctor!

'Nuff said.

Though he won the argument, he realizes it may not matter. He will not comply, however, if it's passed.

John Hood has been a policy wonk superstar for over twenty years now. He was a household name to me when I interned at the Cato Institute in 1990.

The machinations of the Democratic leadership has made me realize (yet again) that they truly have contempt for the people they profess they represent.

Rather than submit the Senate version of ObamaCare to a vote in the House, where every vote aye or nay will be recorded and become part of the public record, they want to use the so-called Slaughter Rule to avoid actually having to show their constituents whether or not they voted in favor of the Obama Health Care Destruction bill.

They must believe we won't figure out this bit of legislative legerdemain and know who really supported this piece of legislative manure. It's not like it will save them from the rage of those of us who voted them into office. We're already pissed off enough at them that we'd like to fire them now. (This means you, Carol Shea-Porter.)

Nancy Pelosi is crowing as if she's already won, claiming ObamaCare will cure the lame, allow the blind to see, all while costing us less money, and raise Obama to the level of deity and shepherding the Democrats to permanent power. (Well, three of the five are hyperbole...maybe, but I know she believes the last two.)

But there are far too many examples to illustrate that government control of anything is fraught with corruption, fraud, and endemic institutional inefficiencies. Health care will be no different, claims by the Wicked Witch of the West notwithstanding.

Before casting "yea" votes in favor of a government health care grab later this week, wavering House Democrats may want to struggle out of the left's ideological fog for a moment and consider the sad, but instructive, tales of the U.S. Postal Service and the city of Detroit. Both are poster boys (excuse me, poster persons) for how government can get almost anything gloriously wrong.

That the U.S. Postal Service is swimming in red ink isn't news. The important news to Americans as they follow Washington's three-ring health care circus is that U.S. Postmaster General Joe E. Potter wants to drop Saturday mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure.

Imagine a hamburger joint announcing to its customers that it plans to stop selling hamburgers a day or two a week to cut costs. Of course, a hamburger joint wouldn't limit the sale of hamburgers to keep its costs down. The guy who owns the hamburger joint would get creative in his marketing and pricing to sell more hamburgers. He might trim costs operationally but not at the expense of selling as many hamburgers as he and his help could flip. Why the difference? The hamburger joint can go out of business. The U.S. Postal Service, being immune to risk, cannot.

Just like the nation's postal service, if enacted, government-run health care will eventually have to limit access to services in an attempt -- however vain -- to contain costs.

There are plenty of other examples showing why government shouldn't be running anything as important as health care. Two quick examples: Medicaid and Medicare.

If we need another example, all we need to do is look at Detroit, a shining example of decades of liberal Democrat policies.

It's an economic basket case, much like Michigan, only more so. It's population is half what it was at its peak. Entire neighborhoods are abandoned, like modern day ghost towns. While some might blame the downturn in the economy, and particularly the auto industry, for its decline, plenty of other American cities have seen their primary industry or industries disappear, but they have thrived in spite of it. But Detroit's government has made sure that wouldn't happen, killing off any chance for economic revival.

Detroit is a sump of corruption, high taxes, and tangles of red tape. Public schools are mostly warehouses for poor minority kids (provided those kids even show up for school). Crime, principally drug-fueled, is endemic. The middle classes -- mostly white, but not all -- have long voted with their feet, seeking safety and stability in Detroit's suburbs or by scooting off to Sun Belt locations.

Consider the universals in government failure. The order will vary from failure to failure, but here goes: 1) corruption; 2) waste and fraud; 3) ballooning costs, higher taxes, and mountains of red tape; 4) sorry management with little or no attention to the bottom line; 5) few (if any) penalties for failure; and 6) big time union involvement, which factors adversely into any of the first five elements.

