Airventure 2009
Starting Sunday the Salmon will be blog-casting from Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh Wisconsin as we attend the 2009 Experimental Aircraft Association's Airventure. The trip was such a success last year that my friend from Alaska decided that we must go again. Thankfully the woman that lets me live with her is very understanding and she will be vacationing in beautiful upper Michigan without me this year. (Please, no Brokeback jokes)

I had intended to blog from our campground last year but our location behind the metal shed next to the broken down combine made wireless reception a challenge. This year we have decided to go all out and stay at Sleepy Hollow Farm conveniently located within walking distance of the main gate and the ever important beer tent.

The EAA web site declares!, "Cool' Factor: Off the Charts Unmatched collection of aircraft coming to Oshkosh"

More than 2,500 showplanes, including hundreds of warbirds, arrive at Oshkosh each year. In many cases, the owners, builders and pilots of these unique aircraft participate in the nearly 1,000 forums, presentations and workshops that take place during AirVenture week. Attendees can ask questions and learn more at these forums, which are included in all AirVenture admissions
Air craft to include:
Virgin Galactic VMS Mothership "Eve" (July 27-August 1): Born as "WhiteKnightTwo," VMS Eve is the next generation of civilian space carrier vehicle

Airbus A380 (July 28-31): The world's largest passenger airliner, which will also be open for public tours during its stay in Oshkosh

Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)

Staying at the field will also allow us to take advantage of the evening activities that are offered throughout the week. Monday night the Doobie Brothers (wow are they still around) will perform and there is a nightly airplane movie drive in style.

So if blogging becomes sparse, its only because we are having to damn much aero-fun.

"I had the right to remain silent but was too stupid to use it.
Headline stolen from Ron White

I was not going to comment on the Professor Gates bruhaha because it seemed like triviality. Then I came across the following Chris Rock Video that should be required viewing for all pinheaded academic types lacking any real world life experiences. (Disclaimer: Any resemblance to my fine Iowa professors, past or future, is purely coincidental;)

Via: American Digest.

Godwin's Law may apply here, A Platform for Change
From American Thinker

We're all Califorians now, The Blue-State Meltdown
From The American

Liar Liar, Health Care Mythology
From RCP

Pants on Fire, The Three Big Lies
Also From RCP

"If you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it.", You will pay less.","Quality will improve."

Sen. Tom Harkin (D,Ia) just wants us to be happy.
From the desk of Comrade Harkin

We also have to change the health care system itself, beginning with a sharp new emphasis on prevention and public health.We also have to realize that wellness and prevention must be truly comprehensive.

It is not only about what goes on in a doctor’s office. It encompasses workplace
wellness programs, community-wide wellness programs, building bike paths and walking trails, getting junk food out of our schools, making school breakfasts and lunches more nutritious, increasing the amount of physical activity our children get, and so much more...

Comprehensive health reform legislation is our opportunity to change the paradigm. We are going to extend health insurance to every American. And we are going to give our citizens access to a 21st century health care system – one that is focused on helping us to live healthy, active, happy lives.

UPDATE July 23
From the Des Moines Register
We need to RAMROD this through before people realize it smells like an Iowa hog lot in July.

Six of Iowa's seven members of Congress, including all three Democrats in the House, said Wednesday that rushing legislation to a vote by Aug. 8 could further penalize Iowa doctors and hospitals...

Sen. Tom Harkin, a senior Democrat on health-care legislation, is the lone voice among the Iowans for urgency. He said delaying action beyond the late-summer break would allow critics time to build opposition." The longer you leave it out there, the more holes you're going to have shot in it," said Harkin, a top Democrat on one of the Senate's health-writing committees. "I'd rather get something done, even if it's imperfect."

Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican on the influential Finance Committee, said the shadow that health care casts over the nation's economy suggests it is better to spend more time trying to minimize the impact on the front end than leave crucial details to be worked out in the fall by a House-Senate conference committee.

Plus, the longer the issues are aired, the more opportunity the public gets to comment, Grassley said."If we're putting up a policy that can't withstand the test of public opinion, we shouldn't be doing it in the first place," he said.

