Dodd Just Gets Dodd-ier Every Day

Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a worse example of how diseased the US Senate has become than Chris Dodd:

Back in July, Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., proposed an amendment reducing aviation security appropriations by $4.5 million in favor of firefighter grants -- a notoriously inneffective program. In fact, the money was specifically "for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems." The amendment was also sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Carper, D-Del., but Dodd deserves to be singled out here because the firefighters union is a pet constituency of his.

Blind slavery to labor unions screws normal Americans once again. Dodd cannot be put out of work soon enough.

Boarding School Does Not Equate Education

It's possible to have it all and still turn out baffled, stupid and alone:

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was "lonely" and had "never found a true Muslim friend."

"I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."

Magnificent

And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.

Follow the link and read it all.

Hey, Neat How THIS Worked Out

Government will consume 100% of the gross national product in our lifetimes.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

"There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee.

This Disaster Was Nearly Elected President

I know, who among us are really poets? Instead of mocking his art, let's mock him for being a rat fink liar.

Everyday I Get in the Queue

I get on the bus, it takes me to you.

So Simple Even the President Could Understand

Not Just the Smoking Gun

But photos of it actually firing:

I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective - since we're using an off-the-shelf product that isn't documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn't coded up in Fortran I don't know - time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn't enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it's too late for me to fix it too.

Now that has all the hallmark of IRREFUTABLE SCIENCE!

Bold Leadership on Display

It might exist somewhere in Washington DC, but with the junior senator from the state of Minnesota - no chance.

The silent treatment reached an apex (or nadir) of sorts on Tuesday, when I caught Franken on the way to the Senate Democratic policy lunch to ask him the obvious question-of-the-day: What did he think of the Obama administration's plan to increase Afghanistan troop deployments by 34,000.

Franken turned slowly to face me and pursed his lips as if to speak. Just then his body man intervened and flicked out the business card of Franken's well-regarded spokeswoman, Jess McIntosh.

CNN's Dana Bash tried her luck: "What do you think as far as what you heard from the President so far?"

Franken: "You gotta talk to Jess McIntosh..."

Body guy: "We run everything on the record through the press shop."

Me: "Every other Senator we talk with, we ask a question, they answer the question.. I really find it unusual.."

Franken: "Well, give Jess a call and talk about this."

Somewhere in the unwritten rules of representing the people is being able to represent the people; not just shoo them off to some PR flack back in the office somewhere. What a putz.