You know that Spring is really here when young activist women march topless in Portland, Maine to protest discriminatory laws about exposing the upper body in public.

Tactically, the use of the sight of nubile female breasts with the object of punishing the phallocratic enemy might seem a bit ill-conceived and fundamentally ineffective, but the more sophisticated of us realize that demonstrations always have multiple and diverse goals and that, particularly in the Spring, some young women just enjoy flaunting their assets.

CBS:

Some people’s jaws hit the ground, plenty of men showed up with cameras, and others – including parents with their children – were just plain offended, as almost two dozen topless women marched in Maine’s largest city.

The women drew a crowd of over 500 onlookers when they shed their shirts and marched in downtown Portland on Saturday to promote what they call “equal-opportunity public toplessness.”

Organizer Ty MacDowell said the point of the march was that a topless woman out in public shouldn’t attract any more attention than a man who walks around without a shirt.

Good luck with that.

According to The Portland Press Herald, by the end of the march more than 500 people had amassed – a mix of marchers, young men snapping photos, oglers and people just out enjoying a warm sunny day.

“We should be able to walk down the street and not have this many men taking pictures of us,” a participant shouted.

The American public’s lack of enthusiasm for the health care bill is clearly getting to the Obamination. At a question session following a speech by the President in Charlotte, when a woman referred to being overtaxed, the Chosen One lost it and responded with a tortuous rambling diatribe.

WaPo:

Even by President Obama’s loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

Serial killers have become enormously successful entertainment themes in popular fiction, films, and even an HBO series. These days, the FBI is operating a museum featuring the letters, art and artifacts associated with serial killers, called the Evil Minds Museum.

It is discussed in this FBI Podcast by the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit.

Unfortunately, the museum is not open to the public and is only intended to be used by criminal investigators, intelligence professionals, and academic researchers. Dr. Lecter could get in, but not you.

Via MindHacks.

UPI reports that the cops in Oklahoma City received an interesting offer.

Authorities in Oklahoma said a man who crashed into a parking lot walked into a jail and offered a stick he called the “last tree in the universe” as payment.

Oklahoma County sheriff’s deputies said Rondell Bailey walked into the downtown Oklahoma City jail with a stick and told deputies he wanted to offer the object, which he called the “last tree in the universe,” in exchange for dropping any possible charges against him, KOCO-TV, Oklahoma City, reported Wednesday.

The deputies said Bailey left after being told the stick was not an acceptable form of payment and threw a brick through a jail window.

Investigators said they discovered a white powder suspected to be methamphetamine during a search of the suspect’s truck.

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Steve Hoefer made a glove which will play Rock, Paper, Scissors against its wearer. The glove was winning in this 1:36 video

Hat tip to Rosa Golian and Karen L. Myers.

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Satire of typical news report (Warning: lots of off-color language). 2:02 video.

From Vanderleun via Karen L. Myers.

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“Just buy me a sun dress and put me in a Prius!” Hitler declares angrily on learning that Jerry Brown is again running for governor of California in the latest “Der Untergang” take-off.

3:49 video.

Hat tip to Kenneth Grubbs.

The leftist democrat base waves flowers

Political strategists on both sides are wondering aloud why it is that democrat members of Congress seem willing to climb aboard the health care flying bomb and head into a one-way legislative mission trying to sink Americans’ free choice in health care. Are they crazy? Do they believe the Emperor Obama’s promises that they will live forever in the Socialist equivalent of the Yakukuni Shrine? Quite a lot of them surely won’t be coming back to Washington next year. So why are they doing it?

Gary Andres explains the thinking of the democrat kamikaze.

One Democratic lobbyist advanced the “public education thesis.” “Sure, this might seem controversial now. But once it’s done, Members of Congress will have a chance to explain what they did, why, and how it’s going to make a difference.”

According to this theory, support will rise and opposition will ease, but only after the bill is enacted. The strategy, however, hinges on lawmakers’ ability to do an effective post-passage marketing job. It also assumes the opposition will not mount any kind of successful counter mobilization to protest its passage.

A variation on the public education thesis is the “Americans support success” conjecture. It goes something like this: Voters like accomplishments. Seeing the president in the Rose Garden, signing health care reform legislation into law will improve Mr. Obama’s approval numbers, which helps his party politically in the midterm election. Getting a bill done – almost irrespective of its contents – will help boost the White House’s and Democrats’ political fortunes, according to this view.

Next there is the “good as it gets” hypothesis. After two successful election cycles (2006 and 2008) Democrats amassed large majorities in the House and the Senate. But now they have reached their maximum majority size, based on this theory. With the prospects of their party strength only shrinking next year, now is the time to act on health care.

