(of course, we may have done so already ….)

…. as long as we consider making this guy the one and only exception:

Daniel Hannan’s blog is here. Yeah, I’ve noticed he supported, or at least hasn’t rejected, Obama. I also know that as a Brit he didn’t have to do the dirty work needed to decide to actually vote for him. After perusing his blog’s front page, I have little doubt that, had he been here, Hannan would have clearly understood Obama’s radicalism before the election, and would have rejected him.

So much of Hannan’s speech could substitute Barack Obama for Gordon Brown that it’s scary.

And …. and …. can you believe it? Hannan spoke from notes, not a Teleprompter.

__________________________________________________

UPDATE: Here’s a transcript –

Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidised, where you have not nationalised outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words? Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country?

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary; countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologizing; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, willfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year – in the last twelve months – a hundred thousand private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created thirty thousand public sector jobs.

Prime Minister, you cannot carry on for ever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so – which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

All that cheerleading for Obama-Biden, and all they got was a continuation of their lousy long-term ratings drop.

Perhaps one reason why Big 3 network coverage of the 2008 presidential election was so heavy on fawning favoritism towards Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined with all-out attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin was that the belief that an Obama presidency might revive interest in their declining evening newscasts.

If so, that strategy has spectacularly failed. Nine weeks into Obama’s presidency, it’s clear that after a short-lived revival, the audiences for NBC’s Brian Williams, ABC’s Charles Gibson, and especially CBS’s Katie Couric are smaller than ever, and that (with the exception of NBC’s Williams) the remainder who are still tuning in are older than ever.

After a significant post-election rise that peaked during the first full week after Obama’s inauguration, the viewership drop at all three networks has been steep, to the point where all three have fewer people tuning in than they did a year ago at this time (source: the Evening News Ratings page at Media Bistro):

From their respective levels during the week of January 26, NBC, ABC, and CBS are down 17%, 15%, and 21%, respectively. As a whole, as seen above, they’re off 17.4%. In the coveted 25-54 demo, the decline from January 26 is even worse (off 26%, 19%, and 26%). An astonishing 70% of viewers are not in the 25-54 demo, and it can be safely assumed that the vast majority of those are 55 or over.

It looks like the geniuses at the Big 3 Nets got the worst of both worlds: They lost even more older viewers, not in small part because of their obviously biased coverage, and they couldn’t hold onto younger people who, at least during the election, were disproportionately Obama fans. Too bad, so sad.

We now return to our regularly scheduled evening news show meltdown.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I suspect this will turn into a multi-part venture, because these kinds of things need to be documented as they occur.

Three things in the past week or so clearly fit the description of “Things Over Which The Obama Administration’s POS ‘Stimulus’ Had No Influence”:

• Housing starts were up 22.1% in February, beating expectations of a roughly 3% decline.
• Existing home sales were up 5.1%, again whipping expectations, this time of a 1% decline. The first-time homebuyer credit of up to $8,000 is a large element of this improvement. But that is something virtually everyone supported, because it’s an immediately stimulating tax cut. It has nothing to do with the hideous POS (Pork Over-Stuffed) portions of the plan.
• Durable goods orders were up 3.4% in February, beating expectations of a 2.0% decline (January’s contraction was significantly revised downward from -4.5% to -7.3%).

While I’m at it, here’s another graphic example of the dire impact of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy last year:

It took a month or so, because durables manufacturers can’t react on a dime, but the generally steep declines beginning in August clearly show that the Pelosi-Obama-Reid energy-starving, tax increase-promising magic had its effect.

The graph is also another entry into evidence showing that the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER’s) claim that the country was in recession during the first half of 2008 lacks credibility.

Ignoring compounding, durable goods orders were up 0.3% from March to June. That’s not impressive, but it’s also not negative, meaning that it was not recessionary.

NBER says that a recession requires “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy” that is “normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators.”

