Ann Coulter Identifies Some Bomber Characteristics

The "warning signs" exhibited by this particular passenger included the following:

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He's Nigerian.

He's a Muslim.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria.

He paid nearly $3,000 in cash for his ticket.

He had no luggage.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Two months ago, his father warned the U.S. that he was a radical Muslim and possibly dangerous.

If our security procedures can't stop this guy, can't we just dispense with those procedures altogether? What's the point exactly?

Spitzer's M101

"The heavens declare thy glory"

Senator Max Baucus Drunk / Intoxicated on Senate Floor - Shouts Down Wicker

Hiding the decline

Shows how the entire climate-gate mess began and grew.

From HARRY-READ-ME text:

As you read the programmer's comments below, remember, this is only a fraction of what he says [in the HARRY_READ_Me.txt file]. These
presumably precise data are the backbone of climate science. Reading "HARRY_READ_Me.txt" it's clear the CRU's files were a mess. ... [And
yet] the CRU at East Anglia University is considered by many as the world's leading climate research agency. ...
-- Back to the gridding. I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently
linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly
how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective ... Of course, it's too late for me to fix it too. Meh.
-- But what are all those monthly files? DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are
other than their names. And that's useless ...
-- It's botch after botch after botch.
-- This surely is the worst project I've ever attempted. Eeeek.
-- Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.
-- ... this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!
-- Well, dtr2cld is not the world's most complicated program. Wheras cloudreg is, and I immediately found a mistake! ... a loop that, for
completely unfathomable reasons, didn't include months!
-- Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!
-- As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.
-- COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!
-- Getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been introduced, so many false references.. so many
changes that aren't documented.
-- The rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. ... Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight.
-- What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no 'supposed,' I can make it up. So I have : - )
-- You can't imagine what this has cost me -- to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological
Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a 'Master' database of dubious provenance ...
-- So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option -- to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations ... In
other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad ...
-- OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done, I'm hitting yet another problem
that's based on the hopeless state of our databases.
-- This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!! ... I am seriously close to giving up, again.
-- Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim's labyrinthine software suites - let's have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing
to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project..

"The entire bill is a public option ...the entire bill is a death panel..."

Mark Steyn on the Democrats' "health care" bill:

My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option — because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill — because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

The details don't matter. Once government controls either the substance of health care or the insurance companies, it's all government control all the time. Once people get into the "system," even if its stinks, they will adapt themselves and find something to love in this rotten security blanket, and panic if there's a threat of it being taken away.

Napolitano: because passengers stopped a bombing, "the system worked."

Jonah Golberg doesn't think that that Napolitano (Head of the Department of Homeland Security) can claim credit for foiling the Christmas bombing attempt.

It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them).

Here's Goldberg's assessment of the role that Napolitano seems to be playing:

Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it.

Watch the video and see if you don't agree.

Somehow I do not think that all those DHS people who demand that I take my shoes and belt off, empty my pockets and open my carry-on bags are there to tidy up the place after a bomb goes off. Some of the claims of the members of this administration are breathtaking.

Is the Obama stimulus helping or hurting the economy?

Scott Rasmussen's latest poll shows voters by a 38% to 30% margin believe that the stimulus is hurting.

Repeat: 38% believe that the stimulus has not just been ineffective, but it has actually hurt.

Why? It seems that for the trillion dollars spent, the public has seen little or no improvement. But they have seen the deficit skyrocket out of control.

The Obama administration may have been too clever by half when it decided to hold off on spending most of the money until the election year of 2010.

Here's the breakdown by class, gender and party:

The Political Class has a much different view than the rest of the county. Ninety percent (90%) of the Political Class believes the stimulus plan helped the economy and not a single Political Class respondent says it has hurt.

Men, by a 42% to 27% margin, believe the stimulus effort has hurt the economy. Women are evenly divided.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats believe the stimulus plan has helped the economy while 47% of Republicans believe it has hurt. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 52% believe the stimulus plan has had a negative impact.

And here's a very important piece of polling data: 55% of Americans Are Populist, 7% Support the Political Class

Mark Steyn Asks:

Passengers getting off both U.S. domestic flights and those arriving from overseas reported being told that they couldn’t get out of their seat for the last hour of their flight. ... What will they do after, say, a burka-clad woman boards the flight with breast impants packed with plastic explosives?

The bizarre restrictions the government is placing on airline passengers are futile.

Playing the game this way lets the terrorists set the rules and forces us to react defensively to every innovation. What difference does it make whether the plot succeeds? After all, long after Richard Reid has died of old age in prison, we'll still be removing our footwear in eternal homage to the thwarted shoebomber.

The arithmetic is very simple: Can we regulate for all faster than they can adapt for some?

No!

Is this the best that the super-smart people who are "the ones we were waiting for" can do?

Record Setting Snowfall Across Oklahoma, Most Interstates Closed

Thanks to global warming ... er ... "Climate Change" ... it could have been worse.