George Crawford, a former chief of staff to Speaker Pelosi and now a senior government affairs advisor at King and Spalding wrote an opinion piece recently in The Hill underscoring this point. Crawford argues that after “successful campaigns over the past several cycles, Democrats had come closer to their potential high-water mark.” He goes on to posit the party’s majority would get smaller irrespective of the House’s actions in the 111th Congress. So they might as well do it while Democrats have the votes.

Finally, there is the “energize the base” argument. This one has perhaps the most appeal because it includes some empirical support. Public polling on health care always masks huge variation in opinion between Republicans and Democrats.

For example, in a recent Rasmussen poll, President Obama’s health care plan lagged overall by a 41 percent (oppose) — 56 percent (favor) margin among likely voters. Yet looking at the crosstabs tells a very different story. Nearly 7 out of 10 (71 percent) self-identified Democrats favor the legislation, while only 12 percent of Republicans approve. This nearly 60 point spread between the parties on this issue has emerged in poll after poll in the last several years on this issue.

In other words, passing health care reform is a bit of a Holy Grail for Democrats. It is one of the most important debates and potential accomplishments for the party’s most ardent partisans – and has been for many years. Failure to enact this legislation would render a crippling blow to those most apt to volunteer, talk to their friends about politics, give money and vote in the upcoming midterm election. These base voters may not always guarantee the party’s victory, but without them defeat is assured.

Some combination of these four theories is the driving force behind the Democrats’ end game on health care. Of course, each of these conjectures includes a host of counter arguments that could prove disastrous for congressional Democrats in November. But for now, the president and his party’s legislative leaders agree – the only thing worse than passing health care reform is doing nothing at all.

It is very odd, distinctly in the “man bites dog” category of events falling into the opposite of normal reality, to see the democrats, the party of competent political tactics and mechanics, the party contemptuous of theory, the party dedicated above everything else to winning at any price and governing, deliberately marching into political destruction, openly defying a substantial majority of public opinion, in full knowledge of the consequences.

We can only conclude, I think, that ideology really has triumphed over there. They are willing to sacrifice their Congressional majority, and many of their political careers, for Socialism.

Obviously, they believe that, once they pass their health care bill, it will become another third-rail entitlement. Americans will become dependent and addicted, and no one will ever be able to alter the new order of reality and repeal it. Curiously, they seem to have overlooked their own Rube Goldberg design (intended to bring costs under a trillion dollars) of starting revenue collection immediately, but delaying most of the system’s arrival until 2013 and after. Republicans have plenty of time to recapture Congress and then repeal all this, and Republicans are promising to do exactly that.

In the end, the democrat’s kamikaze health care push is very likely to prove just as futile as the Japanese precedent in the final stages of WWII.

In the old days, Triad wars featured more traditional weapons.

Recently the police in Taiwan captured a more modern, but equally unusual, example of Triadic weaponry. EDNDO Gun Blog:

(bad Google translation from Chinese, edited by me)

Police said 19-year-old gang member So and So was apprehended for violation of weapon-carry laws resulting in the search and seizure of an arsenal housed on the 7th Floor of Linsen North Road, Suite A. A revolver and 6 rounds of canister-style shotgun ammunition, as well as four pistols, one a standard Beretta, the other three improvised firearms, along with 15 bullets and 19 blank cartridges.

This is the very large shotgun revolver, can be loaded with 6 rounds. The frame is of steel construction. With a short barrel, it weighs more than 3 kilograms (6 lbs, 10 oz.). There is no rifling, but there is a base intended for a sight. There is no guard on the exposed trigger, and so safety, so when fully loaded, if the trigger were to pulled intentionally or by mistake, the weapon will fire, which is very dangerous.

The incongruous home-made Beretta logo and the “Made in USA” must both be decorative efforts to add logos to make the piece look more like a factory manufactured weapon.

From Gizmodo via Karen L Myers.

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I suppose Triad members in Taiwan must have importing issues, but nearly 7 pounds worth of revolver is a lot to carry, and the recoil from a 12 gauge revolver must be awfully unpleasant. Taurus actually produces a series of revolvers chambered for both .45 Long Colt/.410 Shotshell representing a considerably more practical application of the same idea.

2:23 video

Bury the health care bill in an Obama t shirt.

Byron York marvels at a president who stoops to this kind of tasteless emotional manipulation. The democrat crowd laughs uneasily because even they don’t quite know how to take the president’s story.

(around 8:25 in this 10:46 video)

I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

Personally, I think the story is so strange that I tend to doubt it is even factual. And, beyond that, there is something downright disturbing about encountering a public figure who is not actually embarrassed at the idea of such an expression of such macabre personal devotion. Obama’s vanity is without limit or reason.

