It Is teh Awesome!!!1!!!

Thanks to Allahpundit for turning us on to this gem.

Obama Prepares His Strategy; Islamists Have Theirs Already

Headline: White House: Obama Afghan decision 'within days'

Meanwhile, the Islamofascists have got their strategy already and are employing it as fast as possible.

“The enemy should prepare coffins because we will respond quickly and decisively in the depths of the Zionist entity.*”

I recommend negotiating with them, perhaps preceeded by apologies.
* - This may not, in fact, be the precise reading of the strategy, but given the number of times this sort of thing is repeated, you have to figure it's way up on the list of campaign slogans.

Submitted without Comment

From ABC News.

As global climate change intensifies, the negative effects will fall more and more disproportionately onto women, according to State of World Population 2009, a report released by the United Nations' Population Fund last week.

Women will need to work longer and harder as food and energy become increasingly difficult to procure in the developing nations most likely to be affected first by climate change, the report states. Girls are also more likely to drop out of school because of shortages, and the authors note that women are more likely than men to die in weather disasters that accompany climate disruptions, especially in places where women are significantly poorer than men.

A First Take on the Climate Email Bombshells

I've had some thoughts on this, but here's a video that takes all of this to a much, much higher level. I had no idea the control of the literature was from such a tight clique. That shouldn't have been much of a surprise, given what I know about the groups that do the techncial reviews on the journals I'm familiar with. It's a ten minute video, but worth every second of your time.

The shoe that has yet to drop is the way in which Al Gore made his billion dollars based on this "science."

H/T: Mish.

Update: Dig this analysis of a monstrous comment file from the documents that reveals a programmer trying to make sense of what seems to be spaghetti code in the global warming models. Wow.

I Watched Football All Day Yesterday

... and I don't even feel guilty about it. I laid around the house, suffering from a wretched head cold and watched the Indy-Baltimore game (please, can someone let Joe Flacco know what color his team is wearing?), the San Diego - Denver game (first place for the Bolts! Whoohoo!) and then the Philly-Chicago game (Michael Vick should be starting). And of course, I listened to the New Orleans Saints Radio Network and heard the Saints demolish the Bucs, 38-7.

Not bad for a sick day.

Hooray! The Health Care Bill Passed Its First Vote in the Senate!

Soon we will have equality for all, just like these people do!
Voting yourself money works every time.

Yes, but What if I Buy Beer for a Tattooed Prostitute?

It sounds like it would be a triple win for the economy! Explanation here.

Imaginary Congressional Districts

By now, you've probably read that money from the Stimuloid Porkgasm™ is completely out of control - that it's been going to congressional districts that don't exist, that it's creating jobs when it hasn't even been disbursed yet, that there is case after case where the job creation claims are quickly and easily debunked. It's a good bet that the government agencies whose budgets have been goosed by tens of billions of dollars have simply blown it. They'd have to, as they are obligated to spend their budgets after a certain period of time. Why was it blown? The simple explanation is that those government agencies don't have the staff to manage an additional, say, $10B of contracts, particularly when they're trying to let those contracts to lots and lots of small companies.

In short, the money may be going up in smoke because there's just enough staff to spend it, but not enough staff to monitor its use. Now if the contracting professionals within these organizations are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the budgets, imagine how the Inspector Generals and auditors are overwhelmed. It's a good bet that these errors in accounting will never be tracked down for the simple reason that there's no one available to do it.

Allow me to suggest a darker possibility. The nation is simply being looted right before our eyes. So we've discovered that money is going to New Hampshire's non-existent 00th district. Now what? After a few barbed questions to Robert Gibbs in a press conference, we will ... do what? How will you, the private citizen, ever reliably find out where the money really went? Do you have any confidence that there is any tracking of this money?

Don't you think the people running those budgets know this?

Photo of the Day

... our Official Artist has it.

Oink Oink

Dig this.

Germany’s new finance minister has echoed Chinese warnings about the growing threat of fresh global asset price bubbles, fuelled by low US interest rates and a weak dollar ...

He added: “That low interest rate currencies such as the US dollar are increasingly being used as a basis for currency carry trades should give pause for thought. If there was a sudden reversal in this business, markets would be threatened with enormous turbulence, including in foreign exchange markets.”

Oink.

Oink

Dig this bit about how the monster liquidity game being played by the Fed and the Obama Administration is screwing over the rest of the world.

Some officials in Asia are ... suggesting the Fed’s record-low federal funds rate -- the central bank’s interest-rate target for overnight loans between banks -- is pushing asset prices in their region too high...

Continuing the zero-rate policy may lead emerging economies “to overheat and experience financial turmoil,” Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said in Tokyo Nov. 16...