Why Obamacare Cant Work: The Hayek Argument

Two days ago I posted an argument against Obamacare from the Mises Institute that showed that the plan to fix healthcare isn't addressing the central problem; that government intervention in the system what is driving the healthcare "crisis". (scare quotes courtesy B.HO)

Today John Stassel makes what I think is the most cogent argument against government healthcare which is what Economist Fredrick Hayek described in "Fatal Conceit, the Errors in Socialism". A market economy is like a living breathing ecosystem and intervention within the system creates not only inefficiencies as the Mises article pointed out but also creates unforeseeable and potentially dangerous reactions that no person or group of persons can foresee or control. Government lending money to people that can't afford a house for example.

The biggest conceit of American Socialists is that despite overwhelming evidence that what they want to do has failed miserably where ever it has been tried and has caused more death and suffering than any previous social system they feel that they are somehow smarter and will not make the same mistakes. Or they believe, despite the evidence presented, that socialism must necessarily be better than the system we have now because there is still suffering in the world. It never ceases to amaze me that leftists see themselves as the people of reason and those on the right are the irrational ones.

From RCP:

Like the politicians, most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy -- or even 15 percent of one -- doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered
piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets -- private property, free exchange and the price system -- can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.

This is no less true for medical care than for food, clothing and shelter. It is profit-seeking entrepreneurship that gave us birth control pills, robot limbs, Lasik surgery and so many other good things that make our lives longer and more pain free.

To the extent the politicians ignore this, they are the enemy of our well-being. The belief that they can take care of us is rank superstition.

Flotsam and Jetsam
Thx. Dave

Thanks to Obama, Luxury cars are soon to be a thing of the past.
They have always been beyond my means but I took out a Cadillac Escalade last week for a test drive, just to drive that sucker before they become extinct.The salesman sat in the back seat describing the car and all it's wonderful options.

The seats were of particular interest.
He explained the seats directed warm air to your butt in the winter and directed cool air to your butt in the summer heat. I stated the car must be a Republican car. He asked why I thought it was a Republican car.

If it were a Democratic car the seats would just blow smoke up your ass.

It's ironic that my liberal friend sends me these jokes when he finds them so objectionable when I send them to him. I think perhaps he is just pulling my chain.

Obama Lemonade near Henderson Iowa Ragbrai got under way yesterday and this enterprising Iowa farmer has taken the cue from the President on how to generate revenue.

For the Children From American Thinker

"EMP 101" A Basic Primer & Suggestions for Preparedness
From The Silver Bear Cafe

NASA has posted some recent pictures of the Apollo landing sites on the moon and in the photo of Apollo 14 above you can actually see the foot path created by the astronauts. Now I don't want to go all conspiratorial or anything but Apollo 15, 16, and 17 was equipped with a Lunar Rover. The pictures fail to show where it was left parked or the tracks in the lunar dust from the Astronauts four wheelin adventures. This is very suspicious! Has NASA finally shown its hand or were the Rovers dragged into the lunar underworld by the ant creatures?

Why Obamacare Can't Work: The Calculation Argument
From Mises Instatute

Obama assures us that this is not government-run healthcare, that this is not a single-payer system, that the only consequence to these reforms is that healthcare will cost less and that anybody who denies this is misleading or does not understand the facts. Without his reform, he insists, costs will grow unsustainably, which will threaten reimbursements and the stability of the healthcare system.

Unfortunately, since Obama uses faulty logic to diagnose the problem, his solutions will only make matters worse faster. The correct framework within which to diagnose the problem is to admit that costs are out of control because they do not reflect prices created by the voluntary exchange between patients and providers, between customers and producers, like every well-functioning industry.

Instead, health costs reflect the distortions that government regulators have introduced through reimbursement mechanisms created by command-and-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels.

Simply put, Medicare, Medicaid, workers compensation, HMOs and even private health-insurance firms that follow Medicare rates, rely on cost reports submitted by providers. This cost data is then pushed through mathematical models and additional data generated by government, such as inflation and regional-labor-cost modifiers, to unilaterally (or in agreement with lobbyists and industry groups) determine what the prices for services should be.

