Where Does All That CO2 Come From?

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory is sending home some interesting data. It seems that the Industrialized  White  Patriarchy isn't spewing CO2 at quite the advertized rate. In fact the champion CO2 outgasser seems to be mother Gaia herself. Whoops.

When will global warming/climate change/climate disruption finally be recognized as the internet hoax that it is? Well ok, climate does change; that's not a hoax. But the sky-is-falling anti-industrialists' vision of impending Armageddon; that's a hoax. It was predicted by computer models that have proven themselves inadequate.     

From an article by retired engineer Ronald D Voisin over at WUWT:

And just what would NASA have us believe about this first OCO product:

a) That shortly before this last October 1^st, industrial production shut down in the Ohio Valley, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. That as of October 1^st, U.S. industrial production has been concentrated in the lush Appalachian Slopes of the Carolinas, Georgia and Northern Florida.
b) That farming activities may account for the CO₂ plumes over the lush forests of South America and South-Central Africa. While Australian industrial activity may have pushed it’s CO₂ output upwind into the lush forests of Malaysia.
c) That the oceans are net absorbers of anthropogenic CO₂ contrary to this most recent observation.

Or…is there a different explanation from what NASA seems to believe? Like:

Insect and microbial emissions, each at 10X all anthropogenic emission, dominate in these lush forested areas while the historically mildly warming oceans are also net CO₂ contributors. And, anthropogenic emission is essentially irrelevant to atmospheric CO₂ concentration at an approximately 2% contribution to the natural flux.

Last Physics Joke of the Year

Merry Merry Christmas

I couldn't hire Al Gore to hand out presents this year so I settled for John "Reminiscent of Jean-gis Kahn" Kerry again. 

Merry Christmas

I Meant to Do That

That Time of Year Again

bizarro

Weeeee!

via - forgot where I got it

Mural Abuse

I found this here.  It looks to be somewhere in the US but I can't find it anywhere else on the intertubes so I have no story behind it. It might even be a photoshop, but in the absence of an explanation, I'm going to assume the wall decayed from within.

Just a BTW: I noticed that in the official government photos of Obama and Biden they're framed off center. In what direction? To the left of course.

Confused Baby Meets Twins

The baby on the left is obviously afraid that the giant baby is going to eat her. But giant baby is sooo confused.

A few years back the Malthusians tried to genetically engineer a line of "super giant" babies; maybe he's one of them. He's not a threat to the twins though. Like most super giant babies, he just wants to get along.

You should read the wikipedia article on Super Giant Babies; it's an interesting story. After waiting hundreds of years for the chance to say "see, I told you so," the Malthusians decided to help the process of societal collapse along by breeding a line of super babies; who, they reckoned, would eat twice the food and lead to wide spread famine and despair.

But their plan didn't consider the one major factor that has spoiled Malthusian plans for hundreds of years. It was: Hey, we're Malthusians. We're always wrong.   The babies turned out to be adorable and had no impact on the food supply. Apart from a few crib collapses and highchair entrapments, they were just the same as other babies.

Lawless Administration

This is what's wrong with electing Utopia seekers:

Senior officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation actively sought to crack down on legal businesses that the Obama administration – or the officials themselves – deemed morally objectionable, a new congressional report finds.

Released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the 20-page investigative report details how the FDIC worked closely with the Justice Department to implement Operation Choke Point, a secretive program that seeks to cut off the financial lifeblood of payday lenders and other industries the administration doesn’t like.
 
The FDIC is the primary agency responsible for regulating and auditing more than 4,500 U.S. banks.
Emails unearthed by investigators show regulatory officials scheming to influence banks’ decisions on who to do business with by labeling certain industries “reputational risks,” ensuring banks “get the message” about the businesses the regulators don’t like, and pressuring banks to cut credit or close those accounts, effectively driving enterprises out of business.
  

I, by the way, agree that payday lenders are scum. They take advantage of people in desperate situations. (and the stupid, and those with no math skills) They're bums, and put one at my table, I'll go sit somewhere else. But we have usury laws. And we are a nation of laws.

If a payday loan company is abusing consumers, you make laws to limit APR, or deceptive practices, or whatever. Then enforce those laws.

