Morning Whip, Mar. 1, 2010

SECTION ONE: The Word:
March. The first hints of spring begin to seep into the frozen parts of the inhabited world. The world isn’t quite as cold as it has been. A season of hope. College basketball reaches its crescendo. Spring Training is in full swing. Sure, there are slush ponds and sloppy mud puddles and piles of dirty snow, melting at the sides of the roads and parking lots and sidewalks and driveways. But it’s March. Time to look forward to spring, and on to summer.

My favorite season has always been fall. But March isn’t bad. Sure, it comes in like a lamb and out like a lion–or vice versa, but the point is that there’s a lamb at one end or the other, unlike January, which is just harsh and never really very much fun, and not just because of the post-holiday depression.

So here’s to March, and the hope of better days ahead.

SECTION TWO: Things That Amuse Me:
Simians and other aminals*:
Polar bear is a ‘new’ species [*1] — “Polar bears may have come into existence only 150,000 years ago, when brown bears were trapped by an ice age and had to adapt quickly to survive, scientists have found.”
*Yes, I know it’s “animals,” it’s just that I always found the childhood mispronunciation really, really cute . . .

Travel:
Cruise Line Dining: Ten Tips For More Rewarding Dining [*2]

Sports:
No. 4 Tennessee beats Mississippi 75-63 [*3]

SECTION THREE: Politics: The neverending battle against blithering idiocy:
People doing potentially good things (including sightings of politicians doing something less than totally idiotic):
LA-SF Reality Check [*4] — Wherein lefty magazine Mother Jones suddenly realizes that heavily subsidized high speed rail makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, even as a “jobs” program.

The reality of President Obama and his entire Administration as blithering idiots:
Video: Obama doesn’t know what car insurance covers [*5] — And sometimes, “blithering idiot” has meaning beyond its specialized definition here of “thinking that socialism actually works.” Obama has a long history (“I’ve visited . . . 57 states so far . . . “) of saying truly, deeply, moronic things. The guy is not by any stretch of the imagination the sharpest knife in the drawer. He just has a really smooth delivery and a fawning, protective media. Personally, I wouldn’t pick him to run my local school board, let alone the Federal Government. I certainly wouldn’t engage him as a lawyer to try to fight a traffic ticket.
Democrats’ Obama bounce in California disappearing [*6]

The reality of Washington Democrats (and Independents, and Socialists) as blithering idiots:
Nancy Pelosi: Hey, I Sort of Enjoy Teabagging [*7] — Bringing up a really, really, really uncomfortable mental image . . . thanks a lot, Ace of Spades HQ!
Nancy Pelosi “Shares Some Views” With Functional Retards: “A Bill Can Be Bipartisan Without Bipartisan Votes[*8]

Other blithering idiots at large making life difficult for regular folks:
Why I Hate Bureaucrats [*9]
SWAT Team Endangers Child, Parents Charged With Child Endangerment [*10]

Opposition Research: because blithering idiocy can be dangerous, especially when organized into idiotic groups with idiotic ideologies:
Speech and Spending [*11]
What Taxes Will States Turn to Next? [*12] — As Glenn Reynolds notes, “The notion of just spending less doesn’t even occur to them. . . .”
Farrakhan Blasts “White Right” For Causing Problems For Obama [*13] — Remind me again which ethnic group voted upwards of 90% for the guy with approximately the same skin color for President? Who’s racist in America today?

The Keith Olbermann Memorial “Special Comment” on blithering idiots in the Media:
Chaos at MSNBC [*14]
Run, Joe, Run! [*15] — Wherein Suze Orman channels the Keef . . .
NY Times Crank Frank Rich Confuses Marxist Killer With Tea Party Protesters [*16]
Who’s Obsessed and Deranged? [*17] — “Would any newspaper other than the New York Times publish anything this dumb?”

SECTION FOUR: Case Studies in Blithering Idiocy
“Global warming” aka “Climate change” — or should that be “Climate Reform?”:
Al Gore on ClimateGate: “The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules or took a few liberties with our female guests. We did. (Wink.)” [*18]
Gore: We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change [*19] — Sadly, we can’t wish away Gore, either. (Did I use that one yesterday? Yes, yes I did, but I flubbed the link, so the repeat snark is acceptable, according to the new rule I just made up right now.)

The Economy (Can the blithering idiots bring down the most productive economy the world has ever seen? Yes, They Can! Will they?):
Fiscal Death by Welfare [*20]

The Morning Whip is a (mostly) daily review of what’s out there that caught my attention, sometimes but not always posted before 11 am Central time in the U. S. of A., unless I just don’t feel like it that day, am out doing something more important or more fun, or I’ve been abducted, detained, arrested, or otherwise flummoxed by the agents of blithering idiotry.

I surf the Web, so you don’t have to! (which would be a trademark, but come on, who am I kidding?)