Historical results on the ground continue to show that for the most part there wasn’t any decline from March through June, let alone a significant one:

• Durable goods orders increased slightly (see above).
• Manufacturing overall was barely contracting, according to the Institute for Supply Management (March through June index values averaged 49.1%; a reading above 50% indicates expansion).
• Everything except manufacturing was basically okay until the June reading (March through June values were 49.6%, 52.0%, 51.7%, and 48.6%). That June reading of sentiment in the real world is where I detected that the POR Economy had begun sometime during that month.
• The ISM indices on a weighted-average basis show that the economy as a whole improved from March through May (values were 49.1%, 51.5%, and 51.4%).
• GDP wasn’t in decline. Instead, second quarter annualized GDP growth was 2.8%.
• Disposable income increased at an annualized rate of 10.7% in the second quarter, and would have been positive even without the tax stimulus payments of $75.4 billion during that period ($77.5 minus $2.1). (The annualized increase in disposable income was $380 billion; the non-annualized equivalent of roughly $95 billion comfortably exceeded the stimulus payments.)

The only thing consistently declining during that time was employment (March 26 reminder: And the seasonally adjusted employment drop as a percentage of the workforce during the first six months of 2008 was lower than during the previous two recessions). Declining employment alone does not a recession make; it never has.

The case that NBER blew its recession call from December 2007 through June grows ever more compelling. At worst, there was a mini-recession from December through February, followed by 3-4 decent months, followed by the POR Economy’s recession that began in July after it began taking hold in June.

Back to the original point of the post: The above good-news cites are examples of the economy attempting a recovery on its own, thanks largely to lower energy prices and lower mortgage rates. Certainly no one can legitimately claim any stimulus/Porkulus-related impact on the above results. Based on estimates of when the mislabeled “stimulus” money will actually be spent, no one will be able to do so until sometime this fall, if even then.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

The AP’s Matthew Brown doubles down –Yesterday, I noted Brown’s and his wire service’s despicable, class-warfare references to the 14 Montana air-crash victims, including seven young children, as “ultrarich,” and the resort they were heading to as “ritzy.” In a different report brought to my attention by NewsBuster commenter Advocate 123, Brown referred to an “ultra-exclusive resort” in his first sentence when he could have more specifically written “the Yellowstone Club resort,” and decided that we just had to know that it is a “millionaires only” place in a later paragraph. Commenters at the link are quite justifiably not pleased.

Congressman Fortney “Pete” Stark “represents” a district in California. According to the LA Times (HT TaxProf), Stark “is registered to vote at his wife’s parents’ address in San Lorenzo and has a California driver’s license.” He also is attempting to claim his Maryland home as his primary residence for property tax purposes. According to Wiki, “Under Maryland law, in order to qualify, the owner must register to vote and drive in Maryland.” Stark clearly is not a resident of the district he is pretending to serve. Accordingly, even apart from his documented intemperance, which should be reason enough (but hasn’t been), he deserves a voter ouster in 2010.

More than 80,000 111,000 (HT Michelle Malkin) have signed a petition protesting President Barack Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame. I went here and made that more than 111,001.

Interesting, under-reported AIG fact — “(Longtime Democrat Richard) Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat who is now the administration’s point man on Pakistan and Afghanistan, served on the board between 2001 and mid-2008.” Holbrooke is thus among those who helped disgraced Eliot Spitzer oust Hank Greenberg, and was certainly around when the supposedly outrageous bonus plans were put into place. Another interesting, under-reported Holbrooke fact (HT Kaus) — Holbrooke and his family got breaks apparently only available to “Friends of Angelo Mozilo” of Countrywide on five (count ‘em) different mortgage loans.

Anti-life evil has indeed infested the Catholic Church in Boston (HT Voting Catholic in 2008). Properly understood, this is a result of Mitt Romney’s CommonwealthCare and its $50 subsidized abortions. CommonwealthCare forces Catholic hospitals and health services to choose between leaving the state-controlled system and “accommodation” (i.e., providing abortion referrals and information) dressed up to look acceptable, when it isn’t. There are national lessons here. ObamaCare must be stopped, as it will inevitably institutionalize the anti-life culture. Mitt Romney must be stopped, because he has proven that will support the same thing.