And by the way, I don't see the Government of the Light getting upset at banks whose Visa cards shoot up to the 20-30% APR range if a single payment  is late.

It's even more reprehensible for the Administration to wield the big nasty IRS club against its political "enemies", but these guys see themselves as above the law. Thank goodness we've started voting them out.

Season's Greetings

via

The Cost of Higher Education

via

The Squirrel is Recovering Well

She looks unrepentant, yes?

thanks, Lumberbrudi

Thanks Harrison

Sounds Like Our Government

News of the Weird:

-- Comprehensive Pentagon studies of America's nuclear missile infrastructure released in November (following disturbing reports of readiness failures) included the revelation that nuclear warheads had to be attached with a particular wrench, even though the Air Force owned only one with which to service 450 missiles housed at three bases. Consequently, one official told The New York Times, "They started FedExing the one tool" back and forth. No one had checked in years, he said, "to see if new tools were being made" -- typical of maintenance problems that had "been around so long that no one reported them anymore." [New York Times, 11-13-2014]

Obama Was Right, Some Crimes Are Understandable

Via Smoking Gun:

NOVEMBER 26--A Texas woman was arrested yesterday for stealing more than $6400 worth of sausage from the Kiolbassa Provision Company, a San Antonio firm that has been smoking meat since 1949.

According to an arrest affidavit, Regina Shaw, 45, was linked to the September 14 theft via surveillance footage that recorded her taking a “pallet of meat product” from the purveyor.

When I heard Obama empathize  with the Ferguson rioters my first impulse was all bigotish. It seemed counterproductive and irresponsible. But this sausage story has made me rethink my racist opposition to encouraging criminals. I mean, think of it, a whole pallet load of smoked sausage.

No, of course we shouldn't encourage this woman to steal, but there's nothing wrong with giving her a Homer Simpson, "mmmmmmm-sausage". 

I expect the President will urge her to "stay the course."

Vegan Slaughterhouse

via

Like a Mustachioed Lion Dragging a Gazelle Through the Serengeti

via

The Columns Should Have Been a Warning

Grubergate

ACA will lower premiums, you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor; heck, everyone who wasn't in the grip of obamathrall knew these were lies at the time.

via NRO

Lumbersexuals, the Christopher Walken Wing of the Heteronormative Patriarchs

I thought it was a goof: grown men pretending to be lumberjacks. (the inverse of course, is common: Lumberjacks pretending to be grown men) But even TMZ has certified it as a real thing now.

So am I concerned about getting lost in the growing pool of faux lumberjacks? Nah. I'll worry when they start blogging.

Sorry for the blogging-pause, by the way. I had my gallbladder removed on Friday and haven't been doing much of anything. I know, you're skeptical. You'd expect me to remove my own gallbladder, and be back pretending to chop down trees the next day.  Well, I didn't excise my own gallbladder because the wikipedia page wasn't specific enough on some parts of the procedure. Normally I'd just go in and poke around until I found it but just this once I decided to let Obama's new, perfect, healthcare do the job.

As for why I wasn't out there pretending to chop down trees the next day: I showed up, but there were all these other pretend lumberjacks milling about; making chainsaw noises and pretending to harass the spotted owls. It looked like they had the situation well in hand so I left the field to them for a few days.

Kerfuffle in Turkey

via NRO:

Three U.S. sailors were assaulted by a group of young left-wingers in Istanbul on Wednesday, with the aggressors chanting “Yankee go home” while placing plastic bags on the Americans’ heads.

A liberal group? That's odd, huh? Expect the administration to investigate what the sailors might have done to precipitate this kind of treatment.

Two Men

Two world leaders meet at the APEC summit. One is a communist ideologue

 who rules by edict, and the other is Vladimir Putin, president of Russia. 

You Know, Avogadro

via

Two Pandas, Avoiding their Medicine

via

Why? Oh, Why?

via

Larry Hogan Wins

I didn't post anything last night because it seemed so much like a dream, but Larry Hogan is our new governor. In Maryland.  I was beginning to think we'd never see another Republican win.

Funny thing, it's been so long since I've had them, but Democrat tears taste more salty than I remember. Good though. Still good.

Go Vote

I'd like to remind all my conservative friends that it's Nov. 4th, election day. So do your civic duty.

