The first sign of the death of a blog is the "hiatus," that couple-week period where the poster goes off to do other things, so do the readers, and only the blogger returns. Then after he comes back and learns that no one cares, he goes away for good.

We may be there*. Or that may be here. Or something.

Of course, I'm not as depressed as all that sounds - or the picture looks - I've just found something else that I want to spend a lot of time learning, time I intend to redeem from becoming as unplugged from things political as possible**. So I'm going to go do that for a few weeks and maybe I'll be back for summer break or so, and maybe someone will be here.

If not, thanks, all, it's been fun.

*It has less to do with the passage of specific legislation than with the fact that I'm tired of talking about legislation all the time. When a patient has terminal cancer, his bedsores may be interesting and they may be painful; they're just not particularly important.
** It's not the first time, to be sure, and probably won't be the last.

ooooraw!

Amazing what a little video can do:

The ACORN Association Board met on Sunday March 21 and approved a set of steps to responsibly manage the process of bringing its operations to a close over the coming months...

Of course, this is not really the end of ACORN, it's just going to to go underground for a while and hope to grow back bigger someday. There are also plenty of other federally-funded moonbat groups that can step up and wield tax dollars against middle America like ACORN used to.

Still, I can't help but let out a hearty laugh and offer a sincere "well done" to James O' Keefe. There has never been firmer proof that federally-funded moonbats are not only shameless and soulless, they are not very bright, either.

I'm not a basketball fan

But this is probably mandatory for Kansans

Principle

The House GOP showed admirable tenacity in their stand against Obamacare*, another tromp on the gas pedal driving us toward national bankruptcy. And I'm glad to see that they have decided to make the blatant unconstitutionality of this federal power grab a reason to vote against it. But that does raise something of a question: where the hell were these principled constitutionalists when the GOP was in power? Oh, here they were:

2001 No Child Left Behind:
John Boehner (Republican Leader) AYE
Eric Cantor (Republican Whip)  AYE
Mike Pence (Chairman, Republican Conference) NO
Pete Sessions (Chairman, Congressional Committee) NO

2003 Medicare Prescription Drug Bill
John Boehner (Republican Leader) AYE
Eric Cantor (Republican Whip) AYE
Mike Pence (Chairman, Republican Conference) NO
Pete Sessions (Chairman, Congressional Committee) AYE
Thaddeus McCotter (Chairman, Policy Committee) AYE
John Carter (Secretary, Republican Conference) AYE

It is of interest that of the votes cast by the current Republican leadership on the federal takeover of schools and the massive expansion of federal costs in regards to Medicare, 70% of them were in favor**. In addition, the current leader and whip each cast votes in favor of both bills. The GOP as a whole, which held unanimous against Obamacare, voted 186-34 in favor of NCLB and 207-19 in favor of the Medicare expansion.

Such an incredible turnaround can only mean one of two things. Either the GOP has discovered a principled and constitutional position and is willing to fight for it, or they are only willing to expand federal power when they have a Republican president egging*** them on.

* I give them full props.
** Double props to Mike Pence, who like Ron Paul and my former rep Jim Ryun, voted against both.
*** The biggest irony of all this is that had the GOP slapped Bush's nose on NCLB - eliminating the Department of Education rather than doubling it - it would have probably made him a more successful president in the long run. It is certain that had they discovered this stand 10 years ago, Republican congressmen would not be today a threatened species.

The argument not taken

The Federal Courts bust into Bernanke's toybox:

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said. 

The screams that telling the taxpayers who got $2 trillion in "emergency" money were themselves telling.  It would "stigmatize" good bankers. It would destroy "confidence" in the banking system. The Fed argued, consistently, that ignorance is the best policy when it comes to the American public: if Americans really knew what was going on, it would be disastrous for the Fed's current policy*. The courts in this case unanimously upheld the law.

But what I was glad to see was the argument NOT taken: that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to the Fed because it's a private corporation. Now, it's inarguable that the Fed IS a stock corporation: though chartered by Congress, it is owned by member banks, who hold actual stock certificates that pay real dividends. Had they taken that tack, I wonder if the courts could have found that FFOI requests apply at all.

Should the Fed fail to appeal - or appeal and lose - at least one issue will be settled**: it will be very good news for Americans that the Fed is a private corporation that is really owned by the government.  Because for a long time now it has appeared that our government is owned by a private corporation.
 
* While true, it is more an indictment of the Fed's policy than anything.
** Other than that we will know, in the words of Senator "A Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day" Sanders, where $2 trillion of our money went.

Noakemon

Boys and their toys

So anyway, today was shopping day. Took a day of vacation and headed to KC to pick up some stuff I've been wanting.