With all the manifest failure, what's Detroit's liberal establishment's response? Does the establishment make a mea culpa, renouncing the policies and programs that have laid low Detroit? Is pro-growth/pro-family reform -- not the cockeyed liberal variety -- on the lips of Detroit leaders? Where are the big brooms to sweep corruption out from every nook and cranny of government? Why aren't Detroit's leaders standing up to the unions and telling them in no uncertain terms that their days of privilege are over?

And just like Detroit, when government-run health care begins to fail, how will Democrats respond? Will Democrats own up to their failure or will they concoct a bunch of government-centered fixes? When those fixes don't work, as liberal fixes haven't worked in Detroit, then what will remain for Democrats to do? Smartly manage government-run health care's decline and failure?

Despite this and plenty of other examples, the Democrats insist only their way - the Big Government way - can possibly 'save' health care in the US. Never mind that a large majority of the American people don't want this monstrosity, though they do want some kind of health care reform. Never mind that government has a very poor track record managing anything. And the bigger the thing it manages, to poorer the job it does. Since health care is one-sixth of our economy, I expect it to do an exceptionally poor job of it. All we'll get out of this deal is poorer quality health care at many times the existing cost.

How is it again the Democrats expect us to be happy about this? Actually, they don't. They want us to stay home, shut up, and do what they tell us to do because they're the only ones qualified to make our decisions for us.

Yeah. Right.

UPDATE: Massachusetts State Treasurer Timothy Cahill is slamming ObamaCare, saying "If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years."

He should know, seeing as ObamaCare Lite is crushing the Bay State, costing far more than projected and still not covering everyone as it was designed to do.

Gerald Warner in the London Telegraph, writing about the Chicago gun case that was argued recently, writes in passing:

It looks as if Obama is turning into an accidental promoter of conservative values, by provoking a reaction through the law of unintended consequences.

Thanks to Obama, it's not only gun and ammo sales that are through the roof. Conservative tomes are best sellers and liberal politicians are on the defensive after being so triumphalist less than a year ago.

This is something I've seen predicted by Lawrence Auster of View from the Right, who opined, rightly it turns out IMO, that a McCain victory would have doomed conservatism, which was then moribund and on life support in 2008. In the "death grip" of non-conservatives liberal poseurs, of which McCain is almost certainly one.

It looks like I hit a (not) unexpected plateau, dropping only 0.2 pounds. Eating out at friends Friday and Saturday evening (where I over indulged) didn't help. Like Skip says, it takes a few days to work off those extra couple of thousand calories.

Here's this week's results:


Click on image for a larger, more readable version

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just over the border with Texas, had 2,700 murders last year, making it the most dangerous place on the globe. Two thousand and seven hundred!

And it's in the news again today. I first heard about it several weeks ago listening to an Oliver North opinion piece.

And the wall is NOT being built with any sense of urgency. The Democratic Party and the Catholic Church view these illegals and legals (a U.S.-born baby here can drag in dozens of individuals with the misnamed Family Reunification Act) as prospective clients.

With the increase of kidnappings in Arizona fueled by Mexicans flooding the zone, we'll undoubtedly share in the benefits that is Mexico.

This may help explain the dreadful performance of that municipality's school discussed before here. My goodness!

Here's an offending sentence that begins a mass, political e-mail:

If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

Gotta love those gubmit skools.

Heavy rain arrived last night, bringing with it high winds and rapidly melting snow. Some of the Weather Guys™ have predicted as much as 4 inches of rain in the southern part of New Hampshire and 3 inches expected here at Lake Winnipesaukee before it's all over.

With the above average temps we've been seeing the past week or so and the rains expected over today and tomorrow, I expect Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee to be early this year. But there's at least one person disagreeing with me.

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You did remember to set your clocks ahead, didn't you?

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Constitutional questions about the so-called "Slaughter Rule" have been raised, meaning the machinations of the House leadership to shove ObamaCare down the throats of the American public may come to naught. In effect the rule would allow the House leadership to declare, without a vote by the House members, that a bill has been deemed to have passed. But under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution a bill must be passed by a recorded vote.

