For the benefit (?) of those of you back east suffering under some of the worst winter weather in ages, the low in Denver on Tuesday morning was 35°. That's 2° above Atlanta's high for the day. We reached a record high of 70°. Lest you blame my SUV, the previous record of 69° was set in the 1920s before there were SUVs.
Denver has had an extremely mild and dry winter so far, with lots of days in the 60s recently. Atlanta has had more snow so far this December than Denver. The reason isn't global warming, it's a strong La Niña. But before you Easterners get too jealous, we're about to get a change. A cold front moving in Wednesday afternoon should bring 3-6" of snow to the Denver area by Thursday morning, along with highs in the 30s.
If news of our mild weather is causing you to reconsider that ski trip, don't. The La Niña pattern, as usual, has been sending Pacific storms out of the northwest into the Rockies every few days for many weeks, and the mountain snowfalls have been epic. Steamboat had a record November, with over 90" of snow. Most of the other big destination resorts aren't far behind. The northern and central mountain resorts have been getting about a foot or so of new snow every 3 or 4 days for weeks now.
It's the best of both worlds — awesome snow in the mountains and golfing or biking weather down here in the city. The only problem for skiers has been getting to the mountains. They have to time their drive in between I-70 closures. 🙂
UPDATE (12/16): The winter storm for Denver fizzled. No snow, just cold — so I think Atlanta's still ahead of us in December snowfall. 🙂 But the mountains got a decent dumping, and I-70 was closed for several hours.
I’ve admired Elton John and his music since Tumbleweed Connection (1970). But this year, he did something that increased my esteem for him considerably. No, I’m not talking about performing at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding (although I did enjoy seeing the left become apoplectic at the news that Sir Elton and Rush got along famously).
No, I’m talking about the fact that Sir Elton remembered his idol and biggest musical influence, Leon Russell — who had fallen into complete obscurity — reconnected with him, and persuaded him that they should record an album together. Here’s Sir Elton telling the short version of the story (he tells the long version in a 4-page essay in the CD booklet):
I’m listening to the resulting album, The Union, as I write this, and it’s terrific. But the story is even more terrific, and I don’t mind telling you it brought a tear to my eye and some wonderful memories to my heart. It also caused me to reconnect with Leon Russell’s marvelous music from the 70s. I have all those albums on vinyl — I have tons of vinyl — but have never found the time and energy to rip them to digital form. Now I’ve bought several of them on CD.
If you’re under 40 (or maybe even 45), you may have never heard of Leon Russell. Well, allow me to introduce you to a bit of his work. “Back to the Island” is the song that made Sir Elton weep. It’s one of my favorites, too.
“A Song for You” has probably been covered by more artists than any other Leon Russell song, ranging from Ray Charles to Karen Carpenter. It’s one of the most beautiful love songs I know, and I still think the original studio recording, with its spare instrumentation and haunting air, is the best of them all.
Now for something more upbeat. The iconic Leon Russell song is “Stranger in a Strange Land,” from one of my all-time favorite albums, Leon Russell and the Shelter People.
I’ll finish with a live recording. A commenter at YouTube called this “The ten greatest minutes in rock n roll history.” It’s certainly one of the greatest live performances. From 1971’s Concert for Bangladesh, here’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Young Blood.” Turn it up!
The first operational test of the Dragon spacecraft, capable of carrying up to 7 astronauts, appears to be a success. This morning, SpaceX launched the Dragon into orbit atop its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Gizmodo has video.
This was only the second launch of the Falcon 9 (the first was in June), and the first under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The plans for this flight were ambitious:
The upcoming demonstration mission will launch from Cape Canaveral and should follow a flight plan nearly identical to the first Falcon 9 launch, but this time the Dragon spacecraft will separate from the second stage and will demonstrate operational communications, navigation, maneuvering and reentry. Although it does not have wings like Shuttle, the Dragon spacecraft is controlled throughout reentry by the onboard Draco thrusters which enable the spacecraft to touchdown at a very precise location – ultimately within a few hundred yards of its target.
