The Economist:

OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.

The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean global warming is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.

The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.

Oh, my. How can “settled science” be so full of maybes.

Read the whole thing.

Watch and learn.

How amusing that “progressives” are so attached to 19th century technology. Could it be that, as incorrigible meddlers and know-it-alls, they just hate the idea of people going where they feel like it, when they feel like it?

So much better to jam them on trains.

Two stories sum it up:

Ten years after Iraq war began, Iran reaps the gains

The influence of Tehran on its neighbor is growing, while the U.S., Iraqi officials and analysts say, pursues a policy of near-total disengagement.

Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the geopolitical winner of the war appears to be their common enemy: Iran.

American military forces are long gone, and Iraqi officials say Washington’s political influence in Baghdad is now virtually nonexistent. Hussein is dead. But Iran has become an indispensable broker among Baghdad’s new Shiite elite, and its influence continues to grow.

The signs are evident in the prominence of pro-Iran militias on the streets, at public celebrations and in the faces of some of those now in the halls of power, men such as Abu Mehdi Mohandis, an Iraqi with a long history of anti-American activity and deep ties to Iran.

Obama claimed credit for ending the war (Bush did), then pissed away our investment in blood and treasure to prove a point. Jerk.

Healthcare law could raise premiums 30% for some Californians

About 5 million Californians got a first glimpse at what they might pay next year under the federal healthcare law. For many, that coverage will come with a hefty price tag.

Compared with what individual policies cost now, premiums are expected to rise an average of 30% for many middle-income residents who don’t get their insurance through their employers.

Alternatively, lower-income consumers will reap the biggest savings and are projected to save as much as 84% off their coverage thanks to federal subsidies.

The figures were released Thursday by Covered California, the state agency charged with implementing the federalAffordable Care Act. They underscore the harsh reality that costs for some consumers will have to rise in order to carry out the biggest healthcare expansion in half a century…

Half a century? ObamaCare is a massive boondoggle, a wealth transfer scheme, that will set America back.

Does the North Korean dictator need a booster seat?

And what’s with the goofy hats worn by the men second from left and at far right? Do they store their lunch under there?

For the story on NK’s plan to attack America, read here.

by Burt Prelutsky

You might even say that insanity is a growth industry. For example, the liberals are tripping all over themselves to pass new gun control legislation. To prove how sincere they are, they have put Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein in charge. Joe Biden is so dumb that schools have renamed dunce caps in his honor, and Feinstein is such a political hack that even after swearing to get to the bottom of the national security leaks to the NY Times, once she realized the footprints led back to the Oval Office, she never again mentioned it.

Even people as stupid as Sen. Patty Murray and Mayor Michael Bloomberg know that federal bans on assault weapons were in place for 10 years starting in the mid-90s and did nothing to diminish gun violence. They also know that Illinois has very strict gun laws in place, and yet over 500 people were gunned down in the streets of Chicago in 2012, making it the murder capital of every locale this side of Syria.

If liberals were serious about guns, and not merely playing to the kneejerk biases of their clueless base, they would ask the National Rifle Association to provide volunteers to teach gun safety in our grade schools. For all the insults liberals hurl at the NRA, I’m willing to wager that very few, if any, of the mass killings that take place with regularity in America can be laid at the feet of its members.

What’s more, I would make an even bigger wager that the group would do a better job of teaching youngsters gun safety than the members of the teachers union do teaching the kids about safe sex. And if you care to compare the two, I would suggest that the 71% rate of illegitimate births in the black community and the 50% rate among Hispanics do far more lasting damage to society than guns.

Some people were amazed to discover that the four bureaucrats that were being scapegoated by the Obama administration over the Benghazi massacre were still on the State Department payroll. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. That’s because short of killing them, there would have been no way to guarantee that the four wouldn’t start ratting out the responsible parties.

If one wanted to fully understand how corrupt the media is, you merely have to see the way they have stood by while Obama has spent months playing Sir Lancelot to Susan Rice’s Lady Guinevere. He voices outrage that his Secretary to the U.N. has come in for so much criticism for going on five Sunday news shows after 9/11 and blaming the massacre on a video when she knew so little about what had actually taken place. The appropriate response to that would have been for someone at the NY Times or ABC to say, “In that case, Mr. President, why was it that you chose her to go out and lie about it?” But of course those people are too busy nodding on cue.