But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. (emphasis added)

It is apparent to anyone watching the Democrats are willing to do anything they need to do to pass ObamaCare, even if it means violating the Constitution to it. I have a feeling they believe the ends justifies the means, even if the means comes down to violating their oaths of office and, in effect, flipping their constituents the bird.

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You have got to be kidding me.

"I thought hand-knit items were supposed to be warm."

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Wizbang shows us an indisputable act of honor.

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Skip reminds everyone that New Hampshire is a hot bed of retail politics at the local, state, and federal level. For dyed-in-the-wool Granite Staters politics is a participant sport, one to be avoided by the politically uninformed.

Every four years those aspiring to the presidency find that out the hard way, being forced to go out among the voters here if they want to even have a chance of gaining support and votes. The 'modern' method of lots of media buys with slick TV and radio promos, pretty campaign signs and billboards dotting the landscape doesn't work here.

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The trusty Ford F150 4X4 made a trip to the dealership yesterday to have a dragging rear brake replaced. They took care of it quickly (and under warranty) and I was back on the road in only two hours. It would have been even shorter but they had to wait 90 minutes for the new caliper to arrive from the parts depot.

(Shameless Commercial Plug: The Ford F150 is now the Official Pickup Truck of Weekend Pundit.)

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How stupid is this?

The New York state legislature is moving to ban restaurants from using salt in cooking. Oh yeah, like that's really going to set well with chefs and patrons. What's next, red meat, nuts, and sweeteners?

(H/T And Rightly So)

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Eric the Viking has more thoughts and links about the Democrats' end run around the Constitution in trying to promote the so-called "Slaughter Rule" in an effort to push through ever more unpopular ObamaCare.

As Eric comments:

What does it mean for the country when one party, working against the will of the people, decides to change the rules as they go along? It's the seed of tyranny.

Of course they'll use the excuse that it's for the good of the people, even if the people are too stupid to know it. But that excuse has been used by political elites for thousands of years to justify imposition of dictatorial rule.

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Cap'n Teach asks the question that must be asked: "How'd those coffee parties go?"

My take on them? Classic FAIL.

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I've always found this misunderstanding of statistics to be indicative of the ignorance of too many of the people we elect.

There's an old story -- not apocryphal, unfortunately -- in which a politician is heard to moan:

50% earn less than the median income. Something needs to be done!

The median income is the point at which 50% of people earn less, 50% more. The median household income in the United States is roughly $50,000. Half of all households make more than this, half less.

And no matter how high household incomes rise, 50% of them will earn less than the median and 50% more. But somehow President Obama seems to think he can change that.

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Color me unsurprised.

Europeans don't like President Obama. Considering he has a knack for insulting our allies and pandering to our common enemies, it's no wonder he isn't well liked. I wonder if any Europeans find themselves missing Dubya yet?

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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And that the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains are falling, the snow and ice are melting, and where winter is slowly fading away.

In response to this story about the federal useless Dept. of Education purchasing Remington 870 shotguns (in a barrel length that would be illegal for me), Derek Crane tries his own bit of doggerel:

Gun-free zones for thee.
12 Gauge shotguns for me.

What do you think? I like it.

I reminded of a wonderful op-ed by Walter William years ago about the proliferation of SWAT-type teams in DC. And this was before Sept. 11. He mentioned that there were dozens of them, including a team for the Dept. of Commerce. Dept. of Commerce?

It's like Say's law, supply creates its own demand. With all these guys trained in the military for killing, it's not an easy prospect for them to re-join the civilian world. Better to hang out with other gung-ho types with all the tats and bulging biceps and handle guns.

Does anyone stop to think whom they're ready to shoot now?

I heard Israel has a law against it by Christians, but I'm not sure it's enforced.

But in Muslim countries the prohibition of Christians being Christian, at least openly, is far more robust in practice. Doug Bandow, looking at Morocco, hits on a point usually ignored by the secular West. It doesn't fit the multicult playbook.

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.

If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.

Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

HT: Gates of Vienna

My favorite poem of his is this.

Being an engineer and a long time amateur radio operator I have always liked seeing an interesting innovation used to fix a problem, whether the fix is temporary or permanent. I've used unorthodox fixes in both my vocation and avocation over the years. It's also fun seeing how others have dealt with solving problems with only the materials they had on hand.

That being said, I found a blog devoted entirely to showing interesting jury-rigged fixes to everyday problems.

(A big thanks to Eric the Viking)

Not at averting disaster until it's almost too late. Glib liars who would want to get in my pants if they were of the Barney Franks' persuasion.

Anybody else see the tidal wave of projected entitlement spending coming poise to swamp us? Help! SOS! Run to higher ground!

about this.

I was given some garbage political talking points by the nice young liberal male on the other end about her efforts to relieve doctors of their onerous school loan debt and to create more doctors in rural areas.

Count me as unimpressed.

HT: Hugh Hewitt

More red meat for Chan: Gerald Warner in the London Telegraph calls the establishment of a review by the United Nations-established IPCC "a whitewash," following the scandal of the released e-mails, which may have been an inside job or an outside hacker.

Instead, they [the IPCC] have opted for a very obvious whitewash, discredited from the day of its launch, that will provoke hilarity and increased skepticism when it reports. After that, there will be no road back. We should be grateful that the arrogance and over-confidence engendered by their longstanding immunity from challenge (but not any more) prompted the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] fraudsters to create so inadequate a smokescreen.

As Nixon found out, it's the cover-up that nails you to the wall.

It's been sixteen years since the publication of The Bell Curve. The evidence has only solidified in ways that was almost unthinkable back then.

The educational section in The New York Times is absolutely chock-full of IQ-related news. Parents want their children to have as high an IQ as they can produce, I guess realizing that it offers greater opportunity to be a productive citizen later on.

And most of us realize that IQ, or the idea that there's a general intelligence or g (see Arthur Jensen's g Factor) for people, is largely inherited. Not solely, but 60 percent+. I actually think the numerous, numerous studies put it closer to 80-85 percent.

If that's actually true and Darwinism continues its domination--intelligent design people are unpersuasive to me--then start having the courage and to connect the dots.

You may not realize the specific books that have done just that recently here and here.

A Wall Street Journal book review that is an excellent background is here.

Whew. Statists (a word coined by Albert Jay Nock and not Mark Levin, as I heard the latter assert one day) are attempting to win over a perpetual majority through the un-American idea that they can receive benefits without paying into the system. Skeptics might justifiably say the big increase first went into effect under Bush II. Fair enough. Another reason why "compassionate conservatism" is kaput.

Source: TaxProf Blog.  HT: Instapundit

It appears Frontier Communications has fallen further under the spell of Verizon's sales pitch, with the sale of Verizon's Oregon assets to Frontier being OK'd by Oregon's PUC.

But not everything is rosy. At least someone in one state is questioning the wisdom of the sale in light of the fate of other small rural-service telcos that bought what Verizon was selling.

The State Journal-Register newspaper in Springfield reports that [Administrative Law Judge] Lisa Tapia said in a 46-page report that allowing Frontier to purchase the Verizon lines in Illinois "will diminish Frontier's ability to perform its duties to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service."

--snip--

Unfortunately for Frontier, they are caught up in the back wash of Verizon's other local exchange divestments. Both FairPoint and Hawaiian Telecom completed similar transactions, and are both now in bankruptcy.

Both FairPoint and Hawaiian Telecom paid far too much for the assets they bought.

In northern New England FairPoint bought an increasing share of a decreasing market, always a formula for disaster. Wireline customers have been shedding themselves of traditional landlines and using either cell phones or VoIP services from their local cable companies for some time, both of which have been competitively priced compared to FairPoint. FairPoint lost over 13% of their customers since they took over operations from Verizon. And because of FairPoint's financial difficulties, its promise to expand broadband service to at least 95% of its service area has fallen by the wayside.