While Dragon will initially make water landings, over the long term, Dragon will be landing on land. For this first demo flight, Dragon will make multiple orbits of the Earth as we test all of its systems, and will then fire its thrusters to begin reentry, returning to Earth for a Pacific Ocean splashdown off the coast of Southern California. The entire mission should last around four hours.
It looks like they're well on their way to a successful mission.
The Dragon spacecraft the first private space to reach orbitand return to Earth. It just splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, after a perfect launch, separation, orbit and re-entry. This is a huge milestone in the history of space exploration.
Woohoo! Congrats to Elon Musk and the entire SpaceX team!
This isn't really news, now is it? It's been clear to many of us for years that the New York Times' real, but unspoken, motto is "All the news that fits our agenda, we print." In the latest example, here's how the Times explained their decision to publish a series of articles based on the stolen documents released by WikiLeaks:
The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. … The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.
And here's how they explained their decision just over a year ago to ostentatiously ignore the ClimateGate documents:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
Compare and contrast. Extra points for explaining how the Hadley CRU's leaked documents illuminated the goals, successes, compromises, and frustrations of the anthropogenic global warming proponents in a way that the fawning media coverage they receive cannot match.
PowerLine's Scott Johnson didn't want to belabor the point, simply noting that "the two statements are logically irreconcilable." James Delingpole, on the other hand, thought it important to belabor the point, and he helpfully offered a few other examples of the Old Gray Lady applying its peculiar situational ethics to promote its ideological agenda.
Remember "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan"? Long before Obamacare was passed, almost everyone who examined that promise objectively knew that it wouldn't be kept. Since passage, the falseness of that promise — to be precise, the mendacity, since the President isn't stupid enough to have really believed it when he said it — has become increasingly clear, as more and more people have had their coverage canceled, and more and more organizations have requested waivers from the feds.
The waivers exempt the organizations from onerous and costly new government mandates, allowing them to continue existing health care plans that fail to meet those mandates. In the absence of such waivers, millions more would be left without the health care plan they like and were promised they could keep.
Since the Obama administration clearly prefers a government of men to a government of laws, it's no surprise that who gets a waiver and who doesn't is solely at the discretion of some unelected administration lackeys. And it's no surprise that the list of waiver recipients includes quite a few unions.
But it seems that a New York SEIU affiliate either forgot to file for a waiver or filed and didn't get it. Or maybe they just decided the new mandates were a good excuse to ditch the coverage for children of their low-wage members:
One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.
The fund is administered by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. …
The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.
The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU. The union fund pools contributions from several home-care agencies and then buys insurance from Fidelis.
“In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”
Behroozi estimated that the fund faced a $15 million shortfall in 2011 and more in the following years for the coverage of workers’ children.
The affected union members are home-care workers, and their health-care costs are said to be comparatively high and growing. So the union had already started dumping those workers from their health care plan before Obamacare passed, cutting enrollment in half over the past three years. And now it's lobbying for the state of New York to pick up more of the tab. Unfortunately for them, the state of New York doesn't seem to have a lot of extra money lying around looking for some deserving union to benefit.
There's a certain poetic justice to seeing the SEIU, Obamacare's biggest supporters, run afoul of the costly mandates they helped bring about. But the rank-and-file members must be wondering what all those union dues they've been paying have gotten them. Why, it's almost as if all that talk about how the union protects them from exploitation by evil capitalists were a load of crap!
My 2006 post, "The real Thanksgiving story," still gets a fair number of hits around this time of the year from people searching for exactly those words. My follow-ups from 2007, 2008, and 2009 also get a little bump. I thought about reprising the 2006 post this year, or offering yet another follow-up like last year's. But it's been a busy time for me, and as I write this, it's already late on Thanksgiving eve. So, dear reader, please visit (or revisit) those posts and think about their message this Thanksgiving:
For something new this Thanksgiving, I refer you to a couple of fine columns. First, John Stossel recounted the lesson of the first Thanksgiving and noted that our government still hasn't learned that lesson, and Indians today suffer because of that (emphasis added):
What private property does — as the Pilgrims discovered — is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce far more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.