Asian policy makers, including officials from India, South Korea and Indonesia, are studying capital controls to limit “hot money” inflows that may stoke asset bubbles and force their currencies to appreciate. Indonesia’s central bank is “seriously” studying a limit on inflows to short-term bills, Senior Deputy Governor Darmin Nasution said Nov. 19. Taiwan last week banned international investors from placing funds in time deposits.

The U.S. shouldn’t adjust monetary policy to account for rising Asian assets, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Nov. 18. “If there are problems in real- estate markets in Asia, it is not very practical to say you should raise interest rates in the U.S.,” he said.

Emphasis mine.

Now that's Smart Diplomacy™!

Oink.

Dave Ramsey, B-Daddy and more Leisure Time

Over at The Liberator Today, B-Daddy points out yet another income redistribution effort.

...the health care legislation is designed to transfer wealth, the House version includes an income surtax on the "wealthy." Harry Reid's version calls for an increase in the Medicare payroll tax for those making over $250,000 per year.

Marginal tax rates for the wealthy, that is, the taxes paid on your last dollar of income, are going up, up, up. If you lived the Dave Ramsey lifestyle and had a modest home and modest cars while making as much money as you could, the Democrats' effort to raise taxes on the well-to-do could result in lots and lots more leisure time for you!

If you're living below your means, then increases in marginal tax rates could be met by working less and less. You wouldn't have crushing bills to pay, so you'd be able to cut back your hours. And why not, if the government is just going to take those earnings anyway?

Who is John Galt?

The Shape of Things to Come

Mish posted this video of California college kids protesting a monster increase in fees.

California is facing another huge budget shortfall this year, something like $21B, since they have spent and taxed their way into financial ruin. Now all of the recipients of the goodies are starting to get squeezed and they're beginning to go wild.

This is just the beginning.


It's been so long since we've understood that you need to earn what you get that being confronted with it causes a violent reaction.

A Tiny Bit More on Sarah Palin

... from James Taranto.

An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We'd like to compare this dispatch to the AP's dispatch earlier this week "fact checking" Sarah Palin's new book. Here goes:

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11

Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432

Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3

On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives.

No one wants to slam the cool kid. If you did that, you'd be kicked out of the High School clique. It's much better to pile on the cheerleader you all hate.

A Little Bit on Sarah Palin

I'll admit I don't watch the news. At all. Not Fox, not CNN, none of them. My awareness of the media's obsession with Sarah Palin was only second hand, read from the Internet.

The other night, when I got home, my wife was watching NBC Nightly News just about the time Sarah's new book had come out. Over at NBC, they were going completely crazy. They were fact checking and sneering and discussing it with each other, not from any disinterested, third-party point of view, but as if we were in their living rooms during a cocktail party. It was all personal and conversational and incredibly viscious.

While I don't watch the news, I do know that the MSM most certainly did not fact check Barack Obama, Joe Biden or even, for that matter, John McCain, certainly not to the excrutiating level of detail they were going after Sarah. As an outsider coming in cold to the event, I had not been desensitized to the level of venom through months and months of watching them go after her and so it was particularly stunning to see.

The level of hate is obsessive, as if she is their ex-wife or a girlfriend who dumped them or the cute chick in high school who turned them down for a date or the one who stole their boyfriend. The hate is primal, sexual and sick. There are times when I wonder if the schadenfreude over the media's descent into financial ruin is misplaced and then I tune in to something like this and decide they can't die fast enough for me.

I've disinterestedly read analyses of just why the media hates Sarah so much and I'm going to add my own little bit here. The level of hate stems from the lack of balance in the newsrooms. It's a high school in there where everyone is piling on the cute cheerleader and ripping her apart behind her back. Everyone is showing how cool they are by adding one more drop of poison. The participants are proving their loyalty to the clique by joining in the feeding frenzy.

If you don't think so, consider this scenario. Imagine you're back in high school and the Julius Caesar-style mass stabbing is going on in conversation. Some girl who you all think is a snob is being torn apart by your friends. Are you going to be the one to say, "You know, guys, she's actually not that bad. She does a lot of volunteer work at the animal shelter."

That's never going to happen in the high school quad of the media. They'd all be terrified that the knives would turn on them next.

I know that on this blog, I routinely defend Sarah Palin. Just to be clear, I don't think she's particularly bright nor especially prepared for the Presidency. I do think she was the best candidate of the four that ran in the election. Whatever she lacks in intellect or foreign policy experience is utterly trumped by her success as an executive, success totally unmatched by McCain, Biden and the now clearly floundering Barack Obama. We'd be far better off today if we were saying President Palin than we are now.

You asked her out and she turned you down. Don't you just hate her?

My Alarm Clock Went Off

... but I threw a pillow at her and went back to sleep.