I didn't get Dragon Age: Awakenings. But what I did get is pictured on the right. It's a monster, such that the sales guy's eyes lit up when he was talking about it. Not because of the price - it was not the most expensive Warren Buffet had in stock - but because he was a pretty hardcore gamer.  In fact, the Asus G73J was the only laptop they had in stock that was certified by the Republic of Gamers. Now I have to start Dragon Age: Origins again from the beginning*. Oh, the horror!

I didn't leave Rogue** out, of course: she got a new dishwasher and a treadmill.  Oh, and a pretty nice laptop of her very own.

* Because of an issue with my old PC - which will soon be Tommy's new PC - I can't just upload my old games to my Bioware account. At least not until Toshiba sends it back...
** What a great shopper she is. She's like, "Oh, can I have a discount?" "Sure, Ma'am. How would you like $50 off the dishwasher, $30 off the laptop?" I'm taking her along again, I can tell you...

Happy St. Pat's Day

It's only an expansion pack

The Dragon Age "Awakenings" expansion is out today.  And it's spring break. But I really, really, really don't need to buy it. Really.

I'll just keep telling myself that.

Requiem for a lightweight

As the ref reaches a count of ten, Cindy Sheehan still doesn't get it:

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system*?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.

In other words, she was just a tool of the Democratic party. Once she started criticizing the Democrats, she became a tool for which there was no further use, either at their rallies or in the paper, and thus she was jettisoned by the Democrats as soon as the election was over.

The next election will not feature Democrats running against George Bush's wars, which are now Barack Obama's wars, therefore there will be no more smiling pictures with Nancy, no more guest-of-honor dinners, no more re-telling her tattered story to throngs of adoring fans. Her services as an anti-war partisan are no longer required.

The right's exposing of her partisan usefulness was neither slander nor libel, it was simply the truth. An inconvenient truth to Mrs. Sheehan and those for whom war rises above partisan politics, to be sure, but a truth nonetheless. She has broken her family, her marriage, her bank account, and probably her health in fervent service of a partisan cause she never understood, on behalf of those who were twice correct in considering her a useful idiot. Here's to hoping that through her pain she can find peace and through her experience she gains wisdom.

* The main problem**, of course, is that she was not working outside the two-party system at all. She was securely within it, providing ammunition for a side that was happy for the help and rewarded it quite well so long as it was needed.

** The second problem is that, like many leftist women, she immediately presumes the opposition opposes her primarily because she's a female rather than because she's a fool. Because she so consistently misdiagnoses the disease, stumbling onto a cure for that problem is highly unlikely.

Public schools cannot be saved

At least not with educators* in charge of them:

In addition, President Obama would replace the law’s requirement that every American child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that could prove equally elusive: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

If administration officials truly believe that it is "utopian" to teach a child to read and do math in 12 years, then we might as well burn every government school to the ground and salt the earth on which they stood.

It's easy to poke fun at the Obama administration's transparent attempt to dismiss public school failure, both present and future. But this outcome - a national program to ensure that no one discovers how little students are learning -  became inevitable the minute Bush and the GOP passed No Child Left Behind**. Once they said that Washington ought to be in control of the education of little Cindy Lou Who of Podunk, Kansas, then there was never any doubt that eventually the day would come when Washington could ensure that as little learning goes on in Pudunk, Kansas, as goes on in NYC and KCMO and Philadelphia.

This is not a problem of public education any more than it is a problem of medical care, though the result will be precisely the same.  Lawrence J. Peter had it right: all hierarchies, hell all organizations, eventually become filled with incompetents, placeholders, crooks, and termites of various sorts***. The bigger they become, the more brittle and stiff they grow, until some circumstance comes along that they cannot adapt to. Then they bring the whole thing down on the heads of those who paid for it.

* by which is meant professional educrats who rise through unions and the administrative ranks of large public school districts to infest the executive branch
** Yes, I'm blaming George Bush for this one.
*** He didn't say it that way, but that's what he meant.

44bc and all that...

Some of them surely deserve it

I've been in Wal Mart and I've seen them:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Police in Ohio say a man accused of striking children in the head with a key protruding from his fist while roaming a Walmart store did it for the thrill.

Sixty-eight-year-old Ralph Conone was arrested at a Columbus Walmart on Wednesday and charged with assault...

Investigators say Conone told them it was exciting to hit children with their parents nearby. 

Of course, most of those kids that you really, really want to hit ought not be hit with their parents so close by. That's a much better chance to hit the parents, who surely deserve it more.

You smell that? Budget Napalm, son

Nothing else in the world smells like that:

WASHINGTON — The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year.

But that's not really the interesting number, or at least not the important one. I mean, every country is bound to have a largest monthly deficit in history once in a while. This just happens to be ours. No, the important number is this one:

Through the first five months of the budget year, government revenues totaled $800.5 billion, down 7 percent from a year ago, while outlays totaled $1.45 trillion, up a slight 0.1 percent from a year ago.