Here's the biggest irony of all: The U.S. government has yet to apply the lesson to its first conquest, Native Americans. The U.S. government has held most Indian land in trust since the 19th century. This discourages initiative and risk-taking because, among other reasons, it can't be used as collateral for loans. On Indian reservations, "private land is 40 to 90 percent more productive than land owned through the Bureau of Indian Affairs," says economist Terry Anderson, executive director of PERC. "If you drive through western reservations, you will see on one side cultivated fields, irrigation, and on the other side, overgrazed pasture, run-down pastures and homes. One is a simple commons; the other side is private property. You have Indians on both sides. The important thing is someone owns one side."
Then, please read Fouad Ajami's column about how a Middle Eastern immigrant came to value Thanksgiving — but not the gravy (emphasis added):
The fondness of Thanksgiving, the meaning and the appreciation of the ritual, came slowly. It came with my assimilation into American life, with my marriage, and with the family I would come to acquire. I was not fond of turkey, though I made peace with the stuffing. The gravy, for a man of the Mediterranean, was irredeemable. Pumpkin pie and the cranberry sauce were more to my liking.
But the source of the holiday's appeal was that it made no religious demands, for I had been stripped of all religious devotion. I could not make any connection to Christmas—the commercialism, the music, the carols, were all alien to me. Nor could I partake of the passion for two big gateways into American life: football and baseball. I had grown up on soccer, and the frenzy for these two American attachments left me on the outside, bewildered. It was ultimately two celebrations of great simplicity that appealed to me: Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. They are both, to the core, celebrations of Americanism, great assimilative affirmations.
Professor Ajami, feel free to send your unwanted gravy my way — email me for the address. 🙂
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I hope you enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. With a fine giblet gravy!
Over the last five years or so, Michael Yon has not only proven himself today's pre-eminent war correspondent, he's also developed into one of our finest photographers. His dispatches from Iraq showed that he has a natural eye for composition, and gave us some memorable war images.
Recently, Yon posted one of the most stunning mountain photos I've ever seen. Take a look. And don't forget, Yon is an independent journalist who relies on donations and sales of books and photos to finance his work. Let's keep him out there doing the wonderful job he's been doing.
A friend sent me these two videos recently, and since they're on YouTube, I thought I'd share them. The first one is of a cat with some really big cojones. "You don't scare me, gator!"
Daniel H. Fernald thinks TSA administrator John Pistole's response to the growing "Don't touch my junk" movement is a symptom of a problem that won't be solved by defeating Obama in 2012. It's much more fundamental. Woodrow Wilson is implicated. And French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul explained it almost fifty years ago:
Politicians are decision makers. They control the levers of power. The trouble, according to Ellul, is that in an increasingly complex environment, they often don’t know how to use them.
This is where the expert, the “technician,” comes in. At the outset, the expert’s role is merely to advise political leaders on how best to accomplish politicians’ stated policy goals. The expert’s role soon progresses to determining the “one best means” of accomplishing those goals. Finally, the expert technician decides on not merely the means of pursuing the “one best means” but also determines the policy goal toward which “the one best means” is directed.
As the power of the technician waxes, that of the politician wanes, until he is little more than a rubber stamp.
…
The monstrous Leviathan into which TSA has quickly, albeit all too predictably, morphed is a textbook illustration of Ellul’s thesis. Several elected representatives of the people politely suggested that a political technician, a bureaucrat, might possibly want to think about maybe giving, you know, just a bit of thought to not forcing American citizens to choose between being irradiated or groped, and he simply said:
“No.”
That’s a quote. He didn’t mince words, he didn’t equivocate, he didn’t evade the question. He simply said, “No.”
And the politicians did nothing, because they had no power to do anything. The technician had the power, and they all knew it.
They were returning from Afghanistan on a military charter flight — 330 soldiers coming home from war. All were armed with M4 carbines. Some also had sidearms. And some had M240B machine guns. The flight stopped in Indianapolis to drop off about 100 members of the Indiana National Guard. But for some reason, all 330 soldiers were made to disembark. With their weapons (unloaded, of course).