From Contra Costa, California:

Posted: 03/19/2009 09:09:43 AM PDT

The fire had grown so intense in a house near City Hall on Thursday morning that plumes of black smoke could be seen from Highway 4, and it was nearly impossible to enter the building.

Fire crews were still on the way, and a 4-year-old girl was trapped inside. Two Pittsburg police officers knew they had to act fast.

In the end, the officers rescued the child — and their acts ensured that all three residents survived, Lt. Brian Addington said.

The single-alarm fire broke out about 8:45 a.m. at the home on the 300 block of Jimno Avenue, two blocks from where city offices are headquartered, the Contra Costa Fire District said.

Pittsburg police, also housed in the city office complex, were the first to arrive. Officer Mark Mays got to the house and found a man and woman outside, with the man telling him a young girl was trapped in a rear bathroom. The man said he tried to go back in the house but was overwhelmed by the heat, Addington said.

Mays circled the house to look for the girl. By this point, Officer Ryan Wilkie arrived and entered the house, yelling for the girl. He couldn’t go in very far but instructed the girl to go to a window, Addington said.

Mays spotted the girl from outside but couldn’t pull her through the window. While he held her, Wilkie used his baton to break the window, and they were able to pull the girl to safety.

All three residents who were home when the fire started — two adults
Advertisement
and the child — were taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation, Addington said.

The squad of about 15 firefighters arrived soon after and quickly extinguished the blaze, bringing it under control within 15 minutes, fire district spokeswoman Emily Hopkins said.

Go here for the rest of the story.

I said earlier this year (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that there was reason to believe that 2009 might be the year of the newspaper bailout.

Now one of Maryland’s two Democratic US senators thinks he has come up with a way to subsidize and save them — while simultaneously turning them into house organs for his party.

Ben Cardin (picture at right is from his Senate web site) has introduced “The Newspaper Revitalization Act,” would accomplish the just-described goals by allowing papers to convert themselves into not-for-profit entities, providing them tax breaks, and …. prohibiting editorials.

Those who know establishment media reporting know that editorial commentary will then become the sole province of left-leaning beat reporters pretending to be strictly fact-based in their supposedly straight news stories and “analyses,” while traditional newspaper editorials, which against all odds still seem to lean barely to the right when averaged out nationwide, will disappear.

Here’s how Thomas Ferraro of Reuters describes what Cardin has cooked up:

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

“This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

In the short run, Cardin’s bill would give well-to-do Democratic activists, perhaps including many of the “private investors” Tim Geithner is looking at to buy up “toxic assets,” a chance to fund the newspaper of their choice and turn it into a pet project for subtly and not so subtly promulgating their worldview. How about the New York MoveOn Times, or the Washington ACORN Post?

Over a longer period, it seems to me that what would develop out of this would be any number of single-city NPRs that would attempt to control the tone of, and access to, political coverage in their respective locales. They would give perfunctory lip service to token print operations, while having large and unfair cost advantages over their taxpaying for-profit competitors.

Readers might have other ideas as to what might come to pass if Cardin gets his way. So have at it, with this priceless exit excerpt, which happens to be the opening sentence of Editor & Publisher’s coverage of the story:

Newspapers perform a public service for democracy and should be allowed to operate as tax-exempt non-profits, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D.-Md., proposed Tuesday.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

_______________________________________________

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin, who predicted this development many months ago, calls Cardin’s bill “The Fishwrap Rescue and Recovery Act of 2009.”

UPDATE 2, March 25: Newsosaur thinks it won’t fly (HT commenter dscott) –

A conservatively managed endowment of no less than $1 billion would have to be raised to generate the 5% annual return necessary to cover a $50-million-a-year burn rate. What are the chances of that happening?

Great point, given that the burns at the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name two, are at least that much. Also particularly timely, given the damage to equity values resulting from the POR (Pelosi-Obama- Reid Economy/POR Recession.