Via Maggies Farm

Sunday Service

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's A race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far,
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Socialist America sinking
From Patrick Buchanan

After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published "The People's Pottage." A year later, in 1954, he died. "The People's Pottage" opens thus:

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."

Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.

Good enough for thee but not for me: Their Own Medicine Senators prefer the insurance they have.
From the WSJ

In the health debate, liberals sing Hari Krishnas to the "public option" -- a new federal insurance program like Medicare -- but if it's good enough for the middle class, then surely it's good enough for the political class too? As it happens, more than a few Democrats disagree.

On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment courtesy of Republican Tom Coburn that would require all Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan. Yet all Democrats -- with the exceptions of acting chairman Chris Dodd, Barbara Mikulski and Ted Kennedy via proxy -- voted nay.

Advice for Sarah Palin

My normally rational wife commented that maybe we should see if we qualify for the state child insurance program. I have seen normally conservative bloggers write about pricing new cars to take advantage of the government rebates. I've even had visions of sugarplums when I hear of proposals about the government paying off student loans. It's very easy to fall prey to these enticements.

The socialists dangle bits of candy in front of our collective noses and we are blinded to the fact that every piece we take chips away at liberty. None of it is free, it all comes with strings attached. What is needed now is two things. First, every freedom loving American needs to just say no to whatever Obama offers.

Second there needs to be a political realignment within the next few years. What we have now are the Social Democrats on the right and the Socialists on the the left. To borrow from H.L. Menken:

Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibalists on the other... It is a pity that this is so...

What it (democracy) needs beyond everything is a party of liberty.

Fortunately there are some outliers, such as Sarah Palin who just might pull off such a realignment. She is outside the political mainstream and has the rhetoric and popularity to get such a message out. One questions however is if she has the intellectual weight to make the case without sounding like an angry populist flatlander. The press, as she has painfully learned, has the ability to make outliers appear as cranks if they are not careful.

What she shows so far all seems to come more from the gut. Guts have thier place of course. Like quiting your job, going fishing for the week end, and then to everyones amazement jumping back into the scrum. The base loves her guts but she needs more. She has to demonstrate that she has put some thought into what she believes. It is one thing to call Obama a socialist it is another to explain how and why that is a bad thing.

With that in mind I would suggest to the Governor that she immerse herself in progressive history, read the arguments against the socialist state from people like Fredrick Hayek, and listen to the speeches of Ronald Reagan. Then over the next 6 years (this has to be a long term project) educate the mushy middle of the American polity and position yourself as the candidate for liberty.

Powerline Series: The Road to Soft Despotism

Last month I wrote that I believed the path we are now on, call it Modern Liberalism, Progressivism, or Socialism can only lead to a form of despotism. This month Professor Paul Rahe, author of the book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect has an ongoing series at Powerline that should be a must read for anyone interested in Obama's political philosophy, where it came from, and why it matters.
Rahe writes in the first installment:

To grasp what is at stake, one must step back and consider what sort of thinking underpins the drive for what is called "health care reform." There was a time in the United States when we lived under a regime of individual rights, and as individuals we assumed responsibility for our own welfare. We worked; we saved; and we took pride in looking after ourselves. Many of us still think in this fashion, but this is not the manner in which our masters now think. We may be the heirs of the men who adopted the Declaration of Independence; those who rule us are the offspring of the Progressives, and men of this temper have dominated our political life for almost a century now.

1. Obama's Tyrannical Ambition

2. The Servile Temptation Part I

3. The Servile Temptation Part II

4. The Road to Soft Despotism Part I

5. The Road to Soft Despotism Part II

Iowans reject the "King of Pop"
From the DesMoines Register

The Iowa State Fair's annual butter sculptures will not feature a moonwalking Michael Jackson.The fair had planned to include Jackson in a buttery display celebrating the lunar landing in 1969, but word of their plans prompted complaints to fair officials. They responded by putting the issue to a seven-day online vote.The
result released Friday wasn't close — with more than 100,000 votes, Jackson lost
65 percent to 35 percent.

