The Right Wing Professor's Blog

Our junior senator had a narrow escape today at University of Nebraska Medical Center, when a workshop he was holding was crashed by an unruly mob from the organized crime syndicate known as SEIU. ('SEIU' is derived from a Brazilian underworld term for 'shakedown'). SEIU, headed by a millionaire gangster who goes by the name 'Stern', like MS13, draws a high proportion of its members from the illegal alien community, and derives most of its income by extortion from the hospitality industry.

Fortunately, security personnel were able to round up the hoodlums and throw them off the property before they could disrupt the democratic process.

I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota. What a lousy way to live.

Lieutenant Ben Vargas, one of the winning plaintiffs in the Ricci vs. New Haven case, referring to his three sons. Vargas's family hails from Puerto Rico, just like Sonia Sotomayor's. Can't we have him on the Supreme Court instead?

The Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska is planning to have unrepentant terrorist and committed foe of education Billy Ayers come to Omaha to speak, ludicrously, about academic freedom.

I have friends on the board of AFCON, and they are good people. Some of them are not even leftists. But I can't begin to describe what a stupid idea this is. Weather Underground, the terrorist group Ayers led, made its views on academic freedom perfectly clear when they (and specifically Bill's wife, Bernadine Dohrn) set off a bomb at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, apparently because Dohrn thought they didn't have enough women on the faculty. In case this left any doubt about how Billy feels about academic freedom, WU also bombed the office of William Bundy, a historian who was a former Kennedy and Johnson advisor, at the MIT Research Center; and Billy dedicated WU's Prairie Fire manifesto, inter alia, to Karl Armstrong, who used a Terry McVeigh style ANFO bomb to murder Robert Fassnacht, a postdoctoral physics researcher at the University of Wisconsin's Sterling Hall, because he didn't like some of the research he thought they were carrying out in the building.

I am constantly amazed and simultaneously disgusted by the contemporary Left's fascination with washed up terrorists like Ayers. It's almost as if they're leading a vicarious life through creatures like Ayers and Dohrn, living out their juvenile anger by glorying in the brutalities of an earlier era. And those who are not of the Left -- well, they should know better. If Ayers or his ilk ever came to power, libertarians would be first against the wall, and the Enlightenment idea of academic freedom would be DOA.

As a member of one of the constituent organizations of AFCON, I have formally proposed a motion that we dissociate ourselves from the coalition.

The news

Nelson seeks greenbelt tax break. Nelson said he could sell part of his property to developers to build homes or start “a small farming and ranching operation” and seek approval for greenbelt status. “I liked the idea of raising some cattle and horses, and harvesting and replanting trees.

Behind the news: a conversation in the Oval Office

Teh 0: Ah yes, come in Senator...Senator Newton?
Teh Benator: It's 'Nelson', your Highness. Senator Ben Nelson. But your excellency can deign to call me Ben.
Teh 0: Yes yes...Well, Senator Nelnet, Our staff has been looking over your application to be Czar of Radioactive Waste in Our new administration, and We're very impressed. You have a proven track record of shutting down nuclear waste repositories, something We're very interested in. And you cost the taxpayers of North Dakota a hundred and fifty million dollars in the process! That's just excellent!
Teh Benator: Nebraska, your majesty, not North Dakota, forgive me for correcting you, I know you're so busy, and all...
Teh 0: Nebraska, North Dakota, well, they all look the same from Airforce One! But there are a couple of problems...first, if you step down as Senator, your governor's a Republican, and will presumably nominate one of his own to fill the seat. That will cost Us Our filibuster-proof majority.
Teh Benator: A Nebraska Republican, your exaltedness. You won't be able to tell the difference.
Teh 0: But there's a bigger problem, Senator. Our staff vetting says you've had an insufficient record of cheating on your taxes. A minor issue with a property tax classification in Sarpy County. A wild turkey ranch...well that's very creative. I had no idea there were such things as wild turkey, outside of a bar, ha ha.
Teh Benator: And I did renege on a promise to pay all the back taxes, your eminence.
Teh 0: Yes, that's fine, but it's not good enough. The thing that distinguishes Us from the little people, Senator Nixon, is that We don't have to follow the same laws they do. The great leaders of history never paid taxes. Does Robert Mugabe pay taxes? Did Jomo Kenyatta pay taxes? Dodging a minor tax bill in Slurpee County, or whatever it's called, just isn't good enough!
Teh Benator: I'll get right to work on it, your imperial holiness. I have a new tax dodge all set up. I'll prove myself to you!
Teh 0: Yes, well, We'll see about that. Send in the NBC White House correspondent. My left shoe is smudged.

Finding stupid in Mother Jones is, of course, like shooting fish in a barrel, but this is especially good, on the subject, of course, of Global Doom, AKA Climate Change.

Despite ongoing efforts to curb emissions levels and slow the planet's warming, the warning signs are clearer than ever. Natural disasters abound. Entire regions may be rendered inhabitable. Mass extinction looms on the horizon.

Oh noes, entire regions 'inhabitable'!

Democrat flak Don Walton of the LJS hit a new low yesterday morning, when he apparently took an entire column idea from Dem. blogger Kyle Michaelis, parroting Kyle's idiotic charge that Lee Terry (R, NE-2) Hates Our Troops, because he voted against a supplemental spending bill that contained a $100 billion pork infusion for the International Monetary Fund. That's $0.1 trillion, in case you want it on an Obama-deficit scale. Even Kyle had to shamefacedly admit the whole stupid accusation was bogus, and that he was only making it because (he says) the GOP did the same thing when they crammed pork into Iraq and Afghan war funding. But Don even left out Kyle's moment of honesty; in his zeal to attack a GOPer whose Congressional District is 50 miles from Lincoln, he omitted Michaelis's caveats.

Seriously, how hard is it to crank out an original column every Monday morning? I came up with 1200 words monthly for the DN last semester, usually about something that had ticked me off in the last 48 hours, and I hold down a real job as well. How low do you have to get to have to go for column ideas to some unemployed 30-something pounding out party agitprop (that hardly anyone reads) from the shelter of his mom's basement?

Better yet, why not eliminate the middleman, and just hire Kyle as a columnist? He's not a bad writer, he needs the job, I bet he works for peanuts, and he wouldn't be any more partisan.

---

Meanwhile, at the New Nebraska Nutcase blog:

I can't believe I'm writing about anything so idiotic as 2nd District Congressman Lee Terry's shouting profanity at a Washington D.C. motorist

I can believe it. Nothing is so dumb a Democrat won't try to make political hay out of it.

---

36 hours later, Don gives Lee Terry's side of the story.

Honduras on Monday threw out a marxist thug trying to seize power. Manuel Zelaya had tried to remove term limits so he could stay on as President, no doubt on his way to a Chavez/Castro style 'President for Life' gig. However, since he's managed to piss off almost everyone in Honduras, they wouldn't let him away with it. Congress refused to certify a referendum to create an assembly to change the Constitution. Zelaya decided to hold one anyway. The Supreme Court said he couldn't. Zelaya fired the head of the military for refusing to carry out his illegal orders. The Supreme Court told him he couldn't do that either. Zelaya's bud Chavez printed up the ballots, the military seized them, and then Zelaya led a mob to 'liberate' the ballots. At this point, Honduras had had enough, and kicked the dictator-wannabe out. His own party sponsored a resolution declaring him mentally unfit to retain power. All this, and more, is described in a Wall Street Journal article.