TSA personnel decided that, before the 230 who were continuing on could reboard the plane, they'd have to submit to security screening. Hilarious idiocy ensued. Read the whole thing. You won't know whether to laugh, cry, or just be disgusted.
Lisa Murkowski has been declared re-elected by the New York Times and other MSM outlets. But Joe Miller hasn't thrown in the towel, and his campaign is raising serious issues regarding the fairness, accuracy, and honesty of the current count (emphasis added):
In order to ensure the integrity of the election results, the Miller campaign has requested, and the Division of Elections has now granted, the opportunity to review some precinct logs from throughout the state. Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto said, “Our campaign has sworn affidavits identifying unsecured ballot boxes, other precincts where numerous ballots appear to be in the same handwriting, others where there is 100% voter turnout and still other precincts where the ballots were sent to the Division of Elections presorted by U.S. Senate candidate. These and other irregularities give our campaign pause. Alaskans must be able to trust the results of its elections.”
One important step in reviewing the results of the election is ensuring that the number of voters signed in the precinct logs on Election Day matches the number of votes being recorded from that precinct and that there is no evidence of voter fraud. Further verification of these totals will have to come from the tapes that the voting machines produce with a tally of the number of voters and the break down between candidates. So far the Division of Elections has failed to respond to the Miller request for these tapes.
…
Additionally, the Murkowski write-in ballots have undergone a hand count review where spoiled ballots are being counted for her, whereas the Miller ballots have all been counted by machine with many valid ballots not being included.
I have no way of judging the validity of the Miller campaign's allegations. It's possible that Murkowski won fair and square — possible, but not likely. If there was no funny business, why has the Alaska political establishment gone to such lengths to block reasonable, legally sanctioned efforts — like matching the machine tallies against the number of votes recorded — to ensure that the counts are accurate? When people go to great lengths to hide things, it strongly suggests they have something to hide.
I've made another donation to the Miller campaign to fund their ongoing efforts to ensure a fair count. Please consider doing the same.
By the narrowest of margins, Joe Walsh has defeated Rep. Melissa Bean in Illinois' 8th District congressional race. Bean conceded today after the final vote tally showed that Walsh won by 291 votes out of more than 200,000 cast. In October, I posted about Walsh and donated to his campaign. Visit that post to watch what I described as "one of the most effective one-minute videos I've seen in a while." Here's his six-point campaign pledge:
I will not serve more than 3 terms in the House (6 years), if so privileged.
I will not receive any health plans or retirement benefits that only congressmen get and that aren’t available to all Americans.
I will not vote for any legislation which increases the size of government or isn’t supported by the Constitution.
I will never add an earmark to any bill.
I will always speak my mind and tell my constituents the truth.
I will always be accessible to my constituents and hold town halls on a regular basis, in good times or bad
I'm very pleased that Walsh eked out a well-deserved victory. I expect that he'll be one of the stars of the big freshman class in the next Congress.
UPDATE (11/19): In honor of Jed's clever comment (below), here's a classic 70s performance by Joe Walsh — the other Joe Walsh — of his signature song. Turn it up!
I’ve come up with a survey I’d like to see Rasmussen or somebody do of potential Thanksgiving travelers:
Are you planning to fly somewhere for Thanksgiving?
Yes
No
Not sure
If you’re planning to fly, will you be traveling with your children?
Yes
No
Not sure
If you’re planning to fly with a daughter or daughters, how old is she (or are they)?
_____
_____
_____
How do you feel about letting a TSA screener grab your daughter’s crotch?
It’s OK with me. Protecting us from terrorists is more important than her feelings or mine.
I’m uncomfortable about it, but if the government says it’s necessary, who am I to question them?
No, that’s not acceptable. It’s sexual assault on a child.
Hell, no!
Would your response be any different if the TSA screener were a woman instead of a man?
Yes
No
Not sure
If your daughter has passed puberty, how do you feel about letting a TSA screener cup her breasts and squeeze her breasts?
It’s OK with me. Protecting us from terrorists is more important than her feelings or mine.