And to my more liberal friends: your vote is important too. So be sure to vote on your day, Nov. 5th.

Sign of the Times

h/t

This Really Happens

10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Man - watch more funny videos     

In Case You Haven't Seen It Yet

h/t: Moonbattery

XKCD

(clickabiggen)

Actually, I posted this months ago.

xkcd

It's Opposite Day in DC

It's so odd to see the Administration pressuring NY and NJ to scrap their quarantine plans. Usually the administration is on the side of restricting freedom, not guaranteeing it.

Regarding ebola, Dr Antony Fauci explains their thinking:

  ...Fauci reemphasized that the scientific evidence suggests the disease is simply not that contagious. “The scientific data tells us that people without symptoms, with whom you don’t come into contact with body fluids, are not a threat,” the doctor said.

The scientific data also tells us that Ebola outbreaks never exceed 425 cases. But here we are with well over 10,000 cases and counting. So maybe there's reason to regard the old "scientific data" as subject to revision.  

Should there be enforced quarantine? I would hope we could handle it with voluntary quarantines, but Dr Nancy Snyderman showed us how well they work. Seems even medical professionals are willing to ignore the importance of isolating the virus when it demands they resist the lure of take-out food.

In general, I'd like to see more freedom rather than less, but we routinely restrict the freedom of movement of uncooperative TB patients.

The CDC explains it in a soon to be disappeared web page:

Isolation and quarantine help protect the public by preventing exposure to people who have or may have a contagious disease.

• Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.
• Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are “police power” functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society.

 The Administration argues that mandatory quarantines will stifle the efforts of our brave volunteers in the fight against Ebola. But think about it; you're faced with the prospect of traveling to a hot zone, without the amenities you're used to, at great danger to your own health, working without the equipment you're used to, for no money, with the promise that you'll witness daily tragedies. What are the chances that three weeks off at the end of your tour will convince you it's not worth the effort?

OK, it's not three weeks off. It's probably closer to three weeks in jail. (except your "jailers" appreciate what you've done and will get you anything they can to make your isolation more comfortable) But the quarantine isn't the worst part of the equation, is what I'm saying. If you're motivated to volunteer, you've committed yourself to much harsher things than a 21 day quarantine.

Law and Order: KFC

Silly, well maybe, but fiendishly clever when you realize that the dialog incorporates the complete summary of Obama's ISIS policy.

via

Goats and Donkeys and Goats Oh My

Rock Roll

h/t

No, but then again, Yes

Policy be complicated:

The day after that Frieden was asked during a press conference if you could contract Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus—a question prompted by a statement from President Obama the week before, when he declared that you can’t get Ebola “through casual contact, like sitting next to someone on a bus.”

Frieden answered: “I think there are two different parts of that equation. The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no. Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you.”

 You've probably got to be a member of the science party to understand.

Trust Me, I'm from the Government

George Will sums it up.

Cutest Rodents

 

more of his friends here

Greyhounds vs. Mechanical Bunny

So what would happen if the dogs ever caught that mechanical rabbit? I've wondered this since I was little.



 Sooner or later the internet answers everything.

Though my own experience with Jack Russells and house slippers gave me a clue how such a scenario would play out long ago, it's nice to see it documented.

via

Ebola Joke

The doctor sat me down and said,

"I'm afraid you've been diagnosed with Alzheimers and Ebola"

After a moment of silence I said,

"Well at least I don't have Ebola."

There aren't many Ebola jokes yet, and I don't expect many. The thing is, the numbers:

Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number at 1.5 to two.

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling about every three weeks. There is little evidence so far that the epidemic is losing momentum.

If you understand exponentials, that number is scary enough. But there are other numbers that concern me more:

The latest World Health Organization statistics, published Wednesday, show 8,033 cases of suspected or confirmed Ebola in the West Africa outbreak, with 3,865 deaths.

OK, that sounds bad, but it's even worse when you consider that the total number of deaths from all previous outbreaks was under two thousand. And the largest prior outbreaks didn't kill more than several hundred per outbreak. And the outbreaks were usually confined to one country.

So what has changed? (get ready for someone to say global warming) Are the treatment and containment efforts less effective than they were in the past? It seems hard to believe that we've gotten worse at responding to the disease.