Needless to say, Obama and Clinton, who never saw a marxist thug they didn't like, are now calling for Hondurans to take back their aspiring tyrant. It's too bad they weren't as forceful with Ahmed-the-nutjob and the theocrats in Tehran. In this, they stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow thugs Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega. Remeber the last time we had a major !@#$-up in Central America, and let Ortega win power in Nicaragua? Well, folks, here comes Jimmy Carter II, with Jimmy Carter I as a drooling, superannuated advisor.

Honduras has dealt with a budding tyrant effectively, have appointed a replacement who has the backing of their Congress and the Supreme Court, and are on track for elections in the fall. Let's leave them alone; it looks like they have things well under control. The last thing we need in Honduras is another Chavez.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, citing 'an administration official', is calling Zelaya's illegal attempt to retain power a 'nonbinding survey'. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

The 1000 page monster piece of legislative sausage making called 'cap-and-trade' is coming up for a vote today. Nobody has a clue about the net impact of the bill; as usual, nobody has read it in full. It contains some bizarre compromises; for example, it protects bioethanol form the EPA, which has excellent evidence corn ethanol production actually causes substantial net increases in greenhouse gases. All we really know is that it creates masses of new federal bureaucracy and control, and will raise taxes and kill jobs and growth. Please contact your congresscritter and tell them, regardless of their stand on anthropogenic global warming -- and I'm not a denialist, by and large -- that they should vote against this ugly excrescence of a bill.

KOLN-KGIN:

Armed Robbery Investigation

Lincoln

Posted: 10:29 AM Jun 25, 2009

Last Updated: 10:29 AM Jun 25, 2009

Reporter: KOLNKGIN

Email Address: desk@kolnkgin.com

Police are looking for a suspect who robbed a man at gunpoint Thursday morning. Officer Katie Flood said a 20 year old was walking to his car in the Kwik Shop parking lot at 2710 W. W street just after midnight when he was approached by a man from behind. Flood said the man threatened the victim with a gun and demanded his wallet. Flood said the man gave him $45.00 in cash and the suspect ran away. The suspect is described as a black male, 6'0" 180 pounds wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and a blue bandanna on his face.

Lincoln Journal Star:

Lincoln police probe robbery outside Kwik Shop

By the Lincoln Journal Star

Thursday, Jun 25, 2009 - 09:04:04 am CDT

Lincoln police are investigating a robbery in a convenience store parking lot early Thursday.


A man told police he was walking to his car outside the Kwik Shop at 27th and W streets around 12:15 a.m. when another man approached him and demanded his money, said Capt. Jim Davidsaver.

The robber had a dark handgun, Davidsaver said. The victim gave him his wallet and he left east on foot. Police checked the area but did not find the suspect, Davidsaver said. No one was hurt.

You have to laugh, though. They aren't willing to describe the perp., but they'll describe his handgun as 'dark'!

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has gotten hold of a series of internal EPA emails that indicate that

a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.

The 'endangerment' referred to is the EPA's Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act, which proposes

to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. This is referred to as the endangerment finding.

and

to find that the combined emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding.

The study in question is by Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at the National Council for Environmental Economics. The first email, dated March 12, from Al McGartland, director of NCEE, forbids Carlin "from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues".

A quote from an earlier article by Carlin makes it clear why Obama wants to shut him up

Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may be well intentioned and even helpful. But as the sole strategy for climate change control it is nevertheless inflexible, expensive, risky, and politically unrealistic...

Remember the fuss about James Hansen at NASA, who was never muzzled in anything like this way? Will anyone in the media notice?

Hat tip: the indispensable Michelle Malkin

From teh 0's press conference today:

At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.

I can't begin to describe how scientifically illiterate this is. First of all, he's actually referring to carbon dioxide, not carbon. We do emit carbon (e.g. in diesel soot) but that's not a subject of his legislation. Second, if the current atmospheric 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide 'contaminate the water we drink', then carbonated drinks, which have over 2,500 times the concentration of carbon dioxide that water from a tap contains, should certainly be banned instantly.

Do you think he understands any of this? Of course not. He's parroting what Steven Chu tells him, and since he doesn't comprehend what he's parroting, it's coming out as nonsense.

Reowr! Hiss! Scratch! When the Third Congressional District Democrats are finished clawing each others' eyes out and are looking for medical attention, at least they can be thankful Jane Kleeb and her union goons haven't killed our health care system. Yet.

BTW, Roger Hannah's problem is most of his gibes are soaring way over their heads. They're both too clever and too Scottish for the average Nebraska Dem. to comprehend. But nae worries, Roger laddie, ye have fan richt here!

RWP will be joining the Great American Blackout, to protest ABC's turning their news coverage into an infomercial for the ObamaCare 'Health Zero' plan. He will of course be going the extra mile; instead of one day's coverage, he will be boycotting a week's worth of Channel 8 (What's on ABC anyway? Anyone?); and he will also be boycotting Channel 8's premium advertisers. These are mostly a sorry lot he wouldn't do business with anyway, but he does shop at Super Saver, something that is going to end.

Screw with my health care, and this is what happens to you!

The Lincoln Journal Star once again omitting the description of a suspect in a crime, this time an attempted robbery.

Inquiring minds wonder why. (I lie: inquiring minds know why. Inquiring minds wonder if it's a viable newspaper business plan to omit important information from a story because of PC). LJS:

Police are investigating an attempted robbery 4 a.m. Friday on the 4500 block of Tranquility Drive. A man approached a woman leaving an apartment complex and demanded money, said Assistant Chief Jim Peschong. The man told the woman he had a weapon, but she didn’t see one. She didn’t have any money, so the robber left on foot.

KOLN/KGIN

Police are looking for a man who threatened and attempted to rob a woman early Friday morning. Officer Katie Flood said the 37 year old victim was leaving her apartment at 4501 Tranquility at 3:53 Friday morning when a black male approached her from behind. Flood said the man had his hand wrapped in a towel or shirt and told the woman he had a gun and demanded her money.
Flood said she only had a dollar and change on her and offered that to the man, but he didn't believe her and made her empty out her purse. Flood said he didn't find anymore cash and left empty handed. Flood said the man matches the description of the suspect in two Kwik Shop robberies in the area, one where the man wore a beer box on his head. Police say he is a black male in his late 20s, about 5'10"-6'0" weighing 155 pounds. He was last seen wearing a dark shirt and pants and a white bandanna over his nose and mouth, just like the suspect in the Kwik Shop robberies.

This is the LJS's description of the latest Kwik Shop robbery

Police are looking for the man who robbed a Kwik Shop early Wednesday. A man entered the store at 4400 Cornhusker Highway around 1 a.m. and demanded money and cigarettes from the 31-year-old clerk, Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said.

The suspect implied he had a gun, but he had a bag or shirt covering his right hand and did not show one, Flood said. He fled the store with two packs of cigarettes and $33, according to a police report.

