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.

The Year in Robotics

From eye contact to medical snakes.

Chicago Lab Rats

Damon Root asks:

The Windy City would like to “serve as a laboratory” with the “flexibility” to ignore the Second Amendment. But there’s nothing “novel” about that. It’s just another case of the government violating our rights. And since the Supreme Court would never let Chicago ban free speech, establish an official religion, or conduct other “experiments” on the First Amendment, why should the Second Amendment receive any less respect?

Read the whole thing, especially if you have fond memories of Justice Brandeis.

The Enemy Must Be Named

We need more Muslims like this one, who writes an open letter to the Boy Wonder.

Hopefully you will realize that we can only defeat an enemy we can name, describe, and understand. As Thomas Friedman and others have recently reminded us, the only answer to jihadists, Salafists, and Islamists is a narrative from within America, and most important from within Islam, that counters the global supremacism of political Islam. Until you say exactly that, we will continue to flail in this conflict.

Man, Do I Hate Holiday Travel

By Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

So she looks at her computer screen and says, “um, I’m afraid there’s a problem, this passenger’s name is on a watch list.” Oh, great. Looks like my dad is playing Mr. Buzzkill again, just because I took that semester off from Oxford to go backpacking in Yemen. So I showed her my official State Department visa.

So I’m like, “honey, do I look like I’m a US military veteran?”

“No.”

“Do I look like I’m some sort of right wing anti-tax teabagger?”

“No.”

“Do I look like anybody else on the DHS terrorism danger list?”

“No, but…”

“Then I suggest that unless you want a nasty anti-discrimination lawsuit on your hands, you’d best give me an aisle seat. With extended legroom.”

Merry Christmas

OK, so I’m a little late for this year. I was out of town. This will make up for it, though. I promise.

Nasty Little Man Update

Stop the presses! The NLM has apologized to Israel!

Wait…

The only thing worse than no apology is a convenient apology. Funny, I didn’t think I could like Jimmy Carter less, I guess I was wrong.

Go ahead and roll the presses, I guess.

Phantom Menace

I don’t know how long this series will stay up. I’ve only watched Part 1 and it’s so hilarious and dead-on that I’m posting it now.

NB: It contains some f-bombs. It will also teach you a surprising amount about film making.

Update:

Ed Driscoll has more, and links to the whole thing. I’ve now seen it all, and it’s great save for the last minute out of seventy. The good news is that the thing has gone completely viral.

More Science, Less Politics Please

This column in the Telegraph is a good rundown of the bare-knuckle politics involved in HopeNChangen.

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

But there’s also this:

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

Algore is indeed corrupt and risible (which is probably why he has fans at the U.N.) but not all climate science is pseudoscience. Unfortunately good science is getting harder and harder to do what with it being politicized by everybody. AGW is a plausible hypothesis. But it’s not yet a theory because it’s not making any useful predictions yet, and it’s hard to imagine a more complex, harder to model system than climate.

Science is our only hope to know what’s real. Once it has been allowed to really find out, then we can talk about potential remedies. We’re just not there yet, and the naked power grab of the Left is not going to help in any case, because the Left never solves problems, it just creates them. (The Right sometimes solves problems, but usually creates them, too.)

I wish there were a way to get all politicians to just leave their hands off the scientists for a few years. I fear that may now be impossible.

What a mess.

I do not think that word means what He thinks it does

Dear Leader’s Teleprompter said this week,

“We just had a very productive session about the final stages of health care reform in the Senate. And from the discussions we had, it’s clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that’s eluded Congresses and presidents for generations, an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American.”

But it’s the right word.