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Donald Boudreaux retorts:

What have we here? A politically successful multimillionaire stands idly by as an employee – who seems also to have been Mr. Obama’s personal acquaintance – dies because she cannot afford proper medical care. Then Mr. Obama deploys this tale of woe not to apologize for, or to criticize, his own refusal to help a friend but, instead, to criticize millions of other people who never met this woman for their refusal to be forced into ponying up for her health insurance.

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UPDATE 2/7:

Tom Maguire links a story explaining that the lady actually did have catastrophic health coverage with a high deductible but skimped on routine exams.

What world leader is so lame that he requires a teleprompter to address a class of 6th graders?

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

Remember Iowahawk’s message from Obama’s teleprompter video?

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CORRECTION:

Photos exist of his Obamatude actually interacting with the kiddies ex tempore. It turns out he brought the teleprompter to use to announce a program incentivizing school districts to adopt federal curriculum guidelines.

(From Dan Riehl’s commenter Ozwitch:)

What is even more disturbing than the need to whip TOTUS out to talk to school kids is the purpose of Obama’s visit to that school. He was announcing his desire to put billions more into his program “Race to the Top” (RttT in Obamaland cutespeak) and also create a means for school districts to bypass the authority of their State Boards of Education in order to apply for federal RttT funds. What is so disturbing about this? One of the requirements of winning this federal grant money is that local school districts must contractually agree to adopt federal curriculum guidelines, even those that have not yet been defined by the Obama Administration. Yup….the federal core curriculum issue rears its ugly head again.

The plane is a Piper PA-18A 150 registered to Mr. Jonathan L. Miller of Anchorage Alaska

Gizmodo was not sure the story of the pilot repairing a bear-damaged plane with duct tape and flying it home was true, but liked the story so much they linked it anyway.

The original story (and photos) came from an Army Paratrooper forum posting, which gave no details beyond blaming the bear’s assault on the plane on fishing bait left inside.

Jill Burke, at Alaska Dispatch, looked into this exurban legend, tracked down witnesses and recorded the actual story.

When bush pilot Luke Miller, 28, made an overnight stop at a friend’s hunting lodge in Southwest Alaska earlier this year, he had no way to know that a large and very dedicated menace would, under cover of night, chew and claw his plane to shreds. …
What follows is the tale of the bear’s destruction spree and the plane’s revival as told by the pilot’s dad, Mark Miller, and family friend and hunting guide Gary LaRose, who first discovered the bear’s fabric-eating, metal-bending offense.

Contrary to some reports, it wasn’t a fishy aroma that lured the bear in. The plane wasn’t full of fish, nor had it just been used to haul fish. The pilot didn’t radio for help — he used a cell phone — and the incident isn’t a hoax dating back nine years; it happened around Sept. 26 and 27, 2009.

And yes, duct tape and plastic wrap saved the day.

LaRose had already had a few run-ins with the brown bruin, which discovered it could use the new meat shed at LaRose’s lodge like a McDonald’s drive-through. One night, after breaking out a window, the bear grabbed a hindquarter of freshly-butchered moose, feasting on 60 to 70 pounds of it as it dangled through the window, still hanging from the rafters.
LaRose boarded up the window, and after returning from a guided silver salmon trip, butchered the remaining moose meat, put it in the freezer and cleaned and bleached the space to eliminate all traces of the meat.

The next night, the bear pushed out a screen. Two nights later he returned again, got the door open and knocked over a bucket of broken glass collected after the first break-in.

Miller stopped in a day or two later on his way to a piloting job for another guide. A storm was moving through with heavy rain and 25 to 30 mile per hour winds, and LaRose’s lodge offered a comfortable place for a night of rest. Offered a choice to tie down the plane out in the open, or about 60 feet from the shed, where it would be better sheltered, he chose the area by the shed.

“I figured the bear situation was done,” La Rose said. “The meat had been gone for three or four days and I figured it got the message.”

Early the next morning after a night of howling winds, in the dark before sunrise, a client reported another meat shed break-in to LaRose, who took a walk to check things out and discovered the bear had once again pulled out a window, but otherwise had done no damage.

No damage, that is, until LaRose remembered Miller’s plane.

“My headlamp hit Luke’s plane and it was literally destroyed,” he said. “My heart sank. It was just an unbelievable sight.”

LaRose was faced with the unhappy task of waking Miller up to tell him the bear had destroyed the 1958 Piper Cub’s wheels by clawing at the rubber, busted out the windows on the plane’s left side, and shredded fabric from rear windows to tail.