Or has the virus changed? Could it be more contagious than it was in the past? The fact that aid workers are falling victim to Ebola might be an indication that safety measures that were sufficient to deal with the virus in the past are not up to protecting against this strain. I'm thinking this is not your father's Ebola. This is something else.

Still, smart people trained in the field are working hard on the problem. I wouldn' say it's time to panic; but I also wouldn't blame you if you went for the 50 pound bag of rice next shopping trip. You know the current batch of Government clowns won't impose a travel ban on infected areas until the disease has a solid foothold in the US.

Dear Kitten: Regarding The Dog

is there anything he can't narrate?

via

PC

Bill Maher's experiment was simple: to see how long he could talk frankly about the illiberalism of the Muslim world before actor and director Ben Affleck, also a guest on the show, accused him of racism?

When Maher and Harris pointed out how widespread retrograde attitudes are in the Muslim world, Affleck said they were “stereotyping.” But the data doesn’t stereotype. Especially in less-developed countries, it is appalling.

The percentage of Muslims in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries who say that honor killings are never justified is shockingly low (31 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Pakistan). Support for the stoning of adulterers is more than 40 percent in Bangladesh and 80 percent in Afghanistan. The death penalty for leaving Islam is almost, although not quite, as popular as stoning.

Affleck simply couldn’t handle the truth. He kept on insisting it is just a few bad apples who think this way....

Me Too

Watcha Doin?

via

Amazon Review

clickabiggen

NRO

I like the columnists at National Review Online but they don't make it easy. Look at the numbers - slower than 88% of tested websites. Add to that the pop-ups, pop-unders, slide-arounds, and occasional autoplay ads and it quickly becomes more work than it's worth. I often make it my last stop because if anything is going to crash my browser, it will be NRO's Corner.

The Blink tag is the only thing that could make it more irritating.

You Poked My Heart

It's all fun and games until someone gets their heart poked.

(also- it was clearly pwinkaling)

h/t: lumberbrudi

How to Fishing

Executive Action

Somebody at Drudge has a great sense of humor, putting this painting above "Obama to announce executive action on climate."

People Playing With Statues

From: 34 people who saw a statue and knew what they had to do next

I Ended It, I Did, But It Wasn't Me, I Didn't End It

The status of forces talks supposedly broke down because Iraq wouldn't agree to protecting U.S. troops from local prosecution. But later reports seemed to indicate that the point was negotiable. We just had a president who was eager to spike the ball and wasn't quite as keen on negotiating.

But I Like Sticky Notes

I've been using my dog's name for years. I know, stupid. But the genius was in naming my dog 4DiBzzOk31!F28boy.

US Marines Rescue ISIS Sex Slaves

via

News of the Weird

In August, a criminology professor at Rome's La Sapienza University arranged a two-hour guest lecture on "emergency practices" by an "experienced" hand -- Francesco Schettino, the captain currently on trial in Italy for his role in the sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2012, when 32 people died. Said the captain: "I was called to speak because I am an expert. ... I know what to do in these sorts of situations." (Schettino will have to refute alleged evidence that "what to do" included running straight for the nearest lifeboat.) [Associated Press via News.com.au (Sydney), 8-7-2014] 

NotW

Cat Fights Lemon Like Obama Fights ISIS

Except, despite the rumors, Obama doesn't have paws, and the lemon isn't beheading non-Muslims.

About That Speech

So now it looks like, after ignoring them as they built up strength, we're now going to destroy ISIS down to manageable levels.

I suspect American sentiment forced the president into action. Now we have to hope he follows through and doesn't get distracted by a golf ball.

Payback

Video Cutes

I've only ever had one dog who was smart enough to realize on his own that the game of fetch ends if he doesn't bring back the ball. Louie the dog brought back the ball the first time, and every time since.

At first I marveled at my luck, but it turns out that fetch can last for an hour or more if the dog is in charge of when you stop. The only way to end the game now is to throw the ball into some unaccessible area.

Is Your Blue The Same as My Blue?

The biscuit crux is in the first two minutes of the video. If my red looked green to you, we would both still call it "red" because when we learned our colors, that's what we were told was red.

This is something that's bugged me since I was a kid. I tried once or twice to explain my question to various teachers but was never able to express myself clearly enough to escape punishment.