Terrorist Hideout - London

They keep reminding us that terrorism is a way for the poor and the powerless to fight back against Western Imperialism and hegemony. Like man-made global warming, it's theory with a few holes in it.

British police are searching an address in central London after a Nigerian man tried to ignite an explosive device on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The Cat's Eye Nebula

Rep Pete Hoekstra on the Northwest Airlines bomber

What does the Obama administration know and what is its plan?

The scales are falling ...

It just takes some people a little longer O rips the American way

Open letter to Senator James Webb (D, VA)

Jim Webb appears to one of the true believers in global warming or its newer manifestation, “climate change” and wants his constituents to know that he’s going to be frugal about ending it. He and Lamar Alexander are going to be spending a mere $20 billion of our dollars to end this scourge. In today’s reckoning of government expenditures, anything under a trillion dollars is considered to be petty cash. So when he says:

The Clean Energy Act of 2009 would dramatically increase our nation’s energy output and measurably decrease carbon dioxide emissions, and do so at an overall 10-year cost of no more than $20 billion.

...we are to stand up and applaud.

This is the day after Christmas, and I have just finished reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography on my new Kindle. So I would like to take some of Franklin’s admonitions to heart. I will not be rude, argumentative and dogmatic. So I will put the best possible face on Senator Webb’s announcement. I will assume that he believes that the world is warming and that the current cold and snow sweeping not just the US and Europe is a mere blip on the march of the globe’s temperature rise. But I would ask him to wonder why this was not predicted by the computer models which tell us that the earth is warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Is it not a tenet of science that theory and reality should coincide; and if they do not, the theory is wrong?

Is Senator Webb unaware that the e-mails and computer data that has been revealed from the world’s foremost research body shows not only that the scientists have created s spurious “consensus” but that the data entered into the computer models was manipulated to create the desired conclusions?

Yet the Senator is proposing to provide a solution to a problem which may not exist. His entire proposal is based on a premise that may be faulty. Read the proposed purpose again:

As our country works its way through the ongoing economic crisis, there has been strong debate over the most appropriate ways for the Congress to address both our energy needs and the specter of climate change. We have introduced legislation that we believe would address all three of these challenges. The Clean Energy Act of 2009 would dramatically increase our nation’s energy output and measurably decrease carbon dioxide emissions, and do so at an overall 10-year cost of no more than $20 billion.

I ask Senator Webb to consider that man may not have any measurable impact on climate change; that the computer models that associate climate change and carbon dioxide may either be mistaken, or criminally manipulated for financial gain. I ask Senator Webb to answer a simple question: if carbon dioxide is not the cause of climate change, what would be the effect on his proposal to spend $20 billion dollars that the people of this country desperately need in their own pockets?

Would he still propose to spend the money? The answer will be very instructive.

The Messiah in Song. Merry Christmas.

A view of God's creation. Merry Christmas!

Budget Office Rebuts Democratic Claims on Medicare

Via Bloomberg

The Congressional Budget Office challenged claims by health-care overhaul proponents that Medicare savings in Senate legislation would help finance expanded coverage and postpone the bankruptcy of the medical program for the elderly.

What Do Women Want?

Apparently some want to injure the Pope.

VATICAN CITY – A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday, a Vatican spokesman said.

The Culture of Corruption

Peter Wehner ...

When it comes to the public outrage that will emerge based on the deals that took place to secure passage of the Senate health-care bill, the degree of tone-deafness among Democrats is nothing short of startling. Senator Tom Harkin calls it “small stuff.” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said, “Rather than sitting here and carping about what Nelson got for Nebraska, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle: Let’s get together and see what we can get for South Carolina.”...

These people strike me as hermetically sealed off from how most of the rest of the country view this subject. As these backroom deals become more and more widely known, anger will swell up among voters. It is bad enough to jam through a bill on a strict party-line-vote against overwhelming opposition from the public; for it to have happened only because various Members of Congress were (legally) bribed will magnify the intensity of the opposition. And for politicians to take such obvious pride in the pay-off will make things even worse. The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.

Obama Has Failed His Words (Does anyone feel like Americans are coming together?)

Jonah Goldberg ...

Obama’s rhetoric in fact looks to be the best way to achieve a Clintonian agenda. But a Clintonian agenda is the worst possible way to live up to Obama’s rhetoric.
...
Consider his signature domestic priority: health-care reform. After a year of working on it, his progressive base is either profoundly disappointed with him or seethingly angry. His Republican and conservative opponents are not only furious, they are emboldened. And independents — who’ve been deserting the Democrats in polls and off-year elections — are simply disgusted with the whole spectacle. Most important, an administration that once preened over its people-power roots can’t even claim that Americans like what he’s doing.
...
But here’s the point: Obama’s rhetorical audacity breeds cynicism, because utopianism always comes up short. Obama has many victories ahead of him, but his cause is already lost.

Obama goes beyond Clinton in being able to tell lies with a straight face. Obama's lies are bigger, they are bolder and they can't even be excused by defining what "is" is.