The papers could I suppose hold perpetual fundraisers, get on the high net-worth wine and cheese circuit, beat up on chambers of commerce for support, and the like. But a key to all of this would be walking away from their debts as they emerge from private ownership. In a lot of cases, sans bankruptcy, that will not be easy, and (one would think) might leave a lasting, bitter community legacy.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

50-50? I believe that was before any impact of President ‘Prompter’s alleged punch-drunkenness could be measured.

Former DNC Chair Howard Dean has been hired by CNBC — To be Rick Santelli’s and Jim Cramer’s minder, perhaps?

Obama’s judicial nominee (HT the Other McCain) for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, John F. Hamilton, is a former ACORN fundraiser. Hamilton, in a ruling overturned on appeal, barred prayers that mention Jesus Christ from opening daily sessions of the Indiana House of Representatives. He’s so far-left we don’t even have to ask if he’s pro-abort, do we, prolife poseurs and Obama endorsers Steve Driehaus and John Boccieri?

George Will — “The Toxic Assets We Elected.” Great column, as he chronicles much, but nowhere near all, of the “lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement” in the Obama administration thus far. What we elected also has created trillions in liabilities.

Of all the targeted campaigns against supposedly evil capitalistic excess, the idea of banning “luxury” corporate travel by recipients of federal bailout funds is among the worst. It has sent a chill throughout the entire corporate world, as, bailed-out or not, no one wants to be seen as the next target of the Overindulgence Police. It has thus sent the travel industry and related services (catering, etc.) into a serious tailspin well beyond what other industries are experiencing in this downturn. That’s quite a contrast from the post-9/11 mindset, where the Bush administration virtually begged people to travel and not “let the terrorists win” (eventually, it worked). The hypocrisy is hard to swallow too, from Nancy Pelosi’s military aircraft antics to senators of both parties leaving town for meetings on the Florida coast. Another element of hypocrisy: the alleged champions of the little guy apparently don’t care that a lot of little guys at hotels and resorts are losing their jobs because of their posturing.

The Toledo Blade, in an editorial, tells us that the one thing financially strapped Michigan needs more than anything else right now is a graduated income tax with a top rate of 7.9%. Well, states to which former Michiganders continue to flee would surely be pleased.

“U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms” — Yeah, because the federal government doesn’t have enough power already. Oh, and Tax Cheat and Proven Liar (under oath?) Tim Geithner is in charge of it. Feel better now?

Note: This item was posted earlier today, and will remain at the top for the rest of the day.

___________________________________________________

Here’s how the Associated Press’s Matthew Brown chose to open his organization’s initial story (HT Michelle Malkin) on the Montana plane crash where 14 people died, including seven young children, their parents, and the pilot:

Because, y’know, the victims’ presumed “ultrarich” socioeconomic status was sooooo important.

Incredibly, Brown’s report was not an isolated incident, as the AP played the class card at least two additional times. The first came almost three hours later, as seen in this item carried at TMC.net, as more information about the nature of the crash came out:

Finally, in a much longer dispatch about six hours after Brown’s initial report, AP reporters Matt Gouras and Joan Lowy stuck with the theme in their third paragraph:

Here is a photo of the Jacobsens (found at this link), one of the families who perished:

May God be with them and all who died, and may He provide strength to their surviving relatives and friends.

I’ll let commenters elaborate, lest I engage in language I’ll regret later.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Alaska:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

In the span of two years and three Iditarods, Lance Mackey has gone from miracle worker to the undisputed reigning king of The Last Great Race.

Mackey won his third consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Wednesday, putting an exclamation point on mushing’s latest dynasty.

Only two other mushers have won three in a row — Susan Butcher from 1986-88 and Doug Swingley 1999-2001. No one has won four straight.

“I’m so proud to get through this,” Mackey said. “This one was really, really smooth. I’ve never had a team work like this as a whole, come together in every situation. In every situation they seemed to excel.”

Mackey finished at 11:38 a.m. with an official time of 9 days, 21 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds. He still had 15 dogs in harness, dropping only one along the 1,000-mile trail.

“I feel great, but I feel beat up a little bit,” he said. “It was a pretty demanding trail since about Anvik.”

