iPhone Thieves Beware

Many iPhone owners are nobody you want to mess with.

In Case You Thought Chemistry Was Dull

You don’t have to know any chemistry at all to enjoy this geek humor, thanks to the highly reactive writing style of Derek Lowe, PhD.

These Bavarian rowdies have prepared a series of salts of the unnerving azidotetrazolate anion. As they point out, the anion was described back in 1939 (in what I hope was a coincidental association with the outbreak of the Second World War), but its salts are “rarely described in the literature”. Yes indeed! People rarely spray hungry mountain lions with Worcestershire sauce, either, come to think of it.

Yeah, Baby.

What a Difference a Year Makes

For the first time in well over a year, there is a glimmer of hope on the American political scene. Some celebration video seems in order.
Here is how you win:

And here is what happens if you back the wrong horse:

(Yes, I know. This parody has been done to death. But this one is actually pretty funny.)

Political Correctness Kills

And when PC infects the institutions that are supposed to protect us, it’s extra deadly.

The report therefore demonstrates, in its own peculiar fashion, why no one took measures to counteract the threat that Hasan plainly posed. If a blue-ribbon, brass-plated panel can’t speak honestly about Hasan after he has butchered 14 of our people, how can we expect his supervisors to speak honestly about him before the fact? As Peters says, “ain’t many colonels willing” to do that.

James Cameron Jumps the Couch

When I met Cameron years ago he impressed the heck out of me. He could quote Dark Star chapter and verse, and had great stories to tell. In the years that followed he showed that he was a master at directing the action scene.

Later I heard about his infantile tantrum when Bush was reelected, and Cameron withdrew his application to become a U.S. citizen. That showed that he had no idea how valuable citizenship is, nor what our founding principles are.

Now he’s crossed the line. He just destroyed all the good will I had for him in just one sentence.

EW: “’Avatar’ is the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool.”
JC: “Good, good. I like that one. I consider that a positive review. I believe in eco-terrorism.”

So long, Jim. I’m done.

Update:

Added a link to the story about his citizenship tantrum.

TSA Logo Contest

I hear that if you have one of these on your bag you get to skip right through airport security.

Or maybe you think you can come up with a better one?

That Big Head Start Study You’ve Been Reading About

America has spent $100 billion and change on Head Start, and now there’s a major study on just how effective it has been. Kathleen Sebelius says,

“Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children.”

So that’s why you’ve been reading all about it in the press.

What? You say you haven’t?

Hmm. I wonder why not.

Umm, yes Ms. Secretary, but the same research shows those effects vanish by the end of first grade. I guess that information is on a need-to-not-know basis. The public needs to not know about it or the administration hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in Kauai of getting American tax payers to throw another $100 billion or so at government pre-K, as President Obama is so very keen to do.

The Forgotten Elephant in the Room

Veronique de Rugy has a good post up about the real reason healthcare prices are going up.

It should be incandescently obvious to anybody with the slightest understanding of economic reality.

Economists have shown that if a good’s price is zero or decreasing, then the demand for this good will likely increase. In 2008, consumers were only directly responsible for 11.9 percent of total national healthcare expenditures, down from 43 percent in 1965, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This means that someone other than consumers pays roughly 88 percent of all healthcare costs, giving consumers little incentive to mind costs and much incentive to over-consume.

But ignored in all of the current debates over health care costs is the reason why we are paying less out of pocket. As usual, when things are really screwed up you have to look to government meddling.

The first bit of bad juju in this story was the imposition of the income tax. Next was the Ponzi scheme called Social Security. Then came income tax witholdings (Milton Friedman’s one bad idea.) Once that big chunk was being taken out of paychecks, employers started offering “benefits” like health insurance to sweeten the pot. It started with “major medical”, and went downhill from there.

Not only did the taxes seem hidden once people got used to witholdings, but what once was spent out of pocket became hidden. (The subterfuge is double in the case of Social Securit. Half of what you’re paying is hidden as an “employer contribution.”) Once the HMO model got started, well, you can see the result on the chart.

Not only should the income tax be repealed (along with the XVI and XVII amendments) but, before that, tax witholdings should stop. If people had to write a check every April 15th we’d see a rapid shift toward smaller, more responsive government.

And health care costs would go down because there would be no reason to depend on your employer for health insurance.

Think about what costs you more now than it used to vs. what now costs you less. I think you’ll see a pattern.

Let’s Go to the Big Board

And check out the numbers.

And if that doesn’t scare you, you’re either dead or a Democrat.

Brave, Brave Sir Robins

Classical Values asks, where’s the brave art world that stood up to John Ashcroft?

According to the New York Post, they have a bad case of “jihad jitters.” “The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” the Post reported yesterday, “quietly pulled images of the Prophet Mohammed from its Islamic collection and may not include them in a renovated exhibition area slated to open in 2011.” Why? “The museum said the controversial images — objected to by conservative Muslims who say their religion forbids images of their holy founder — were ‘under review.'”

