The founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Dr. Zudhi Jasser, thinks the Pentagon's report on the Ft. Hood massacre embodies the paralyzing culture of political correctness and utterly fails to confront the threat that political Islam presents:

As a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, I know the culture of the U.S. military. While I served my 11 years pre-9/11, the culture of political correctness was pervasive. This travesty of a report is front and center evidence of that paralyzing culture.

As a Naval physician and former chief resident at Bethesda Naval Hospital, I can also speak to the inadequacies in the counterterrorism, counter-radicalism and insurgency training of commanders like those being held to blame for Hasan’s promotion and movement up the chain of command. … As we have all heard, his commanders were seriously concerned about his actions and the role his faith played in his everyday interactions with patients. Had they brought those concerns to his review process, they would have been vilified as Islamaphobes. …

As a Muslim, I am most fearful that our entrenched mindset of victimization and political correctness is precluding a vitally necessary open discussion of faith-based issues both inside and outside of the military. The current military and governmental culture precluded Hasan’s superiors from questioning anything relating to his faith.

… 

How can we hold these soldiers responsible for not preventing Hasan’s actions if we aren’t giving them the environment and the tools they need to confront Islamist radicalization? The military cannot allow the mantra of victimization of Muslims to dominate how it handles force protection. Islamist radicalization is real and it cannot be confronted unless we are honest about the threat it represents. Hasan is not the first soldier to be radicalized and he won’t be the last if we do not address the real issues.

Read the whole thing. 

At Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism (home of the wonderful Retracto, the Correction Alpaca), Kurt Schlichter gave a well-deserved smack-down to Joseph Farah and his fellow birthers:

… WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah used his Friday night dinner speech at the Tea Party convention to “raise questions” about the President Obama’s citizenship, much to the disgust of other attendees, including Andrew Breitbart.  “It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told one of Farah’s minions, his frustration evident. 

Let me add a few more adjectives.  It’s “stupid,” “irrational” and “destructive” of everything we are fighting for.  The movement might as well take out its figurative .45, aim directly at its foot, and pull the trigger.

I'm tempted to add that it's retarded. But that might get me into a heap of trouble. 

By the way, am I the only one who thinks it's both amusing and appropriate that when you compare Democrats to retarded people, it's the retarded to whom you owe an apology?

I hope this picture is real and not just Photoshopped. It's the funniest billboard I've seen since this one. As Instapundit put it, "Heh™."

Indeed™.

If it's not real, I'd be willing to kick in some money to help make it so. :-)

Or was it Blogger Fest 0x0000000000000001? I'm not clear about the numbering. Honestly, right now I'm not clear about anything. Except that I left before midnight (and wasn't the last to leave this time) and arrived home safely about half past.

Billll did a good job of choosing a location. The Old Mill Brewery has excellent food and decent house-brewed beer, and we ended up having a back room to ourselves (about 20 of us). It was a fine evening. If you ever go there, I heartily recommend the Penne Gorgonzola, Off Colfax thought the prime rib was excellent, and the burgers got thumbs up from everyone who tried them. 

Thanks to the staff at the Old Mill Brewery for showing us a great time!

Now I hear a pillow calling my name…

Last Sunday, on ABC's This Week, in an interview with Baba Wawa, Scott Brown called for a freeze on federal hiring and federal pay raises (something he'd advocated before on the campaign trail):

WALTERS: President Obama has asked for a spending freeze on almost everything except matters like the military, Social Security, and Medicare. He says he's going line by line through the budget. Now, you have said that's not enough for you; that you want to cut spending and not just freeze it.

Time out: What a bogus question. The "almost everything except" that's supposed to be frozen amounts to just 13% of the federal budget, according to the Cato Institute. So 87% of the nearly $4 trillion dollar budget is exempted from the Obama "freeze." And as Cato's Chris Edwards noted, "a very large part of the 2009 spending spike of $699 billion will be sloshing forward into 2010 and later years," so even that 13% isn't really "frozen" — it will grow by the hundreds of billions of yet-unspent "stimulus" funds already appropriated and still "sloshing" around.

So what are the first 3 items that you would cut?

BROWN: The problem with what the president said is he's not doing it until 2011. We need to do it immediately. We need to put a freeze on federal hires and federal raises because, as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.

Sen. Brown's assertion about federal pay apparently came from a Cato study from last fall based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data. It showed that total compensation (including fringe benefits, which are much more generous for federal employees than those in the private sector) averaged $119,982 for federal civilian employees versus $59, 909 for those in the private sector.