Healthcare Organizational Chart.


It will become more streamlined once they eliminate the bottleneck at the insurance industry and shutdown Medicare.

On Healthcare
From the Wall Street Journal

The idea that every life is infinitely precious and therefore everyone deserves the same kind of optimal medical care is a fine religious sentiment and moral ideal. As political and economic policy, it is vainglorious delusion. Rich and educated people not only receive better goods and services in all areas of life than do poor and uneducated people, they also tend to take better care of themselves and their possessions, which in turn leads to better health. The first requirement for better health care for all is not equal health care for everyone but educational and economic advancement for everyone.

Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.

If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.

Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Indian health care's victims
From the AP via Hotair

On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is "don't get sick after June," when the federal dollars run out. It's a sick joke, and a sad one, because it's sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.

A walk through Goverment Healthcare from our neighbors to the north.
(NO not Minnesota, Canada)

PJTVs Steven Crowder Investigates Why CanadaCare Sucks...Will ObamaCare Be Any Better?

The push for Universal Healthcare has nothing to do with health but has everything to do with "social justice". The concept that government has the obligation to ensure that we are equal in every way. The only way to ensure that however is to bring down the many to raise up the few.

Healthcare is the holy grail of socialist policy that has been pushed since the Wilson Administration. Along with controlling energy, healthcare is the vital link in the progressive program to ensure that the state and not the people are the center of power. Welcome to our Dystopia.

Palin channels the CR Salmon
On July 10th the Cedar River Salmon wrote:

I would hope the state of Alaska makes an effort to reform how ethic complaints against public officials are handled in the future.

Then from the Anchorage Daily News July 12

Gov. Sarah Palin says she hopes the latest ethics complaint filed against her is a "wake-up call" that a new ethics policy is needed in the state. "The only saving grace in this recent episode is that it proves beyond any doubt the significance of the problem Alaska faces in the 'new normal' of political discourse," Palin said in a release that was posted online through her Twitter account.

Sunday Service

The Law of the Yukon

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane--
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others--the misfits, the failures--I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters--Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;
Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,
Till he swept like a turbid torrent, after him swept--the scum.
The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,
One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was--Men.
One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,
Rotted the flesh that was left, poisoned the blood in their veins;
Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

"Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;
Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,
Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;
Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,
Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;
Lost like a louse in the burning...or else in the tented town
Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,
Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,
Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,
Crushing my Weak in their cluthces, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, them who would 'stablish my fame
Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the land and first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with longing forlorn,
Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who will win me--and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,
With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;
Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,
When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;
Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave--
Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon,--Lo, how she makes it plain!

The Politics of Personal Destruction

Last fall I attended a lecture at the University of Iowa by former Democratic House Whip and Iowa alum David Bonier of Michigan. One statement that stuck with me during his talk was, and I am paraphrasing here, "I knew when we lost the Congress to the Republicans in 1994 the only way I could have any affect was to go after them personally." He filed 75 ethics charges against House Speaker Newt Gingrich reminiscent of the recent attacks on Sarah Palin, He then went on to lament how relationships between the two parties deteriorated after the Republicans gained power.

In response the republicans proceeded to gerrymander poor Mr. Bonier right out of a job, but the point is that thanks to the work of men like Bonier and a cadre of leftist organizations such as People for the American Way silencing the opposition by personal attack is now normal operating procedure.

Whats troubling here is that these tactics go beyond Sarah Palin who by virtue of her political aspirations became fair game for fair debate. The accusations her family had to endure were certainly unprecedented but the political apparatus that the Democrats have developed to silence opposition now knows no bounds. We witnessed it with Joe the Plumber and now they intend to decimate firefighter Frank Ricci. From McClatchy:

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci.
This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill.
"The whole business of getting Supreme Court nominees through the process has become bloodsport," said Gary Rose, a government and politics professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

This is not as the writer implies opposition research this is another example of Sturmabteilung Democrat style.

