Category: Uncategorized

When I saw an eye-catching mouthful in a post by Ann Althouse, I wondered whether Andrew Sullivan had finally succumbed to one of the fatal smackdowns that have been inflicted on him over the years. But alas! To my great disappointment, the startling admission did not come from Andrew Sullivan, but some writer I’d never…

One of my pet peeves is that whenever a gunman opens fire on unsuspecting victims, there’s a flurry of finger-pointing, and a haste to blame almost anyone besides the gunman, often with blatant political overtones. The fallout over the recent shooting at an Israeli gay center (in which the gunman killed two and wounded twelve)…

I saw Hot Tuna Saturday night at the Rockford Theater courtesy of the first mate. They have added another musician to the line up, Barry Mitterhoff, who plays a wicked mandolin among other instruments. Naturally the Rockford hippie contingent was out in full force. We met a lot of very nice people there and made…

This is how a Cash for Clunkers car is destroyed. Now think of what this will do to the low end used car market. People who depend on these low end vehicles to get around will no longer be able to afford transportation. Socialism at work. Here are a couple of other things I have…

I’m glad the war on sex hasn’t spread to include dog sex,* or else there’d be a movement to have the government ban the sexual dog dummies that Glenn Reynolds linked earlier. While their use as a novelty or toy seems new, sex “dummies” of various sorts have been used in artificial insemination for years.…

Megan McArdle’s piece on why she opposes national health care got deservedly wide coverage, and provoked some generally limp objections, such as this offering from Ezra Klein: For all its waste, elevating the U.S. government to sole purchaser seems to ensure a much-higher rate of military technology innovation than if we left it to the…

While I agree with Glenn Reynolds that the Obama administration’s softening stance on obscenity prosecutions is a good thing, I’m enough of a worry wart that I worry about how the consequences will play out. Because of the way politics works, any action that can be perceived as softening the war on sex will be…

One of my worst nightmares involves the idea of driving on the freeway in a reasonable and prmudent manner, only to have a pedestrian suddenly appear in front of me. I’ve hit a couple of deer before, and that is an unpleasant experience, but deer are animals, and what can you do? If they dash…

Yes. Marijuana reduces some cancer risks. Specifically head and throat cancer. And who is reporting this study? Some fly by night organization or some pot legalization folks? Heavens no. The National Institute of Health (NIH). I’m going to quote the full extract because it would be hard to excerpt the details without giving the full…

Michelle Malkin has out a new book: Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies Here is an Amazon review: By Peter Ingemi (Worcester County, Massachusetts United States) Michelle Malkin’s new book “Culture of Corruption” is a damning review of a connected Chicago Pol and his connected wife who have…

Via Dr. Helen, I learned about a real life horror story in which an apparently innocent old man became a casualty in the war on sex. For inappropriately touching a girl, he was sentenced to life in prison: FORT PIERCE — A 69-year-old Port St. Lucie man who volunteered as a reading mentor at Morningside…

It’s bad enough when she is mercilessly bashed from the left. But it really stings when Republicans lay into her. As one of Sarah Palin’s more clueless (but libertarian) fans, it was with great anticipation that I clicked on the link to John Hawkins’ from-the-heart analysis (“Why Sarah Palin Fans Feel Betrayed”) of why her…

I was looking at Nir Shaviv’s site Science Bits and came across an interesting paragraph. According to the IPCC (AR4), the solar irradiance is responsible for a net radiative forcing increase between the Maunder Minimum and today of 0.12 W/m2 (0.06 to 0.60 at 90% confidence). We know however that the Maunder minimum was about…

To his credit, the WaPo’s Eugene Robinson admits that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. falls into the category of a “Big Cheese.” But he argues that a Big White Cheese would be treated differently than a Big Black Cheese: …Gates’s fit of pique somehow became cause for arrest. I can’t prove that if the Big Cheese…

The Cash For Clunkers Program that I wrote about here is a rousing success. So much so that the $1 billion that was supposed to last three months is gone in a week. The Obama administration is telling lawmakers that its much-touted “cash-for-clunkers” program is already running out of money, according to three Senate aides…

Tim Price has an interesting take on bankers. …the coinage “banker” has now completely replaced its assonant rival as a term of abuse to describe the hopelessly objectionable and contemptible. Given the state of the economy shouldn’t the term be “tanker”? However, many blame W for the current mess. And if the above sentence doesn’t…

Lefty economist Paul Krugman asks about Canadian health care. H/T Judith Weiss on Facebook Cross Posted at Power and Control

The same place where I found the discussion of the Home Depot boycott also links a piece which maintains that the Episcopal Church is not merely guity of heresy, but apostasy: Apostasy is a strong word. It is a word with a direct correlation with the Anti-Christ. Hence, it should not be used lightly in…

While I tire of some of the anti-gay tirades that often seem just a finger’s click away on so many conservative websites, I’m all for free speech. Even when the goal of the speech is to suppress the free speech of companies which see fit to advertise at gay events. So instead of attacking anyone’s…

Remember Iraq? You’re not seeing it in the headlines nearly as much these days, and the reasons are all good. Most auspiciously, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the major cities has not precipitated a return to the violence of 2005-2007, as many feared. At 200-400 a month, Iraqi deaths (civilian and security forces) are…