Americans for Limited Government's Carter Clews thinks Sen. Brown's proposal is a good beginning, but doesn't go far enough. He thinks we should cut the federal government's workforce of 1.9 million civilian employees (which has grown steadily for many years, in good times and bad) instead of just freezing it:

… Scott Brown was right – as far as he went. And he should have gone much further. We don’t simply need to put a freeze on federal hires and raises. We need to fire federal employees. The American people, themselves, are clearly prepared to do their part come November. But, it would be a chipper idea to get a head start now by firing about ten percent of the drones and dregs now feeding from the federal trough.

Everywhere else in America, workers are reporting to work each morning not knowing whether they will have a job by the end of the day. More than ten percent of American workers – if you believe Barack Obama’s Labor Department – are now unemployed. And if you add those who are working part time because they can’t find full time jobs, as well as those who have simply given up looking, the figure is nearly double that.

But, there is one place where no one worries about losing his or her job, where the very idea of a pay cut is little more than laughable, and where the next pay raise is as certain as the sun rising in the east and Barack Obama spending money. No, it’s not the Enchanted Kingdom. It is, of course, the federal “work” place.

Charles Anderson thinks firing just 10% is totally inadequate: 

It is almost impossible to fire a federal employee, but the government would work much better if at least 20% of them were fired.  That is just the one's who are not even trying to do their jobs.  If you were to fire the ones who are trying somewhat, but doing their jobs badly, that would eliminate another 30% of federal workers.  Then there are those who are doing what they are assigned to do adequately well, but what they are doing is so wrongheaded that it is hurting the country.  Fire them and you will have eliminated another 25%.  The remaining 25% might largely be federal employees who are doing things that ought to be done and doing them well enough that it is reasonable to spare them the axe.

I'm with Charles on this. I like his math. Cutting the federal payroll by about 75% sounds pretty good to me. 

If you're in the Denver area, don't forget that the Rocky Mountain Blogger Fest is taking place Saturday evening (more info here). So you might want to give your liver a rest tonight to get it in shape.

OTOH, some people would argue that the best way to get your liver in shape for the event is by giving it a good workout. Pump it up! :-)

Whichever strategy you follow, I hope to see you there tomorrow night!

The idea behind carbon credits is that you can "offset" the alleged harm done by your CO₂ emissions by paying someone else for not emitting an equivalent amount of CO₂. Imagine Tiger Woods or John Edwards making everything all right by paying someone else to "offset" their infidelities by remaining faithful.

It's a fraudulent bit of nonsense through and through, but it's made Al Gore and his cohorts hundreds of millions of dollars from selling believers in the Church of Climate Change the modern equivalent of the medieval Roman Catholic Church's indulgences. 

Now, I think the authorities need to subpoena Gore's records from his ISP and check his online activities over the past week. Just to see if he had a role in this scamming of the scam:

Sneaky cyber-thieves have made millions by fraudulently obtaining European greenhouse gas emissions allowances and reselling them. The scam has hampered trading of the credits, which are seen as an important tool in curbing climate change, in several European countries.

According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Financial Times Deutschland, hackers sent e-mails last Thursday to several companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand which appeared to originate from the Potsdam-based German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt), part of the EU's Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Ironically, the e-mail said that the recipient needed to re-register on the agency's Web site to counter the threat of hacker attacks.

The cyber-thieves then exploited the user data that was entered into their spoof Web site to transfer emissions allowances to other accounts, mainly in Denmark and Britain, from which they were quickly resold. The new owners of the allowances would have assumed that they had acquired them legally.

"The attack was highly professional," a DEHSt employee told the newspaper. Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is now investigating the incident.

Of course, Gore might not be involved, or might not have been acting alone. Other credible suspects in any scam related to climate change include Phil Jones, James Hansen, Murari Lal, and Rajendra Pachauri.

From Mark Perry:

CANADA'S NATIONAL POST -- Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States. He is expected to be away from four to six weeks.
A decision to leave Canada for the surgery, especially if it is available here, raises questions about the Premier's confidence in Newfoundland's health care system.

MP: This raises the question: Where will U.S. politicians go for heart surgery if we ever adapt Canadian-style health care?

Thanks to Bob Wright.

Good question. There are other good questions, too. What about the average Canadian who can't afford to come to the U.S. for health care and simply has to wait his turn on the long waiting list? What about the average American if ObamaCare gets rammed through (they're still working feverishly to accomplish that) and we're all in the same boat as the Canadians? 

