Good morning.

1. Two links on the PP sting, here and here.
2. The (do you believe in) the sanity clause returns.
3. The individual mandate.
4. The crux of why power to tax isn’t used as a defense of the mandate but the commerce clause is.
5. An Orthodox man and the Super Bowl.
6. Speaking of Orthodoxy … some notes regarding the East and evolution.
7. Kodachrome no more.
8. Someone is forgetting that the left prefers social entitlements to science programs.
9. Some notes on the Coptic situation.

If this is okay
then,

this should be as well…

and this too…

and, lastly, this also.

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Be careful how you hold your cellphone when you’re in public
It just might be considered a weapon.

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One soldier, with a knife, against 40 armed thieves
Result: Thieves – 3 dead, 8 injured. Soldier – a serious wound on his hand. This is one reason why the notion that banning objects, such as 30 round magazines, with the intention of curbing acts of evil, is flawed. Humans have the uncanny ability to utilize available tools, combine them with courageous virtue – or evil desire – and act.

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Why you should be concerned about something like Pod Slurping.

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Abortion and the Argument from Inhuman Sociopathy
Joe Carter pulls no punches in this critique.

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Geek News: 25 years since Voyager 2 passed by Uranus
From JPL,

“The Uranus encounter was one of a kind,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at JPL. “Voyager 2 was healthy and durable enough to make it to Uranus and then to Neptune. Currently both Voyager spacecraft are on the cusp of leaving the sun’s sphere of influence and once again blazing a trail of scientific discovery.”

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ID Theft not all it’s cracked up to be?
From Consumer Reports,

You have a low likelihood of becoming a victim of true identity theft, and even if you are unlucky, your finances will probably not suffer. Don’t waste money on expensive services offered by credit-reporting bureaus and other ID theft protection companies. Most of their products are unnecessary or ineffective, or they duplicate things you can do yourself, for free.

Good morning.

1. Talking about abortion, alas starting with the regrettable Jarvis thing.
2. Antisemitism (or not) of one of the three great church Fathers.
3. Talking about Vinson. So is inactivity a commercial act? Are there any conceivable limits to Constitutional authority in the liberal view?
4. And an application of inactivity and the law.
5. And on that topic, Mr Obama’s campaign rhetoric returning to bite him.
6. Are those the two legal alternatives, of which Mr Obama is not to follow choosing either?
7. A water/land switch.
8. Holding one’s heart aflame.
9. America’s poor in context.
10. Snow meets Plato.
11. To counter the “snow a result of global warming nonsense.” 
12. Payoffs and transparency.
13. Multipliers and crowding.
14. Humor meets the pizza.
15. Meta-conceptual notions.
16. Heh.

Good morning.

1. Repair work in house and self.
2. Irony alert.
3. Culture wars.
4. One way in which Mr Obama can truly be thought really really smart (or why he selected Mr Biden as running mate?).
5. Some aphorisms: here and here.
6. Coptic links.
7. The judge makes a ruling.
8. Yah think?
9. Artwork, oil on canvas I think.
10. A child is ill.

Good morning.

1. When Mr Bush was President and today little policy change, big change however in the volume of criticism. Hmmm, and that’s likely one example among many.
2. Climate. And some words on the snowy winter we’re having.
3. Yet another elephant in the room, which is not unlike the childhood obesity elephant.
4. What? He’s going to just fold? Riiiight.
5. Coptic images.
6. Democracy and the kayak.
7. Communications and self-censorship.
8. Cutting to the heart of the problem with liberal notions of the welfare state, “A movement whose main promise is the relief from responsibility cannot but be antimoral in its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth.”
9. A failure of imagination. So many times “if X then Y” does not follow. Liberal multiculturalism likes to tout the notion that there are many ways to think about things … except apparently when they argue.
10. Measuring an uprising.
11. Fun with maths.
12. What normally doesn’t happen when you fall 1,000 feet off a sheer cliff.
13. Bully in transit, and I think it helped that the person assisting with the bully was taller.
14. Well, at least political rhetoric laced with military images  haven’t (yet) been blamed.