If any religion needs to be offended, on a regular basis, it is Islam. As long as it has members who get violent when offended it needs to be treated with contempt. It’s quite fine for the members of a religion to be offended, to complain, and to not like what they perceive as offensive. But religious violence must not be tolerated.

If offense can damage your faith, your faith is of no value.

Update:

In fairness, Ask-Imam.com seems to be doing a pretty good job.

Money Bomb!

Scott Brown just may be able to save us all from Government-Mismanaged Healthcare. Help him help us.

Transparency Redefined

By now it’s obvious that the Dumb Bastard lied when he made his CSPAN promise. Pelosi piped up with this bon mot:

There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who’s served here’s experience.

To which James Taranto retorts:

Has a more false or awkwardly worded statement ever come out of anyone who has served as speaker of the House’s mouth?

That politicians lie is hardly front-page news. But Dear Leader and the Democrat leadership are taking it to a breathtaking new level.

Update (and bumped):

Tune in for the next exciting episode!

(And here’s hoping the series gets canceled in November.)

Dots

Do Not Show This Post to Bradley Byrne

He would not want to know that there are more errors in the New Testament than there are words.

GOP Needs a Medical Clue

One of the many bad side effects of this immoral, insane, and illegal effort to nationalize health care is the politicization of medical science. There are many good reasons (besides the constitutional one that should strangle this monster in its crib) to oppose Obamacare.

But one thing many on the Right keep harping on, namely the new recommendations on mammography, is going to make the GOP look stupid.

The health care reform bill, in particular, has created fear among women of all political persuasions. After all, women are responsible for most health care decisions and spend two out of every three health care dollars. The overwhelming majority of health care workers are women, including 95 percent of home health care workers, 90 percent of nurses, and the majority of first year medical students. In November, women around the country reacted fiercely when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women ages 40 to 49 should not be routinely screened with a mammogram for breast cancer. It seemed the federal government was telling young women to just roll the dice when it came to this deadly disease.

The truth is that mammography screening for women aged 40 and above is one of the major health care advances of the past 40 years. With the onset of mammography screening, the death rate from advanced breast cancer has decreased by 30 percent since 1990. That’s why the American Cancer Society and Susan G. Komen for the Cure have made it clear they will not change their guidelines urging women to be screened starting at age 40.

It’s true that it’s suicidal to turn over your health care decisions to the government. But those new recommendations are based on the latest science. That said, they are not the final word. It’s well worth reading David Gorski’s post on SBM in order to wrap your mind around what is a complex situation. What’s hard to intuit is that increased screening does not necessarily save lives. There are valid reasons to criticize the recommendations, but they should be based on science and not political hysteria.

Well, Duh!

David Freddoso states the obvious.

But, you might say, aren’t these inconveniences, and TSA’s $46 billion annual budget, just the price we pay for safety? Hardly, because we’re not getting safety. A Nigerian man with documented terrorist ties, whose name was already on a watch list, known both to the British government and to ours as a threat, was given a visa and allowed to board a U.S.-bound plane wearing explosive underpants. Had he lit his drawers on fire in the bathroom and not in his seat, we’d be watching memorial services for 300 passengers today.
In short, we have turned our airports into something out of “1984,” and we’re not safer for having done so.

I welcome Freddoso to my Disband the TSA bandwagon.

Safety Warning

Living near Berkeley means I see this idiotic bumper sticker a lot.

I consider it a courtesy notice that the owner of the car is a complete moron, so it serves as kind of a safety warning. For a detailed takedown of exactly why the bumper sticker is stupid, see this Wiser Time post.

TSA Border Bullies

The Too Stupid for Arby’s jackboots outdid themselves by arresting Michael Yon at SeaTac – because he wouldn’t say how much money he makes.

The blue-shirted morons are out of control.

Update:

In this case, it wasn’t the TSA, but the other Border Bully morons. Yon posted on his Facebook page:

There is some confusion about who arrested me. TSA was not involved. The Customs people (CBP) were the actors who handcuffed me.

Give A Little

And maybe save a lot. Like your country.

I just did. It’s easy.

Just imagine how much nicer 2010 could be.

Update: (and bumped)

It may be working. Brown seems to have closed to single digits, all without any help from the (irrelevant) Republican Party. An Instapundit reader writes:

Thanks for your links to info about the Brown-Coakley race in Massachusetts. It motivated me to flip some cash to Brown. There’s no better way, right now, for those who are opposed to ObamaCare in particular, and the Administration’s economic bungling in general, to register their opposition than giving support to Scott Brown.

Shenator Maxsh Bacchus

In other news, government bureaucrats are soon to be replaced by machines.

None So Blind

Can you believe that the White House thinks this photograph will make us think well of Dear Leader?

Me neither.

Don’t Let This Happen to You

I’ve previously linked to an artistic take on what’s happened to the Motor City. Steven Crowder has a message for anybody who’s even heard of Michael Moore, describing how it got that way.

Or see the higher-res version of Detroit in Ruins.

Can the TSA Be Trusted With Guns?

No.

