Potpourri

Who said the Cold War was over? Russians unveil new fighter jet.

This scares me: William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection on the liberal angst regarding the Supreme Court decision a few weeks ago on the First Amendment (Citizens United).  And this from NRO via Pundette:

“Our argument in the case wasn’t complicated,” says Bossie. “It was about freedom, and it ended up hinging on a very simple question: If the FEC is comfortable banning political films, like Citizens United’s Hillary: The Movie, around election time, would it also be fine with banning political books financed by corporations? The Justice Department’s attorney answered yes, the government did have the power to prohibit the publication of a book. When they admitted that, everything changed.”

“I think that answer sent a chill through the Court,” says Bossie. “It was that moment that was a catalyst for us, and gave us the opportunity to win on much bigger constitutional grounds than we anticipated. It became apparent that the government believed that they could ban anything: movies, books, pamphlets, the Kindle, you name it. It was a shocking revelation.”

Read the rest.  It rather simply decimates the President’s claim that “foreign corporations” would now be able to contribute to political campaigns (that’s covered by a separate part of election law).

 In other news, the only non-government owned car company posted its first profit since 2005 this week.  Reminds me of this from Mike Rowe.  I don’t think it’s any accident that the only company posting a profit is the only company that didn’t take a bailout.

AJ Strata has worthy read up, “The End Of The Global Warming Madness.”  Highlights:

I want to lead this post off with a reminder of two key events on the global warming front that occurred in the last 6 months. First were results from a Japanese space mission to measure Green House Gasses (GHGs), which showed America has an extremely low ‘carbon footprint’ compared to the rest of the world. We actually DO NOT produce  very much of the world’s GHGs at all, coming in last among modern and near modern regions with large populations.

Second was the publication of emails from NASA GISS, which openly admit (to the brain dead press no less) there is NO SIGN of global warming in the United States of America. None. The best these alarmists can claim is it should show up in 20-40 years! It is not here now, that much they can say – scientifically.

RTR.

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Always a party when it’s not your purse

Pundette detailed the excess of the congressional junket to Copenhagen last month on our dime.

What would you pay for two days in Copenhagen?

Or more accurately, what did you pay?

In a follow up to her initial report, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS does more real reporting on our governing class, for whom nothing is too good as long as the taxpayers are so generously picking up the tab.

The tab comes out to $1.1 million, by the way. And we don’t even get a thank you card.

A new wrinkle for Pelosi’s botox tech to iron out: taxpayers shell out over 100k for Pelosi’s in-flight food and booze.

Is it just me, or should she get peanuts and a Coke like the rest of us?  If she wants first-class, she should pay out of her own millionaire pocket to get it.  If I pay, the woman gets peanuts.

A Caveat for College Ball

I admit to hearing PJ Husband declare the BCS system “idiotic” over the years. 

But does it truly require Presidential intervention?

College football is big business. 

As such, be forewarned: tread with caution while dealing with the President and his merry camp of Marxist minions. 

You never know what you’ll end up “conceding:” the right to structure ticket sales prices, the right to pay coaches what they’re worth, the right to give scholarships to worthy athletes regardless of skin color or socioeconomic status, etc.  I could go on. 

Put nothing past this man.

This just in: news of Climategate slow to reach caves

Laughter always perks me up more than coffee.

Drudge headline this morning: Bin Laden blasts US for climate change.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.

In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

Funny: Osama bin Laden understands better than liberals (let on) that the sole reason for AGW BS is to destroy the US economy.  So we can all live in caves, too, apparently. 

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Also in the global-warming-is-a-sham category this week: a “scientist” admits the data sets were false but that it was used to “encourage” governments into “concrete action.”

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

More on the Himalayan glacial farce here. 

Brings new meaning to the term SHAM-WOW, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: Linked from Pundette. (Thanks!) (And a Recommended Read!)

“Well, I said it ‘with all due respect'”

ROTFL.

PJ Husband on Obama’s “With all due deference to the separation of powers” moment last night:

Cleaning leads to clarity (You should try it sometime, Mr. Brooks)

There’s only so much all-Obama-all-the-time I can take when the reality of three more years of the same ahead smacks me in the face.   It did this morning.  

Facebook stoked my anger rather than a providing a diversion: too many “I ♥ Obama and listening to him makes me swoon” comments gave rise to nausea.  So I busied myself this morning cleaning out of necessity to provide focus, and well, to be honest, distraction.

(And who knew vinegar and water can really clean everything–my wood floors sparkle as do all the windows and mirrors.  Oh wait, my mother knew vinegar cleans everything.  Well.  Cheaply. Chalk another one up to I-should-have-listened.  Thanks, Mom.)

While wiping thousands of tiny toddler handprints from every glass surface, I finally saw the silver lining in Obama’s SOTU.  Something that inspired–dare I say it, hope–that the next three years wouldn’t be as disastrous as I fear.  If we survived Carter, we will survive Obama.  And all the more so because of Obama’s one and only job skill: community organizing. 