This is the third time that the Kwik Shop has been robbed since Jan. 1, Flood said.

You can see that, indeed, the LJS description of the attempted robber fits the description of the earlier Kwik Shop bandit. It's completely absent.

Our home town newspaper apparently doesn't know the difference between 'collegiate' and 'collegial'.

They don't want to learn, either, judging by their failure to post corrections. It makes one wonder; exactly what are the qualifications for a newspaper editor, these days?

---

(Thanks, Grundle). Well, they fixed it, but they don't want to admit who tipped them off. Tsk tsk. Next time, I'll bill them for editing.

Conservatives are grumbling about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. They should be cheering.

Think of what Obama could have done. He could have appointed a genuinely qualified, persuasive leftist jurist to the court. While this wouldn't have shifted the political balance (Souter was pretty leftist already), it would have replaced an intellectual nonentity with an intellectual force, capable of writing powerful opinions, who might have won over Anthony Kennedy's wobbly fifth vote with alarming frequency. Instead he appointed someone whose defenders damn her with faint praise. The NYTimes carefully said her opinions were marked by 'diligence, depth and unflashy competence.' They might have added she's punctual. Her statements about the superiority of Latina women over white men, and that race and gender differences in abilities might possibly be physiological, mark her as almost a caricature of a modern leftist bigot. And it's widely reported she's widely disliked as a colleague and is very difficult to work with. This is not the judge to form coalitions with the court moderates. This is a woman who will piss off even those on her own side. I doubt Justices Breyer and Stevens will much like being lectured on their white male inferiority.

The GOP should grill her carefully and respectfully, but in great detail, about her interesting views on race and gender, her conduct in the Ricci case, etc.. Let's get her on the record about everything. By all means cast a principled vote against her. But don't filibuster, let her take her seat on the court, and then watch the fun.

By the way, Benjamin Cardozo was the Court's first Hispanic.

Maryland last year tried to close its budget gap by fleecing the rich. They instituted a new top 'millionaires' bracket with a 6.25% rate. The Baltimore Sun said millionaires would "grin and bear it." Uh, no. This year, the WSJ reports, millionaire tax returns are 2/3 what they were in 2008. As the Journal notes, rich people usually have at least one other home, and it's usually somewhere like Florida, which has no income tax. And if you own your own business, are a high executive in someone else's business, or make your money from investments, changing your state of residency is ridiculously easy. It's only wage slaves like RWP that have to spend more than half their year in high-tax states. So, in fact, the richest people will actually be paying less tax this year in Maryland than if they left the rates alone.

Nebraska's top rate is 6.84% (and that rate starts, amazingly, at $27,000 p.a., which is barely middle class). Imagine all the potential state tax revenue we've driven away.

This Memorial Day weekend, I's like to echo the memorable words of our most cerebral president since Jimmy Carter, uttered on Memorial Day, 2008:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

In Chicago politics, not only do the dead vote for you, but they even come out to hear you speak.

Washed up terrorist Billy Ayers, denied entry to Canada yet again.

This was taken at twilight last night on a beach overlooking Pond Bay on the Sea of Abaco, Abaco Island, Bahamas. It's an Antillean Nighthawk, taken with a flash camera. The red eyeshine shows the nighthawk's huge eyes; you can also see his enormous gape, and the white wing markings that says this is a nighthawk and not a Chuck Will's Widow, the only other Caprimulgid likely to be in the Northern Bahamas. Anyhow, they're incredibly fast birds. Four of them came out to hawk for moths at twilight just outside our cabin, and this was the best (and certainly the weirdest) of about 30 attempts to get a picture.

Full trip report later.

A wonderful article by a bankruptcy law professor on how the Obama administration has trampled all over bankruptcy law at Chrysler, to benefit the UAW. One more step on the way toward a Hugo-Chavez style people's republic.

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

As an owner of one Chrysler and one GM vehicle, I hereby pledge never to buy another vehicle from either company, until the creditors are given their proper rights under bankruptcy law, and neither the UAW not the gummint holds a cent of equity in the company.

HT/Somniferum @DC

It turns out the Boston trolley driver who injured 46 people by colliding with another car at 25 miles an hour while texting his girlfriend was given the job despite a lousy driving record because he was a female-to-male transsexual. Lots of guys screw up on the job because they're thinking with their little head rather than their big head, but this is the first recorded instance where the little head was plastic...but seriously, folks, if they wanted 'diversity' in the MBTA, they should consider hiring a normal person. The T has for the last half century been an employment agency for the unemployable cousins of Democrat party precinct captains. The only reason there aren't more accidents is, well, the darn things run on rails, and all you can really do to crash them is completely ignore signals for a long time. All adding preferences means is you get a nice mix of races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations among the drooling idiots.

The New York Times finally got around to admitting one of those widely known but rarely acknowledged facts -- that the massive rise in sub-prime lending that caused the current economic meltdown was in large part driven by political pressure to make loans to members of minority groups who were, on average, far poorer credit risks than whites or Asians. Of course, they only admitted it because it was necessary to do so to show that, as usual, minorities are hardest hit by foreclosures.

Like previous studies, the report found that blacks and Hispanics were more than twice as likely to have subprime mortgages as white homeowners, even among borrowers with comparable incomes. Only 10.5 percent of white home buyers took out high-cost loans in 2007, compared to 27.6 percent of Latinos and 33.5 percent of African Americans. These loans, which typically require little or no down payments and are meant for borrowers with low credit scores, made homeownership possible for many black and Hispanic families during the boom years, but also led to high rates of foreclosure.

Sometimes hard facts are so gosh darned, you know, racist.

Evidently deaf, dumb and blind to the irony of it all, the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation wants UNcle Sam to buy up local pork, to shore up prices. Evidently we just haven't been buying enough dead pig, on account of swine flu, so the NFBF wants to force us to buy it with our tax dollars instead. And why not? Not enough of us bought GM and Chrysler cars, so they made us buy the car company. Not enough of us wanted dubious mortgage backed securities, so we got to own dubiously capitalized banks instead. In Obama's America, if you don't spend you money the way a well-heeled group wants, they'll just take it from you and spend it instead.

Ted Sorensen is, unfortunately, a Nebraska icon.Ted's claim to fame is to have ghostwritten Profiles in Courage for John F. Kennedy. Profiles in Courage is not an especially good book, but it served to endow JFK with the patina of intellectualism, won a Pulitzer for that reason, and probably made the difference in his misbegotten election to the presidency. When what everyone knew was true appeared in print -- that JFK had not in fact written Profiles in Courage -- Sorensen signed his name to a perjurious affidavit --- if not perjurious by precise legal standards, then by all normal standards of truth -- swearing under oath, falsely, that JFK was the author. Then, as if this were not enough, Sorensen bragged in his own autobiography, 'Counselor', that he had in fact written Profiles in Courage, no doubt counting on the fact that the statute of limitations, as well as the public attention span, had long expired.