School officer shooting – a hoax
Oh, this is just icing on the cake for homeschoolers. Remember the school officer shooting that resulted in a pee-deprived 5 hour LOCKDOWN, for up to 9 schools, in a 7 square mile area? Well it appears that the “shooting” was orchestrated by the officer who was “shot”.

Keep incidents like this in mind whenever someone advocates that ordinary citizens should have sensible gun-control laws foisted on them, because we can only trust those who have been trained to be responsible with firearms. Incidents like these do not indicate that all law enforcement is bad, but merely that they are human.

If you think parents were peeved before…

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It was green in every way – except that of money
Huntington Beach’s [California] first ‘green’ home is seized by bank.

The first ‘green’ home in Huntington Beach, debuting to much fanfare a little more than a year ago before having its asking price chopped dramatically and becoming a short sale, has gone back to the bank.

You’d think someone like… Robert Redford, might have cared enough to pick it up.

I suppose that some enviros have yet to understand the concept of free market economics.

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Green in name, but not in deed? Must be due to Big Oil Greed?
And in the same Huntington Beach, we have a middle school protest over the installation of solar panels on school property. Why? Because said panels will be installed by – shudder! – Chevron.

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Hey, Wally?
For some lighter Huntington Beach news, it seems that The Beaver just got married in the H.B.

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A common sense lib
From the Huffington Post,

As a liberal Democrat, I worry about the damage we might do by rushing toward a fresh raft of gun-control laws. It’s very hard to demonstrate that most of them — registration, waiting periods, one-gun-a-month laws, closing the gun-show loophole, large-capacity-magazine restrictions, assault-rifle bans — have ever saved a life. It’s a hard thing to accept, but in a country of 350 million privately owned guns, the people who are inclined to do bad things with guns will always be able to get them. One might as well combat air crashes by repealing gravity.

If you didn’t hear anything, or very little, about thousands who attended the March for Life last weekend in DC, that’s understandable. The media routinely ignores it.

And speaking of a liberal media, Jay Carney, who used to write for Time magazine, is now Obama’s new press secretary. His new job description — putting Obama in the most positive light possible — is very much like his old job description.

And still speaking of a liberal media, they’re getting rather disappointed that Obama is not doing what he said he would. Well, they’ve just joined those of us who have been paying attention for 2 years.

Headline from USA Today: “When unwed births hit 41%, it’s just not right”. But it’s OK at 40%? Seriously though, look at the graph showing how fast the out-of-wedlock births have jumped since the notorious “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s.

Civil Discourse Watch:

“They’re going to hang themselves,” said Belknap [New Hampshire] Democratic Chair Ed Allard of Republicans. “And we’re going to help them.”

Allard’s threat came during a meeting of despondent Democrats in Belknap County on Thursday evening. The meeting was hosted by President Obama’s Organizing for America.

The IPCC said that the glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range would be gone by 2035 due to climate change. The latest word? “Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.” Um, who’s popular belief are they talking about?

And finally, a shorter version of the State of the Union speech, from Rick McKee:

Good morning.

1. For the open borders crowd.
2. The Constitution a continuing series.
3. Envy? Really!?
4. Fundamentalism.
5. Fan/Fred.
6. Some local NJ history.
7. Belief and unbelief in Russia.
8. A US map.
9. Rahm and Chicago. Somewhere I read that almost all of Rahm’s financial backing for this run, which exceeds by far that of his opponents, comes from big Wall Street banks. Awareness of the cognitive dissonance on the part of the party of the people seems to be missing.
10. Silence in the left wing echo chamber.
11. Hitting some of my pet peeves regarding the Holocaust.
12. Stupid cop tricks in the land of liberals.

So… where’s my blessing?
I’m particularly touchy on # 2, although it does take some of your own understanding to grapple with # 6.

