TSA Redux

Remember my TSA experience? I just thought it was useful to bring it up, given recent increasing asininity from the TSA (“for our own good” you know) which is now aggressively violating people’s fundamental right to not be sexually assaulted. But they can do it, and say it isn’t what it is, because they are the Government and they’re here to help.

I also never commented on our elections here in Florida, or the great results nationwide. Needless to say, there is a lot I would like to say, but won’t right now. About other things, too, not just the elections. See you later folks, and around Christmas time I’ll post “regularly” again.

The Kagan Hearings

I didn’t say it here at the time, but the minute I read about how Obama’s Supreme Court nominee wrote that the hearings for Supreme Court nominees have a tendency to be completely vacuous, I predicted that she was not going to be any different. I was mostly right. But even though she has been less than informative, what she has revealed is rather shocking. For one thing, she actually said that she did not think that a law telling people what they would have to eat would be unconstitutional. For another, she actually said that her job would be to enforce the law-I wasn’t aware that she belonged to the Andrew Jackson school of thought about the role of the Supreme Court in government*, but I think anyone who knows anything knows that enforcement is the job of the executive branch.

But if history is anything to go by, she will probably still get on the court, and probably get a sizeable number of Republican votes. This is because, with the exception of Obama’s last nominee, Republicans just rubber stamp the President’s appointments to the Court. Moderate Anthony Kennedy, and the former Justices, liberals O’Connor and Stevens, while all nominated by Republicans, had zero votes against them. Ginsburg (Clinton) got a total of three votes against her appointment, Breyer (Clinton), and Souter (Bush 41) both got just nine votes against them, and all three are arch-liberals. The only Conservative Justice that was appointed by a Republican that got an such overwhelming support was Scalia, who got unanimous support as well. But Thomas (Bush 41) the Court’s most conservative member, barely got confirmed, 52-48 (that every single Senator was present for this vote seems to be another oddity, but obviously the push by Democrats to stop his appointment was virtually without precedent, except for their successful Borking of, well, Bork. Roberts (Bush 43) got 22 votes against, and again, every single Senator showed up and voted. Alito (Bush 43) got 42 votes against, and yes, again, every Senator came out in force to make sure this vote was as close as possible. Sotomayor is, like Scalia, an outlier in terms of the level of support she got considering her ideology-while Scalia got incredible support for a conservative Justice, the level of opposition Sotomayor got was unusually high for a liberal, 31 votes against. If nine Republicans could vote for the wise Latina, though, it seems doubtful that every single one of them can be counted on to vote against a woman as radical as Kagan. They should, but they won’t.

Well, there’s a lot of craziness going on out there right now, but I won’t get into that right now. Still, here’s my nomination for craziness of the week, Deem It Passed is back. Oh, and did you know that, when Strom Thrumond died, NYT called him a “foe of integration”, but when Former Imperial Wizard of the KKK, the man who organized the record setting filibuster of the the Civil Rights Act (which was also opposed by Algore Senior) Robert Byrd died, NYT and everyone else in the media talked about the death of the “soul of the Senate”. What is the difference between these two men’s stories? Only that Byrd stayed in the Democrat party. Oh, and the party that Thurmond switched to just voted for a nominee a black man, over his son. Yes, Thurmond’s son just lost a GOP primary, to a black man. No typo, a GOP primary. But Robert Byrd is the “Soul of the Senate”, while being a Republican means you are nonredeemable for your history as a “foe of integration”. Because Republicans are just evil!

Oh yes, and RNC chairman Michael Steele has put his foot in his mouth again, I’m sure you’ve heard. Son of the Original Neo-con (Irving Kristol) Bill Kristol is calling for him to step down, and I’m almost positive that this will, indeed, be his last mistake. Sad story, but you can’t say something that stupid and expect people to forget about it.

*Sorry, forgot the part where I was supposed to explain this statement.

What Have I Always Said?

Liberalism is about treating children like adults, and adults like children.

Nancy Is to Antsy for you to be free…

No really.