Well, so what? Sorensen should be justly derided as a creature without the wherewithal to lie for his own benefit, being only fit to lie to promote the career of another -- a veritable intellectual eunuch to the Emperor Kennedy. Unfortunately, just for having the touched the holy jockstrap of JFK, Sorenson has become a demi-god of the local libs. A rcent column , covering Sorensen's characterically stereotyped and dumb-as-rocks views on torture, appeared in the LJS, and a lot of people were mean about ol' Ted -- just showing that the average Nebraska citizen can spot a phony, even if they don't know the full history of his phoniness

Don Walton, self-designated carrier of Ted's rather light-weight jockstrap, has now weighed in, though 'weigh' seems to be the wrong word in this case. He says

some of the comments online and in my phone mail are the latest reminder about how many haters are out there.

I don't see it. Frankly, I see nothing in the comments about Sorensen that isn't well deserved, and nothing about Don at all. One more shot in the war to shut conservatives up?

In a little-noticed study, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University a couple of months ago ranked the relative level of individual freedom in the fifty states, on separate indices of fiscal policy, regulatory policy, economic freedom and personal freedom. Nebraska's performance was disgraceful. We scored in the top half of the states only in regulatory freedom (13th), probably because in Nebraska, your hog confinement facility can stink as much as you want it to. We scored 38th in fiscal policy, 27th in economic freedom, and 34th in personal freedom. Our overall placement was 28th, which should be compared with our neighbors: Colorado (2nd), South Dakota (3rd), Missouri (6th), Kansas (12th), Wyoming (15th) and Iowa (16th).

There's no excuse for this. We are a high-tax, paternalistic state where the gummint at various levels butts into our lives and takes our money so they can fund their intrusiveness. Small wonder the kids can't wait to be out of here.

It's bad enough we have a monoglot president, but must he try to joke in a language in which his vocabulary contains only words like 'enchilada' and 'guacamole'? A telling quote from last year:

My accent's always been good. It's just that I only know 15 words.

That sums up the Obama presidency.

George Bush's accent wasn't so good, but he speaks the language.

We're all in a tizzy again about a hazing incident at Sigma Chi. Yawn. The local rag lists previous incidents, which were drearily familiar to me, except for one at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at 2003, where it says a stripper used a vibrator to penetrate a pledge's anal orifice -- that sounded uncharacteristically heterosexual, although I suppose they didn't specify the sex of the stripper. I could tell you of some other rituals I've heard of, but I won't; I like to keep this blog no worse than R rated.

Everyone, of course including the LJS, has misidentified the problem. They think hazing is something that has to be stopped, either by the schools, or by the alumni of the fraternity, or by the gummint. Get a grip, people! We're discussing consensual sexual activity by men over the age of consent here! Granted, the sort of extreme homosexual BDSM that seems to be the norm for some of our frats may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that's what tolerance is all about. If it's reasonably discreet, and everyone participating has full knowledge and is fully consenting, how can you possibly justify banning it?

The real tragedy seems to me to be the young men who clearly love doing these sorts of things, or having them done to them, and who then have to, once they graduate from college, (presumably because of social pressure) adopt lives of vanilla heterosexual sex. That sort of long-term repression can't be good for them or for the people around them.

No, the problem here is that frats mislabel themselves as organizations promoting 'brotherhood' and similar virtues, rather than hard core gay kink, and may therefore lure in naive heterosexual or vanilla gay guys into their activities. (Seriously naive hets or vanilla gay guys though; c'mon, 'Greek brotherhood'?) This can be solved by 'truth in labeling'. Frats can do what they want, but they need to divulge their initiation rituals to the university; a committee composed of the Dean of Students, perhaps a couple of profs in queer and gender studies, and the sex-ed. coordinator, can write up a quick summary of the frat (e.g. organizational activities: homosexual BDSM, primarily focussing on humiliation and anal penetration), and publish it in the student activities guide. That way the unwary or unwitting get to join organizations perhaps a little more attuned to their tastes (organizational activities: hiring strippers and then drinking so much we can't remember their performance), and maybe the frat brothers themselves can come out of the closet, realize who they really are, and what it is they like. There's nothing to be ashamed of, guys!

Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal Star likes Jeff Zeleny's sycophantic 'surprised-troubled-enchanted-humbled question' to teh 0, at last week's presser. Of course he does. It's the kind of question Don routinely asks local pols. Actually asking a probing question to get some, you know, news? Not my job, says Don. That would be 'caustic and mean-spirited'.

Don also thinks there were 'gotcha questions' at the press conference. When? I sure didn't hear any. Dennis Miller put it better than I could, when he said Miss California was asked more difficult questions at the Miss USA Pageant, than Obama was at last week's press conference.

Don also thinks 'an informed and engaged citizenry' is at risk if local newspapers go out of business. That would be true in Lincoln, if our local newspaper did any investigative journalism, or reported the news in any sort of objective fashion. But actually, the student-run Daily Nebraskan has a better record of investigative journalism in the last few years than the Lincoln Journal Star. Their big story recently was 'breaking' the news that there are fraternities on campus that collect old exam questions and distribute them. Next they'll be telling us that there is drinking going on in the frat. houses, something I've always suspected. (Hey, LJS, if you decide to investigate that, you don't need to give me credit for the idea. Really. )

These little guys breed in the Rockies and Northern Canada, and winter in the southern US, but they do migrate through Nebraska. This is my first Lancaster County sighting, on my front lawn this morning.

...that according to the Department of Homeland Security, I may be a terrorist.
Find out if you're one o' dem nasty right wing extremist terrorists here. And maybe spend some time reading the magazine. Esp. you, lurker1.

It's unclear who first quipped that you shouldn't attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Some people give credit to Heinlein; some to Napoleon. But let me make an original observation; that where the press is concerned, what is often attributed to malice can usually be explained by sloth. Neal Gabler, not exactly a soulmate in other respects, often makes the same point; that the press's besetting vice is laziness, not bias.

Discussing with a Chemistry colleague, who was also there, about how both I and the organizers could have counted 350 - 400 people at Saturday's Lincoln Capitol Tea-party, whereas the press reported 150, he hit on the solution. He said the press disappeared after the first 15 minutes, before most people had arrived. And it's true; by the time I did my first count, about 1:45 p.m., I didn't see any press critters at all. So they didn't really report on the demonstration -- they reported on the first few minutes of a two-hour demonstration.

The Lincoln Journal Star is going broke, and I won't miss it much. When I occasionally worry about who will cover local events, I remind myself that you could never really rely on the LJS's coverage anyway.

The Lincoln Tea Party was a success. We had (my estimate) about 400 people, about as eclectic a mix as you could ask for. Bikers, Ron Paul supporters, fair tax advocates, guys in suits, students, parents with kids (that would include me), and a big stack of cans of pork and beans. The crowd was friendly, good humored, and patriotic. There were no politicians I could see. The speeches were excellent, considering this was being run by political amateurs. They kept it non-partisan and focussed on government spending. There was a C&W singer there, who, given my complete hatred of country music, was at least tolerable. No white supremacists, no Obama birth certificate types, no obviously visible wackos. Just a lot of American flags and one very visible 'Don't Tread on Me' flag, which, I confess, I'm inordinately fond of, and some quite funny signs. I have some video that, if it looks OK, I'll post later.

