Oh!

Today's Reading/Listening List

The beginning of a trade war?
Reuters - Mexico slaps tariffs on U.S. goods in truck feud

Reuters - Fossil sea monster's bite makes T-Rex look feeble

AP - Justice Thomas: Americans don't sacrifice as much
"Our country and our principles are more important than our individual wants," Thomas told close to 400 people who greeted him with a standing ovation at Washington and Lee University, a Shenandoah Valley liberal arts school.

He quoted President Kennedy's famous, "Ask not what your country can do for you" speech, but said Americans today are more likely to say, "Ask not what you can do for yourselves or your country but what your country can do for you."

Washington Post - Anger Over Firm Depletes Obama's Political Capital
Asked why the administration is attempting to claw back the bonuses now but did not do more to block the payments earlier this month when it was authorizing the latest $30 billion in new loans to the struggling insurer, Gibbs was unresponsive.

"The administration is taking the steps today to go back and see what can be done," he said.

Politico - Tax Hikes Put WH on Defense

Bloomberg - Wells Fargo forced into TARP

AP - 8 Dems oppose quick debate on cap-and-trade

John Goodman - Revisiting the (Health Care) Syllogism

Insider Online - Look to Europe for Health Care Solutions?

♫♫

The Pogues - The Body of an American (live)


The Pogues - Waxie's Dargle

Today's Reading/Listening List

Politico - Cheney warns 'Obama wants massive expansion'

KYPost.com - Thousands Support The Cincinnati Tea Party
Michelle Malkin - No Duh! White House "worried about bailout backlash"

WashPost - Obama to activate his email zombies to support his tax hikes

AP - Budget crunch cuts illegals' health care

OpenCRS - A Medicare Primer
"In FY2009, the program will cover an estimated 45 million persons (38 million aged and 7 million disabled) at an estimated total cost of about $492 billion, accounting for over 3% of GDP."

Rep. Barton - Under Obama Cap-and-Trade Plan, Taxpayers Will Face $522 Tax Hike

Victor Davis Hanson - Making Orwell Proud

FoxNews - ACLU Urges California District to Let Kids Leave School for Medical Treatment Without Parental Consent

Discover - 20 Things About Time
"The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil."
~~~

The Smithsonian improved its online calendar. It used to be displayed as one long list, now they've made it very flexible, there are more items listed than in the past, more options to choose which items to see, and several different ways to subscribe to the calendar: RSS, month email, or download an iCalendar. And results can be filtered by museum, too.

Ditto for the Washington Post's Event Finder. They've made it easier to browse by day and type of event.

~~~

Google no longer supports its text/photo clipping application, GoogleNotebook. I use it on occasion to save references. The service is still there, but they won't be making any more updates to it. I'm not sure if they are letting any new people signup for it or not. Wired.com has a wiki of alternatives here.

~~

A colleague just told me about this new series on the History Channel: Battles BC. Mondays at 8 & 9 PM (EST). Tonight's episode: Hannibal: The Annihilator. Should be good!

♫♫

Washington Times - Brain in step with offbeat music

Steve Reich - The Desert Music
Here is an excerpt of my favorite section of the piece:

Today's Reading/Listening List

Malkin - Tea Party update: Revolution is brewing

WSJ - Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth

WSJ - Obama's Rosetta Stone

China:
Thanks to our unstoppable over-spending, China owns our sorry asses. How soon till they start dictating our tax policy?
AP - China "worried" about US Treasury holdings
WSJ - Wen Voices Concern Over China's U.S. Treasurys
Bloomberg - Treasuries Drop as Stocks Gain, China Asks for Debt Assurance

AP - 10 kids drink windshield wiper fluid in daycare

♫♫

eMusic Suggestion:
Pillow-soft music for lazy afternoons: Kirk Hammett, one of Metallica's chief axmen, gave Miranda Lee Richards her first guitar lessons way back when, but don't expect Light of X to resemble Ride the Lightning. Despite her metal-god tutelage, Richards excels at making pillow-soft music for lazy afternoons. She's Keren Ann with just a little more verve, Norah Jones with less reserve. (Link to artist on eMusic)

Paste - Seinfeld cast to appear in Curb Your Enthusiasm

Steve Reich - Different Trains

A few changes

Yahoo!Briefcase is closing on March. Makes sense since Yahoo!Mail now has unlimited storage. So if you've got items stored there, better retrieve them before they disappear into the ether.

GMail made some little changes that have improved the program. It is now much easier to add labels. Click on the label button and a text box appears. I'd long been meaning to make a suggestion about this, but they seem to have read my mind.

Google also recently added two notable gadgets for GoogleDesktop - a GoogleCalendar gadget and a handy GoogleDocs gadget.

I had trouble getting them both to work. Re-installing GoogleDesktop to make sure I've got the latest version, so we'll see if it works in the morning.

Today's Reading/Listening List

Reuters - Oil companies flee to low-tax Switzerland

WSJ - Obama, Geithner Get Low Grades from Economists

Victor Davis Hanson - Now Obama Tells Us? What an Honest Campaign Would Have Sounded Like

Federal $$$ Oversight:
GovExec.com - Stimulus creates major challenges for agency money managers
GovExec.com - TARP staffing continues to increase
GovExec.com - Panel questions Treasury's oversight of TARP funds

GoogleBlogoscoped - GoogleReader Adds Comments

♫♫

Lisa de Moraes - Can the Judges Save "Idol"?