We are Oceania

The White House Ministry of Truth wishes me to inform you that crimethink about Healthcare will not be tolerated. Crimethink may consist of anything from taking the words of proponents seriously to any kind of ungoodthink more generally. Noting that Party members such as Barney Frank or Jan Schakowsky have explicitly stated that the public “option” will lead to single payer will earn you a trip to the Ministry of Love for unmiseducation. Understand that they have been malqouted, please, and understand that history is being revised to erase Obama having said these things to. If you see anyone saying otherwise, please report it to the White House Ministry of Truth. And remember War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. (And on an unrelated note, Cooling is Warming 😉 )

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/05/morning-bell-the-people-spreading-disinformation-about-obamacare/

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28952/?ck=1

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28961/

Bawney Fwank Misses The Pwoint

Barney Frank says to business “It’s not our job to help you make money“.

No, actually, Barney, you’re right. And it’s not your job to prevent them making money either. You are supposed to get out of our damn way. But you say this after billions of our tax dollars have already been given to businesses, trillions in “stimulus”-if that doesn’t “help business” then WTF? What’s the point? And what about Capn’Trade? Haven’t you heard about how big business are planning on making a killing on that? You sir, are a dumbass.

Generalissimo Electric…

I’m gonna juxtapose a couple of quotes, which I found via the website Political Capitalism:

“Capitalism’s biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action.”
Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists. New York: Crown Business, 2003, p. 276.

“The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Letter to Shareholders, GE 2008 Annual Report

Now some notes. General Electric owns NBC, and MSNBC, the infamously liberal “news” network. NBC does “green week” where they celebrate going “green”. NBC-Universal owns the SciFi and Nickelodeon networks, whereby nerds and children are similarly indoctrinated with environmental mumbo jumbo. None of this would be particularlly sinister, except that GE is highly involved in the politics surrounding energy policy and Klimacht, and of course are heavily invested in renewables. In fact, GE Wind was once Enron Wind, and we know how well that worked out (fortunately, in a way). Jeff Immelt is, arguably, the Administration’s largest ally in the energy industry. They lobbied for incandescents to be banned…naturally they produce and sell compact flourescents and stand to benefit massively from such chicanery. GE is the epitome of the political capitalist company, and a great friend to liberal fascists such as the Administration, which similarly believes in Immelt’s corporatist ideology (corporatism, was, in fact, invented (at least the term, which he used to describe his view of the role of government in business) by Mussolini, although the Progressives pioneered it-now we are full circle, America is perfecting this system under Obama…They will “bury the putrid corpse of liberty” in Benito’s words.

Memo to Congress-Chuck this crap

The Democrat controlled House of Reps is getting set to do Capn’ Trade. This is a bad idea.

There are several reasons why. First of all-projections of Catastrophic Global Warming that are the basis for the “danger” of not acting on Climate are failing miserably. There has been no warming of the lower atmosphere for over twelve years now:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

Even supposing the model scenarios do by some miracle turn out to be correct, the bill in question would avert only a tiny fraction of future warming-on the order of .1 degrees Celsius. Making a dent would require much more effort-especially on the part of other countries and in particular those who seem keen to refuse such restrictions. What’s more, because of the possibility of “leakage” the authors of the bill seem prepared to risk (trade) war.

Waxman-Markey is just a really bad policy move. For all the lack of benefits, it will have enormous costs. What is the point of diverting such enormous resources from other things to make a tiny impact on a non existant problem? If AGW really is a problem, then the only sensible course should be obvious-get rich now, adapt, and maybe do this crap later. It certainly doesn’t make any sense to due it now, when the economy is flirting with stabilization but still really hurting. We sure as hell shouldn’t take away people’s freedom to use whatever energy source they wish anyway.

UPDATE: It’s even worse than I thought.

Apparently being too thin is bad…

Better chubby than skin and bones, evidently.

So what does this mean? Maybe that the best information available, and the simplistic thinking which is popular with some, can be very, very wrong. If nothing else, it makes government weight control efforts by taxing soda all that more stupid. And yet some think that having a Department of Love-handles and a Secretary of Lard or a “Fat Czar” sound like good ideas. If they are going to regulate your BMI, well, what is the ideal? Is it even the same for all people? Nobody knows, but busybodies want to micromanage this stuff anyway…

Hey Obama-Leave my Cereal Alone!

Unbelievably assinine.

Also, but unrelated, Michele Bachmann is, following the lead of Reagan about Thatcher, the Best Man in Minnesota.