Recently in Say What? Category

President Obama speaking to sixth-graders armed with the duo of TelePrompters. Are they his "binky," or baby blanket? Apparently they go everywhere with him.

Ain't democracy grand? I'm laughing, but I'm sad at the same time. What harm will this guy go to the country, but be too ignorant to realize it as it unfolds?

Rex Ryan consumes 7,000 calories a day.

I'm shocked, but here it is. That's feminism run its full course. My brother's wife won't be taking his last name--just like her mother didn't do. Surprisingly, however, they're getting married in a traditional Catholic ceremony even though he's a left-wing Quaker. (Sorry, I am being redundant right there.)

And the young woman has that curious--increasingly common--hyphenated last name that's a mark of selfishness on the parents' part.

Dennis Prager argues convincingly to my ears that women shouldn't do that. I can't find a reference to what he's said, but Luke Ford comes to the rescue. I hope he's having a good Shabbos. I'm a bit worried about him.

Well, judging from their jumping jacks...not so well.

We hear more about ClimateGate as time goes on, particularly from many professionals. One group we've been hearing from on a regular basis has been engineers. Maybe it's because we depend upon verifiable data and reproducible results as part of our jobs. No amount of wishful thinking will make what it is we design work if the scientific principles upon which it is based are false. This is something the so-called climate scientists involved in the ClimateGate scandal seem to have forgotten.

One of the latest engineers to speak out about ClimateGate is Ken Johnson, a registered Professional Engineer, retired professor of Mechanical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, and Metrology (that's metrology, not meteorology, a similar sounding but unrelated scientific field).

The appearance of [the websites that first made the ClimateGate data public] was probably the fruit of either a diligent hacker or the guilt easing effort of an honest, science dedicated, whistle blower who became disgusted with the dishonest actions of their employer at the East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU), in Britain, who supplies global temperature data to the UN. The material contained on the sites verified what many climatologists and meteorologists have been claiming for many years, i.e., there is no legitimate scientific data which indicates any unusual long term increase in the global temperature ('Global Warming'). Further, although carbon dioxide (CO₂) 'greenhouse gas' in the atmosphere could have a small effect on global temperatures, it is kept in check by the massive amounts of CO₂ loving vegetation on land and in the oceans (like kelp), which convert the CO₂ into our life sustaining oxygen and food.

The e-mails revealed there has been an organized "cabal" of politicians and others calling themselves "Climate Scientists" who for years have been supplying falsified global temperature data to the UN to promote their efforts at worldwide wealth redistribution through CO₂ emission rationing and taxing schemes, such as the US's upcoming 'Cap and Trade' (industrial CO₂ generation allotments), with a tax on all CO₂ releases. Following the first announcement that their scheme had been uncovered by the e-mails, the major players were on the Internet commanding file deletions, hard drive erasures, and demanding prosecution of those responsible for the releases. This whole episode was dubbed by some journalist as "Climategate". It has been an example of the radical environmentalists demanding the 'foot' must be made to fit the 'shoe'.

To base policies, taxes, regulations, and laws on patently bogus data used to 'prove' a theory not much more than scientific quackery is madness...assuming the theory wasn't designed for just that purpose.

UPDATE 1/13/10: Sorry, I forgot the link when I posted this last night. All fixed now.

It's good to know that it's not only white people who are the cancer of the planet, as Susan Sontag is infamously remembered for having sputtered. We're all at fault if we breath out that poisonous gas carbon dioxide that's a "threat" to the public safety.

Silly me for thinking that that gas was good for plants in their production of oxygen and sugars. That's at least what my grandfather, a Ph.D. in biology, constantly taught me when we went down to visit him in Naples, Florida. Photosynthesis, no?

Obviously I should be sent to a re-education camp for siring more than two or three children. (I have four.) All that poisonous carbon dioxide!

Wait. I'm a gun-toting, Bible reading, weekly church attending, conservative. I think there are moral absolutes, truth, and Haydn is better than Lady Ga Ga. They won't even bother wasting time on me. I'm hopelessly reactionary.

I must admit I've missed Steven Den Beste since he pulled the plug on USS Clueless a few years ago. When he resurfaces from time to time his postings are poignant and to the point, just as they have always been. His latest is no different.

In his new screed he ties together ancient Greek philosophies, modern Western society, and our Teleologist-In-Chief.

It does not bode well for the U.S. at all.

Don't stop being negative, bloggers. It can improve memory, judgment, and writing according to recent research.

HT: John Derbyshire

As I've written before, zero-tolerance policies, particularly when it comes to public schools, are the refuge of the lazy. Such policies fall under the Law of Unintended Consequences, punishing the innocent far too often while generating bad feelings and lawsuits.

Zero-tolerance policies have claimed more victims, in this case a six year-old first grade student (and a Cub Scout), a high school student (and an Eagle Scout), and a 14 year-old student.

The first two were 'busted' for carrying 'deadly weapons', the six year-old for bring in his new Official Boy Scout eating utensil kit (with spoon, fork, and knife), and the high school student for having a 2-inch pocketknife...in his car.

The six-year old was suspended and was 'sentenced' to spend 45-days in the county reform school. How stupid is that?

The high school student was suspended for 4 weeks for his major infraction of carrying that huge weapon of mass destruction in his car. How stupid is that?

And the 14-year old was suspended for wearing a wristband. A wristband. How. Stupid. Is. That?

As long as zero-tolerance policies like these exist, no one will be willing to actually make a decision, to take responsibility for making a decision, and kids will suffer for this lack. How stupid is that?