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Grandma would command a lot more respect in one of these babies!

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Estimates vary, but do the math
The country has gotten riled up over a lone madman using a firearm to kill 6 people, somehow coming to the conclusion that we need to implement stricter gun control laws. Consider that if 0.001% (that’s one thousandth of one percent) of the firearm owners in the U.S. decided today to shoot and kill 6 people, we’d have 4,800 people killed. Seems to me that, under current laws, over 99.99% of firearms owners in the U.S. pretty much keep control of their actions.

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Now this is cool
One thing, though… might it be done to our infrastructure as well?

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Another advertisement for the home school industry.

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Global Warming Denier?
From the New Mexico Independent, Martinez picks former astronaut, global warming denier to head energy, natural resources department. Alternate title, “Martinez picks first and only scientist to walk on the moon, global warming realist to head energy, natural resources department”.

Good morning. 

1. An honest man, Diogenes sought … found.
2. Historical crime.
3. Naming conventions and ethics.
4. In the wake of the rhetorical regrettable moments last night …. a great rhetorician noted.
5. Palestine and Israel.
6. A point made, but perhaps better by the demotivators poster “None of us is dumb as all of us” … the truth of which makes one doubt the sanity of the Democrats who continually place great faith in the ability of that really really dumb “all of us” part.
7. A point Hollywood hasn’t missed.
8. A cold ride.
9. A progression of sorts.
10. Some good advice.
11. I’d buy it (If it’s affordable) … but 1 gets you 10 that it won’t be available in the US cause of our regulatory barriers.
12. This does work. In our house the shower drain is against an exterior wall and when a hard cold snap comes (-10 or worse) we often get a frozen drain. A gallon of boiling salt water opens that up right away.
13. Why do they believe him? Clue in. 

So. Did anyone listen to the address? If so, why? After all, just last week he when he was going on about helping business get out from under regulatory burdens he touted an executive order which (a) repeats a standing order anyhow and (b) has loopholes for the agencies one could drive a truck through. Why would you believe anything he says? And if you don’t, why listen at all?

A verse I found highlighted by a friend on Facebook:

Proverbs 26:18-19 (New International Version 1984, ©1984)

¹⁸ Like a madman shooting
   firebrands or deadly arrows
¹⁹ is a man who deceives his neighbor
   and says, “I was only joking!”

The Left seems to forget their own hateful rhetoric when they start to point fingers at Sarah Palin. “…a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.” Indeed. These and other gems at Q&O.

On the (much) lighter side, I have finally been convinced that you should only put 1 space after a period, not two. I’m endeavoring to do so in this post, but it’s a hard habit to break.

Living up their promises, the Republicans have put forth a proposal for $2.5 trillion of spending cuts. Since it’s that amount over 10 years, it’s still only a drop in the bucket. But it’s more than they have suggested in the past (as far as I know) and certainly more than Democrats ever have. If the Dems want to criticize the choices of where to cut, let’s just see them propose their own.

I grew up in the Salvation Army denomination. (Yes, it’s a denomination.) Representatives from around the world are currently meeting to elect the next General, the administrative head of the Salvation Army. You can follow events on their web page, get e-mail updates, or even follow them on Twitter.

Cutting sugar, sodium and trans fats. Buying more produce locally. Cutting price premiums for healthier food options. That’s Wal-Mart for you. (Yeah, that Wal-Mart).

In Houston, it’s apparently safer for the homeless to go hungry than to get a meal that hasn’t been government certified.

Reason TV asks, what happened to the antiwar movement? It gives a serious look at the disappearance of a group that was so huge while Bush was President. Glenn Reynolds notes, they were useful idiots until they stopped being useful.

Charles Krauthammer:

Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

He’d be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare.

Some say that if spending $X saves us $Y down the road(where Y is greater than X), then the government should spend it. But ObamaCare is much more a behemoth than simply judicious spending on road repairs before they get much worse. The claim that repealing ObamaCare will cost us money is ridiculous for Krauthammer’s reason.  Amazing.