Russian Aggression

Worst part: telling your wife that your new shirt was ripped by SpongeBob Squarepants.

via

Will: Obama 'Making Up ISIS Policy Press Conference to Press Conference'

Tiny Deer Disrupts Migration Patterns

via

Ex-Im Bank

We're a country full of things that sound like good ideas. Look a little closer though...

New Teacher Alert

So today was the first day of school for the middle-school math teacher known around here as Lumberkid. She's spent the last two weeks making sure her classroom was ready; doing way more work than I ever imagined was necessary.

So anyway, she is excited about her kids even though she knows some of them will be a challenge. And she's decided to ignore her dad's suggestions as to the best and most durable discipline-bats to use. She's going to rely instead on non kinetic discipline techniques.

When I was in school things were handled differently. The vice principal had a paddle the size of Rhode Island. It had nails sticking out at odd angles and it had been known to throw sparks when used properly. Early on the vice principal declared himself "wise to my shenanigans" and so daily beatings followed. But only till his arms got tired. And of course they stopped when I graduated, well almost. He followed me to my first few jobs out of high school but eventually he decided he couldn't afford the extra gas and paddle maintenance.

Anyway, I sure wish Lumberkid well. I know she'll be spectacular. I'm already proud.

Guacamole

via

President Putt-Putt

(clickabiggen)

 Strong statement? Seems to me coming out against beheadings was taking the easy road. "I don't care what you say; I'm against them, and I'll always be against them."

Now where's my 3–wood?

Amateur Hour in Mo

When Obama first spoke about Ferguson I was quietly impressed. After all, he resisted the temptation to pass judgement before there was even an investigation. I had half expected him to pull a rush to judgement, as he did with Trayvon, and the Harvard professor. So yeah, I was pleased that the 1st. Law Professor seemed to finally understand how our judicial system was supposed to work.

And I expect Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to pause in their money counting long enough to pronounce judgement on on a man they know nothing about. But Jay Nixon had no reason to call for prosecution. Nobody could fault him for saying "let's see where this investigation leads."

Bax Nixon. Bad bad Nixon.

What if Michael Bay Directed "UP"?

h/t: squid

They Only Want What's Good for Us

I know, racist kids. Why else would kids resent being told what to eat?

In other nanny news – Again, a scientific study argues against the nanny-state recommendation that we consume under 2300 milligrams of salt per day:

 Participants consumed an average of about 5000 milligrams of sodium per day. They found that sodium consumption under 3000 milligrams daily was associated with a 27 percent increased risk of death or serious event defined as heart attack or stroke, as compared to those individuals who consumed between 3000 and 6000 milligrams. It was only when sodium consumption increased to over 6000 milligrams that the risk of adverse outcomes was detected.

This is good news and bad news, of course. Good, that the federal government may once again trust us regular people to regulate our own salt intake. Bad, in that if we take this away from the nannies, they'll put a herculean effort into finding something else to ban/regulate.  Liberals don't care what it is, just so long as it's mandatory.

More from the article:

And on a related note, Brian Strom, chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences in New Jersey adds, “There is not a single study, not one, showing [such a] benefit for having a sodium intake of less than 2300 milligrams.” The current guidelines are based on these short-term studies showing that a low sodium diet results in reductions in blood pressure in people who are already diagnosed with hypertension or borderline high blood pressure, but these reductions may actually result in more harm than good.

This new study is now sparking the FDA to re-evaluate the research supporting the current guidelines, yet they say the agency “continues to recognize the need to reduce the sodium content of the food supply to help reduce sodium intake.”

Just Because

Unrest? I don't see any unrest.

It's been so long since I've put him on a dinosaur.

"I'm Not Here to Make Friends"

I am. I'm here to make friends. If I go somewhere else I'll be there to make friends too.

h/t: wetdry

Send Those Guys Taser Batteries

It's good to see white guys getting in on the Victim Train in Ferguson. I'm reminded of herding an obstreperous child away from the playground. Except these were adults dragging their feet in order to elicit an angry response from policemen who were doing their job.

ISIS and Us

I think it's great that Obama is finally doing something to combat these known terrorists. They are a threat to non-Muslims everywhere. And even limited air strikes are better than no air strikes.

