The One is great at math!

The One is great at math!

He divides the country,
He subtracts jobs,
He adds debt,
He multiplies misery.

The man's a regular four-function calculator!

Via my lovely bride...

Scottie pinwheel...

Scottie pinwheel...  Puppies are involved.  Blow it up to full screen!

Via my lovely bride...

It's embarrassing!

It's embarrassing!  The Washington Redskins have been embroiled in a controversy over their name.  They have resolved the controversy by dropping “Washington” from their name. 

Via my lovely bride...

Dying wish...

Dying wish...

Washington , D.C. an old priest lay dying in the hospital. For years he had faithfully served the people of the nation's capital and was well known among the elected officials. He motioned for his nurse to come near.

"Yes, Father?" asked the nurse.

"I would really like to see Obama and Senator Reid before I die," whispered the priest.

"I'll see what I can do, Father," replied the nurse.

The nurse sent the request, and waited for a response.

Soon the word arrived; President Obama and Harry Reid would be delighted to visit the priest.

As they went to the hospital, Obama commented to Reid, "I don't know why the old priest wants to see us, but it will certainly help our images." Reid agreed that it was a good thing.

When they arrived at the priest's room, the priest took Obama's hand in his right hand and Reid's hand in his left hand. There was silence and a look of serenity on the old priest's face.

Finally, Obama spoke. "Father, of all the people you could have chosen, why did you choose us to be with you as you near the end?"

The old priest slowly replied, "I have always tried to pattern my life after our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

"Amen", said Obama. "Amen", said Reid.

The old priest continued, "Jesus died between two lying thieves; I would like to do the same."

Tribute to a fallen farmer...

Tribute to a fallen farmer...  Kyle Hendrix, a farmer in Monticello, Illinois, recently died of cancer.  He was just 31 years old, and left behind his wife, two young kids, and a community of farmers who loved him.  Those farmers set up a roadside tribute to Kyle, and photographer Matt Rubel captured some beautiful images of it.  Via friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S...

“Senate Leaders in Striking Distance of a Deal”

“Senate Leaders in Striking Distance of a Deal”  Now there's a scary headline!  Translation: soon we'll know exactly how they're going to screw us this time...

Worser and worser...

Worser and worser...  Megan McArdle is learning more about the ObamaCare implementation, and she's not liking what she's seeing (below are some cherry-picked pieces of her much longer, much more detailed post):

...
This is stunning. It’s far worse than I imagined, and I am pretty cynical.
...
Federal contracting codes, so far as I am aware, do not emit intoxicating gases that might have caused senior HHS officials to decide that it was a good idea to take on the role of lead contractor -- a decision equivalent to someone who has never even hung a picture deciding that they should become their own general contractor and build a house. Nor can those rules explain their lunatic response when they were told that the system was not working -- “failure was not an option."...
Nor can you really blame the Republicans -- an argument that makes sense only if you don’t examine it very closely. It starts by assuming (but never stating) that the administration passed a law that didn't work as written, and then posits a civic duty for the opposition not to oppose laws that they oppose, but instead to help the majority party turn an unworkable law into something more to said party’s liking. This is absurd. Moreover, it’s not even a very good explanation for most of these problems. Maybe CMS turned lead contractor because they couldn’t get more funds to hire private help, but lack of funds does not explain why HHS took so long to write regulations and specifications, keeping insurers at loose ends until as late as this summer, and preventing their biggest contractor from writing code until spring. It does not explain why officials decided to launch a system that was so badly behind schedule, or to keep insisting, against all evidence, that it wasn’t broken. What explains this long train of poor decision-making is some combination of bureaucratic inertia, a desire to hide what they were doing from voters who might not like it and a terrifying insouciance about how easy it might be to build a system of this size and complexity.
...
But given that they didn’t even announce that they were taking the system down for more fixes this weekend, I’m also guessing that it’s pretty bad. Bad enough that it’s time to start talking about a drop-dead date: At what point do we admit that the system just isn’t working well enough, roll it back and delay the whole thing for a year?

