here's my College Top n list, after two weeks of play

1.  Oregon.  Yes.  Really

2.  Alabama.  Looked good vs octogenerian JoePa this w/e

3.  Ohio State.  Good but not as good (right now) as those other two, can still get there if they run the table and get some help.  Golden Goophballs loosing to the Fighting Sigh -ooks does NOT count as help.

4.  I kinda like the Gators here but they'll drop when the tide roll's 'em.  LSU?  Not after the near debacle vs UNC.  Cal looks good but they'll stumble.  Let's give it to Texas.

5.   South Carolina?  LOL.  We'll put Boise State here although the road win over Va Tech doesn't look NEARLY as good now.

This morning I walked to the store to pick up a few basis for todays viewing (lunch meat, cheese, ice cream, etc.) The sky was a beautiful shade of blue with a few streak of white. My i-pod was playing music from NFL films. My old HS beat the rival on Friday night and Saturdays games were pretty satisfying.

I'm now home and settled in. Nice cup of coffee. Browser opened to all appropriate pages. Phone turned off. “Recall” button on the remote programmed. Windows are open and the neighbor has fired up the grill.

It's all I can do not to weep that my life is so good.

Peter Schweitzer's friend Marc Thiessen uncovered this gem in Tony Blair’s new memoir.  President George W. Bush is at the G-8 summit with Tony Blair and they are listening to the prime minster of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt,  drone on about global warming. Blair writes:

George had arrived bang on time for this first discussion and had not fully said hello to all the participants. He didn’t know or recognize Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment.

He turned to me and whispered, “Who is this guy?”

“He’s the prime minister of Belgium,” I said.

“Belgium?” George said, clearly aghast at the possible full extent of his stupidity. “Belgium’s not part of the G8.”

“No,” I said, “but he is the president of Europe.”

“You got Belgians running Europe?” He shook his head, now aghast at our stupidity.

The difference between Middle Eastern and Western economic approaches can be seen even in their distinctive forms of corruption, from which neither society is exempt. In the West, one makes money in the market, and uses it to buy or influence power. In the East, one seizes power, and uses it to make money. Morally there is no difference between the two, but their impact on the economy and on the polity is very different.

Wife having back problems and I got bz enjoying the holiday weekend (by reviewig notes for the six hours of lectures I'm givig today) so no much posting but this is giving me some grist.  Mollie Hemingway overon Ricochet observes

Ed Driscoll had a prescient blog post titled 'Something Weird Happens When Presidencies Go Wrong.' It looks at how Presidential gaffes and incompetence beget more Presidential gaffes and incompetence. This clearly plagues President Obama but he's by no means the first president to suffer in this manner.

And that was before his speech yesterday. I didn't listen but followed online a bit. He said something that I'm sure made his aides just groan:

“They talk about me like a dog,” Obama said with a chuckle of his political opponents. “That’s not in my prepared remarks but it’s true.”

First: "They talk about me like a dog."  How would a dog talk about him?

Second: The ONLY reference I could find to ANYONE connecting  Obama to being a dog is .... OBAMA!  From The Hill:

President Obama waded into the national race debate in an unlikely setting and with an unusual choice of words: telling daytime talk show hosts that African-Americans are “sort of a mongrel people.”

The president appeared on ABC’s morning talk show “The View” Thursday, where he talked about the forced resignation of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, his experience with race and his roots.

When asked about his background, which includes a black father and white mother, Obama said of African-Americans: "We are sort of a mongrel people."

 Third: a collection of responses:

@iowahawkblog Didja hear about the dyslexic agnostic narcissist President? He laid awake all night wondering if he was really Dog.
@ExJon My dog is mad at me again. (I talk about her like Obama.)
@jtLOL Who’s a good president? Obama’s a good president, isn’t he? Yes he is! http://bit.ly/aUvfps
@gpollowitz In dog years, Obama has served his full two terms.

of posts regarding the liberal Democrat Green Gunman

MARK HEMINGWAY: Will the media call the Silver Spring/Discovery Channel gunman an environmental terrorist? “The question is, to what extent will the media note that this violence was spurred by a radical left-wing environmental agenda, or that eco-terrorism is not a new phenomenon and is arguably the America’s biggest domestic terrorist threat?”

from Chris Horner:

Now, both Fox News and CNN have reported that Lee attributed his radicalism to the writings of two men — Daniel Quinn and Al Gore. The Washington Post carried a fairly lengthy article exploring the former, who dismisses any connection. That piece and the main news feature are both silent on the deceased’s giving equal credit to Gore (although a pop-up ad for China’s solar industry does accompany one of them). This is true of the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, among others.