And why are the clowns in Congress and the White House intent on emulating the socialist health care systems of countries whose leaders flee those systems and pay dearly to get treated here instead?

UPDATE: Investor's Business Daily noted that the independently wealthy Williams couldn't get "world class" treatment in Canada, even if he paid for it himself, because the government controls even private care: 

That means long lines of rationing as well as lower-quality care. It's so bad that even the premier prefers to head to the States.

He's not alone. Other premiers, including Quebec's Robert Bourassa in 1990, have sought that care, as has Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach in 2007. According to the Fraser Institute, 41,000 Canadians, or 1% of the population, were referred by their own doctors for nonemergency medical care abroad in 2009, a rise of about 10% from a year earlier.

Thousands more don't even wait for a referral, leaving the country to seek treatment on their own. Clinics in U.S. cities like Buffalo, Seattle and Detroit do a booming business with Canadian medical tourists. Canadian newspapers are filled with U.S. doctors advertising their services.

For the wealthy Williams, U.S. health care paid for out of pocket is a viable option. Not so for Canada's poor. If the U.S. moves to a Canadian-style health care model, not even the rich will be able to run from the unpleasant side effects of a socialist system.

The same kinds of controls that mandate rationing and lower-quality care even for paying, private patients in Canada are built into the U.S. Senate and House health care take-over bills. The ones we simply have to stop.

Sarah Palin in USA Today:

Later this week I'll head to Nashville, where I'll have the honor of speaking with members of the Tea Party movement. I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility. This movement is truly a grassroots, organic effort. It's not a top-down organization; it's a ground-up call to action that already has both political parties rethinking the way they do business.

From the town halls last summer to the protests and marches in the fall to the game-changing recent elections, it has been inspiring to see real people — not politicos or inside-the-Beltway professionals — speak out for common-sense conservative policies and values. As with all grassroots efforts, the nature of this movement means that sometimes the debates are loud and the organization is messier than that of a polished, controlled machine. Legitimate disagreements take place about tone and tactics. That's OK, because this movement is about bigger things than politics or organizers.

Read the whole thing.

In the New York Post, Brian Riedl tried to put the President's breath-taking 2011 budget into perspective (bold emphasis added):

Last year, Obama swept into office promising to make tough choices -- and then released a budget proposing the largest debt-and-spending spree in American history. This year, he's at it again: Over 2010-2019, his new plan boosts spending another $1.7 trillion and the deficit by $2 trillion over what he proposed last year.

In fact, this year's budget shows yearly deficits as much as 49 percent larger than even last year's bloated proposal. This spending spree will drive up both taxes and deficits to levels unseen in US history.

Nor are the Obama deficits a temporary result of the recession. Despite a modest recovery, the 2010 budget deficit will be higher than the 2009 deficit. Nearly 42 cents of each dollar Washington spends will be borrowed.

Even by 2020 -- which Obama's planners assume will be a time of peace and prosperity -- annual deficits would still exceed $1 trillion. By that point, nearly a fifth of all taxes would go toward paying the interest on this record debt.

The president who said "I didn't come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation -- I'm here to solve them" would, over the next decade, dump $75,000 per household in added debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren. 

Those disturbing budget numbers include the three-year "freeze" (starting next year) that the President bragged about as proving he's a fiscally disciplined deficit hawk — a "freeze" that will theoretically prevent a pitiful $20 billion of additional spending in a budget of nearly $4 trillion (that's $4,000 billion for the math-challenged).

1. The President and his top advisors are cynical manipulators, saying what they're saying to fool us, and doing what they're doing to accumulate power and wealth for themselves and their friends, while betting that the day of reckoning will fall on someone else's watch.
   
   If that's the case, they're like many politicians who preceded them, but on a much larger and more reckless scale. And they're much more ignorant and lacking in judgment.
   
   
2. The President and his top advisors genuinely believe that they can improve the economy and make us all better off by spending in excess of 25% of GDP and enacting massive tax increases, especially (but not exclusively) on "the rich" — i.e., the producers, the people and businesses that create jobs and wealth.
   
   If that's the case, they're out of their minds. Completely delusional.
   
   
3. The President and his top advisors are rabid leftist ideologues intent on deliberately destroying capitalism and dragging down the successful and productive regardless of the effect on the economy. They're determined to create a more egalitarian (albeit much poorer) society, no matter what the consequences.
   
   If that's the case, there is no dissuading them, compromising with them, or appealing to their patriotism, values, or concern for average Americans.
   