Is now the time to beat Obama up for the missteps that lead to the rise of ISIS? I think we should avoid anything that gets in the way of his doing the right thing from this point forward. He should understand that he will be held responsible if he drops the ball now that the threat has been widely acknowledged, though. 

A Jew and an Arab Walk Into a Pastry Shop

The Arab immediately steals three pastries and puts them in his pocket.

He says to the Jew, "See how good I am? The owner didn't see a thing." The Jew says to the Arab, "That's typical of you Arabs. I am going to show you an honest way to get the same result."

He goes to the owner of the bakery and says, "Give me a pastry and I will show you a magic trick."

Intrigued, the owner accepts and gives him a pastry. The Jew swallows it and asks for another one. The owner gives him another one. Then the Jew swallows that one and asks for a third pastry and eats that, too.

The owner is starting to wonder where the magic trick is and asks, "So what did you do with the pastries?"

The Jew replies, "Look in the Arab's back pocket....."

One Sad Agency, One Extroverted Guy

News of the Weird:

-- The Environmental Protection Agency is already a News of the Weird favorite (for example, the secret goofing-off "man cave" of one EPA contractor in July 2013 and, two months later, the fabulist EPA executive who skipped agency work for months by claiming falsely to be on secret CIA missions), but the agency's Denver Regional Office took it to another level in June. In a leaked memo, the Denver deputy director implored employees to end the practice of leaving feces in the office's hallway. The memo referred to "several" incidents. [Government Executive, 6-25-2014]

-- Sheriff's deputies in Salina, Kansas, arrested Aaron Jansen, 29, but not before he put on quite a show on July 5. Jansen, speeding in a car spray-painted with derogatory comments about law enforcement, refused to pull over and even survived a series of tire-shredding road spikes as he turned into a soybean field, where he revved the engine and drove in circles for 40 minutes. As deputies set up a perimeter, Jansen futilely tossed items from the car (blankets, CDs, anything available) and then (with the car still moving) climbed out the driver's door and briefly "surfed" on the roof. Finally, as deputies closed in, Jansen shouted a barrage of Bible verses before emerging from the car wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a woman's dress. [KAKE-TV (Wichita), 7-7-2014]

I Report, You Forget Please

Ooops moment for a Finnish journalist who accidentaly told the truth:

A Finnish journalist reported seeing Hamas terrorists launch a rocket at Israel from a Gaza hospital, but later attacked news outlets for using her report as a pro-Israel “propaganda weapon.”

Aishi Zidan, a journalist for the daily newspaper Helsinging Sanomat, described the rocket attack in a report, which was uploaded to YouTube on Friday. The blog Legal Insurrection provided a translation of the Finnish report.

Zidan reported that a rocket was fired at 2:00 a.m. from the parking lot of Gaza City’s main hospital, Shifa Hospital.

You can see what happened here. The journalist was lucky enough to be in an area when news happened. She reports the news eagerly, because, well, it's news.

Only later does she realize that it doesn't fit the narrative.

And what was she doing at the hospital? Looking for Israeli atrocities?

It's a fact that Hamas fires rockets from hospitals, schools and residential areas. Many reporters just ignore the fact. (and Hillary claims that Gaza is just so small that they can't help it)

I propose a new narrative for Hillary, Finnish reporters, and antisemitic noncombatant helpers: "Our guys just forgot they were in a school yard, hospital parking lot, or residential shelter."

Cute's Back

I've not disengaged from the political these days but I'm finding it harder to comment on our current insanity. The world needs serious men, and women, at the moment and we've been electing guys we'd like to hang out with. The world has a way of working these things out, but it's often not pretty.

So I've been watching Wicked Tuna and fixing things around the house. How lazy is that, by the way – watching videos of other people fishing? I mean, when it's done right, fishing is already about the least taxing "sport" there is. 

Course the TV doesn't show the long hours of waiting for fish to show up. That wouldn't sell. (though in my present state of mind, I might watch it) But what they do show: a fish gets on the line, then you either lose it or don't, and if you do get it in the boat, it's either a good fish or a great fish. There are no surprises. They never catch a talking fish, or one that can grant wishes.

If I ever catch a talking tuna that can grant me three wishes, I'll ask him to put Charles Krauthammer into the president's body. Three times.