Dead Jacko Jokes. You knew it had to happen.
From Dead Michael Jackson Jokes
Michael jackson will go to heaven after all. Satan hates the smell of burning plastic!

Why is Palin leaving?
From Weekly Standard

At this writing, there is no reason to doubt her stated position: Her enemies' concerted efforts to tear her down have caused her family financial stress and distracted her from her duties as governor. Since she returned to Alaska in
November 2008, she has been hemmed in. Ethics complaints, insults, invective, undue attention, and legal bills have been all-consuming. "I can't fight for what's right when I'm shackled to the governor's seat," Palin said. For the last seven months the governor's office has been a ward. A trap. She is breaking free.

And from John Zeigler

The bottom line is that Sarah Palin resigned simply because she was no longer allowed to do her job in a way that benefited her state and family. She saw that if she stayed on as Governor it would cost the state millions of dollars in wasted time and resources and doom it to gridlock. She knew that it would also continue to cost her family hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against false and maliciously filed ethics complaints. And she had simply had enough of her children being fodder for inappropriate public attacks.

Most of the muck raked against Palin came from Anchorage radio talk show host Shannyn Moore who writes in Shannyn Moore Will Not Be Muzzled!; "In a rambling quasi-legal letter, the most powerful person in this state accused me of defaming her for pointing out the fact that there have been rumors, -rumors- of corruption, rumors that have been around for years."

I would hope the state of Alaska makes an effort to reform how ethic complaints against public officials are handled in the future. I do not mean that critics should be muzzled but the onus for ethics charges should fall to the complainant. If the accusations are unfounded as the Palin complaints were people like Moore should have to pick up the tab.

This will not muzzle Shannon Moore, she can still spout rumors and speak truth to power from the comfort of her studio but it will save the citizens of Alaska from paying for her blood sport.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Slow News Day, Local Truther Gets Front Page Expose.
From The Cedar Rapids Gazette

Like the rest of us on Sept. 11, 2001, Russ Gerst stared in awe as the World Trade Center in New York City collapsed into dust.But now, like only a handful of onlookers, Russ wonders how the Twin Towers crumbled so quickly and so completely... We’ve got to figure out what happened,” says Russ, 42, of Cedar Rapids. “We can’t listen to the adults. They’ve already looked at it and say nothing (unusual) happened.”

Of course the papers comment section was overrun by those that think the X-Files is a documentary. Fortunately one b.j edwards does yeoman work in debunking the bunkers.

As Scooby used say, "RutRoh": Obama Approval Index at NEGATIVE EIGHT?
From Rassmusen

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week

Washington pussies rescued from Alaska's Killer Midnight Sun:
From the Anchorage Daily News.

(Alaska)Troopers say they got a report of an emergency locator beacon registered to Washington, D.C., resident William Calomiris, 27, that was activated near Pungokepuk Lake, 20 miles northeast of Twin Hills, about 8:30 p.m. July 1. An air taxi service had dropped him and Adam Grunstra, also 27, of Bethesda, Md., off at the lake on June 30 for a seven-day stay, troopers said.
Troopers alerted the Alaska Air National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard and then diverted their own Dillingham-based floatplane that was in the area to head to the scene and check things out.
The floatplane touched down about 10:30 p.m. to find there was no emergency. A day in the wilds had just taken its toll and the men were ready to leave, troopers said.
"Calomiris and Grunstra claimed that they had been sunburned," troopers wrote in a dispatch. "They were unprepared to deal with the long day length and any further exposure to the sun. They had activated the beacon in an effort to get extracted ahead of schedule."

And you thought eugenics went out of style after 1945.
From the New York Times

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg

A Question that must be asked.
Why is it that when Sarah Palin changes directions she is erratic, unpredictable, and "flighty", but when B.HO is flipping and flopping like a freshly hooked sockeye he is considered Pragmatic?

The Tough Go Fishing

Sarah Palin and daughter Bristol Fishing at Bristol Bay on Monday.

Photo courtesy the Anchorage Daily News.

Correction: I have pulled a David Letterman. That is daughter Piper not Bristol in the boat with her mom. My appologies.