You see, in the TSA directive which Frischling’s posted online, the TSA was caught calling a spade a spade:

INFORMATION: On December 25, 2009, a terrorist attack was attempted against a flight traveling to the United States.

Yup, “terrorist attack.” In plain old English, spelled out. When out of public earshot, apparently the TSA is allowed to call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack by name. But when the public is listening, it’s to be referred to as a Christmas Day event.

These jackbooted morons all need to be fired. The TSA needs to be abolished. It is a complete waste of money and time, and has never done one thing to make any flight even a whit safer. It’s time to end the Airport Kabuki Theatre and actually go after Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, make sure you always wear clean underwear.

Here is what any moron can see as plain as day: our $40 billion dollar post-9/11 airline security net is a total joke – a White Elephant of epic (and potentially tragic) proportions.

The truth is the only aspect of our post 9/11 defense that has turned out to be 100% effective are the passengers themselves. Without really thinking about it we have become an airborne militia – all watching and ready to kick al Qaeda butt at the drop of… a pair of trousers. It began in Shanksville – it effectively thwarted the shoe-bomber – and now Captain Underpants.

No worries, though. We’re in the best of hands.

Update (and bumped):

The T and the A may be up for grabs, but the S surely stands for stupid. (Notice the apparent difficulty in spelling “journalist”.)

Keep Your Crises Small

See some of why Ed Catmull is one of my heroes.

Also available here in higher resolution than I can embed.

Dear Leader’s Green Thumb

One thing about The Messiah: He never seems to run out of plants.

Before and After

How to turn a beautiful, charming city into one noticeably less beautiful and decidedly less charming.

Unlike their Asian, Latin American or Eastern European counterparts, modern Western socialist governments aren’t going to round us up and shoot us.  Instead, they’re going to love us to death.  They’ll control what we buy, what we eat, how we get our health care, how we educate our children, what we watch on TV, what light bulbs we screw in, what cars we drive, what phones we use, what shopping bags we use, etc., all with the most beneficent of intentions.  We won’t be murdered by gun toting government-funded thugs in concentration camps.  Instead, we’ll just be infantilized to the point where we’re incapable of functioning without a Nanny state at our backs — and our fronts and our sides, and wherever else the State can insert itself into a citizen’s life.  (By the way, if you want to know what that will look like, just cast your mind back to images of Hurricane Katrina.  The self-reliant middle class sat on their porches with shotguns, protecting their families and homes.  The welfare classes, destroyed not by their race but by their decades-long dependence on government handouts, were incapable of even moving off the side of the road.)

The one thing that Jonah Goldberg’s book misses is the fact that the New Age, crystal-gazing American socialist utopia does not allow itself to control all people within its political borders.  Instead, in the name of political correctness, American socialist cities have a two-tiered system:  law-abiding citizens are on the receiving end of heavy-handed government control, while politically correct protected victim classes are removed from any controls whatsoever.  The result is the worst of all possible worlds, with law abiding citizens beaten down both by their own government and by those whom the government allows to roam free.  San Francisco provides a perfect example of this Western socialist dynamic.

Watch the video in that first link. If nothing else, you’ll learn how to pronounce Kearny correctly. Something I’ll wager most current San Franciscans can’t do.

Read the entire second link, even though it’s long.

Shooting the Messenger

I’m on record as not being a big fan of polls. I think most of them don’t qualify as even borderline scientific. There’s a story on Politico about how the Left is all in a dither about this Rasmussen result, which seems to show that America is waking up to what it did:

The Dems claim that Rasmussen polls 5 points to their detriment. You could shift that whole graph up by five points and it still tells the same story. To me the interesting tidbit is here:

In August, for example, Rasmussen asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “It’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.”

“Why stop there, Rasmussen? Why not add a parenthetical phrase about how tax cuts regrow hair, whiten teeth, and ensure that your favorite team will win the Super Bowl this year?” responded Daily Kos blogger Steve Singiser, who frequently writes about polls.

Get that? To this kossack the very idea that taxpayers might know better what to do with their own money than government drones is as risible as the claims of a snake oil salesman. Behold the intellectual vacuity of the Left.

But the question does point out the problem with how polls can be shaped by how you ask the question. Rasmussen’s question is really two. The more neutral way would be to ask if you agree that:

It’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending.

and, separately,

Taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

But, even then, half the time you’d have to ask these instead:

It’s always better to increase government spending than to cut taxes.

and

The government, not taxpayers, is the best judge of how to spend money.

A few moments thought will reveal problems even with that approach. Which is a big part of why I don’t trust polls much.

Head-Scratcher OTD

Tigerhawk:

So, let me get this straight: The ax-prone Islamist lunatic trying to destroy freedom of speech is in Denmark because he was being persecuted?

I think this calls for a cartoon.

Southers: Almost a Perfect Fit for the TSA

On the plus side, he’s sleazy and dishonest. On the minus side, he’s only admitted to a misdemeanor. I thought the Dumb Bastard (as Tammy Bruce calls Him) only appointed actual felons.

Slacker.