Lansing Tea Party anniversary

A year ago today.

The Tea Party in Lansing.

And in April and in July, twice.

Logorrhea

Watch this:


Then contemplate this:

(The new logo of the US Missile Defense Agency)

And finally, be thankful Oldsmobile is no longer a Government Motors brand.
Because it would obviously be easy to change that logo into a factory installed Obama bumper sticker.

H/T BP via MC

Canada Health care retrospective

The Other Club has written extensively about health care in Canada (see below). So much in fact, that the story earlier this month about Newfoundland Premier (Governor) Danny Williams coming to the United States for heart surgery seemed like same old, same old.

The comparable story, from a US perspective, might be that the Governor of Mississippi went to India for heart surgery.

Premier Williams came here for a heart operation he could not get in Newfoundland. We don't know if he could have had the operation somewhere else in Canada. Probably he could, but we do know he chose not to.

In any case, he's been attacked in Canada for this choice. You can see where it might be embarrassing to a culture heavily dependent upon their health care system for a sense of moral superiority.

Williams' defense? "I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics." It's "my heart, my choice and my health." Hear, hear.

This seems to be a story worth noting as President Obama unveils his new plan to destroy Premier Williams' future health care choices. Without the US, where would he have gone?

IAC, thanks to Jason Gillman for pointing this press release out at Americans for Limited Government.

Following are most of the posts from TOC on the topic of Canadian health care, which has been held up to us as a goal. I put them together because TOC has always contended we can learn something from Canada, and most of these posts depend upon Canadian sources.

Monday, April 04, 2005
Canadian Health Care. You'll Get Old Just Waiting.

Thursday, June 16, 2005
45 Million Myths

Thursday, June 30, 2005
Medicine Cabinet Minister

Monday, July 11, 2005
Brave New World meets Animal Farm

Thursday, July 14, 2005
You don't always get what you pay for

Thursday, August 11, 2005
Canada: 3 Examples, 1 Point

Monday, August 15, 2005
Pollyanna Preposterous?

Thursday, August 18, 2005
Ob-Gyns with 10 Month Waiting Lists

Saturday, April 22, 2006
Universal Health Care Update

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The cost of free health care

Friday, May 05, 2006
Free health care

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Socialist health care

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Previewing Hillarycare

Friday, December 15, 2006
Socialized health care choices

Saturday, December 23, 2006
Lessons from Canada

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
...every other advanced country

Thursday, March 15, 2007
Waiting for Trudot

Thursday, August 09, 2007
SCHIP of Fools

Sunday, August 19, 2007
Human gestation period surprises Canadian health administrators

Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Support the system. Game the system. It's all OK, eh?

Monday, January 21, 2008
Andragogy Canada

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Obama; Needs time in Canadian Instructional League?

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Canada is telling us something

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Health care lotteries, a Canadian growth industry

Monday, August 25, 2008
Universal health care

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Safety valve endangered

Thursday, June 04, 2009
Lessons from Canada???

Monday, June 22, 2009
Canada: health care rationing review

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Canada: health care wait times

Sunday, June 28, 2009
Health care notes

Sunday, July 12, 2009
Canadians criticize Canadian health care wait times

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Canadian analysis

Monday, August 03, 2009
Canadian counterpoint

"...intractable Canadian health-care problems"

Thursday, August 20, 2009
Message from the President of the Canadian Medical Association

Friday, August 21, 2009
Surgery panels

Friday, September 04, 2009
Reimbursement panels panel

Saturday, September 26, 2009
The View from Dromore

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Anecdotes

Friday, October 30, 2009
Canada Health Care - Recent News. And some from here, too.

Rick Santelli, the rant that lit the fuse

February 19 2009.

If you haven't watched this in a while, it's worth revisiting. If you've never heard it, well...

"President Obama, are you listening?..."

"We're thinkin' of having a Chicago Tea Party in July."

Thanks again, Rick.

And, no, the President is not listening; despite several electoral drubbings, numerous Democrat defections and huge disapproval numbers just one year later.

Sublimation

The word sublimation has different meanings. One is from physics: Sublimation is when a substance passes directly from a solid to a gaseous state. Dry ice is one example.

Another meaning is in psychology, where sublimation is an unconscious defense mechanism, diverting instinct into personally and socially acceptable channels. Defense mechanisms may be healthy or they may be pathological. Here are some characteristics of a pathological defense mechanism:

• the defense is rigid and exclusive
  
• the defense is motivated more by past needs than present or future reality
• the defense significantly misstates the present situation

Both definitions appear to apply to Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The "settled science" is rapidly passing from solid to vapor, and the AGW proponents' defense mechanisms are, if not clearly unhealthy, decidedly unscientific.

Doctor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, may be making progress, however. He's just admitted that there has been no global warming since 1995:

...And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Of course, the computer models "proving" that humans are causing global warming heavily depend on there having been no global Medieval Warming Period. Michael Mann's discredited hockey stick graph, for example, completely erases that warming.

Before Mann:

From first progress report of the IPCC -1990

After Mann:

From 3rd IPCC Assessment Report

Up until the mid 1990's a global MWP was an undisputed fact for climate researchers. An MWP is still acknowledged by those who promote AGW, but they restrict its effects to the northern hemisphere, because, they say, "We don't have much in the way of data for the southern hemisphere in that period." So, as Dr. Jones says,

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

But it does not follow that we must, therefore, assume the opposite: That temperatures in the southern hemisphere definitely did not reflect a global average warming during the MWP. Why is it a better "assumption" that the MWP was NOT global? The answer is that if the MWP were global it seriously undermines AGW theory.