I'd like to believe that #1 is the case (because then they could be reasoned with, cajoled, bullied, or bribed). But their utter failure to adjust after multiple electoral warnings (including an astonishing repudiation in Massachusetts), their unwillingness to "triangulate" a la Clinton and tack to the center even a bit, their dogged determination to "double down" regarding takeovers of health care, energy, etc., and their unrelenting focus on wealth redistribution — these things make it more and more likely that, sadly, either #2 or more likely #3 is the case.

As the late Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." This fiscal insanity clearly can't go on forever — or even, I suspect, for a decade. It will stop either because people with a modicum of good sense and concern for the nation recognize the danger and make it stop or because the dollar and the economy completely collapse.

But it seems that the former are not in charge.

That must change, and the sooner the better. This November would be good.

It's not a Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash (RMBB), it's a Rocky Mountain Blogger Fest (RMBF). I have no clue what the difference is. Ask Billll, it's his idea. Apparently, he's been checking out bars and pubs all over the metro area for a new location for our irregular drinkfests (the sacrifices some people are willing to make!), and he came across what he promises is a fine spot — the Old Mill Brewery (click for map) in downtown Littleton:

If you include Steve Green in the numbers, it's centrally located, and isn't that hard to get to in any case. It's 2 blocks off Sante Fe if you're driving, and 3 blocks from the Littleton light rail station if you're a public transit fan. They also have lots of free parking.

I've been there. The food is good, the beer is good, and they have an area toward the back where birthday parties, Blogger Fests and the like are held. They have areas scattered about that can accommodate groups from 12 to 30, and if we get the back area, they'll even turn the TV off. Or on if there's something momentous going on.

Sounds great. I can stumble 3 blocks back to the train station and then (assuming I remember to get off at Broadway) stagger less than half a mile home. It's not that I'm a huge public transit fan — I'm a fan of avoiding DUI arrest. And I'm not known for exercising self-discipline and restraint at these events. 

All the details are in the graphic on the right (courtesy of Jed), but here they are again: Old Mill Brewery, 5798 S. Rapp St., Littleton, CO, on Saturday, February 6, at 7 PM. I'll be there. Billll and Jed will be there. Mr. Lady will be there (and she promised to wear a short skirt). I'm betting that Darren, Off Colfax, and David will make their way there, and Vodkapundit will show up just to add some class to the event. Who knows who else.

If you're a blogger, former blogger, wannabe blogger, blogger groupie, or just a fan of intelligent conversation combined with prodigious quantities of adult beverages (thus making it less intelligent as the night progresses), join us!

Hey, since it's a Fest, not a Bash, does that mean we start a new numbering scheme? Can we come up with one that's remotely sane this time? 

Of the many falsehoods, misstatements, and disturbing statements the President made in his State of the Agenda speech, one that Ed Morrissey called attention to really struck me (emphasis by Morrissey):

… HA reader Marvin K and Patriot Post notice that the Con-Law prof seems a little confused about what’s actually in the Constitution:

We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution:  the notion that we are all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it; that if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else.

As Morrissey observed, this is so wrong in so many ways.

First, it's not a notion, it's a principle. But I suppose to a post-modernist Alinskyite admirer of Said and Chomsky, notions and principles are pretty much interchangeable, both just pieces of some narrative. 

Second, it's not "enshrined in our Constitution," it's from the Declaration of Independence. Epic fail.

Third, the notion that only those who "abide by the law" and "adhere to our common values" are protected by the Constitution is truly disturbing. Especially coming from someone who once taught Constitutional Law. 

And since I'm growing more paranoid by the day, I have to wonder what exactly, in Obama's eyes, qualify as "our common values."  By his criteria, I'm not at all sure I'm protected by the Constitution.

Morrissey asked an interesting question: 

And if Obama really believed what he said, then why is he trying terrorists (who clearly reject our values and refuse to recognize our laws) in criminal court with these same Constitutional guarantees?

Well, Ed, I'm sure he really believed it when he said it in the context in which he said it. It's part of his narrative for dealing with the Congress and the American people. 

Mirandizing enemy combatants who are waging a declared war on the United States and treating them as no different from convenience store robbers is part of a different narrative. Which he also really believes.

We are in deep doo-doo, folks. For three more years.

In Michael Moore's 2009 film, Capitalism: A Love Story, he railed against (among others) corporate greedheads lining up to get government handouts of the taxpayers' money. Talk about a great big pot calling the kettle black.