“He basically ravaged the whole plane,” LaRose said, adding that, in his 38 years as a pilot in Alaska, he has never seen anything like it.

Miller had a small amount of vacuum-sealed meat for personal use stored in plastic and stashed in the gear he had brought along for his upcoming job assignment. Despite all the damage done to the plane, the bear missed it. LaRose questions whether the bear was even able to smell it, and said Miller’s plane was otherwise clean.

Miller grew up in a family that owns a remote lodge and learned early on to scrub planes down with bleach, soap and water after hauling meat. He had transported caribou a few weeks earlier, and LaRose said he supposes it’s possible there was a hint of blood on board, but he’s skeptical, and thinks there’s a better explanation — one having to do with the bear’s fondness for the meat shed and its proximity to the plane.

“He was pissed,” LaRose said. “His easy food source had dried up and he was out for revenge.”

If malice was indeed the motivation, the bear knew how drive the point home. It took a dump next to its handiwork near Miller’s plane, LaRose said, and left a similar gift not too far away near where other planes were tied down.

After a few days of meticulous fix-it work, the plane was airworthy enough to fly back to Anchorage. Miller fitted the windows with plywood and Plexiglas, replaced the tires and the horizontal stabilizer (the bear either leaned on it or sat on it), and, according to Miller’s dad, fashioned a makeshift fabric skin out of 25 rolls of duct tape and some industrial-strength plastic wrap.

As for the bear, it hasn’t been seen since. It may have been “whacked” during bear hunting season in October, or it may be playing it smart. After all, bears know when it’s time “to get the hell out of Dodge,” according to the LaRose.

Then again, it may be off enjoying a satisfied rest.

“He’s off digesting some fabric right now. He just disappeared into the night. He doesn’t know how famous he is,” the pilot’s father, Mark Miller, said.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Zennie62 says Max Baucus wasn’t drunk. Zennie also thinks the health care bill is a good idea.

What do you think? Let’s have a real bipartishan approach to the question.

5:38 video

You elect Barack Obama president of the United States and this is the inevitable result.

The White House hires Barney’s gay creative director, Simon Doonan, famous for risque Yuletide displays depicting Margaret Thatcher as a dominatrix and Madonna (not the holy one), to decorate its Christmas trees, and he sends out plain balls to be decorated with decoupage at such worthy cause locations as a gay community center.

The result, as Big Goverrnment reports, inevitably places on the national Xmas tree open expressions of exactly what Barack Obama’s administration represents, statements identifying its deepest values.

Mao Tse Tung

Drag Queen Hedda Lettuce

Obama on Mount Rushmore

BrickGun Semi-Auto

What I would consider a busybody Toronto neighbor saw an executive standing by a window holding what appeared to be a pistol, and phoned the local police who responded with a Swat team raid. The frightening weapon proved to be 277 lego blocks assembled into roughly the outline of a Glock 17.

Toronto Sun:

(Jeremy Bell a) partner at digital marketing company Teehan+Lax was surrounded by heavily armed tactical officers, cuffed and held against the wall of his Richmond St. W. office — until, that is, the cops found the gun he had been holding in front of the window about 90 minutes earlier was a pile of blocks.

The BrickGun Semi-Automatic gun (purchased online from BrickGun, “designers and builders of the world’s most realistic custom Lego weapon models”) arrived at Bell’s office Wednesday.

The lifetime Lego fan finished assembling his toy — complete with build-it-yourself magazine — at 5:40 p.m.

It was in one piece for about 10 minutes before it fell apart, he recalled yesterday.

But the tenant in an apartment about six metres across the way didn’t see that last part. And so the tenant called the cops.

At about 7 p.m., as Bell and some colleagues played a video game, the Emergency Task Force moved in.

“They were screaming in the hallway for me to come out,” Bell said. “When I went out there and I saw there was an officer kind of crouched down in the stairwell, it was clear what was going on.”

Despite the very real guns pointed at him, Bell said he didn’t fret.

“I’m not trafficking guns or selling drugs or anything like that, so as soon as I saw that these cops were legit, I was like, all right, this has got to be about this stupid gun.”

Pressed up against the wall, his hands thrown in cuffs, Bell directed the cops to the pieces of fake gun sitting in a box by the window. Moments later, he was free.

“At least you have a story to tell now,” he quoted one cop as saying.

I think this case is a classic example illustrating the exaggerated fear of weapons characteristic of today’s deracinated urban masses. Put a badge on someone and sprinkle the authority of the state upon his head and he suddenly magically is supposed to acquire powers of judgment and responsibility beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. It seems to me that Jeremy Bell came fairly close to proving, along with Amadou Diallo, just how foolish that theory is.