Kyle Michaelis didn't show up; nor did any other lefties, that I could see. All they would have gotten was some good-humored ribbing, if they had. The left likes to fantasize about 'grassroots', but this was grassroots; it was as good a cross section of Nebraskans as you could ever hope for.

RWP is helping get the word out that the Lincoln Nebraska tea party, where we will go Santelli and protest the massive bailout of bankers, auto unions, mortgage defaulters, and other flavors of moochers and deadbeats, will be held April 11 on the steps of the Capitol. Not April 15, April 11; Lincoln, is four days ahead of the rest of the country. That way, you get to protest twice!

It's fitting that we go should first; a recent national headline announced that Nebraska is the happiest state in the nation. What this actually means, if you read the details, is that we have fewer foreclosures and less non-mortgage debt than the rest of the country (as well as low unemployment). Under Obamanomics, that means we just pay more to bailout the deadbeats who took on more debt than they could afford. I don't why anyone would be happy about that. I'm angry, and so should you be.

So get out there and let the nation know you're not happy to be the ant in a nation of grasshoppers!

The Nebraska State Historical Society found a sign. The sign says

Whites Only Telephone Booth

Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph

Nobody knows where, if at all, the sign was ever displayed. Contemporary accounts say that the owner of LT&T was not a segregationist. There is no record in the company's archives of segregated telephone booths. One might speculate a hotel or other business put it up, independently, maybe in the 1920's, but that's pure conjecture. The sign might also be a fraud. In short, we don't know if it's authentic; we don't know when if at all it was used. Doesn't matter. It's useful to beat Lincoln residents over the head with, to try to convince them that their city was segregated, which it was not, before 99.9% of its current citizens were born.

Meanwhile, here's another sign, that's up on the web, right now.

http://yns.nebraska.edu/UNLEMBHSSC.shtml

Who is eligible and how do I apply?

Applicants must be enrolled as a current 5th, 6th, or 7th grader in aLincoln or Omaha school. Applicants must be from a group traditionally underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (African American, Native American, or Hispanic) and/or qualify for free or reduced prices school lunches according to federal guidelines. Interested students and parents should complete the application forms and submit completed materials by Friday, May 1, 2009. Space is limited so applicants are encouraged to submit completed materials as early as possible. Complete applications will be reviewed and invitations extended beginning Wednesday, May 8, 2009 on a rolling basis until all positions are filled. UNL EMBHSSC Application materials are available on the Forms Page.

Yes, indeed, Nebraska voters passed a constitutional amendment last fall, outlawing such blatant discrimination. Think the University cares what the constitution says?

---

Just to add, in case it isn't already clear, that the sign reported in the article would never have been legal in Nebraska. Racial discrimination in public accommodations in Nebraska was prohibited by statute in 1885, whereas Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph wasn't founded until 1904.

A couple of months back, Rick Santorum gave a speech here at UNL, and various national (if hardly watched) media outlets made a big issue when a rookie student reporter claimed (probably inaccurately) that he referred to the language of the Koran as 'Islamic'.


Well, gosh, Our President, today, replying to a reporter from Austrian TV, said the following:

"There's a lot of — I don't know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing, and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics."

Lieber Präsident Null, gibt es keine Sprache, die 'Austrian' genannt wird. In Österreich, spricht man Deutsch.

(Or in Chicagoan: Hey meathead, in Austria, dey speaks German).

Paging Rachel Maddow....

Obama grovels before the French, confessing that arrogant America was dismissive to Europe.

It makes a nice follow up to his obeiscent bowing and scraping before the vile Saudi King Abdullah, autocrat of a medieval and barbarous desert nation that happens to be rich by a freak of geology.

Mark Steyn as usual, put it best.

I think I preferred him when he had his butt in the air and was staring at King Abdullah's shoes. (As George V, rex et imperator 1910-36, said, "Only waiters bow at the waist.")

Needless to say, all this abject obsequiousness has brought us no agreement with our economic policies (Angela Merkel, unlike teh 0, is actually qualified to lead a major nation, and knows economic mumbo-jumbo when she sees it); and only a negligible contribution of troops for the Afghan war.

I thought if we were nice to them, they would do what we wanted?

The Senate on Tuesday adopted by a 67-31 vote an amendment by Mike Johanns to prevent 'cap and trade' rules being imposed via the budget reconciliation process. This sneaky parliamentary maneuver has been discussed by Democrats as a way to avoid a full Senate debate on the massive energy tax, a debate they know they would lose. This may be the single most significant piece of legislative action carried out this year, and it's the work of Nebraska's own rookie Senator.

The London Telegraph reports today that our boy President's gift to the Queen was an iPod. Good grief! Well, at least it's better than the Walmart-bought boxed set of DVDs they gave to Gordon Brown.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports the President is being carefully sequestered from the media, probably so he won't publicly make another retard joke.
The national embarrassment continues...meanwhile, CBS this morning was gushing about how the British love the Obamas. Are we living in the same universe as the mainstream media?

Hillary Clinton, praying in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe today, asked 'Who painted it?' (Quién la pintó)

The Virgin, of course, is believed by Mexican Catholics to have appeared miraculously in 1531 on the cloth of San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin's tilmàtli. Amazingly, this was Hillary's second visit, and she still wasn't aware of the legend. Way to reinforce Mexican sterotypes about American ignorance of their country, Hill! Don't you bother to get a briefing before you visit important places?

My monthly DN column for March is about earmarks; I point out the fallacy of Ben Nelson's claim that earmarks help 'even the playing field' for small states.

Nancy Hicks, the Lincoln Journal Star legislature reporter, has the hots for Ernie Chambers; as I've previously blogged, she covers up for even his most outrageous rants. Yesterday, she reported that Ernie Chambers wants to take possession of the state electric chair once it's been retired from duty. (That's what she reported; what he actually said was probably quite different). So I posted this  comment.

I'd fully support Ernie Chambers getting the electric chair.

It appeared on the site for a couple of hours, but then was taken down. The complete lack of a sense of humor at the LJS, when it comes to one of their icons, is duly noted.

Ernie Chambers, of course, blames the entire global economic crisis thizzle on whitey (his full remarks are here). But now Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who looks pretty damn pale himself, is getting in on the act.

This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics.

This, of course, must never be allowed to happen again. I propose that, in future, banks with majority white ownership be forbidden from making loans to, offering bank accounts to, or otherwise exploiting people of color. It's the only way to prevent those blue eyed devils from sticking it to the People.

That'll show 'em!

A UNO Saudi Arabian student group will be putting on a a carnival to 'showcase' the culture of Saudi Arabia at the Kauffman Center at UNL.

To properly honor Saudi Arabian culture, women will be prohibited from driving within 10 blocks of the center; all religious symbols, books and observances, other than those of Islam, will be banned on campus; and there will be a public flogging hourly at Broyhill Fountain. Women will please respect Saudi culture by covering themselves head to foot during the carnival. Burqas are preferred.

As part of the festival, volunteers are sought to help reenact the glorious burning to death of fourteen girls at the Mecca religious school in 2002, when Saudi religious police interfered with rescue efforts because fleeing students were not wearing the obligatory public attire (long black cloaks and head coverings) for Saudi girls and women. Severely depressed female teenagers preferred.