According to Watchdog.org, Michigan's Mackinac Center discovered that the movie was partly filmed in Michigan, qualifying it for a generous windfall courtesy of the state's taxpayers. And it's already been approved, despite what strikes me as a serious conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety (emphasis added): 

That windfall would come from Michigan’s refundable tax credit program for the film industry, a program that allows movie producers to apply for a tax refund of up to 42 percent of their spending in Michigan. This lavish provision means a studio can easily receive more from Michigan taxpayers than it pays in Michigan taxes.

This initially seemed to trouble Moore, and he openly questioned the program at a forum in July 2008.

“These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios. Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we’re already broke here?” Moore asked.

Moore posed this question to the Michigan Film Office director who determines which movies will qualify for the program. Moore went on: “I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they’re making billions already in profits. What’s the thinking behind that?”

But in November 2008, Gov. Granholm appointed Michael Moore to the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council. Which advises the Michigan Film Office. Which runs the tax refund program.

Moore filmed part of “Capitalism: A Love Story” in Michigan. And the Mackinac Center has confirmed with the film office that a “production person” associated with Moore “applied, was approved for an incentive and … will receive credits” once the state treasury department reviews and approves the audited filing.

The film office did not disclose how much the resulting payment from the state would be; however, the film office director insisted that the incentive approval posed no conflict of interest with Moore’s seat on the film office advisory council.

Oh, OK. I guess I was wrong. Nothing to see here, folks. No crony capitalism. No unseemly behavior. No hypocritical greedhead pigs feeding at the public trough. The director of the office that Moore advises, who determines which movies qualify, has assured us of that.

I never heard of Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-MI) (TGM or Thad to us cognoscenti) until I saw that "hip gap" link at Instapundit, clicked it, and saw his commentary at BigGovernment.com. Check it out: 

It permeates the public’s consciousness and Big Media obsessively promotes the perception to our detriment.  Yet, like a canker on a suitor, polite Republicans won’t discuss it.  No longer, however, can we pretend the issue doesn’t exist.  It does and, though painful to admit, we must confront the truth.

Republicans have a “hip gap.”

This is not to say Democrats are hip.  People who squander their precious breaths of life poring over Das Kapital, practicing rhythmic chanting with Kindergarten lyrics, chaining themselves to national monuments and/or writing memoirs prior to accomplishing anything are utter stiffs.  They can only pass themselves off as cool in comparison to…well, us.

Oh sure, we’d like to think this is just another slanderous Leftist attack on Republicans.  But, let’s be honest:  a large gaggle of GOPers have yet to put a toenail into the Twenty-First Century’s cultural crosscurrents – or, for that matter, the Nineteenth’s.

Still, let us not curse the darkness.  Let us light a cultural candle to illume our whereabouts upon the path to hipness.  Thus, the following is a True or False pop culture test.

Take a look, take the test, and report your score. If you can figure it out. :-)

No, I won't be watching, much less posting about, the President's State of the Union speech (or POTUS SOTUS, as we cognoscenti call it). Even if I didn't have work to do, I doubt I could persuade myself to endure the torture. Later, maybe not until tomorrow, I'll read Vodkapundit's drunkblogging of it, which will probably be as informative as and far more entertaining than watching live.

I predict, though, that the William Warren cartoon below will prove prescient (although I'm sure the presentation will be somewhat more cool and subtle than depicted).

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a
free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

UPDATE: Yep, the cartoon was prescient. And Vodkapundit did a fine job of drunkblogging as usual. But zombyboy had by far the most informative and amusing coverage — an absolute must-read.

This is probably the coolest economics lesson you'll ever see:

Your focus on spending is pushing on thread
In the long run, my friend, it’s your theory that’s dead
So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective
Prepare to get schooled in my Austrian perspective 

Brought to you by the wacky folks at Econstories.tv, where you can watch while following along with the lyrics, download a free MP3 or AAC of the song, learn more about Keynes and Hayek, and contribute to help them with future projects.

Full disclosure: I'm a long-time supporter of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is behind this project, and thus helped fund it.

Veronique de Rugy graphed employment and labor force changes against the government's "stimulus" spending, and the results aren't pretty:

Using data from the administration’s website Recovery.gov and from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this accompanying chart shows the monthly increase in the number of unemployed workers and the shrinkage of the civilian labor force in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending. In other words, it shows how not only that many workers have lost their jobs since the administration started spending stimulus funds, but also that many more workers have exited the labor market. The civilian labor force shrinks when individuals who were looking for work or were employed decide that their labor market prospects are not good enough to keep looking for a job or to stay employed. For instance, some people might decide to go to grad school instead of keeping a poorly paid job, while others might decide to not seek a job and instead stay home with their kids. One reason for the shrinkage could be that the current economic state is so bad that workers feel it is not worth their time and energy to keep looking for a job when there is no hope in sight.