The best thing Illinois could do for telephone customers is to run from the Verizon-Frontier deal. In the end the only one such a deal helps is Verizon. Everyone else will be screwed. Frontier doesn't have the financial wherewithal to handle such a deal and will end up in the same situation as FairPoint and Hawaiian Telecom - in bankruptcy. That helps no one...except the lawyers.

We miss you, Duchess! The greatest dog I've ever had the privilege of knowing. You were a tremendous gift.

It may be more than you think. Here in New Hampshire with local funding doing the vast bulk of it, most of the expense is difficult to conceal. But in other places, like Washington, DC, the costs per pupil are definitely disguised. Cato or somebody looked at it and determined the per pupil spending was the highest in the country, around $25K. How 'bout $28K?

A lot of good that does.

Watch the wonderful Cato video.

Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Cool.

Hellenists v. Jews.

Go Jews!

HT: Marginal Revolution

There's also Chasidim (ultra Orthodox Jews) v. Franciscans. That's a tough one.

Maybe the g-dd-mn Catholics aren't so dumb, after all.

It is quite obvious the one course University of California students protesting against tuition hikes have not taken but desperately need is Economics 101. The UC system-wide protests highlight the financial crisis facing California, a state verging on being forced into federal receivership because every effort to resolve the its financial problems has failed.

Taxes are sky high and getting higher. Revenues are falling off. Unemployment is over 12%. Taxpayers and businesses are leaving in growing numbers. Union compensation and pensions have reached unsustainable levels and are still climbing. Is it any wonder California has become a financial basket case? How can the students of the UC system expect the state to be able to fund the system when they don't have the money to do so? Do they really believe that just by making demands and throwing mass temper tantrums the state will somehow find a source of funding they haven't already taxed to death? Obviously they do. And by doing so they have displayed their economic ignorance. They don't understand: Their politicians have sold them a bill of goods and the time to 'settle up' has finally come.

Whites in Rhodesia, the bread basket of southern Africa, owned the large, productive farms. That proved unpopular. Now the country is black-controlled and -dominated, renamed Zimbabwe, and the people are starving. Whites have been kicked off the land in many places and given to people who don't know how to grow carrots or manage a hamster cage. The Economist covers it.

Yet, sadly, black Africans dance in glee at whites being persecuted. It makes for good politics to take people's eyes off their own incompetence.

Don't forget Ian Smith, one of the greatest men I've ever met. He bitterly spoke at the Heritage Foundation in August 1990 of democracy's course in Africa: "One man, one vote, one time"; then the dictator sets up shop.

I've seen Reich taken to task before by real economists. Robert Barro of Harvard just embarrassed him on the PBS NewsHour way back on September 14, 2004. Reich has a Harvard Law degree, that's it.

But this is something to remember for a long time. Ah, those moments of clarity.

But I am on the nerdy side. I mean I watched Red Dwarf in the 1980s, in addition to Dr. Who. I even like to wear nerdy-looking glasses.

Why back down from what one is? And if I were smarter I'd be an engineer like Chan.

Having said all that, I don't hesitate in saying, "Yeah, I'd like the President to comply with the Constitution by releasing a valid birth certificate." Call me names, if you want. I don't care.

But there's an awful lot about this man we don't know. It's disconcerting, really. Makes me in the mood for a movie. A 1962 movie staring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Janet Leigh.

Barry Farber has interesting thoughts on birtherism, as well, citing the Sherlock Holmes story "The Dog That Did Not Bark."

I feel compelled to mention that my brother, a novice diplomat with the State Department, caught some flack during his background check that his older brother had been born in West Germany while his father was stationed over there as a second lieutenant.

Notwithstanding the fact that the same older brother attended a service academy for two years, presumably proving his citizenship, repeated requests were made for a copy--a real notarized copy--of a birth certificate from the older brother.

I guess rookie diplomats have a higher bar to cross than a mere Commander in Chief.

This is gross.