He’s all rhetoric (and not even good rhetoric last night).  Petulant.  Whiny. All Obama knows how to do is pit people against one another, “agitate” for change, demand others make sacrifices–but he’s incapable of any real or honest leadership.  And this, in the end, will serve us well because the  “transformative change” he had hoped to engender will end up dustbin as the Democrats in the Senate and House tear each other apart. 

Lefties prayed (if that’s possible) in the run-up before the SOTU that Obama would provide a roadmap for how-to-accomplish-everything.  But he didn’t.  And he won’t. 

Ah, vindication: Rush just said of Obama,

He’s just turned the House against the Senate and the Senate against the House.  This is all he knows how to do.

And for that, I am thankful.

Don’t get me wrong: it pains me that we have to endure three more years of this bullying from a President.  (Read it all.  An excellent compendium of commentary from Pundette.)

But after few hours of elbow grease and a half hour of Rush, it all seems manageable with a little more cleaning. 

My wood floors sparkle.

“With all due deference to separation of powers?”

Pardon me, King Obama.  Rock on, Justice Alito. 

In case you couldn’t stomach too much of tonight’s SOTU, (or in case you imbibed a little too much watching), here’s my highlight of the evening.  Justice Alito shaking his head, mouthing “not true,” to the defamations Obama made concerning the SCOTUS ruling last week. 

.”

Better video here at HotAir, but I can’t embed it.  With all due deference to separation of powers.  Hellsbells, ya’ll, I’m surprised he didn’t burn the Constitution in front of us. 

“I don’t quit.”

Oh, how I wish you would.

UPDATE: 0919.  Law Prof Randy Barnett of Georgetown on the President’s comments:

In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.

Organic Family Planning

Who knew Catholics were so hip and with it, eh?  I guess some folks haven’t heard of NFP (Natural Family Planning) or FAM (Fertility Awareness Method). 

From Creative Minority Report (Hat Tip: Pundit and Pundette):

I was over a friend’s house picking up a buddy of mine this past weekend. He wasn’t ready so I ended up hanging out for a few minutes with his wife and her friend. I’d met the other woman before but don’t know her all that well. She was talking a mile a minute about how “natural” she lives and how great she feels. Of course, she was telling us that we should be living the same way. She lectured me about different herbs and how she’s detoxing her body.

She’s been “living naturally” since New Year’s Day. (Her words)

She said she feels so much better (“fantabulous!!!” was her word) and she’s been doing a lot of reading about all the “unnatural” chemicals people put in their bodies and how harmful it all is.

I have friends like this.  Organic, organic, only organic.  But the “natural” organic living only goes so far. 

In the conversation my buddy joked about me “detoxing” my five children.

“What?!” gasped the woman. “Really? You really have five kids?”

One of the funny things about writing a Catholic blog is you sometimes forget that having five kids is a lot. But around the Catholic blogosphere I read about so many people who have that many children and many more that I forget how countercultural it is to have more than two children.

Then she asked me if I was crazy?

I responded I was. (I mean, how else do you respond to that?)

“My gosh,” she said, slowing herself down for a moment. “I couldn’t even imagine. One’s enough for me. I’m not having anymore. My husband wants more but thank God for the Pill.”

Ms. Natural Living is on the Pill?

I couldn’t hold me tongue so I just threw it out there. “How does all this natural living coincide with all the chemicals you’re putting in your body from the Pill?”

And then she said that she needs to be on the Pill because it allows her to live naturally. If she had more children then she wouldn’t have the time to live the way she wanted to live, she said.

How selfish.  And short sighted.  But I digress. 

I hope she likes detox: her one crutch does more harm to her body (and, ironically, the enviornment) than all the detox in the world could flush away.  NFP and FAM have been touted as “green” birth control for a while.

UPDATE: A Recommended Read from Pundette (Thanks!)

Be Thankful for Primetime SOTU

At least the markets are closed.

PJ Husband on the way home tonight: “Are we watching SOTU?  Might as well so we can see why our investments plummet.”

More to come.

Pantybomber copycats ’round the globe!

Except this one tried to smuggle lizards in his undies.  44 of ’em.  From the SF Gate:

A German reptile collector has been jailed for 14 weeks and must pay a 5,000 New Zealand dollar ($3,540) fine for plundering New Zealand’s wild gecko and skink populations, a judge has ruled.

Hans Kurt Kubus, 58, is to be deported to Germany as soon as he is released from prison, Judge Colin Doherty ordered Tuesday.

Kubus was caught by wildlife officials at Christchurch International Airport on South Island in December, about to board an overseas flight with 44 geckos and skinks in a hand-sewn package concealed in his underwear.

He admitted trading in exploited species without a permit and hunting absolutely protected wildlife without authority, pleading guilty to two charges under the Wildlife Act and five under the Trade in Endangered Species Act.

Department of Conservation prosecutor Mike Bodie told Christchurch District Court that Kubus could have faced potential maximum penalties of 500,000 dollars and six months in prison.

I wonder if they caught old Kubus using that new x-ray device.  Itty bitty lizards.  In his pants.  I still can’t stop laughing.  I wonder if the guards had to feign indignation, or if they, too, fell over in hysterics.