And she links to a post by Michelle Malkin on Dr. John Holdren, whom Obama has appointed as his "science czar".
Obama is "czar-happy" because these czars are appointed by him, have the full authority of the executive branch behind them, and are responsible to no one but Obama himself. There are no inspectors general; there is no Congressional oversight: should a czar do something heinously illegal his boss can protect himself with the power of the bully pulpit.
"Extra-Constitutional", that's the term I'm looking for.
Why do we suddenly need so many of them? I think it's because Obama does not like being told "no" by anyone; that's why several inspectors general have been unceremoniously shown the door.
Remember back when Michelle Obama told us that her husband was going to "rule"?
She was telling us the truth. If the Bush administration was "imperial" what does this make the Obama administration?
* * *
Scipio: "It would be better for all concerned if the RINOS simply came out of the closet and became Democrats."
Let me tell you this: wither Sarah Palin goeth, so goeth I. She is the first politician I've seen since Reagan who understands what conservatism is.
"Palin is doing what Reagan did," Scipio finishes. Oh Lord, I hope he's right.
* * *
The other day I talked about the soldier who questioned Obama's authoritah and had his orders canceled. Guess what? He is so fired. Not from his job with the Army; oh no--from his civilian job.
This stinks of "payback". It might be that the Army is going to rescind the guy's security clearance and that he wouldn't be able to do his job for his private employer without it, but generally speaking yanking the security clearance should come first in that case.
There's gonna be a goddamned big lawsuit over this, and I hope the guy wins.
* * *
The future of health care: a $30,000 retirement tax! Britain's socialized National Health Service is the model for Obamacare, and guess what? It doesn't fucking work!
* * *
Park this guy at a desk for the rest of his career.
I have a serious problem with cops who think they're special. He was going 126 MPH a few seconds before the collision, and while doing this he was texting on his cell phone?
That is negligence. If you're driving that damn fast you should be doing nothing but driving. This cop, however--convinced of his own ability by hours of driver training and sheer hubris--apparently thinks that he is capable of super-human feats.
Any cop who screws up like this should either be off the force, or driving a desk for the rest of his career.
This reminds me of the fatal accident some time ago here in my hometown, where an off-duty cop was driving his own vehice well in excess of the speed limit (at least 30 MPH over, probably more) and collided with another car, killing its occupant, a 17-year-old boy. The cop said "he ran the stop sign!" which is about what I would expect from someone who was desperately trying to save his own ass.
1) The other driver was 17, and inexperienced. He may have thought he had plenty of time to get across the lane of traffic before that car. The cop's high speed would have meant a very high closure rate, something the kid was not ready for, having only experience with traffic which is going 5, 10 miles over the limit rather than 30+.
2) The cop himself was not an unbiased observer. He may have thought the kid would wait; he may have thought nothing of the car that was at the crossing road: "I'm a cop; you'll wait," forgetting that he was in his truck and not his cruiser.
3) Regardless of every other circumstance, the cop was engaging in excessive speeding, which is when a driver exceeds the speed limit to an egregious degree. The cop was off duty and in his private vehicle, expecting that the "old boy" network would protect his driving record from moving violations. He simply should not have been going that fast; and speed is the primary reason this accident included a fatality.
* * *
"Could we be wrong about global warming?"
...
Science--real actual honest-to-God science--includes always, always, always asking yourself if you are wrong. Searching for ways in which you are wrong. Spending as much (if not more) time on checking the validity of your conclusions as you do on coming to them.
Global warming "science" does none of this. Global warming "science" comes up with a pronunciation that global warming is happening and man-made, and it says, "This is fact, and we all agree, so it is proven and you must ruin your economies to prevent it."
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates don't ask themselves if they are wrong, and they don't ask themselves if there are any flaws in their theories or hypotheses. What they do is present a thesis and find or create proof to support it (eg Mann et al) and attack and discredit anyone who argues with them.
That's all fine and dandy, I suppose, but it sure as hell ain't science.
The article I linked to hints at a long-overdue admission that climate models aren't even remotely accurate: they can't reproduce conditions found in the historical record.
Futhermore, you can't put climate history data into the models and get current conditions out. This is for three reasons: 1) the climate history data is full of gaping holes; 2) it's not all that accurate to begin with; 3) the models are oversimplified because there are several processes going on that we are either totally ignorant of or else are simply not well-understood enough to be modeled accurately.
One of the major problems with AGW is that the modern data--which is reasonably accurate and robust--does not agree with it. The IPCC says that for every bit of carbon X we add to the atmosphere we should be seeing Y degrees of warming for a total warming of Z degrees if we don't get our act together soon--and instead we've seen about 0.1Z degrees of warming overall, which doesn't match the IPCC's numbers. (Not to mention the fact that atmospheric carbon continues to rise and there has been no warming since 1999 or so.)
So the answer to the article's question is "YES! YES WE COULD! AND WE PROBABLY ARE!"
* * *
This is news to me. When I hear about the F-22 "Raptor" it's always in glowing terms about how "capable" and "sophisticated" the thing is.
Problem: One hour of flight time requires thirty hours of maintenance.
How in the blankity-blank-blank hell does a monstrosity like that get handed over to the military? Jesus, I can remember when "military specification" meant something was tough and designed to withstand long periods with no maintenance.
So let's say we get into a big shooting war with Lower Crotobaltislavonia and we have to do flight ops for extended periods. How will the F-22 squadrons manage to sortie enough aircraft to be effective?
When I worked at Rockwell one of my coworkers regaled me and my teammates with a story about when he was on an aircraft carrier off Vietnam. He worked the flight deck, and during one particularly hectic period of operations he ate his meals just off the flight deck, slept in the crash netting (the nets that are there to catch people who fall overboard, or who jump to avoid an out-of-control aircraft) and wore the same coveralls for a month straight.
If he were stationed on an aircraft carrier with F-22s, he wouldn't need to do that. Instead he'd spend his entire time working on maintenance.
Ludicrous.
* * *
Incidentally, he told us that when they finally stood down he simply threw away the clothes that he'd been wearing, and took a "Hollywood shower"...and no one said a word about it.
* * *
Michelle Malkin is right that Congress should subject itself to Obamacare...but the commentors are correct that this will never, never, ever happen.
* * *
...so Amaleni hit 65th level and suddenly I could get to the Isle of Quel'Danas--the flight point just magically appeared--so I finally got the Eastern Kingdoms completely explored.
I ran down several more quests in the Eastern Plaguelands, and now I'm back in Outland.
Annoyance: when I desperately needed mithril so that I could level Jewelcrafting, all I could find was thorium. Now I need thorium, and all I can find is mithril. Argh etc. Despite this I finally cracked the 250 barrier.
I've been running down quests in Hellfire Peninsula, and am within 10% of 66th level. Hoody hoo etc. I've nearly exhausted all the quests in HP, though, and soon I'll be moving on to Zangarmarsh.
* * *
Apparently GeoCities is going to go away, and it means that the images that I've linked in various posts here on the Fungus will similarly disappear. I am not likely to go back and reinsert them, because it would be an enormous amount of work.
*sigh*
What I guess I will do, then, is to make the PDFs of the Fungus available for download, somehow. No idea if my ISP is going to offer any free hosting space or if I have to buy some in order to continue to post images. Argh etc.
Anyway, I don't know if it really makes that much of a difference.