One in six Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes and close to one in two black women are infected, new figures from the CDC reveal.

People like this deserve to be horsewhipped.

[W]hen I see a story like this, I don't want to hear about a "plea bargain." I don't want to hear about "parole." I don't want to hear about "what a good mother she is."

I'd rather hear about to which part of the Gates of Hell she'll be chained.

From the NY Daily News:

A heartless Queens woman was arrested for crippling her 11-month-old English bulldog after witnesses caught her on video beating the pooch with a shovel, officials said.

The young bulldog, named Spike, had been abused repeatedly over the past few months.

During his short life, Spike has sustained a hip fracture, a broken leg, three broken teeth and injuries to his ears, according to ASPCA Assistant Director Joseph Pentangelo.

The pup, which is being treated at the ASPCA hospital, is also virtually blind in his right eye.

ASPCA investigators were called to Aguilar's house on Feb. 24 after witnesses reported hearing a dog crying.

One of the witnesses used a camera phone to tape the abuse, also capturing Spike's howls of pain. Aguilar is seen throwing Spike to the ground and then slamming him with a snow shovel.

[The ASPCA] discovered her husband had taken the dog to veterinarians 12 times in the past seven months for treatment.

If you get a pet, and you have no intention of treating it with kindness and getting any self-fulfillment out of it, then, WHY. GET. A. PET?

The story also includes the video of Spike being beaten by his owner.

I could not bring myself to watch it.

The thought of anyone abusing any of the feline members of this household makes me want to reach for the Mossberg 930 12-gauge Autoloader.

Here it is, week 9 of the challenge, and Skip is still ahead, though his lead is back down to 4 pounds. Here's where we are so far:


Click on image to actually be able to read it.

It's hard to believe that only a couple of weeks ago ice fishing bobhouses dotted the lake. On Saturday I saw only one between Alton Bay and Governor's Island. Today it was gone. The ice is looking mushy and dark blue here and there, a sign that the ice is thin. A view from one of our favorite hilltops showed a lot of blue ice across the lake.

Yesterday's and today's temps in the mid-50's and temps in the mid to upper 40's over the next few days or so will speed the melting and break up of the ice. If the weather holds I expect Ice Out will be declared early this year, occurring in late March or early April. (Ice Out is defined as when the M/S Mount Washington cruise vessel can make all five ports of call on the lake - Weirs Beach, Alton Bay, Wolfeboro, Center Harbor, and Meridith - which usually occurs in mid April.)

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BeezleBub was back at work at the farm for the first time since vacation, working at the farm's saw mill cutting timbers for a new pavilion at Farmer Andy's farm stand. Construction will start next month, meaning BeezleBub will then use the timbers he cut this weekend to assemble the post and beam frame of the pavilion.

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It seems the Left is trying to link just about anything bad that happens anywhere to the TEA party movement, including the Pentagon shooter, Amy Bishop, and the Chilean earthquake.

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As the saying goes when it comes to scandal or corruption, follow the money. When it comes to AGW skeptics, they receive a small fraction of the funding of the AGW faithful receive, and from the same sources.

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Speaking of following the money, we should look closely at the Tides Foundation, "which is one of the original "philanthropic" donation launderers for donors who don't want to be tied to fringe activist groups."

The list of donors and recipients is illuminating and makes one wonder how some of these organizations and businesses can support organizations that do not have our country's best interests at heart and are working to damage as much of our economy as they can, all in the name of 'fairness' and 'justice'.

(H/T Instapundit)

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A comment to neoneocon's post about whether Obama has already done irreversible damage to America brings up a point that few may have thought about.

Neo's point is valid but Obama damages us in a more insidious direct fashion. At the end of the day what constrains both foriegn and domestic policy is money. Nothing new, that goes back thousands of years.

Obama is removing future options by burning up our capital actively managing the private sector's participation in the economy and racing through our credit by ramping up the deficit.

If he wants to remove any possibility of America doing anything here or overseas all he needs to do is bankrupt the nation, and that appears where he's leading us.