In a related matter, Hillary Clinton, who was the person primarily responsible for the safety of Ambassador Stevens and his gallant colleagues in Libya, has been unable to address Congress or the American people about what she knew, when she knew it and, most importantly, when she decided not to talk about it. First she had a virus, then she suffered what has been referred to as an immaculate concussion and, finally, a blood clot. Call me a cynic, but I have a feeling that if the numbskulls in Oslo had decided to present her with a Nobel Peace Prize, she would have somehow managed to crawl out of her sick bed and make it across the Atlantic to the awards ceremony.

The liberals in Washington are once again suggesting that the minimum wage be raised from $7.25 to $9.80. They do this periodically to show they have compassion, knowing that appearances are all that counts to their base. The fact that such raises inevitably lead to higher unemployment never registers. Because all these men and women with (D) after their names are convinced of their own compassion and because their supporters are all lunkheads, symbolism trumps reality.

The fact that employers will often decide that it’s not worth $400-a-week to have someone stock their shelves or sweep out the store never occurs to them. What’s important is that they’ll be able to sleep soundly and dream of sugar plum fairies re-electing them. They never bother facing the fact that high school kids and unskilled adults aren’t worth $9.80-an-hour, an amount congressmen think others should be compelled to pay even though they themselves never would.

Speaking of unskilled labor, Obama has ordered pay increases for all federal employees. If I think it’s absurd to pay someone $9.80-an-hour to sweep out a barbershop, you can imagine how I feel about Joe Biden getting a raise that hikes his salary from $225,521 to $231,900. Now that he’s already paid for the hair transplant and having his teeth whitewashed, I have no idea how the VP will be spending the extra $6,379.

Still, I suppose there’s some intrinsic value in the fact that Biden serves as a high-profile inspiration to America’s mentally challenged. After all, we already have a president who proves that anyone, and we mean absolutely anyone, no matter how arrogant and corrupt, can grow up to be president. In Biden, we have proof that anyone, and we mean absolutely anyone, no matter how vain and ignorant, can grow up to be that person’s second-in-command.

Here in “car friendly” California, the tax is 66.1 cents per gallon.

Ann Coulter

The New York Times caused a sensation with its kazillion-word, March 17 article by Michael Luo on the failures of state courts to get guns out of the hands of men in domestic violence situations.

The main purpose of the article was to tweak America’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Rifle Association, for opposing some of the more rash anti-gun proposals being considered by state legislatures, such as allowing courts to take away a person’s firearms on the basis of a temporary restraining order.

It’s a new position for liberals to oppose the rights of the accused. Usually the Times is demanding that even convicted criminals be given voting rights, light sentences, sex-change operations and vegan meals in prison.

Another recent Times article about communities trying to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhoods quoted a liberal saying: “It’s counterproductive to public safety, because when you have nothing to lose, you are much more likely to commit a crime than when you are rebuilding your life.”

But that was about convicted child molesters. This is about guns, so all new rules apply.

As is usually the case when liberals start proposing gun restrictions, they assume only men will be disarmed by laws taking guns from those subjected to temporary restraining orders. But such orders aren’t particularly difficult to get. It doesn’t occur to liberals that an abusive man could also get one against his wife, whether or not his accusations are true.

Rather than helping victims of domestic abuse, this — and other Times’ proposals on guns — only ensures that more women will get killed. A gun in the hand of an abused woman changes the power dynamic far more than keeping a gun out of the hands of her abuser, who generally can murder his wife in any number of ways…

Read it all.

Central California is a favorite destination of my wife and me. We’re just back from a three night stay in Cambria. Here are two images from the trip.

The first is of a sprawling eucalyptus tree we stumbled across in Montana de Oro state park. I measured 33 paces from one end to the other.

The second image is from Big Sur, about 6 miles north of Gorda. The poppies are the state flower. We almost passed this up because, from a distance, they looked like wild mustard.