And finally:

Look at them yo-yos, that’s the way you do it
It would seem that Canada is, indeed, in dire straits.

I recall watching a movie, during the late ’70s, broadcast from a television station in San Francisco, California. Being from southern California, it was notable to me to see the difference in what the station owners allowed to be broadcast vs. what I was accustomed to at home (e.g., partial nudity, vulgar language, etc.). What was striking, however, was one instance where the use of “jeezus” as a curse word was left audible, while a derogatory term for a homosexual was bleeped out.

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If we should ban 30 round magazines, because someone used one while killing six people
Then we should ban scissors, because someone used one to kill seven newborns.

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The Glock ~ AIDS connection?
And, yes, the Glock cannot teach children (but, then, the public school system doesn’t seem to do that very well either).

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Hey. What could go wrong with this sales promotion on January 17th?

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Geek News: NASA Telescopes Help Identify Most Distant Galaxy Cluster

This afternoon (finally) I drive home. As another note, in reaction to the “civil discourse” push, I’m pushing back (like this) for the next week or so. So with that being said, let’s lock, load, and line up our sights on some links. 😀

1. Super Bowl and the President. Chicago is Mr Obama’s “home town.” I live in a town, Lemont, and have lived there for 18+ years. In the eyes of most in my town, I’m a newcomer. I won’t be considered “from Lemont” by those in Lemont until my family has lived there for a few more generations. 
2. Defining liberalism and a bullet list of points that define the same. Is it right? What’s missing? 
3. Hydrolic energy storage, of which I know little.
4. Two deathly posts from Dr Platypus here and here.
5. I suppose it would help if I knew what “cert” meant.
6. A conversation to watch unfold.
7. Obamacare repeal and budget.
8. A book noted.
9. Speaking dismissively of athletics for intellectual development. For myself, I started cycling a sport which requires physical perseverance and endurance. Those traits are learn-able and can be improved. My impression is that training has carried over to my perseverance in non-physical matters.
10. That undulation costs fuel … a counter suggestion.
11. Last words on Mr L.
12. And an aphorism on evil.

Good morning.

1. More on the left getting stupid in the wake of the AZ shooting. And the Orwellian nature of the “civil speech” movement (especially given that civil or non-civil speech had nothing at all to do with the recent event).
2. A case of PDS exposed.
3. Speaking of stupid, a Jewish liberal takes umbrage to Christian terminology, used by a Christian politician in a Church (of all the places). Hint, Christians call fellow Christians brethren (a term in use for just shy of 2000 years). What do they call non-Christians? Neighbors. What are they called to do for their neighbor? Love them. Wow, that’s just sooooo exclusionary. 
4. Another look at the economy and recovery.
5. The trillion dollars spent for what? 8000!?
6. College ejukation.
7. The wikileaks problem from a practical standpoint.
8. How they got there, a suggestion which might be humorous but slightly offensive to those on the left of the aisle. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
9. More right leaning satire here.
10. A film review untangled.
11. About that Doc fix thang.
12. Wait and see. I’ll bet its going to turn out to be a forgotten empty gesture.

Good morning.

1. Racists remember MLK, if somewhat snarkily.
2. A less snarky way to note the occasion. 
3. Interview with an influential journalist, or at least influential in one corner of the world.
4. Life and Sanctity.
5. Tunisia noticed elsewhere.
6. Silly talk of the NRA. Seriously though, I think just about the most civil place I’ve enjoyed was at the firing range, at which I’ve never ever seen anything but civility (HT).
7. Attempting to minimize budgetary ignorance.
8. Somebody somewhere has never witnessed a Montessori school.
9. For your String theory primer.
10. Hard work that calls to some.
11. Media crackdown.
12. The left’s echo chamber decries the lack of intellectual vigor on the right. Turnabout.
13. Arithmetic correction for Mr Krugman.
14. Soap opera coming to the high court?