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Here's yet another preview of what we can expect in the way of health care if Obama gets his way.

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The Weekly Standard has their own take on the AGW crowd being in denial about ClimateGate and the continuing disintegration of AGW theory. (I particularly like the magazine cover illustration, finding it appropriate.)

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Now I'm off to watch the Oscars.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is melting away, the bobhouses are gone, and thoughts of boating now intrude.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute has 'em.

This morning, after yesterday listening to a podcast with Alan Gura, the lead plaintiff lawyer in McDonald V. Chicago, I checked in how oral arguments went Tuesday. I was guardedly optimistic at the likelihood of the Court ruling in favor of the Second Amendment.

From this and this I'm crestfallen. I don't mind an activist court--in the pursuit of Constitutional guarantees. It sounds as though many of us who were having expectations of victory--like the Patriots in the Super Bowl against the Giants--may face bitter defeat. I hope this won't be the case when the decision comes down in a few months. I've heard June is the time.

Mid-March is usually the end of Town Meeting season here in New Hampshire.

Here in our small town Tuesday is the second session of our town meeting, where residents will vote on list of warrant articles that cover everything from town and school district budgets, capital reserve funds and bond issues, to zoning changes and voter petitions. It's also town elections, where a number of citizens, including yours truly, are seeking offices ranging from cemetery or library trustee, road agent, school board, to selectman.

Many towns have tried to hold the line on spending, keeping both the town and school portions of their budgets under tight control. Some have even managed to cut their budgets, like our town, knowing that with today's economy their residents are struggling to make ends meet. Unfortunately a few towns are acting as if the good times are still here, attempting to expand their spending despite the poor economy.

Regardless, the people will be speaking, letting their town leaders know what they think via the ballot box and whether they really want to spend the extra $20,000 for the chihuahua dog park.

As the saying goes, if you don't attend town meeting or vote, you have no right to complain about your taxes.

It's become quite apparent to me that far too many of my more liberal friends and acquaintances have little or no understanding of the TEA party movement, including why many supporters capitalize the word 'TEA', but not the first letter of 'party'.

First, TEA. It stands for Taxed Enough Already. It's simple and straightforward.

Second, it is not a political party like the Democrats or Republicans, hence no capital 'p' in the word 'party'. Instead it is a loose coalition of like-minded citizens - Democrats, Republicans, and Independents - tired of over-the-top government deficit spending, the threat of confiscatory tax rates being imposed, and the attempts to expand government beyond the limits imposed by the Constitution. The movement harks back to the original Boston Tea Party, with Rick Santelli's rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange seen as the start of the modern TEA party. Unfortunately too many opponents of the movement don't see it that way, making claims of racism, naziism, and 'astroturfing' as part and parcel of the TEA parties. I guess it's better they believe that rather than taking a close look at those supporting the TEA parties and seeing that they are average Americans driven to political activism by the irresponsible actions of the Obama Administration over the past 14 months and the Democrat-controlled Congress over the past 3 years.

For the most part social issues are not at the forefront of the TEA parties. They aren't interested in dealing with abortion, drugs, religion, education, or a host of other issues. They are seen as minor as compared to the impending train wreck that is the government's insatiable quest for revenue, control, and profligate spending. Social issues are merely a sidebar as quite often the deficits are deepened by spending on the myriad of issues that really aren't that important, or as some claim, unconstitutional.

If one can understand that about the TEA parties, then one might look at the movement with a more open mind.

The purpose of women as traditionally understood is to have & nurture babies. That's what they're built for, not competing against men as equals in the brutish world. But feminism decades ago went to war against things traditional, even the traditional understanding of biology.

Well, evolutionary biology is providing much corroboration to the traditional views of the sexes. This started for me way back in 1991 by hearing an interview with Anne Moirs, the author of Brain Sex, which made much hay of reporting on studies showing that brain wiring and endocrinology make the sexes different, giving legitimacy to traditional views of sex differences. She was apologetic about it then. The years have only given added strength to her thesis. One of the UK reviewers, where Ms. Moirs hails, wrote, "Women talk, and men drive." Hm-um.