Beck’s (somewhat backhanded, I understand) rationale for exculpating Gore of partial responsibility is that the terrorist was not a sane person. Yep. But the two — culpability by Gore and other radical green imams, and acting out by mentally unstable members of their targeted demographic — aren’t mutually exclusive. We know that individuals bear responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, both the instigator and the instigated.

One might not like the connection, what with environmentalism being as chic as a Che Guevara handbag, but you can’t deny it. Take the quiz, “Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?“. I dare you to score better than 50%. That should make you uncomfortable. Then read Lee’s manifesto, and really squirm at the similarities.

from Melissa Clouthier

One of my children has autism. An autistic child is inside his own head and lacks a certain self-awareness. So, for example, when the child does repetitive behaviors called "stimming" like rocking in place or flapping his hands in front of his eyes, he doesn't realize what he's doing. A parent might say, "Johnny, stop swaying" or "Stop flapping" and the child will continue. He doesn't know that he's doing anything.

Modeling normative behavior can help-but only if the child is aware of the normative behavior. That is, if he is not "seeing" it, he cannot model it. He is internally focused and that's the problem.

So how do you get that child out of his head? You mirror his behavior. Try it some time. A child who is swaying or flapping will show a dawn of awareness when the parent or teacher mirrors what the child is doing in front of his face. So, in my house, I will start flapping my hands in front of my face and my son will get a sly smile of awareness and he'll stop. He gets out of his own head for a minute, registers his behavior and quits. It is very effective. In fact, it is far more effective than modeling...until the unwanted behavior stops. Once the child stops the asocial behavior, he will start watching for different behavior. Awareness comes first.

You can see where I'm going with this. From what I can tell, and it's a scientific fact to boot, leftists lack empathy. That is, they cannot put themselves in someone elses' shoes and modify behavior based on how they would feel if the behavior was turned toward them. They are rather autistic about their intellectual and social behavior. They'll tar and feather a whole segment of people based on the action of one crazy and not even bat an eye. However, when their own crazy gets caught, they want the more reasonable and reasoned and logical response of not smearing a whole group of people (say, all people who watched and liked the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth).

Modeling has not helped the left. They simply do not see good behavior. They're too into their own lefty world where their own asocial behavior is reinforced and fed (for example, Journolist).

What is the answer then? Mirroring.

At every opportunity, people on the right need to illustrate the absurd by being absurd. A crazy dude who hates babies and loves squirrels? Why, he's a typical environmentalist! I mean, how is he different from Keith Olbermann and Dylan Ratigan? They're all crazy, anger-lust filled wackos who would love for the world to be rid of humans and populated with trillions of squirrels.

The funny thing is that conservatives and libertarians on Twitter are in on the joke. Well, most of them are. They get that the smear is unfair and ridiculous. They understand that it's childish and a little silly. They have also learned that modeling fairness to the lefties does not work. They simply are too inside their own experience.

So, mirroring it is. When lefties start holding to fairness in reporting and thinking, when they start viewing right-leaning outliers as the work of crazy outliers, it will be time to start modeling good behavior.

I understand the notion of being above it and acting in a manner in which you want others to act. I get not getting dirty. I also know that playing nice hamstrings the right and gives the left license. So, as long as the mirroring is conducted in a self-aware, joking manner, I say have at it.

Court Jesters, parody, and all manner of humor have always been used to reveal absurdity and bad behavior. Until the left mends their mendacious ways, mirroring is the best medicine.

Crossposted at Liberty Pundits

Deval Patrick: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t.”

I can't even bring myself to write about this.  Here are some links:

No, I’m not making this up: In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that “there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in [the reform law] and what isn’t.” The remedy for the poor, bewildered public? “We have a lot of reeducation to do.”

As Glenn Reynolds quipped, “Maybe there are camps for that?”

Maybe these politicians would’ve been better off if they’d read the bill in the first place. But not even Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the leaders in the push for passage, had time to do that.

So who is it that needs a re-education? Not the American people, but the political leadership itself — a lesson that will likely come at the ballot box.