President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

WTF?!

Why has he received the Nobel? For being elected?

The Nobel committee says it was for his work on reducing/eliminating nuclear weapons and strengthening diplomatic ties between nations.

Hogwash. He's done nothing but talk about what he'll do. That's it. That's all he does.

At least Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace between Egypt and Israel, a major accomplishment.

Al Gore won for his environmental efforts, as misguided as they are.

At least they actually did something! But the Big O just needs to show up to get his. Now he'll be insufferable as is narcissism won't allow us to forget he won the Nobel.

UPDATE: On the way into work I was listening to NPR. Even they couldn't believe Obama was awarded the Peace Prize, questioning the choice and the wisdom of the Nobel folks.

For more WTF, Glenn Reynolds has a compilation of reactions.

It's bad enough Congress was complicit in part for making the housing meltdown a reality. Now they want to do it again.

(Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting the results to be different this time.)

...[F]ew people noticed a hearing with an exceedingly boring title -- "Proposals to Enhance the Community Reinvestment Act" -- held last week in the House Financial Services Committee. But the session marked a key moment in the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over what caused our current financial woes -- and how we might best avoid getting into the same trouble again.

At the hearing, and in others across Capitol Hill, Democratic majorities are pressing hard to expand some of the very policies that led to the reckless home lending that in turn helped lead to the great financial meltdown. If Chairman Barney Frank and his fellow Democrats have their way, we'll do it all again -- and more.

At issue last week was H.R. 1479, the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. It would expand and strengthen the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to make loans in low-income areas that many lenders had traditionally shunned.

The same legislation that forced banks to lend to borrowers incapable of repaying the loans is now being 'enhanced' to force banks to do even more of this kind of lending? If that isn't an example of fiscal insanity, I don't know what is.

Back in 2003 and again in 2007, President Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-created financial organizations, because he believed they were getting in over their heads. Barney Frank, the same Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, blocked any attempts to do that, stating on more than one occasion that they were fiscally sound and required no such efforts.

He was wrong.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed the irresponsible loans the banks were forced to make by taking them off the bank's hands and repackaging them, in effect collecting most of the risky home loans and holding on to them or repackaging them as mortgage backed securities. When these home loans stopped performing, as they were destined to do, both financial organizations failed and billions of dollars were lost in the financial markets and billions of dollars worth of real estate was foreclosed upon, leaving the taxpayers holding the bag.

Now these congressional idiots want to the same thing...again.

Do they really believe that this time there won't be a housing market collapse when banks are forced to give even more home loans to people incapable of paying them back?

It appears Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH-1) has no problem with stating an outright lie as truth if the lie serves the purposes of her masters (Pelosi and Obama).

During both of her town hall meetings to 'debate' health care reform, she stated that tort reform wouldn't help health care costs and tried to use the 'failure' of tort reform in Texas as an example.

There's only one problem with her claim: it's a complete and utter falsehood.

On NHPR, she said of the Texas reform, "It didn't drive down costs." In Manchester on Saturday, she said it accomplished "nothing."

That would be news to Texans. The Dallas Morning News reported in 2007 that because of tort reform, "(t)he number of doctors applying to practice in Texas every year has increased more than 50 percent, relieving desperate shortages in some rural areas."

The cost of malpractice insurance dropped an average of 27 percent, according to the Texas governor's office. Shea-Porter pretends that didn't help patients because health care providers did not immediately lower their prices. It's true, they didn't.

"Instead, they're reinvesting the savings in more and better health care," the Dallas Morning News reported.

When confronted by a woman at the town hall meeting in Manchester about the inaccuracy of her claim, she told the woman to sit down and be quiet.

So much for polite discourse or reasoned debate.

One of the charges one hears made most often about the uprising of angry Americans against Obamacare is that it is funded and coordinated by the GOP or health insurance lobbyists. You see it in the various blogs, forums, newspapers, and so on. And it is, if course, the Democrats making such charges. But why is it something that they do on a pretty regular basis entirely off limits for those on the Right?

In Denver it became quite evident the "bought and paid for" protesters weren't from the Right, but from the Left.

The anti-Obamacare protesters arrived by car, public transit, or shank's mare. The counter-protesters arrived by chartered bus.

The anti-Obamacare protesters made their own signs.


The counter-protesters carried professionally designed and printed signs and banners.


The anti-Obamacare protesters were there because they had a stake in health care reform and showed up on their own time. Some even took time off from their jobs to be there. The counter-protesters were there because they were paid to be there.

The anti-Obamacare protesters understood what they were protesting against and what they were for. Some of the counter-protesters didn't even know what the signs and banners they carried said because they didn't speak a word of English.

This clinic [outside which the protest was taking place] is adjacent to Denver's day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys "¿hablan ingles?" "casi nada" was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. "¿Quien sabe?" (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I'm kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the grassroots.

The irony of their lack of comprehension of the signs they were holding was heightened by the fact that they were the most elaborate and detailed signs of either group.

This is yet another example of the double-standard being applied to moderates and conservatives.

Two Boston areas zoos threatened to euthanize a number of their animals unless some of their funding cut by the state were restored. Basically it was a version of "Don't make us shoot this dog."

Talk about emotional blackmail.

I know things are tough all over, but this is just plain sick.

Four Chicago-area cemetery workers were accused on Thursday of digging up hundreds of graves and dumping the remains so the burial plots could be resold, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The scheme may have netted about $300,000 and gone on for four years. The workers targeted plots that were older and had not been visited recently.

Why does in not surprise me that this took place in Chicago?