Only the government could create a law called the “Affordable…” and have it raise prices. IBD

ObamaCare Turns Three: 10 Disturbing Facts Americans Have Learned

As this start date draws near, evidence is piling up that ObamaCare will:

Boost insurance costs. Officially the “Affordable Care Act,” ObamaCare promised to lower premiums for families. But regulators decided to impose a 3.5% surcharge on insurance plans sold through federally run exchanges. There’s also a $63 fee for every person covered by employers. And the law adds a “premium tax” that will require insurers to pay more than $100 billion over the next decade. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation expects insurers to simply pass this tax onto individuals and small businesses, boosting premiums another 2.5%.

Push millions off employer coverage. In February, the Congressional Budget Office said that 7 million will likely lose their employer coverage thanks to ObamaCare — nearly twice its previous estimate. That number could be as high as 20 million, the CBO says.

Cause premiums to skyrocket. In December, state insurance commissioners warned Obama administration officials that the law’s market regulations would likely cause “rate shocks,” particularly for younger, healthier people forced by ObamaCare to subsidize premiums for those who are older and sicker.

“We are very concerned about what will happen if essentially there is so much rate shock for young people that they’re bound not to purchase (health insurance) at all,” said California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones.

That same month, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said ObamaCare will likely cause premiums to double for some small businesses and individuals.

And a more recent survey of insurers in five major cities by the American Action Forum found they expect premiums to climb an average 169%.

Cost people their jobs. The Federal Reserve’s March beige book on economic activity noted that businesses “cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.”

Around the same time, Gallup reported a surge in part-time work in advance of ObamaCare’s employer mandate. It found that part-timers accounted for almost 21% of the labor force, up from 19% three years ago.

Meanwhile, human resources consulting firm Adecco found that half of the small businesses it surveyed in January either plan to cut their workforce, not hire new workers, or shift to part-time or temporary help because of ObamaCare…

by Burt Prelutsky

Because I am a conservative living in California, I often find myself thinking that, like those members of the French underground in World War II movies, I should be transmitting my dispatches by way of a shortwave radio.

How crazy is California, you ask? Well, for openers, the voters back in November, voted to raise the state income taxes. And why did they do that, you ask? Because Governor Jerry Brown told them it was a good idea. That’s how crazy California is. But there’s more.

Now it’s been discovered that the world’s largest deposit of shale oil lies beneath our feet. Not only could it provide jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed people, but it might even lower our gas prices 50 or 60 cents-a-gallon, finally putting us in range of the national average. But for all the good that oil is likely to do us, it might as well be lying beneath the feet of Martians. That’s because nearly every wealthy Democrat in California is a devout environmentalist.

All those rich dipsticks, like Rob Reiner, George Clooney, Ted Danson and Barbra Streisand, who spend millions electing the likes of Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, Brad Sherman and Governor Moonbeam, are more concerned with being invited to Sierra Club galas than they are with the state’s double digit unemployment rate. It may not be easy being green if you’re a Muppet, but you’ve got it made if you’re a greenie in California.

In a saner world, it’s not insects that would need to be on lists of endangered species. Instead, it would be two-legged creatures like Jim Carrey. The sometime actor/fulltime buffoon recently declared that “Anyone who ran out after Newtown to get an assault rifle has nothing in his body or his soul worth protecting.” One has to suspect that in the sequel to “Dumb and Dumber,” Carrey will play both roles. In Hollywood, that’s called typecasting.

How is it that when Obama releases photos of himself playing basketball at the White House, it’s okay, but if a conservative mentions Obama and basketball in the same sentence, he can count on Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow labeling him a racist?

Speaking of which, how is it that blacks claim to feel insulted if they are in any way connected to fried chicken and watermelon, two very tasty items, but, by and large, they don’t seem to be even slightly embarrassed by a 71% illegitimacy rate, a flourishing drug culture and more young men going to jail than to college. If they were serious grown-ups, instead of being a pair of celebrity suck-ups, wouldn’t we expect Barack and Michelle, the First Black Couple, to address those problems instead of constantly lecturing white, law-abiding, people about guns and cookies?

The latest in a litany of good reasons why conservatives should home-school their children was the suspension of a seven-year-old from the second grade. It seems during recess he fantasized a game in which evil monsters were hiding in a box. His solution to saving the world was to toss a fantasy hand grenade and blow them up. The school administrators, who no doubt fantasize that they are sane, wasted no time dealing with this menace.

For the boy, it was no doubt a learning experience. One thing he learned was that all the monsters don’t hide in boxes; often, they can be found lurking in the principal’s office. The other thing he learned is that fantasy hand grenades are good, but real ones are more effective.