A link to the ScienceDaily article about our terrorist explosive research. John Simpson of the American Chemical Society did a very nice job on the news release, which I couldn't post here because it was embargoed until yesterday evening. The photo in the article is a still frame from a video we made of a TATP explosion; I'll youtube the full video when I get back into town. We had 472 google hits this morning just by search for the literal text of the ACS news release headline, including newspapers in India, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, and the UK.

UNL, my own university, showed negligible interest in getting out their own news release, although I've kept them completely up to date on the ACS coverage. And although I independently emailed the local newspapers alerting them to the press conference and pending release, none of them picked it up. UNL puts out news releases for almost every other piece of research on campus that's at all newsworthy. I find it really odd that I can find the story in two places on the USA Today website, and in the Canadian National Post, but not in the Journal Star or World Herald.

I'm beginning to entertain paranoid questions about whether I'm being blacklisted, in a pathetic local sort of way, for my political activity -- though, frankly, if that is the case, they're only hurting themselves. If we're being linked by USA Today, I could give a flying !@#$ if anyone in Nebraska notices.

Big Science, from the American Chemical Society meeting in Salt Lake City.
Live TV : Ustream

PS: the weather sucks.

Obama's supporters are reluctantly beginning to agree that Obama is not the Second Coming of Jesus: Jesus, after all, could build a cabinet. -- Cobalt Shiva, of Darwin Central.

RWP reads (you don't think I watch that dreck?) that March 9, Olbermann named one State Senator Larcenia J. Bullard (D Miami, FL) the 'worst person in the world' for misunderstanding the phrase 'animal husbandry' to mean 'having a long term sexual relationship with animals'. This occurred during the pressing state business of outlawing bestiality, a practice that until now has apparently been legal in the sunshine state.

RWP doesn't actually think Ms. Bullard is bad: just about as ignorant as you'd expect of a state senator from a Democrat district in Miami. But he has to admit she has a wonderfully appropriate name for a politician.

Hat tip: doc30 on the inestimable Darwin Central website

A typical but quite engaging little internecine feud is going on over at the New Nebraska Network, between Kyle Michaelis and various other 'progressives'. It's all about who lost Initiative 424. I happen to think that nobody lost it; once ACRI put the highly talented Doug Tietz in charge of the initiative petition effort, the good common sense of Nebraska citizens made this basic piece of legislative fairness a done deal. But, in Lib'rul Land, there must always be a scapegoat. Some of them want to nominate Kyle for the position, although his suggestion of amending Christensen's LR 233 CA to add sexual orientation was IMO an ingenious poison-pill that might have given us trouble (though, frankly, I have no problem adding 'orientation' to the amendment -- I don't think we discriminate against gays in state business anyway, and if we do, we shouldn't.) Others -- e.g. Patrick D. Jones, a colleague of mine here at UNL, are of the opinion that the fault lay in the take over of the anti-424 effort by professional pols David Kramer and Danielle Nantkes, derailing a winning 'grassroots' effort. Oh yeah, sure.

But it's time to 'fess up. Patrick is almost right, but it's far worse than that. David Kramer deliberately sabotaged the whole thing. Yep, he was our mole in Nebraskans United. (He's a former GOP State Chair, fergawdsake, how could he not have been working for us?). We infiltrated him into the anti-424 effort by suckering them into thinking that he could get the state GOP to oppose the initiative. Instead, he spent huge amounts of their money, and made sure they wasted all their efforts on a futile petition-blocking drive, leaving them dispirited and broke going into the actual election campaign. His staged debate against Pete Ricketts at the GOP state convention, which he deliberately threw to his opponent, was his masterful pièce de resistance. Even Danielle Nantkes, who worked closely with him throughout the campaign, suspected nothing. Nothing!

Obligatory evil laugh: BWAHAHAHAHA!

David, of course, will be richly rewarded from Warren Buffett's confiscated fortune once the anti-Obama military coûp goes down next month. It's a shame Warren turned on his plutocratic kindred, but his fate will be a lesson to others on the importance of class loyalty! And it's a bigger shame we didn't get his loot before the market crashed! BWAHAHAHAHA again!

The London Daily Telegraph reports that our President is 'overwhelmed' by the job, and that his several snubs of, and gaffes involving, Prime Minister Gordon Brown were a result of his being 'too tired' to give the visiting dignitary a proper reception.

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

Good grief! Any questions about why some of us were worried about electing a Chief Executive with no executive experience and precious little experience of any kind? Will he make it though the first three months? Will we?

---

Even the mainstream media are voicing doubts. Howard Fineman says the 'Washington Establishment' are beginning to doubt Obama.

Nice to have you on board, guys, but 6 months ago it would actually have made a difference.

Mark Schniederjans and I went down to the State Capitol building Monday to get our fair share of abuse, testifying against LB 440, a bill that would modify what in less politically correct days was known as the Minority Scholarship Program, to remove references to race and ethnicity (while retaining the 'diversity' component which is a proxy for those characteristics). Mark gave his three minutes of testimony, and was met with arrogant hostility by State Senator Bill Avery. I then gave mine, which you can read here. I was cut off after three minutes, and then Ernie Chambers got up to testify.

Ernie then launched into a 25 minute, rambling, hate-filled diatribe against white men in general and Mark and myself in particular. White men, he said, were only interested in destroying things, and lived by putting other people down. White men had destroyed the financial system. White people (there must have been some evil white women too, I guess) cut ahead of Ernie in line. Guys like me had gotten ahead by getting advantages over non-whites (there weren't too many of the latter in Ireland where I grew up, but anyway...) While he had had to be diplomatic, Ernie said (and it sure escaped most people's notice) in the State Senate, now he was just a private citizen, he thought he might come back there and punch Mark and myself. All the teachers he'd had, he said, were white men, and he'd never failed a class (probably because they were scared). He went on, and on, and rambled back and forth, about pensions and immigration and Creighton and the Nebraska constitution, with no coherent theme except Ernie's hate for white men. And the committee chair let him. I wonder how many of the rest of us saw the irony in restricting two white men to three minutes apiece, while allowing Chambers unlimited time to rail about how we had always been favored over him?

I'd say Ernie was losing it, but I've seen him in action before. It's never been any different. Since his Black Panther days, he's been the same old hatemongering lunatic, and his fellow senators were always just too scared of being called a racist to do what they should have long ago, which is to tell him to sit down and shut up.

The Lincoln Journal Star, as it its practice, sanitized the whole thing, and then has refused to post comments that correct Nancy Hicks' warped reporting. And Michael Nelson, the LJS editor, has the gall to pontificate about integrity.

...is here.

Fight LB 674!

After posting some blog-shaped drool about teh 0's speech last night, Obamabot airhead Mary Kate Cary takes out her crystal ball and sees:

Expect Rising Stock Market and Poll Numbers

The S & P 500, as it happens, is off 2.5 % as I write this. In fact, I've noticed every time Obama or a member of his cabinet makes any kind of public statement about the economy, the market tanks. Maybe we could get the recovery started if they'd all just shut up?