Through the first half of the year, the government spent $14.50 for every $8 it collected. One way to put that is that it is now borrowing 45% of its spending. Another way is to say that it is now spending 80% more than its income. And revenues are still going down, and costs are still going up. We not only have trillion dollar deficits are far as the eye can see*, but the compounding interest on all this new debt makes even running in place impossible. That is the financial death spiral.

Someday this war's gonna end. But I don't think that smell is victory. 

* which is actually not as far as budget projections go.

I can dream, can't I?

Blacks As Children file, drawer 145,871

Dr. John Douglas refuses to blame the victim:

Black women had the highest rate of [genital herpes] infection at 48 percent and women were nearly twice likely as men to be infected, according to an analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

[Dr. John] Douglas said the increased rate of infection in blacks is not do* to increased risk behavior but likely due to biological factors that make women more susceptible as well as the higher rate of infection within black communities.

I just love how scientists explain politically-uncomfortable facts, like the fact that the black herpes infection rate is twice that of the rate of whites**. The first explanation is that "the increased rate of infection in blacks" is due to "the higher rate of infection within the black community."  True, I suppose, but not really all that enlightening when you think about it. The second explanation - that women are more susceptible than men - does not explain the racial difference at all unless there are so many black women compared to black men that they skew the sample.  So what does explain the difference?

Well, we are assured that the increased prevalence of herpes is not due to "increased risk behavior." That means that black people with herpes are not to be accused of doing the kinds of things that cause one to catch herpes, at least not in proportion to the resultant catching of herpes. That would be blaming the victim***, and probably racist to boot. 

So what causes the spread of herpes if we have already excluded the idea that herpes is spread by the kinds of behaviors that spread herpes? That's what we need another grant to figure out, I guess.

* or "due," if you prefer.
** At least according to the CDC, which asks unanimous consent to revise and extend its conclusions.  Science is not an exact science.
*** And as CNN.com notes, blacks are already "shouldering a heavy STD burden." And who wants to add to others' burdens?

Hahahaha

Hahahaha haha ha ha:

In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave. 

Haha ha hahaha haha haha hahaha ha hahahaha haha hahaha ha haha hahaha haha ha hahaha hahaha hahaha hahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahahahahaha. 

No, seriously. We know what we're doing.

The People's Buffet is closing

Now comes the crash diet:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is considering a radical plan to close nearly half its schools to stay afloat.

Schools officials say the cuts are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case.

It wasn't too long ago the KCMO school district was building olympic-sized swimming pools and taxiing white kids from Kansas in a futile attempt to desegregate a school district that merely reflected the racial makeup of the people who live in it*. They won a big fat two thousand million dollar award to do that, and that cash has enabled the school district to not only avoid the hard choices, but any choices. No arguing about costs: nothing is too good for the poor, benighted children of KCMO**.  KCMO schools have been at an all you can eat buffet for two decades. Now that it's coming to an end, it looks like they will have to close half of their schools - half - to stay afloat.  That's some bitching triage, my friends. And all because they refused to cut while the times were good and the cuts were easy.

Moving over to Jefferson City:

Jefferson City -- The alarm bells are ringing in the halls of the state Capitol.

The state of Missouri is going broke.

Hark, I hear the bells, too. Why is such a thing happening? Well, mostly because of this:

Some lawmakers saw this fiscal train wreck coming, warning last year against relying on the stimulus to fund ongoing operations in state government. But Republican legislative leaders and the Democratic governor forged ahead using the stimulus anyway.

Same story, different chapter: so long as politicians have money to spend, they will not make choices.  But the choices must be made now, because the tide-them-over money, which gave them a chance last year to step down from the precipice, is gone.  The easy cuts*** are made, the hard cuts are coming.

And because they didn't make the hard cuts when they were easier cuts, there's a whole lot of state governments that are going to soon look like the KCMO school district.

* well, almost.  The schools are more segregated - by which is meant they have a higher percentage of black students - than the city, but mostly because the white residents are older and therefore have fewer kids to go to school.
** who remain both poor and benighted despite the five-figures-and-more spent to educate each of them for each of twelve years.
*** by which is meant the not-really cuts, the moving-money-around cuts, and the pushing-back-payments cuts.

Morning in America

(Hat tip: Mark Engblom)

More good news for Kansans

Kansas took even less of your money last month:

Gov. Mark Parkinson has made additional budget adjustments to bridge a $106 million budget imbalance in the current fiscal year in light of continuing revenue declines.

Parkinson also criticized the Legislature for going on a “tax-cutting binge”... Parkinson cited the elimination of estate taxes and franchise taxes and a tripling in the number of sales tax exemptions in recent years.

“We have to stop giving away the tax base to special interests,” Parkinson said.

Yeah, it's really important to stand up to special interests, like people who die. While I applaud Parkinson for cutting spending*, I have to laugh at his complaint that Kansas would be in a better position if it had more money in prior years.  It would in truth be in a far worse position.