Two things are sure. First, if it weren’t for workers’ mass exit from the labor force (600,000 workers exited in December alone), the unemployment numbers would look even worse that they already do. Second, government spending cannot create jobs.

(HT: Instapundit)

This shouldn't surprise anyone with a modicum of economics education. In fact, it's an utterly predictable result. A study released last March by researchers at Madrid's Juan Carlos University determined that each "green" job created by Spain's rush to embrace "alternative" energy (at a cost of $750,000 apiece in subsidies) cost the Spanish economy 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

The problem isn't specific to "green" energy, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about direct government hiring, government contracts, government mandates on private activities, or government subsidies.

When government takes resources out of the economy (by increased taxing or borrowing) to fund any of these activities, it redirects resources from a more productive use to a less productive use. If that weren't the case, the heavy hand of government wouldn't have to forcibly redirect of those resources.

Ipso facto, these activities make us as a society poorer — although they certainly enrich the special interests who benefit from the redirection of those resources.

Mark Steyn believes that exactly no one is waiting for Obama's 412th speech and 159th interview of his presidency:

So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:

“The same thing that swept Scott into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

Read the whole, hilarious thing.

What little credibility the promoters of global warming hysteria had remaining has now been shredded. From Investor's Business Daily (emphasis added):

We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate figures.

In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA.

As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA's two primary climate centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York City, are accused of "creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based."

Joseph D'Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA "systematically eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations." The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.

E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D'Aleo, said he found "patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations." The more he looked, the more he found "patterns of deletion that could not be accidental."

…

Smith argues that the decrease in stations used and the selectivity of locations make NASA's data and conclusions suspect. D'Aleo goes further, saying such cherry-picking and data manipulation are a "scientific travesty" committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.

I wonder — if we graphed the amount of scientific fraud uncovered in the field of climatology over the past few decades, would it look like a hockey stick?

Larry Kudlow shares my concern about whether the GOP leadership understands the lesson of the Miracle in Massachusetts. And he notes that Scott Brown owes much of his success to campaigning as a JFK Republican:

... Are the Republicans listening? Do they really understand why Scott Brown was victorious? If they do, why aren’t members of the Republican leadership loudly campaigning for an end to tax hikes, just like Scott Brown?

…

Remember that Brown ran on a JFK/Ronald Reagan platform of across-the-board tax cuts to promote economic growth. Take a look at what the senator-elect had to say during his victory speech Tuesday night:

This [health care] bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper into debt . . . I will work in the Senate to put the government back on the side of people who create jobs and the millions of people who need jobs. And remember, as President John F. Kennedy stated, that starts with across-the-board tax cuts for businesses and families to create jobs, put more money in people’s pockets, and stimulate the economy. It’s that simple.

There you have it. Scott Brown could not have been any clearer. That’s the great thing about his message -- its breathtaking clarity. Across-the-board tax cuts and a revival of free-market capitalism on the supply-side.

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A recent Washington Post poll showed that by 58 to 38 percent, voters want smaller government and fewer government services. This, too, should be the Republican congressional message.

It is, in fact, an economic-growth message, the likes of which we haven’t heard since Jack Kemp promoted it in the late 1970s. And the brilliance of Scott Brown was to use the JFK tax cuts -- an across-the-board reduction in marginal tax rates -- to attract Democrats and independents to his message.

An across-the-board tax cut is the fairest pro-growth message of them all. Lower tax rates for everybody. Get out of the box of rich people and class warfare. For the Ted Kennedy Democrats, that box has been a loser for decades. But for timid Republicans always on the defensive, now is the time to break out and adopt the Scott Brown theme.

This is what Reagan did. This is why the Gipper touted JFK’s across-the-board tax cuts. Republicans must now be bold and fight for across-the-board tax relief, for families, individuals, and businesses, along with smaller government, fewer services, and across-the-board spending cuts.

That's what the Republican leadership should be talking about: across-the-board tax and spending cuts, not across-the-aisle deal-making. If they want to present a less partisan image, let them embrace the optimistic, pro-growth message of both Reagan and JFK — "across-the-board tax cuts for businesses and families to create jobs, put more money in people’s pockets, and stimulate the economy." Let them embrace JFK Republicanism.

I think that would resonate with voters. And drive the Democrats crazy. :-)