Clunker

Gaming the system is the system.

And so I asked the question on the minds of millions of my fellow concerned citizens: How can I get my snout into this trough? Easy: I buy a small car qualifying for the $4,500, and keep it for a few months until the cash-for-clunkers boondoggle has run its course. At that point, the supply of used cars will have shrunk and their prices driven up; I will sell the almost-new small car for what I paid for it ($12,629 last Saturday) or more, at worst having driven it for free, and then buy the truck I covet.

The consequences of trashing all those “clunkers” will fall mostly on the poor, but also on auto parts and service businesses.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

Socialism doesn’t work. Why do these crazy people keep trying it?

Next time you meet a Global Warming Alarmist

ask them why they haven’t just killed themselves. If you really, truly believe this stuff then you believe that humans are the problem.

The most recent example of anti-birth thinking comes from Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax of Oregon State University. In a study called “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals,” they suggest that if you truly care about the environment, it’s not enough to trade your SUV for a Prius, use the right lightbulbs, or limit your lawn to organic fertilizers. To the contrary, you need to start thinking about something way more important: i.e., having one less child.

The “basic premise,” the study reports, is that “a person is responsible for emissions of his descendents.”

Why stop at merely preventing American or English births? Just think of the carbon reduction you could make by just offing yourself.

I think there are many who want the political outcome of anthropogenic alarmism. I don’t think there are many, if any, true believers.

Update:

The scientific debate, meanwhile is just getting interesting. Go ahead and skim past Watts’ objections to ground temperature stations. I’m sure many are as bad as he claims, but those data aren’t (or shouldn’t be) particularly relevant. The satellite data are much better and, as you’ll see, are less “convenient”.

Satellite observations are not influenced by heat islands or subject to the quality control problems detailed by Watts, and satellite records tally well with weather balloon observations–an independent database. However, the “debate is over” crowd is unlikely to embrace this solution.  The satellite record shows a relatively slow rate of warming–about 0.13ºC per decade–hence a relatively insensitive climate.

It’s a nice roundup. Worth perusing.

I Cook, Therefore I Am

Take time to enjoy Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch and ponder the many benefits of cooking.

Cutler and his colleagues also surveyed cooking patterns across several cultures and found that obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation. The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not.

And then go whip up a nice meal.

(Tonight I’m making pesto rotelle with portobello mushroom.)

The Messiah (Uncut)

Remember: “Single Payer” in English means socialized medicine.

The White House response is beyond lame. Anyone with kindergarten-level critical thinking skills can see she’s tilting at strawmen, obfuscating, and outright lying. Just in case, though, here is The One with no edits.

Transcript courtesy Breitbart TV:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

Bring on the ridicule, Barry.

The Natives Are Restless

Check out the three videos at Hot Air which illustrate why Obamacare is in trouble.

More hostility, please.

I just checked my misrepresentative’s web site and not only does she not seem to have any public meetings scheduled, but “health care” doesn’t make it onto her “hot topics” list. Oh, but the switch to digital TV does.