What did Kansas do with the money it had in prior years? It spent every penny, just like every other state. New programs, new cars, sexy advertising campaigns for the state fair.  Had the state been given more money to spend in prior years, it would today have even more programs to cut and even more people screaming about it. And it would have no ability to solve that except by raising taxes even more than it will have to today.

The fact that the Kansas legislature cut taxes in the past is the reason Kansas is facing a deficit in the hundreds of millions rather than the billions - or like some other states, eventual bankruptcy.

* even if it is inevitable. I mean, unless he wants to pay for these programs out of his own pocket, he really has no choice.

Where are those vaunted political skills?

Obama prepares another knife for his party's back:

Reporting from Washington - Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.

Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.

You might remember that Bush tried the same thing*, and that it pretty much marked the end of his term as President. Even when it came to the final looting of the Treasury, Paulson and Bernanke took the lead. Of course, it's a little different for Obama in that it was the GOP conservatives who rebelled against Bush and to a lesser extent against McCain**, and Obama will get no help from them in any case. Perhaps he figures that will be the extent of his losses. It won't.  If the Democrats fear they are losing middle America over their health care debacle, they haven't seen anything yet. This effort will crush the life from their party like, well, my bulldozer comparison was too cold-blooded, even for me.

I've got to admit, I'm absolutely flabbergasted*** by the political incompetence shown by the Obama administration thus far. And I look forward to it - and their never-growing list of legislative triumphs - lasting straight through to 2012.

* I believe the words used by CNN to describe the results were "a crushing defeat."
** However, they forgave McCain, I guess.  Why I have absolutely no idea.
*** pleased, but flabbergasted

White girls can't dance

or at least, they shouldn't be allowed to:

On February 20, the University of Arkansas chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha, a predominantly white sorority, won the inaugural Sprite Step Off stepping competition, beating two predominantly black sororities...

...it was not just that they'd beaten African-American sororities, it was seen as the first assault on yet another African-American cultural tradition that, if not guarded, would be appropriated from blacks like jazz and hip-hop.

Lawrence C. Ross, Jr., is absolutely correct in opining that black folk can't demand to be included as fully equal citizens in this great land while cordoning off certain activities as exclusively "theirs." Being an equal means you get to try what the other guys do, and if you do it better than them, you win. If you don't do it better, then you try again next year or try something else. After all, it wasn't too long ago that whites were likewise worried about their own cultural traditions that needed guarding, and it was not just basketball and boxing, it was long-time "white" activities like voting and serving as President*. One man's appropriation is another man's inclusion.

Besides, being an American means there's no sense in being too particular about your cultural "traditions" anyway. They will come and go with such astonishing frequency that most of them will be what-the-hell-were-we-thinking jokes long before they have a chance to become traditional.

* And now tricycling is in danger, I'm telling you. Is there no end?

(hat tip: Misty)

Unlike their forebears

today's Cal Berkeley students protest the important stuff:

BERKELEY -- Yet another student protest turned violent at UC Berkeley late Thursday and into Friday morning, when more than 200 people spilled out of a dance party on campus and trashed university buildings and smashed windows along Telegraph Avenue...

A protest leader, UC Berkeley student Callie Maidhof, defended the vandalism and said rioters targeted the sandwich shop because a second Subway is scheduled to open on campus, just across Bancroft Way.

"There will be two Subways within 100 feet of each other," she said.

What do you bet Miss Protest here is pursuing a really societally-valuable degree like wimmin studies or social justice*? It's just a guess, but I figure it rather unlikely that a young fascista who defends the destruction of others' property because she doesn't like its placement is probably not out for engineering or comp sci, you know? And a Subway?  What kind of a person so hates the $5 foot long**?

That said, such marches are another argument that, as bad as California's state budget situation is, it still has too much money - Cal Berkeley is still open. The world will be a better place when the taxpayers no longer suffer nor support such "education" - by which is meant, of course, 4-7 years of promoting and coddling the incoherent rage of spoiled rich kids.

* I mean, where would this world be if we didn't have professionally-trained marchers and chanters?
** Perhaps she has developed feminist Rage Against The Sandwich(™)

Suckers

UPDATE: Speaking of Progressives, it turns out a cousin of mine is running for Congress in California's 24th district against some Republican I never heard of. Tim and I were actually pretty close as kids*, competed against each other in high school Cross Country**, and had plenty of deep political discussions during long car rides from Minneapolis to Duluth during college. Tim's a pretty good guy*** and always has been, even if he's still wrong about nearly everything.

Anyway, while I wish him nothing but luck, it's starting to look like he picked a really bad year for the attempt.

* he was the cousin all my clothes went to, before they came back so my little brothers could wear them.
** I won
*** Even though he has a law degree, he's never practised law. QED.