Gov. Sarah Palin called to congratulate Mackey shortly after he pulled in under Nome’s burled arch.

“We are considering this team the greatest in Iditarod history,” Palin said. “You continue to give all of us hope. The adversity you have overcome, the challenges you have met — believe me, it resonates across our nation and across our world.”

For Mackey — a cancer survivor who came to prominence with an unprecedented double-double in the Yukon Quest and Iditarod in 2007 called the Mackey Miracle — Wednesday’s victory capped a dominating performance. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

On Saturday, March 28, “World Wildlife Fund is asking individuals, businesses, governments and organizations around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.”

Of course, the UN has endorsed it. Scroll through the list of supporters and you’ll find among them many of the usual suspects: The American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; the National Science Teachers Association; the Weather Channel, whose Heidi Cullen called in early 2007 for removing the meteorological society’s “seal of approval” from meteorologists who dared to question global warming in early 2007. You’ll also note a sad chronology of those who have been taken in and opportunistic businesses, many of whom probably know better than to buy what Earth Hour is selling.

The Earth Hour folks had better hope that the following news out of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee either stays under the media radar or gets ignored until Saturday (bolds are mine):

The idea of a global climate change event which is caused by human activity and most specifically by the use of fossil fuels is considered by some people as a concept which cannot be denied.

Others who study the current changes in weather patterns and mean temperatures are far from convinced and posit other causes or sometimes admit they don’t know the “why” but can chart the changes.

Dr. Anastasios Tsonis from the University of Milwaukee is one of the latter. Dr Tsonis is willing to say that there is a climate shift occurring, but admits he can’t fully explain why it happens.

Dr. Tsonis and the rest of the team of scientists at the University are using a math application called synchronized chaos.

The synchronized chaos was applied to data from the past 100 years and found it works well in describing the actual events which now seem to be occurring.

….. The University team suggest the act of synchronization is capable of creating the resulting climate shift.

They also note the last climate shift probably occurred in 2000.

That would be the end of the warming trend which had been happening for the thirty years prior, and ushered in a cooling trend.

The synchronized chaos math application also appears to account for the global temperature trends over that 100 year period.

In other words, the UW-M’s Dr. Tsonis claims to have a global temperature variance theory that correlates to reality and has nothing to do with human activity — especially because so much of the period studied is well before anyone could even try to claim that human activitiy signficantly influences temperatures.

Globalarmists have a problem. The media will probably ignore Tsonis’s work for now, but it can’t last, and there are other debunkers, as well as thousands of scientist-skeptics willing to put their names on their skepticism. The worldwide pushback against climate-related strictures is gaining steam daily.

Speaking of raising temperatures, here’s an exit question: Does anyone else think that “synchronized chaos” really describes “the hand of God”?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

So, did anyone get a visit this weekend from one of the “13 million people on his campaign e-mail list” who were asked by Obama for America “to go door-to-door to raise support for his agenda”? If so, were they coherent? Was anyone “asked for their e-mail addresses so the Obama-ites can keep in touch”? Much more of this, or of things like the harassment of AIG bonus recipients, and we’ll see a lot of those who can afford to live in them start to develop an affinity for gated communities.

Speaking of grass-roots movements, another round of Tea Parties took place this weekend. Instapundit caught wind of this: “In the comments at the ABC item, I’m noticing some lefties making unsubstantiated claims of ‘violence’ at the tea party protests.” Typical, and sort of like WCPO (We Constantly Promote Obama, or something similar, according to one commenter here last week) making unsubstantiated claims that their safety was threatened at Cincinnati’s Tea Party last week. Given that there has been no response to my e-mail to the station and follow-up later in the day requesting an official statement or other substantiation, my conclusion concerning this stands: No evidence (or statement), no credibility. WCPO’s reporter is no more or less believable than the reporters who claim less troubling things happened, or Tea Party participants claiming to be eyewitnesses who say almost nothing happened. And thus it will remain until evidence appears.