This is not to say I excuse lack of opportunities for women or sex discrimination. I refuse to use "gender" incorrectly. I don't. My wife works outside the home, for instance. More power to her.

But she's also the mother of four children. God bless her. And she leads me to believe that I'm the father of all of them.

Well, some feminists who drank the Kool-aid are not happy campers. Not happy at all. Their biological clocks have stuck the dooming chime on the last of their fertility and they are wondering what it's all for. The good job, the vacations, the nice clothes...

They want a baby, dammit!

I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment [sic] came with a leather briefcase.

It was wrong. It was crap.

The Democrats talk a pretty good game about jobs and how they're so supportive of labor. Unfortunately what they don't tell is that their 'support' usually ends up causing labor to lose jobs. And while the Democrats blast the Republicans as being pro-business, it is those businesses that provide jobs for labor, something often overlooked or purposely ignored by them.

Here's an interesting graphic that shows an interesting correlation between which party was the majority in Congress and job growth, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Skip at Granite Grok.

The Cato Daily Report, run by Caleb Brown, who happens to have a very mellifluous voice, has an interesting discussion by Tom G. Palmer about a new case wending its way through the courts. It's about whether DC resident can do more than keep arms, but bear them as well.

The same attorney is handling the case who handled Heller, Alan Gura.

Mr. Palmer, as a gay man who apparently was engaged in a public display of affection with his boyfriend, was set upon by a pack of thugs who were trying to kill him. I think this happened in California. Running away, he eventually had to turn around and brandish the weapon he was carrying to thwart violence.

This is often how it goes down. Mr. Palmer, who has no doubt the threat of physical violence was real, says that thanks to that firearm he's lived for another twenty-eight years.

He was also one of the original plaintiffs for Heller.

Reading the historian Esther Forbes and her account of Paul Revere's ride, I learned that the colonials were forbidden from having large caches of weapons and gunpowder. Which they ignored. So our War for Independence could not have happened if we had not been violators of unreasonable gun laws.

This gives me solace. The last time I was in D.C., for example, I went a little overboard by packing...something full service. And doncha know I nearly had to pull it on a young thug who began physically confronting my friend and me from out of nowhere. He crashed into us as if we were bowling pins and he was the bowling ball. The hand was on it in its concealed position, when luckily the threat receded. But like any former Eagle Boy Scout I was prepared.

Just brandishing a gun at a criminal thug is usually all one need do to cause a prompt cessation of hostile activity directed at one.  It happens much more than people realize.

My friend, the very high-ranking gubmit lawyer who occasionally had after-lunch walks with former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, was momentarily freaked out. Needless to say, he's very hostile to the Second Amendment as properly understood, and thought I was insane for exercising my Second Amendment right. We're former West Point buddies and our bond is deep. But he did gratefully acknowledge he felt relieved I was as prepared as I was.

Here it is. The invaluable David Horowitz finds out how bad it is. Any guess that the smaller zoo in Durham is following in goose-step with the Trotskyite party line?

Don't forget we pay for this.

Lots to do and miles to go before I sleep.

Regular blogging resumes tomorrow.

I'm not sure what's happened, but I created the weekly graphic Skip and I use to show our progress, and then e-mail to him as well as home (I use a program at work to create the graphic). But when I got home, no e-mail from work in the Inbox. This is the third time in a row this has occurred. The spam filer doesn't have them, nor does my ISP's system, so it is a puzzlement.

So here are the results sans graphics:

Skip: 223.4 pounds

Me: 229.8 pounds

Our common goal is 195 pounds. Skip had something of a head start, being 4 pounds lighter than me when we started, and that gap has both widened and narrowed over time.

UPDATE: I finally got the graphic where it was supposed to be!


Click on image to embiggen