For Dr. Jones to admit the science is not settled is quite important. This was not his position a few weeks ago, before the East Anglia emails and computer code were leaked. Still, it is ironic that Dr. Jones defends his rejection of a global Medieval Warming Period based on lack of data, since he appears to have misplaced his own modern records: World may not be warming, say scientists

Update: 7:25PM
Climategate: Phil Jones Finally Proves Al Gore Right — The Debate Is Over

Climategate: Phil Jones Still Has More Reflecting To Do

Blame America

John Brennan says America is safer, but it's because we are racists.

He should be fired, but the President would simply replace him with another idiot trained at the Neville Chamberlain School of Counterterrorism.

I found the "policies perceived as profiling" comment a good summary of the Administration's attitude: It's not whether there is actual profiling targeting luggage-less 20-something males named Abdulmutallab flying from Yemen with one-way tickets bought in cash and whose fathers have warned our State Department are al-Qaeda sympathizers - it's whether "Islamic law students at NYU" feel there is.

This is not new. George Bush invited CAIR to the White House and tiptoed carefully around naming the enemy. He did not, however, make it explicit policy.

H/T Paladin

Tea Party convention

What I Saw at the Tea Party Convention, Glenn Reynolds:

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

RTWT

"How could such smart people do so many stupid things?"

Maybe because they, umm... aren't smart?

Michael Barone on what's gone wrong for the smartest President ever.

The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics.

RTWT.

People have been telling me Obama is smart because of the way he ran his campaign, but no one can now contend that Obama provided leadership or management to that campaign. They would have to explain how and to where those qualities have vanished.

If the campaign appeared to be "smart," it appeared so because the candidate was clueless. If Obama is smart, then a clueless ideological committment is the only benign explanation for his persistent advocacy of horrible policies. If he is not clueless, he is a liar. Of course, he could be both.

During the campaign many people told me Obama's inexperience would be OK, because he would surround himself with smart, experienced people. If the people around him are smart and experienced, we must wonder about the utility of those characteristics to governance.

Lame... as the Press Corpse groans testify

It's Robert Gibbs' boss who can't speak in a sixth grade classroom without a teleprompter. It's Robert Gibbs' boss who pronounces corpsman as "corpseman," because the teleprompter didn't provide a pronunciation guide. It's Robert Gibbs' boss who, when the statute of recriminations runs out on blaming George Bush, will take a clue from Flip Wilson and start saying "the teleprompter made me say it." It's Robert Gibbs' boss who has inspired Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog.

Yet Gibbs is mocking Sarah Palin for writing 5 words on her hand, and he thinks it clever to remind us of the abject failure of hopeychangeiness? What would he have done if she'd used a single index card, accuse her of killing a tree?

It's hard to understand why he didn't write "bacon" and "healthcare" on his hand so he could segue into an "Obama would bring it home except for the Republicans" moment. Or he could have written "corps" = "kore," if he really wanted a laugh.

Palin, on the other hand, has an actual sense of humor about herself.

Felonies aren't what they used to be

One upmanship on the East Lansing Police Department

In East Lansing it was, basically, an M-80 (golf ball sized "mortar?").

In Virginia it's Felony Snowball Tossing.

This is a little much...

...coming from the party of Harry "The War is lost" Reid, John "Marines are cold-blooded killers" Murtha, Barack "We must leave Iraq in 16 months" Obama, Nancy "Bush lied" Pelosi, and John "Cut and run" Kerry.

The Obama Administration says criticizing their policy of Mirandizing terrorists aids al-Qaeda. John Brennan, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, writes:

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.

Best Superbowl commercial

LOL

Audi Green Police

If there is an Accuracy in Advertising Award, this is the winner.

If only

In Welcome to Palinland, Katrina Vanden Heuval says Sarah Palin is channeling AuH20:

In his 1960 manifesto The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater wrote, "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden."

Vanden Heuval thinks this is an "extremist brand of conservatism." Which only proves she doesn't get it.

Of course, since George Bush corrupted the concept of conservatism by making it synonymous with a slightly diluted brand of statism, it isn't surprising she thinks that. And, of course, Vanden Heuval was only 5 in 1964.

Anybody who has not read The Conscience of a Conservative, is welcome to borrow my copy. It is even better than the quote Ms Vanden Heuval picks.

Weird

This:

...is weird.

You have to think he knows how to pronounce "corps," so he either twice pronounced it "corpse" purposefully or he's so detached from what he's reading on the teleprompter that his brain just isn't engaged.

In favor of purposefully is that he did it twice. Arguing against this is that it is a far worse gaffe than Bush's consistent "nucular." He had to know it sounded stupid.

In favor of detached is that he did it twice. Arguing against this is that he stayed on autopilot even when he saw the word again. That's some serious disengagement.

Weird either way.

Look out above!

Michigan’s Blueprint for America, by Henry Payne at NRO.

Most Americans are just getting warmed up to the idea of a self-centered chief executive who has divined America’s future as a green economy and is brashly installing the industrial-policy tools to get us there. But we here in Michigan have been living it since Gov. Jennifer Granholm took office in 2003.

RTWT

You wonder if the Governor was a model for the President. He did pick her for his "economic transition team," and we're getting more insight into what the "transition" was supposed to be every day.

As to emulation, Michelle is doing a fair job of reprising Mr. Granholm, too.