That little bugger is still sending out radio signals, and collecting data.

It appears to be in the "heliosheath," a bubble created by the sun that traps (?) cosmic rays.

Meanwhile, a pregnant question from physicists -- What if everything you didn't understand about the universe turned out to be wrong, and instead a completely different thing you didn't understand turned out to be the truth?

The universe is expanding. We don't really know why it's expanding.

It's also accelerating in its expansion. We don't know why it's acelerating in its expanding (and we do not know why it's expanding anyway).

So, in case everything wasn't baffling enough, physicists propose a new bafflement: What if the universe isn't slowing in its expansion at all? What if time is simply ticking more slowly, giving rise to the illusion of a rapidly expanding universe, when the real culprit is time, literally, running out and slowing to a crawl?

They don't discuss the most important question of all: At some point do I get to add a Time Has Slowed Minute to the clock or something? Because I really dig that extra hour we pick up every year.

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (263)
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Interrupted mid-sentence.

Via the American Spectator.

Remember, you were instructed that this has never happened before. It's simply inconceivable -- real reporters have too much respect for the dignity of the office to interrupt a president's canned remarks.

It has never before happened.

Your eyes lie to you. The media always speaks truth.

Bonus! Sam Donaldson, whose career was built on being rude to Reagan and interrupting him, declares that the only reason a reporter would interrupt Obama is racism.

Thanks to Dr. Spank.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:08 PM | Comments (150)
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Holder lied, Brian Terry died.

Council President George E. McCubbin III, a 25-year Border Patrol veteran, described Mr. Holder’s actions in the case as “a slap in the face to all Border Patrol agents who serve this country,” adding that the attorney general showed “an utter failure of leadership at the highest levels of government.”

...

Mr. McCubbin said Border Patrol agents are indoctrinated from day one of their training that “integrity is their most important trait
and that without it, they have little use to the agency.” He said agents who lie or show a lack of candor are disciplined quickly.

“The standard that applies to these agents should at a minimum be applied to those who lead them,” Mr. McCubbin said. “If Eric Holder were a Border Patrol agent and not the attorney general, he would have long ago been found unsuitable for government employment and terminated.”

Meanwhile, the whistleblower who alerted the nation that American border agents were being killed with American guns delivered to Mexican drug-dealers at the order of the American ATF remains on leave -- still being retaliated against, for the crime of telling the truth.

More than a year after ATF Special Agent John Dodson first blew the whistle on the scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, Dodson says he is "disheartened and disappointed" by the congressional investigation and Attorney General Eric HolderÂ’s handling of the botched gunrunning probe.

The Terry family has brought suit against the government over Brian Terry's death. And Dodson says the government cannot claim it wasn't warned.

Because he warned them.

...

I asked them [his supervisors] if they were prepared to go to the funeral of a Border Patrol agent over this or Cochise County deputy – if they were prepared to watch that widow accept that folded flag because that’s exactly what was going to happen. So they can't claim that was an unforeseen consequence," he said.

The man who the press should be protecting as a whistleblower is instead thrown under the bus.

Even though Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Fast and Furious was a mistake and ordered the agency to stop walking guns, Dodson says the ATF never acknowledged it did anything wrong. His former chain of command filed a complaint against Dodson for lying. Despite a mountain of evidence and testimony to the contrary, he remains on leave, rendered ineffective by the claims against him.

...

"The Secret Service scandal that just happened. Did we have to wait on an OIG report? No. In three weeks 10 guys were gone," he said. "The GSA scandal? Dealt with and gone. We shouldn't have to wait a year on a OIG report."

This report is more difficult, of course. Unlike the Secret Service scandal, this report is designed to protect the guilty -- a harder thing to do.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (88)
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The anecdote was presented as a contrast with a story relayed to him by an optometrist, who said he had to file a 33 page form to note a simple change of address (for reimbursement purposes-- I assume he means Medicare).

He then discusses the Wa-Wa quick ordering system. The "It's amazing" line refers to the difference between the two systems.

DrewM. posted this earlier, but he posted MSNBC's clip. Not the full clip, which @soopermexican has now posted.