Yes, I know what I’m suggesting is a major, horrible task. And I’m aware that since I opposed the law in the first place, people will take my suggestion with a huge grain of salt. Fair enough, but hear me out.

If the exchanges don’t get fixed soon, they could destroy Obamacare -- and possibly, the rest of the private insurance market.
...

Megan McArdle is noteworthy for her calm and sober analysis.  If she's this riled up, it must really look bad to her.

Go read the whole thing...

Urban legends...

Urban legends.  That's what ObamaCare enrollees have become.  We hear about them, but nobody has actually seen one.  Reason has a post on the phenomenon, including the short at right...

Sure looks like fun!

Sure looks like fun!  Does anybody know where this is???

Reduce your income...

Reduce your income.  If you want to lower the impact of the new, higher ObamaCare health insurance premiums, that's the advice from SFGate, a publication of the San Francisco Chronicle.  It's all summed up with this:

You can also consider reducing your 2014 income by working just a bit less.

Say what?

It's all because of some poor law-crafting in the hastily cobbled-together ObamaCare law.  It includes some “cliffs” in the subsidy formulas that cause sudden changes in the amount of a subsidy when your income changes by as little as $1.  That's right – making $1 more can cost you thousands of dollars in subsidies.  So:

People whose 2014 income will be a little too high to get subsidized health insurance from Covered California next year should start thinking now about ways to lower it to increase their odds of getting the valuable tax subsidy.

So now our government is providing incentives to work less.  Lovely.

This is how a welfare state looks.  People pour their creativity into finding ways to game the system, instead of inventing the next iPhone.

Doom.  I feel the doom...

“Mr. President, tear down this wall!”

“Mr. President, tear down this wall!”  I never would have imagined that Reagan's trenchant sentence could be reused.  Well played, sir!

John Hinderaker, at PowerLine, has much more...

Dance of the atoms...

Dance of the atoms – in the world's thinnest sheet of glass, imaged by an electron microscope as it's being bent.  Awesome!

“Never mind.”

“Never mind.”  Scott Adams' all-time favorite Dilbert:

Interview and his top ten list...

Mars, with some changes...

Mars, with some changes.  This photo was taken yesterday by the Curiosity rover, then corrected to make colors appear as they would if the scene were on Earth.  Generally that means it's more blue and less red than it actually would appear to us, were we standing on Mars – but it's more comparable to similar scenes on Earth.  That scene looks like any number of desert places I've visited, and I've never left Earth...

Mosaiculture...

Mosaiculture:

“A refined horticultural art that involves creating and mounting living artworks made primarily from plants with colorful foliage (generally annuals, and occasionally perennials).”  

Despite growing up with and around horticulturists and botanists, I'd never heard of mosaiculture before my mom sent this link along.  Beautiful stuff there, and even more at this search result...

Flying pig moment!

Flying pig moment!  Spotted in an article I read this morning in the dead fish wrapper known as the New York Times:

The research comes with caveats. It is based on climate models, huge computer programs that attempt to reproduce the physics of the climate system and forecast the future response to greenhouse gases. Though they are the best tools available, these models contain acknowledged problems, and no one is sure how accurate they will prove to be at peering many decades ahead.

Too bad they aren't so honest in all their warmist propaganda climate change reporting...

Veterans: 1, President StompyFoot: 0.

Veterans: 1, President StompyFoot: 0.  They're not going to take it any more!  Veterans today stormed and took several memorials in Washington D.C.  The best coverage I've seen is at Legal Insurrection.

Frost flowers...

Frost flowers.  These are new to me – “flowers” made of ice extruded from long-stemmed plants or pieces of wood.  They mostly form in the fall, when there are wet plants and freezing temperatures.  Here's a Wikipedia article on them, and several collections of photos and information, here, here, and here.

The Hindenburg...

The Hindenburg, including lots of photos I've never seen before, like the lounge at right...

Juggling, of a different kind...

Juggling, of a different kind...