Last night, Obama said his administration is

committed to a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it, and I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

Uh, sorry to have to correct teh 0 (blessed be He), but Karl Benz invented the automobile, in Germany. His Motorwagen was patented, and driven on the road, in 1886. Americans didn't make them until seven years later.

---

John Derbyshire on the corner at National Review noticed another blooper; Obama claimed the first transcontinental railroad was built during the Civil War, when in fact it wasn't even begun until June 1865. What Obama said struck me as odd at the time, but I forgot to check it out.

Teh 0, yesterday:

I just want to make sure that we're having an honest debate and presenting to the American people a fulsome accounting of what is going on in this program.

Maybe he picked it the mis-usage from his campaign's senior policy director

We had a fulsome debate on this in the Senate

...although his campaign manager David Plouffe has also misused the word

If we want to go play in a state like Georgia - TV advertising, staff, mail - in the most fulsome way, we'll be able to do that.

... a usage deplored by Bill Safire, the language-curmudgeon-in-chief.

On his word choice, Plouffe goofed. Fulsome does not mean "full." Nor does it mean "complete, well developed" or other synonyms of abundance. On the contrary, the adjective is used not in a compliment, but in an insult, meaning "excessive." Its frequent use in "fulsome praise" gives that phrase the meaning of "cloying, unctuous, obsequious flattery." Though loosey-goosey usagists may accept the turning of the word's meaning on its head, most of us draw the line at such surrender to error. Fulsome is to "full" what noisome is to "noisy"; a word that sounds the same but means something quite different. Noisome, rooted in Old French for "annoying," means "smelly," and fulsome means "too much." If you're on the side of clarity, hold that line.

Are we going to let the Obamoids do to the English language what they're doing to the Federal budget. Never, I say!

A couple of months ago I was worried what sort of shape we'd be in after four years of Barack Obama and at least two years of big Congressional Democrat majorities. Now I'm wondering where we'll be in three months. The market tanked (again) today on rumors that the US would soon be nationalizing banks, rumors promulgated by now defunct Countrywide Mortgage's favorite Democrat Senator, Chris Dodd. Even the good news that the CPI was up in January, which at least temporarily dispels fears of deflation, didn't help much.

Meanwhile, the White House, in what's almost invariably a sign of desperation, is trying to shoot the messenger. In an unusual move, White House Press Secretary attacked YouTube sensation and CNBC journalist Rick Santelli, mentioning him at least five times by name. Santelli's crime was expressing the widespread disgust that Obama is planning to reward people for taking on mortgages they can't pay.

Sheesh, guys, you've been at this only a month, and you can't keep a dry shirt through mid-morning. Panic is contagious. Time to grow some stones.

Don't you wish we'd elected a president who we know can deal with crises and adversity without needing a change of underwear?

---

Meanwhile, in Obama's corner, we have this 'progressive leftist' (a.k.a. self admitted moron) claiming the revolt against the Obama Moocherama is somehow a racial problem among 'white ethnics'. Race card, anyone?

RWP has been noticing something rather funny recently about crime reports in the Lincoln Journal Star. For example, take this report, from Monday's paper, about the sexual assault of a 14 year old girl on 27th street south of O street in broad daylight on Saturday at lunchtime. It's really too bad they don't have a description, because it's important to get this creep locked up, huh?
Oh wait, the police do have a description.

Police are searching for a black man in his 20s, around 5' 8" to 5' 9", weighing around 170 pounds. They said the man has short hair, and was last seen wearing a red jacket with blue accents and jeans.

It's just a shame the LJS didn't print that; it might have helped catch the perp. No doubt just an accidental omission, though!

Sexual assaults in that area of town are rather common. Here's another report, this time about a serial groper. You'd think that five assaulted women could come up with a good description of the suspect. But they can't have -- if they did, surely the Lincoln Journal Star would print it? I mean, isn't it important that we catch this pervert?

But wait...check out the KOLN/KGIN website. They do have a description!

In each case Flood said the suspect description is similar, a young black male with a medium build. He was wearing a bandanna in both of Tuesday's crimes.

Even though the police now have a photo of the suspect in the first sexual assault, and the LJS published it, there's just one little detail they can't bring themselves to print.

Lincoln Police Capt. David Beggs said the man was described by the victims as 5-foot-8 or 5-foot-9, about 170 pounds and in his 20s. She also said he was wearing a red jacket and dark blue or gray jeans.


Particularly odd is that the first report did irrelevantly mention another, entirely unrelated case, in which the ethnicity of the perp is quite clear from his name. Obviously, it's OK to reveal some ethnic or racial identities, and not others.

RWP is baffled by the thought processes over there on P street (or is that PC street?).

---

Update at 5:03 p.m.: the police got the asshole who sexually assaulted the 14 year old. The groper is still at large.

---

Update 2/21/2009: looky here. Here's a story about a Lincoln crime spree where they do publish a description of the suspect!

The suspect is described as a white male in his 20s, 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 180 pounds. He has a cut lip and a brown goatee.

The President will tour the solar-power facility at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature today, for a photo-op and to sign the 'stimulus' bill. The facility has 465 solar panels, which were installed last June.

President Barack Obama plans to inspect a solar-power facility at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science Tuesday just before he signs the $787 billion economic-stimulus package. The museum's rooftop solar photovoltaic system consists of 465 solar panels on the southeast and southwest wings of the museum. The panels generate a portion of the museum's electrical power. The tour is in keeping with the alternative-energy theme of the bill-signing event at the museum.

A quick calculation posted on Michelle Malkin's website shows that 15,000 gallons of fuel will be used to fly Air Force One from DC to Denver and back for the signing ceremony/photo-op. Aviation fuel releases about 36.86 MJ of heat per liter on complete combustion, or about 39.4 kWh/gallon. So the energy released as heat in trucking the Prez. from DC to Denver and back is approximately 600,000 kWh.

According to the museum's website, the photovoltaics will generate 134,500 kWh per year. With 4 years of uninterrupted operation, therefore, they will not quite manage to offset the energy used by Obama in one visit. However, if you allow for the fact that the electrical energy they replace would probably be generated from heat at about 35% efficiency, the fuel used for the photo-op is really only equivalent to about 1.5 years of continuous operation of the solar cells.

The solar cells have been operating since June, so around January 2010, they will have generated enough 'green energy' to offset Obama's visit.

As that great thermodynamicist Kermit the Frog said, it's not easy being green!

Poor deluded little things.

Ben Nelson has been tooting his own trumpet for the last week, as the man who will clean up the stimulus package in the Senate. Yep, Ben's going to put together a bipartisan coalition of centrists to strip out the pork and turn it into a lean, clean job-creating machine. And his loyal sycophants in the local media have been sucking it all up.

Problem is, on the first vote to remove a chunk of pork from the bill - a $245 million dollar gift to Hollywood production companies - Ben was AWOL. Most of the centrist Democrats in the Senate voted with the GOP to strip out the give-away. But not Ben; he apparently thinks that buying movie film for Hollywood is 'job-intensive infrastructure development'.

Mike Johanns, by the way, voted for the amendment, which passed 52-45.

1931: Al Capone: convicted of evading $55,365.25 in income tax.