As MSNBC deceptively edited George Zimmerman's 911 call, so too they clip this one.

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (130)
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JohnE. caught this this morning -- the Washington Post sobbing that the Presidency Is Just Too Big For One Man, noting that Newsweek tried to make the same darned case about Jimmy Carter in 1980.

James Taranto picks up this idea and finds more parallels in press spin for Jimmy Carter (and more Obama cribbing from Jimmy Carter's failed playbook.

"In the same years when presidential politics changed so greatly, governing did, too," writes the Times's Tom Wicker: "It got harder. . . . The rise of single-interest politics and independent legislators has made it more difficult to put together a governing coalition; sophisticated new lobbying techniques wielded on behalf of virtually every interest group further complicate the task. And a strong argument could be made that the major issues--energy and the economy, for instance--are more complex than they were."

Hey, wait a minute. Didn't Tom Wicker die last year?

Why yes he did. That quote came from a column he wrote in April 1980, the last time a Democratic president was in the midst of an unsuccessful re-election bid. And he's not the only one whose 32-year-old plaints sound awfully familiar.

Jimmy Carter was known for his bright smile.

"The Presidency today is entangled in the great crisis of all established authority," wrote Henry Graff, a Columbia University historian (now emeritus) in the Times July 25, 1980. "Executives of every kind--political, educational, ecclesiastical, corporate--are under incessant public attack." Those damn blogs! The president's life, Graff wrote, "is under such relentless scrutiny that he can only seem ordinary, never extraordinary. No man is a hero to his valet, and America is now a nation of valets."

Graff did not mention Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth.

"Watching President Carter try to juggle all the contradictory foreign and domestic problems of the nation during a presidential election and an economic recession, you have to wonder who can do it and who can govern America," wrote James Reston, another Times columnist, in June 1980.

Reston, who died in 1995, concluded: "Carter's campaign theme is clear. It is that while the economic figures are not on his side, the economic 'trends' are changing for the better, and that, as he hopes to demonstrate in his meetings with world figures, he knows more about foreign policy than [Ted] Kennedy, Reagan or [John] Anderson."

And to point out the Very Obvious-- when Republicans are perceived as failing, the press attempts no similar defenses. In such cases, the job of the president is not impossible -- it's just that the current Republican office-holder has failed.

It is only when Democrats fail do we begin learning about how complex and difficult this job is -- impossible, actually.

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (274)
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When I saw the headline about a law professor urging his defeat, I thought he'd say something about Obama asserting more and more unilateral executive power, threatening the very Constitution he has sworn to uphold, and which has served us well for 230 years.

Nope. He's bothered that Obama hasn't done more.

[H]is most barbed remarks he reserves for the Democrat leader saying that Mr Obama has 'evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle'.

His summary of the past four years is equally scathing: 'Give the bond markets what they want, bail out the reckless so long as they are also rich, use fiscal and monetary stimulus to make up for the absence of any consequential broadening of economic and educational opportunity, sweeten the pill of disempowerment with a touch of tax fairness, even though the effect of any such tax reform is sure to be modest.'

Most of Mr Unger's comments seem to be politically to the left of Mr Obama, but he insists that the Republicans would be no more destructive than the Democrats as 'the risk of military adventurism' would remain the same.

And some would doubtless strike a chord with the President's GOP opponents, including the academic's attacks on Mr Obama's efforts to reform healthcare.

Mr Unger argues: 'He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight.'

He also suggests that, despite their fierce rivalry, the Democrats' agenda is little different to that of the Republicans, saying the party aims 'to put a human face on the programme of its adversaries'.

The professor concludes his video by saying: 'Only a political reversal can allow the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.'

I think I agree, although not in the way this socialist means.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (146)
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If you're unfamiliar with the ordering process at a regional restaurant chain, you're too out of touch to be President or something.

First of all, how often do you think Andrea Mitchell and Allen Greenspan are chowing down at a nearby Wa-Was (I gather from sources, it's a Mid-Atlantic Philadelphia area chain)? My prediction....NEVER.