I’m uncomfortable about it, but if the government says it’s necessary, who am I to question them?
No, that’s not acceptable. It’s sexual assault on a child.
Hell, no!
Would your response be any different if the TSA screener were a woman instead of a man?
Yes
No
Not sure
If you’re planning to fly with a son or sons, how old is he (or are they)?
_____
_____
_____
How do you feel about letting a TSA screener feel your son’s penis and testicles?
It’s OK with me. Protecting us from terrorists is more important than his feelings or mine.
I’m uncomfortable about it, but if the government says it’s necessary, who am I to question them?
No, that’s not acceptable. It’s sexual assault on a child.
Hell, no!
Would your response be any different if the TSA screener were a woman instead of a man?
Yes
No
Not sure
Would you be more comfortable putting your child(ren) through a back-scatter X-ray scanner that produces a nude image of your child detailed enough to show, for instance, whether your son is circumcised, and possibly increasing their risk of skin cancer?
Yes
No
Not sure
Are you sure you and your child(ren) want to fly for Thanksgiving?
Senate Republicans adopted Sen. Jim DeMint's two-year moratorium on earmarks Tuesday, challenged Democrats to do likewise, and called on the President to veto any bill containing earmarks. Two Democratic senators, Colorado's Mark Udall and Missouri's Claire McCaskill, have called on their caucus to follow suit.
When the people lead, their leaders will follow.
UPDATE: Just spotted this, via Instapundit (and read his post for a reader's idea about verbing "Murkowski"):
Even as Senate Republicans approved a "moratorium" on congressional earmarks, a small but significant contingent of the caucus is openly vowing to flout the new rules.
Led by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the contingent is "going rogue" against the party's leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who Monday made a high-profile switch to back the earmark ban.
…
Murkowski, who appears to have warded off a tea party-backed challenger in a run-off campaign, is leading the charge.
Tuesday, she offered a novel defense of seeking earmarks for her state, saying that Alaska, a “young” state admitted into the Union in 1959, hasn’t been able to enjoy earmarks for as long as the other states.
The vile Murkowski's defiance of the ban got support from Sens. Inhofe and Cochran, conditional support from Sens. Alexander and Graham, and the backing of lame-duck Sen. Bob Bennett, who thankfully was defeated in his primary and will be returning to civilian life none too soon.
BTW, the Daily Caller's contention that Murkowski appears to have won re-election is still strongly disputed by her Republican opponent, Joe Miller. Read his response to the 5 myths going around about the state of the election, and if you can, donate a few bucks to help him with the legal and other expenses related to the continuing vote count.
Here is the press conference held by a bipartisan group of New Jersey legislators challenging the constitutionality, efficacy, safety, and decency of TSA's back-scatter radiation scanners and "enhanced" pat-downs (a.k.a. gropings). They were joined by the New Jersey ACLU.
Senator Michael J. Doherty (R- Hunterdon, Warren) and Senator James Beach (D- Camden) announced they will present resolutions to the Senate and Assembly calling on the U.S. Congress to end TSA screening procedures requiring full body scans and pat downs at U.S. airports Their action comes in response to widespread concerns over privacy and radiation, as well as reports of inappropriate conduct by TSA agents during the screening process.
“The pursuit of security should not force Americans to surrender their civil liberties or basic human dignity at a TSA checkpoint,” said Doherty. “Subjecting law-abiding American citizens to naked body scans and full body pat downs is intolerable, humiliating, vulnerable to abuse, and is fast becoming a disincentive to travel. Particularly concerning to us is the fact that physical searches result in children being touched in private areas of the body. Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms upon which this great nation was built. By implementing these screening measures, the TSA has already handed a victory to those who seek to destroy our freedoms.”
…
Senator Doherty was joined at a State House press conference announcing the resolution by Senator Diane Allen (R- Burlington), American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Executive Director Deborah Jacobs, and Assembly members Erik Peterson, Alison McHose, John DiMaio, and Valerie Vanieri Huttle.
Read the whole thing. Bravo, New Jersey legislators!
