My elite 8:  Florida, Indiana (whose schedule has finally gotten tough), Michigan, Louisville, Duke (because what's an elite eight without those two and/or Kentucky), Kansas, Syracuse, and the surprise ... Pittsburgh!

Gonzaga is 3-0 vs top 25 so they're the good second tier team.  Buckeyes are my #10 but must avoid falling apart down the wire.  Not convinced they won't.  Minnie ha ha is solid.  Arizona is ALSO 3-0 vs top 25 but none of those teams are in the top 15.  Kentucky?  0-3 vs top 25.  But you can't count 'em out.  The State University of Florida at Coral Gabels has the second toughest schedule at this point, are 17-3 and deserve respect.  Wisconsin rounds out the Big ? participation ... and Creighton is the other small school rep.

Remember waaaay back to ....oh .... YESTERDAY!  When I posted about FDR/Obama's yearinging for a "left wing" Bill of Rights mirroring that used in South Africa?  The one that gave rights that aren't rights?  The destructive one?

Today the Columbus Dispatch quotes Cleveland area State Representative Mike Foley (D) “People aren’t looking for tax cuts; they’re looking for government (to provide) goods and services," he said.

It gets worse.  Accordig to Third Base Blog:

Take this comment from Brian Rothenberg, a liberal so shameless that he actually once used a school shooting tregady to create a fake condolence website to trick people into joining an anti-gun propaganda mailing list:

“Anticipated income tax cuts in Kasich’s budget – expected to be unveiled Monday – together with federal spending cuts could create a “perfect storm” that would have “devastating effects on middle class Ohioans,” said Brian Rothenberg, executive director of Progress Ohio, a left-leaning public policy group.”

Unbelievable. Middle class families do not depend on government spending to make ends meet, Mr. Rothenberg.

Do You Like Hitchcock?

D Argento's tribute to the master.   Lots of scenes to bring back memoires.  Not bad.  Wouldn't recommendit to sany but an Argento fan though.

HAD started to watch Groundhog Day but I feel like I've seen it before ...

Lost more in November/December than I thought.  I've trimmed my daily mileage to 2, forbidden days with lifting AND running ... and my lower leg problems are back.

On the flip side, it's been bitter cold here, snow (so footing has been "off" for a month) and windier than it needs to be.  Typical Ohio mid-winter.

At least I HOPE that's what it is.  I'll muddle through.  Still planning on M-D Games in March, but not looking for much, without significant improvement in February.

WSJ Marketwatch’s Darrell Delamaide worries about the Misesian takeover:

The U.S. economy has fared somewhat better than Europe precisely because Obama in his first term was able to get some stimulus spending passed, while Europe remains mired in the obsolete and discredited policies of the “Austrian” school of economics, which sees austerity as the answer to everything — much as medieval doctors saw leeching as the cure for all illness.

Of course, as EPJ points out, “austerity” in Europe mostly means tax increases, with no real reductions in government spending or government intervention in the economy. The essence of the Austrian program, right?

And leeching?  Sucking the blood out of the patient?  Sounds like the POTUS' "raise taxes, spending be damned" policy.  The WSJ get it totally, completely and inexorably backward.  Every.  Word.

The $95 penalty will increase to $695 in 2016, and continue to grow thereafter at a "pre-determined" rate.

Households that do not earn enough to pay federal income tax are exempt from the penalty of the mandate, as are persons who are temporarily unemployed or transitioning from one job to another.

The current rules of the healthcare overhaul also say that if you have insurance "for one day of a month," it will count as having coverage for that entire month.

So some smart company is going to offer insurance for one day a month!  Small premium (less than $95 in 2014, increasing to less than $695 by 2016) .... maybe even be able to buy it by the year - and always be covered on the 1st, or 12th, or 15th or whatever.  The gubmint will then make it illegal because they were  too stupid to think of it.

Having an intermittent discussion with a "rational scientific athiest" regarding the HHS mandate.  The point I've nearly convinced him of is the religeous freedom, as guarenteed in the Constitution, is the freedom to NOT believe.  He should support those arguing for religeous freedom so as not to have a belief imposed on him.

Walter Weber has done a GREAT job explaining the problem.

Money graph:

Suppose the time is pre–Civil War, post–Dred Scott (i.e., slavery is legal and protected by the Supreme Court) and the benefit in question is, instead of birth control, ownership of human slaves. The (admittedly anachronistic) federal Department of Labor decides that, to help poor people manage their households and maintain gainful employment outside the home, they should receive subsidies to purchase domestic services, such as childcare, housekeeping, cooking, and other chores. To do this, the DOL imposes regulations saying that companies that employ more than 50 people have to buy insurance for the staff that covers, without copay, the purchase of certain domestic services. The regulation explicitly included providing for such domestic services by buying one slave per every four members of a household. This is touted as a matter of fairness — after all, rich people can buy plenty of slaves already — and slavery is, at least in many states, perfectly legal, indeed a property “right.” Plus, DOL argues, slavery and other domestic services will boost the economy by freeing up potential workers from duties at home.

Not surprisingly, some businesses and their owners object to being complicit in human slavery. These objectors challenge the federal rule as a violation of their religious freedom.

Read the whole thing

Sunstein: Obama Wants 'Second Bill of Rights'

This is nothing new.  Mere hours after Breitbart News published an excerpt from an interview with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in which he speculated that President Barack Obama would "prefer a different kind of constitution," one with a Bill of Rights based on the South African model, former Obama administration regulatory czar Cass Sunstein published an op-ed making a similar argument: that the president wants a "second Bill of Rights" alongside the existing one.

But these "things" that are declared as rights in these documents aren't rights.  They incurr obligations on others to GIVE you something.  A right to self defense does NOT mean the gubmint has to provide you with a gun.  Roosevelt's BoR provides for "The right to a useful and remunerative job."  Someone has to GIVE you that. 

The right to free speech does NOT mean the gubmint has to give me a microphone or a radio station.  The SA BoR (which reads like an American Socialist Manifesto) provides for "the right to food and water."  Which means I no longer have to work for or obtain it.  It will be GIVEN to me.

It all sounds like something dreamed up at a HS slumber party.  Sadly, the REST of us have graduated and have to deal with the real world.  You may ignore reality (ie elect/re-elect Obama.)  We may NOT ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.   

Remember playing games on the playground when you were a kid?  You'd make up the rules as you went.  It might be two on two half court basektball.  Or four on four two hand tab football.  Or softball with ghost runners.  Or some variation of Calvinball

But there were rules.  And we agreed on them.  And we played by them.  Consider the role of rules even in recreational games. The foul line, the distance from the pitcher’s mound to the batting box, the number of strikes or balls. None of these has an objectively reasonable prescription. Yet the games can be played only because of the rules—whatever they are. Made-up games of our childhood collapsed quickly not because the games were uninteresting (although they often were), but because we couldn't resist changing the rules in the middle of the game in our favor. Children soon tire of the arguing and bargaining that substitutes for the playing, and they give up the game, exasperated.

So do adults.

I keep hearing that he has a mandate ... that we aughta just roll over and let him have his way, etc.  Then I read Gallup.

According to Gallup, President Obama is tied with George W. Bush for most unpopular re-elected president since Gallup began measuring presidential job-approval in 1945.

In fact, Gallup found that apart from Bush, "every president...has had a higher job-approval rating in the January following his reelection than Obama has."

Obama's approval rating is at 52. 

Think about it this way--following reelection, President Reagan's approval numbers beat Obama's by 11 points, President Eisenhower's beat Obama's by 21, and a much-derided Republican President named Richard Nixon beat Obama's numbers by 7.