Terry Riley - The Harp of New Albion
(More Info) (eMusic)

Today's Reading/Listening List

Morton Feldman's "For Stephan Wolpe" (also available from eMusic)

James Pethokoukis - Putting Obama on the Couch

YouTube - Nancy Pelosi at Home

Politico - Congress at Work "$1 billion an hour" (They didn't add in SCHIP spending.)

Veronique de Rugy - A list of all the bailout/stimulus measures since last September

Associated Press - Extreme cheapskates: Tightwads revel in frugality

Space.com - Catch Venus Before it Disappears (3 weeks to go!)

♫♫
MP3 - It Ain't Your Money to Spend!

Lisa de Moraes - 13 Unlucky for "American Idol"

Google Had a Leak

Google's new-ish online Document applications are very handy for collaborating with colleagues, or for working on a document or spreadsheet without having to email it back and forth from work to home. But there is a downside to working in the cloud - security and privacy becomes a greater concern.

Yesterday, Google reported a "software bug" that shared documents that were meant to be private. Only a small fraction of accounts were affected, but given the number of people who use Google, that is still a lot of people.

This isn't just a concern for Google. Now there is a federal push to digitize patients' health records. So presumable there will be large government-run databases of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. One risk is that decisions concerning health care with be centralized under some new federal czar, another is that all this private information will be breached. Governments have a poor record of managing and securing these types of database.

Yep, They're Bad

http://www.badpaintingsofbarackobama.com/

The Democrats' Keynsian "Stimulus" Explained

An economics student asks his professor to explain how the stimulus will help the economy. The professor replies that he doesn't have time to explain it now, but if the student will come by his house in the evening he will do his best to explain it.
The student shows up that night and the professor asks him to help him with an issue in his pool first. "Take this bucket and fill it with as much water as you can from the deep end of the pool. Then, carry it around and pour it into the shallow end."

Confused, the student complies, but quickly becomes frustrated. Finally he puts down the bucket and says, "This is pointless! I've been doing this over and over again and now I'm tired. Besides, it hasn't changed anything!"

The professor smiles and says, "Exactly."

That's a Shame

Remember those TV ads selling Obama Presidential Coins? They were pretty much a scam.

So Much for Energy Security

The porked up and bloated omnibus spending bill being squeezed through Congress by Democratic leaders will not fund the initiative to double the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Apparently the Dems idea of "energy security and independence" involves Americans all driving around in little clown cars and paying more for food thanks to the diversion of corn for the production of the highly inneficient fuel known as ethanol.

By the way, this omnibus bill increases its programs spending by 8 percent.

Enemies Lists Are "Fun"

Obama's creepy Press Secretary thinks it "fun" to use the power of the Oval Office to target individual private citizens who disagree with the Administration's War on Prosperity. I would be very surprised if Gibbs is still in this job come summer.

Fraudbama Presented a Fraudulent Budget??!

The inestimable Krauthammer thinks so.

Even worse, the policies in his budget are destroying wealth.

Obama's Training Wheels

Obama can't even make the shortest address with the assistance of his steadying TelePrompter.

See the Politico.

News for the Boy

1) A hand print fossil reveals that some dinosaurs' arms were likely positioned upward, not downward as depicted in the Jurassic Park movies.

2) Fossil hunters in Colombia find a 43-foot long snake!

3) A paleontologist in England discovers 48 new species.

Colorful Chart

LastFM generated this chart of the artists I've been listening to this year.

(Click to embiggen.)

This Redistribution of Wealth Business is Tricky

A little parable from Monty Python:

Dennis Moore Part 1


Dennis Moore Part 2


Part 3


Part 4

At this rate, we won't need an emissions cap

Barack "Senator Government" Obama wants to impose an annual $80 billion tax on all consumers via a "cap-and-trade" program to regulate emissions. We won't need it. His platform contains enough assaults on productivity and other fuel taxes that emissions will decline as Atlas Shrugs and manufacturers close shop or relocate to friendlier climes. Oh look at that, the Dow plummeted again. Thanks, Obama. Here's your more equal society, wealth is destroyed and dependency on the government is increased.

Not Too Likely

Representative Pence has called on the President to veto the $410 billion pork-infused omnibus bill. This ain't gonna happen. Barack "Senator Government" Obama will not stand in the way of federal bloat.



PENCE CALLS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA TO VETO BLOATED SPENDING BILL

“House Republicans trust President Obama will veto any spending bill that is not consistent with his campaign commitment…”

Washington, DC- U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, made the following statement today after joining House Republican leaders in sending a letter to President Obama requesting he veto the massive omnibus spending bill:

“In only a few months, Democrats have passed massive spending bills at the taxpayer’s expense. To make matters worse, the manner in which this legislation was forced through Congress was not transparent or honest. For example, the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ spending bill was rushed through Congress without any Member having read it. And, the $410 billion legislation that passed this week contained nearly 9,000 ‘airdropped’ earmarks, most of which were not even considered in committee let alone on the House floor. This is unacceptable.

“House Republicans trust President Obama will veto any spending bill that is not consistent with his campaign commitment to ‘fiscal responsibility and accountability and ensuring that spending commitments are paid for without burdening our children and grandchildren.’ And, since the Democrats’ bill also goes against President Obama’s pledge to ‘slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public,’ we urge him to stand by his word.

“We side with the American people who are tired of business-as-usual with Washington’s out-of-control spending habits. Our nation’s families and small businesses are being forced to make sacrifices and cut down on spending and we believe, so should government. American taxpayers deserve better.”