Sentenced to 11 years in Alcatraz

2009: Tim Geithner: admitted to evading $35,000 in income tax.

Confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury.

2009: Tom Daschle: evaded approximately $130,000 in income tax.

Nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary

Now that's real change we can believe in!

---

But why listen to little ol' me? Listen to a former senator from South Dakota!

Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter!

Let's follow Tom Daschle's advice, and run Tom Daschle out of DC on a rail!

---

It was just announced that Daschle and another Obama pick have withdrawn their candidacy, both over tax evasion. So the most ethical administration in history is two weeks old, and two cabinet level appointees have had to withdraw over ethical issues!

The books, of course, say they shouldn't be here in January, but they often are. A pair were checking out nesting boxes yesterday. Lousy picture -- hopelessly backlit -- but I think it clearly shows a bluebird.

I say this means an early spring.

Is here.

It's about Billy Ayers.

The Lincoln Journal Star's Don Walton, mused this morning about how Ben Nelson will attempt to be all things to all men by first voting 'no' on cloture, and then 'no' on the Democrats' give-aways to unions -- the cloture vote being the only important one when you have an ironclad majority. This is Don's version of the Democrat proposal to elmininate the secret ballot in union origanization votes.

Norquist wants Nelson to vote against cloture on labor legislation that would allow workers to organize their workplace and choose a union without a secret ballot vote.


Translated out of Democrat weasel speak and into plain English, this becomes:

Norquist wants Nelson to vote against cloture on labor legislation that would allow the union to organize workplaces without a secret ballot vote.


'The workers' is of course a collective noun without any correspondence to reality. There is no way to determine the will of 'the workers' without a secret ballot. Anything else is vulnerable to external pressure. 99% of workplaces are organized by pre-existing, external labor unions, usually headquartered out of state. The workers, in fact, have no option to choose a secret ballot under the pending legislation. If AAUP decides to organize UNL, I can ask for a secret ballot, but they won't give me one. I and ten of my friends could request a secret ballot, but we wouldn't get one.

An entirely polite comment suggesting the above rephrasing of Don's statement was not posted on the Journal Star. But heck, if he's against secret ballots, why would you expect him to be for free speech?

I just got word from Doug Tietz that Nebraskans United lost their court challenge to Initiative 424, which bans racial ethnic and gender preferences in Nebraska. The Nebraska Civil Rights Amendment has been the law of the State of Nebraska for the last month; now we know it won't be struck down by judicial fiat.

Nebraskans United brought losing to a new pinnacle in 2008. Supported by most of the major institutions in the state, run by luminaries of the state GOP and Dem parties, they collected $200 K from Warren Buffett and three other Omaha millionaires, and took in other mega-donations from the NEA, Omaha Chamber of Commerce, etc.. They staked everything on keeping the initiative off the ballot. They paid tens of thousands of dollars to scores of petition blockers, and flouted Nebraska disclosure statutes by refusing to name them. They tried every dirty trick in the book. And despite all the money and the backing and the legal shenanigans, they lost. NCRI collected far more valid signatures than we needed.

Once the issue was on the ballot, instead of trying to argue their case with the voters, Nebraskans United bet the house on the court challenge, claiming the petition process was fraudulent. Problem was, while they were waiting for the verdict, the voters opted 58-42 for the constitutional amendment. And, guess what? Lancaster Country District Judge Karen Flowers, in an admirable exercise of judicial restraint, let the will of the people stand.

The final loser was Baird Holm, David Kramer's law firm. Evidently to avoid having to disclose what was a massive donation of the time Kramer spent opposing the ballot initiative, his law firm decided instead to defer billing Nebraskans United for Kramer's services until after the election. They then took a loss of $75,000. Of course, it's only a paper loss. They couldn't deduct from their corporate taxes an in-kind donation of $75 K to a political cause , but they can deduct it as a business loss. I'm not qualified to determine whether it's legal to do so, but it's clearly one more end-run around Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Law, another loser in this whole process

But there's one consolation: a loser on one's tax return is the only kind of loser to be.

Joseph Lowery's inaugural benediction included a nasty piece of race-baiting; teh 0 himself, with the aid of Chief Justice Roberts, screwed up the oath of office so badly it'll take a week to figure out if he actually said it; the inaugural poem is gibberish, and the S & P is down 4% more than 5%!

Feel the hopey changey tingle!

---

Meanwhile the Lion of the Senate and the Grand Kleagle of the Senate both collapsed at the inauguration luncheon. Kennedy had a seizure; word has it Byrd passed out when someone finally found the nerve to break it to him that we now have a black president.

Canada evidently feels the same way as many Nebraskans do about unrepentant terrorist Billy Ayers. He was turned away yesterday at the Canadian border, because of his arrest record! The usual suspects are upset.

This is all very unfair. After all, the U.S. is willing to import Canada's garbage.

2008 was a year to be a grasshopper. 2009 will be even worse.

People who took out loans they couldn't afford get to keep the house and have the loan reduced to a cost that does not reflect their credit history. The banks that made the loans, and other banks who bought repackaged versions of the bad loans, already have $350 billion of our money, and will be getting more. Meanwhile, if you're one of those ants who pays the mortgage on time, runs a zero balance on the credit card, and generally lives within his means, you get to pay for the deadbeat grasshoppers, individual and corporate.

The social contract is always to a greater or lesser extent a hostage situation where the parasites leech off the hosts by using the threat of illegal or legal force. But this year it got worse, and next year and the following years the ants are really going to take it in the abdomen. So to speak.

So grit your mandibles, fellow Formicidans, and keep the spray gun at hand.

The bloated, hyper-ostentatious monster of an inauguration party is in full swing. Probably the only thing keeping RWP from spending the afternoon working on research are the NFL playoffs, the only (mostly) inauguration free spaces on broadcast TV. And of course, conservatives are already noticing that while the media copiously grouched about Bush's too-expensive inauguration in 2004, Obama's is so much more opulent than Bush's they don't even bear comparison, yet the media are gushing, not grousing. The Guardian of London, not a conservative source, estimated teh 0's inauguration bill at $150 m, compared with Bush's 2004 bill of $42.3 m. Obama's committee spokeswoman admits the expenses will be considerably greater than previous years

Combine a President whose fondness for grandiosity is so extreme it hurt him in the campaign (think 'Greek Temple'); a political party who really are only truly happy when they're spending other people's money, and a vast collection of Hollywood celebritards for whom 'over-the-top' is really the only fashion statement they know, and this is inevitable.

To be fair, as Media Matters points out, some of these numbers compare apples and oranges. To do a proper comparison, you have to factor in all the costs, most notably security, which dwarfs the figure spent by the inauguration committees. (Media Matters are also playing fast and loose with some numbers, by the way). I myself only care about public expenditures, anyway. If you're spending your own money, party hearty! But the estimates I've done still put the Obama figure well in excess of any past inauguration.

'Excess'. As the 'economic stimulus package' moves forward, keep the word handy.

I saw this little guy on Mount Le Conte in Tennessee on June 3, 2008, but wasn't sure of the ID until I found a picture of him on my camera. The little white spot on the back of his primaries is diagnostic.