Beyond that, this is a transparent attempt to catch Mitt in some sort of George H.W. Bush grocery scanner moment. Like this moment of faux outrage, that bit of fiction was simply the work of the liberal media in service to their hero of the moment.

When asked for comment about Mitt's reaction to the automated ordering machine, Barack Obama responded, "Like those lousy ATMs, the ordering terminals at Wan-Wa's are costing real Americans and the illegals I'm immunizing from deportation, jobs".

(It's quite possible I made that Obama quote up).

Posted by: DrewM at 11:54 AM | Comments (233)
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Writing at PJ Media:

What I call “Securitygate” — the release of the most intricate details about the cyber war against Iran, the revelations about a Yemeni double-agent, disclosures about covert operations in and against Pakistan, intimate details about the Osama bin Laden raid and the trove of information taken from his compound, and the Predator drone assassination list and the president’s methodology in selecting targets — is far more serious than either prior scandal. David Sanger and others claim that all this was sort of in the public domain anyway; well, “sort of” covers a lot of ground. We sort of knew about the cyber war against Iran, but not to the detail that Sanger provides and not through the direct agency of the Obama administration itself.

Here is the crux of the scandal: Obama is formulating a new policy of avoiding overt unpopular engagements, while waging an unprecedented covert war across the world. He’s afraid that the American people do not fully appreciate these once-secret efforts and might in 2012 look only at his mishaps in Afghanistan or his public confusion over Islamic terror. Ergo, feed information to a Sanger or Ignatius so that they can skillfully inform us, albeit with a bit of dramatic “shock” and “surprise,” just how tough, brutal, and deadly Barack Obama really is.

. . .

Is the world to be outraged that Russia sends war material to Syria or Iran arms to Hezbollah — when it matter-of-factly now reads that almost all communications inside Pakistan are intercepted? Do we need to know that the U.S. warped medical vaccination programs to gain information about bin Laden — right out of a scene from the film Man on Fire? I bet the Gates Foundation and other American philanthropic organizations will appreciate the doubt that will now be cast on their own vaccination efforts.

. . .

We donÂ’t quite have an investigative press these days, but rather a Ministry of Truth put in charge of Barack ObamaÂ’s public relations: when the worldwide Left worries that Obama is too militaristic, we heard of deep engagement with Catholic theologians and a desire to go after former CIA agents, or more plans to close Guantanamo; when the Right is up in arms that Obama is not pursuing Islamic terrorists, then the drone tally, cyber war, and more details about Osama bin Laden suddenly are all over the news.

Much more at the link. The fact is, Obama couldn't care less what harm he causes--to the extent his reelection prospects aren't adversely affected. People who lack empathy do that. He is an utterly selfish person, and he will use his "mirrors" in the press to reflect his greatness as much as they will allow him.

Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:53 AM | Comments (180)
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Obama has repeatedly tried to kill the DC scholarship program that enables about 1,200 DC kids to escape from the hole that is the DC school system. Republicans kept pushing back and funding the program and now Obama has agreed to keep it alive.

A small but important victory.

"Thousands of families have taken advantage of this scholarship program to give their children an opportunity to succeed in life, and there's strong evidence that it's both effective and cost-effective," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement today. "I'm pleased that an agreement has been reached to expand the program, consistent with the law already on the books.

Ninety-one percent of the District students who participate in the scholarship program graduate from high school, and yet the Senate Democrats voted in 2009, at the behest of the National Education Association teachers' union, to bar new students from entering the program.

House Republicans succeeded in reauthorizing the scholarship program in 2011, but the president chose not to fund the program in his most recent budget request. That decision threatened 1,200 students who applied for scholarships this year.

Related enough: Black families are the fastest growing segment of home schoolers.

If Republicans are ever going to make gains with minority voters (or at least limit the damage with them), education choice is probably one of the best issues we have to connect with them on.

The GOP has been fighting for school choice for awhile now, perhaps we're starting to see some of the fruits of that effort.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:56 AM | Comments (178)
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Graphic displaying the sum total of Nancy Pelosi's adherence to her professed church's (Roman Catholic) dogma and practice available for viewing below the fold: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:51 AM | Comments (252)
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