From the “You Don’t Say?” Dept. — “Obama’s embryonic stem cell decision ignored pro-life Democrats.” Democrats who claim to be pro-life who voted for Obama in the first place and knew his record and beliefs can’t credibly claim to be pro-life anyway.

Imagine that — “Craig Loehle has analysed the data from only the profiling floats for ocean heat content from 2003 to 2008.   In a paper recently published in the journal Energy and Environment he has concluded that there has been ocean cooling over this period.” And “Dr Loehle’s findings are consistent with satellite and surface instrumental records that do not showing a warming trend over recent years.”

From Michael M. Bates at NewsBusters — “The Boston Globe reported in December, 1979 that ‘Carter Administration officials feel they have scored a major foreign policy success in Rhodesia.’” Rhodesia is now known as Zimbabwe, and is headed by Robert Mugabe, the person Parade Magazine, which apparently has a Top 10 for anything and everything, named as the “World’s Worst Dictator.” Nobel Peace (cough, cough) laureate Jimmy Carter can add Mugabe to his list of accomplishments, along with doing more than any other person on earth to bring about the rise of Islamofascism.

Speaking of which, here’s Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas at Pajamas Media — “The issue of Islamic/Islamist gender apartheid is one of epidemic and global proportions. Although it has reached American shores, the feminist establishment here remains tragically ambivalent about how to deal with forced veiling, arranged marriage, separatism, and honor-related violence, including honor killings. Many feminists fear that, were they to tie the subordination of women to a particular religion or culture, especially to Islam, that they would be perceived as ‘racists,’ or ‘Islamophobes.’” This fear trumps their sincere concern for womens’ rights and womens’ lives.” I would suggest that those who allow that perception to keep them from speaking out against the practices of Islamist chauvinist thugs just identified don’t really have “sincere concern(s).”

Gallows humor — Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Obama’s deficit projections vs. the Congressional Budget Office’s, which happen to be $2.3 trillion higher over 10 years — “Hey, what’s a little rounding error among friends?”

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up — “Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting.”

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up II — “Despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in additional TARP funds, it appears that the current administration has performed zero oversight over it.” Specifically, the last FINSOB (Financial Stability Oversight Board) meeting took place on January 15th of this year — five days before Barack Obama’s inauguration. Sadly, Instapundit’s sardonic intonation that “The country’s in the very best of hands” may become quite popular in the coming weeks and months.

From Arizona:

Archive for Friday, March 20, 2009

A Pine woman was rescued Friday night after being disoriented and lost on a trail a mile south of Pine.

Kari Boys was hiking alone Friday afternoon on the Donahue Trail, which leads to Milk Ranch Point. The trail starts at the Pine Trailhead, which is just a few miles south of town.

Around 7 p.m., authorities received a call that Boys had not returned home from the hike after several hours, said Tonto Rim Search and Rescue Commander Bill Pitterle.

“I am not sure what her plan was, but she might have gotten turned around at some point,” he said.

When authorities arrived at the trailhead, Boys’ car was in the parking lot and they found her tracks on the trail. A deputy from the Gila County Sheriff’s Office and an officer from the Tonto National Forest law enforcement division started hiking up the trail shouting Boys’ name.

After hiking several miles up the trail, the officers located Boys cold and exhausted, but uninjured.

Volunteers from Tonto Rim Search and Rescue (TRSAR) hiked up the trail and helped assist Boys down.

“At some point she reported she was missing her car keys and cell phone,” Pitterle said.

By 10 p.m., authorities had navigated Boys down the trail to the trailhead, where her parents picked her up.

Boys’ father, Mark, division chief of the Maricopa Fire Department, said he is deeply grateful to the officers, deputies and volunteers who located his daughter.

“As a result of the Tonto Rim Search and Rescue and the Gila County Sheriff’s Office’s aggressive action, my daughter was found shortly after beginning a search and safely returned to her family, avoiding a very unpleasant stay in the forest overnight without food or shelter,” Mark Boys said.

“Presently working in the fire service, I am acutely aware that organizations such as the TRSAR and its members largely go unrecognized for their personal sacrifices, training and dedication of which each member is committed. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.