“Where Egypt sits in the world .. it has of course the Panama Canal …”

Chris Matthews, Sooooper Genius

Stay Tuned?  Right.  With Pam Dauber.  HUGE crush there.  Went to college with a girl who looked a LOT like her.  Huge crush there too.  Totally unrequited.  And not for a lack of trying.  Last I heard she was a missionary in Africa.  Not sure is she's better off or not. 

And I just hit 4100 movies on flickcharts.com.  With the Oscars around the corner thought I'd revisit 2010 movies.  

My fave?  Toy Story 3.  Unthinkable & Never Let Me Go are high due to thier ethical content.  Remy and I enjoyed Howl the other night.  Stone comes in at #5 for no apparent reason.  I look for it to drop in subsequent rankings. Alice in Wonderland.  Ghost Writer.  The Experiment.  Easy A.  and the Expendables.  No Inception until #15.  Still don't see what the dealeeo is. 

K J Lopez noted that Obama could have simply quoted the motto of Center Rock, the Keystone company the president gave props to for its work in saving those Chilean miners: “Drill Faster, Run Harder, Work Smarter.”

Another offensive line:

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.

(emphasis added).

You got that?  When you are allowed to keep your money, that is considered “spending” by the Federal Government.  Because in reality all of the fruits of your labor belong to us, the government.

And finally .... I was in vitro during Sputnik.  Barry Soetoro wasn't even CLOSE.

Sputnik grew out of the profound belief that the Soviet Union had shot ahead of us in the space race and that this was a direct challenge to American supremacy.   As the Washington Times points out,  this was not some abstract exercise in education investment.  It grew out of a belief that (a) the Soviet Union presented a serious threat to the American way of life, (b) technological prowess, no, superiority, was an essential component of national greatness and (c) America was #1 and should remain #1.  it is pretty easy to believe that if Obama had been in politics in 1957,  he would not have embraced any of those beliefs.  Indeed, today,  he finds it hard to call our “enemies” enemies, does not believe that America is “exceptional” any more than Great Britain or Greece is “exceptional,” nor does he believe in the notion of national greatness.

Obama using the “Sputnik moment” line is more about advancing his domestic spending agenda than it is about meeting America’s global challenges.

hat tip to Peter Schweitzer @ bigpeace.com

As some know, back in 2009 I got one of the three best Christmas presents EVER: a 16G Ipod. I've LOVED the plethora of podcasts available and recently stumbled upon a new trove: old time radio!  Mystery,suspense, horror, thrillers, detectives - it's been fun. 

Didja know, for example, that CBS was running radio dramas clear into the mid 70's.  It's TRUE.

And the voices.  Everybody did these things.  Many of the names from 40's and  50's Hollywood ... and quite a few names that made it into TV.  Allen Ladd, William Concrad, William Powell.  Jack Webb did a LOT of these, both in leading roles and supporting.  Vincent Price.  E.G. Marshall.  And Lionel Barrymore was all OVER the place with that trademark nasal whine.

During the flight to Philly last week I got a chance to hear Orson Welles do Harry Lime .... episode was called "Two's Company" ... kind of Romeo & Juliette meets the Fantastiks.  VERY well written. 

My other "discovery" ... Anchor Hocking, HQ'd right here in Lancaster OH, sponsored a show called "Casey, Crime Photographer'.  Show was fair for it's time.  But the lead character was played by a voice named Staats Cotsworth.  Say it a few times out loud.  GREAT name.

from around the 'nets re: SOTU.

From Nick Schultz: It Depends on What the Definition of ‘None of Us Can Predict’ Is…

The Salmon joke is almost 87% of what's wrong with government.

POTUS took credit for limiting the spread of nukes to Iran and North Korea? That's risible.

Translation of the “South Sudan” portion of the speech: "We're happy they can vote in South Sudan. They'd just better not try to sell us stuff."

And since The One was trying to be Reaganesque how about “A MILLION POINTS OF TRITE.”

“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

 

see also Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Henry Ludlow, 10 AUG 1824

 

Maybe because it was severely under-reported.

In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.

At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.

The story never left Kansas City. It is not hard to understand why. Knives lack the political sex appeal of guns, and even Keith Olbermann would have had a hard time turning Brezik into a Tea Partier.

Indeed, Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.

so here's THE SB prediction.  Sooo glad I can cleanly go with the Steelers.  IMHO these are two of the three best teams in the NFL (absent: Pats).  Line currently has GB -2, 44 1/2.  I like the Packers by 1.81 (thus providing the illusion of specificity).  So today I'd take the Steelers and the points (although I'm hoping it drops to 1 1/2 so I can bet thePackers and LAY the points).  Final score prediction roughs out to Packers 23.155   Steelers 21.345.Betting line score is 23.25 to 21.25.  So for giggles I'll go with

Packers 24

Steelers 21

Go Mason Crosby!!!!

GREG MANKIW:

I have a plan to reduce the budget deficit. The essence of the plan is the federal government writing me a check for $1 billion. The plan will be financed by $3 billion of tax increases. According to my back-of-the envelope calculations, giving me that $1 billion will reduce the budget deficit by $2 billion.

Now, you may be tempted to say that giving me that $1 billion will not really reduce the budget deficit. Rather, you might say, it is the tax increases, which have nothing to do with my handout, that are reducing the budget deficit. But if you are tempted by that kind of sloppy thinking, you have not been following the debate over healthcare reform.

Healthcare reform, its advocates tell us, is fiscal reform. The healthcare reform bill passed last year increased government spending to cover the uninsured, but it also reduced the budget deficit by increasing various taxes as well. Because of this bill, the advocates say, the federal government is on a sounder fiscal footing. Repealing it, they say, would make the budget deficit worse.

So, by that logic, giving me $1 billion is fiscal reform as well. To be honest, I don’t really need the money. But if I can help promote long-term fiscal sustainability, I am ready to do my part.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Related: Post-tax-increase, the exodus from Illinois begins.