On the other hand, if the kid was anything like me, he knew exactly what he was doing. If I were attending public school these days and I found out how easily one could be sent home, I would be spraying the schoolyard with an imaginary tommy gun.

I don’t really believe that little kids pointing their fingers and going “Bang bang” are really a cause for great concern. I do think that adults lying about disabilities in order to either retire early or increase their pension benefits is every bit as disgusting as a president blowing millions of dollars on vacations for himself and his family when so many Americans can’t pay their bills, thanks mainly to his left-wing agenda.

At present, there are 8,830,026 Americans collecting disability checks. That is a record number. In fact, a new record has been set every month going back to January, 1997. That month, the number went from 4,385,623 to 4,385,374, a dip of 249. Does anyone actually believe that we have doubled the number of disabled Americans over the past 16 years? Even with all those nanny state safety measures in place? Disability fraud is definitely a growth industry. Along with gun manufacturing and gun sales, it’s just about the only one we have.

Finally, in Colorado, some very bright legislators are trying to change things so that the burden of proof will be on defense attorneys to prove their clients are sane rather than on prosecutors to prove they’re loons.

Although it is a step in the right direction, the solution should be to throw out the plea of guilty by reason of insanity. Evil is evil. It is not a state of mind, but a state of soul. The lame argument that the insane can’t assist counsel in their own defense falls on my deaf ears. As I see it, if the accused didn’t need a bunch of shysters to help him molest, rob, rape or murder, I don’t see any compelling reason why these law school grads need his help to con a jury.

by Burt Prelutsky

Back in the 1980s, a fictional pitchman named Joe Isuzu made a series of TV commercials promoting Isuzu cars and trucks. A fast-talking, smarmy-looking guy, would make outrageous claims along the lines of “It has more seats than the Astrodome” and “It goes faster than a speeding bullet,” and everyone knew it was a takeoff on every overly zealous, ethically-challenged, salesman who had ever tried to sell you a lemon.

Today, it seems to me that we have his cousin living in the White House. I mean, is there anything our commander-in-chief says or does that doesn’t remind you of the cheapest sort of huckster? Instead of being the leader of the greatest nation on earth, this guy was born to work a carnival midway. He would clearly be right at home trying to con you into trying to knock iron ten-pins off a pedestal or blow several dollars trying to win a ten cent Kewpie doll by shooting at mechanical ducks.

You only have to look at the scare tactics Obama has employed in his attempt to use sequestration as an excuse to once again hike taxes to understand what a truly mendacious creep he is. Still, even I, who am always seeking the silver lining, have to acknowledge that Obama has surrounded himself with so many ignoramuses that rarely a day goes by that his stooges don’t provide me with a few good laughs. For instance, while standing in front of the other female members of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group that could have as its theme song “It Pays to Be Ignorant,” Maxine Waters warned that “ the Sequester could cost the nation 170 million jobs.” That’s roughly 50 million more people than presently have jobs.

It reminds me that in 2009, Obama, allegedly the smartest person in the universe not named Hillary Clinton, promised that the Affordable Care Act would save employers 400% on their insurance costs. Most people, that is most conservative people, understand that you can’t save more than 100% in the cost of anything even if you give it away for free.

From the first time Obama announced that his would be the most transparent administration in history to the last time he told us the world would come to an end if he had to cut two percent out of the most bloated budget we’ve ever seen, he has lied about everything from skeet shooting to the importance of pre-school.

Speaking of schools, a recent poll disclosed that 52% of Chicago’s high school students have engaged in sexual intercourse. So it’s no wonder that those students are setting records when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases and illegitimate births. Speaking as an old geezer, it strikes me that something is definitely lacking in those sex education classes that liberals have spent the past few decades promoting. Inasmuch as the kids are also failing to master English, math and science, I have begun to believe that they come out of these classes wondering what the heck all those bananas have to do with them.

Lest anyone think that all the idiots are in Illinois, in Massachusetts they’re promoting the idea that kids as young as five or six should get to determine their gender of choice, and use whatever bathroom they deem appropriate. What’s more, parents would not be informed.

It makes you marvel at how adaptable these morons are. It was less than 20 years ago that liberals were rallying around Hillary Clinton’s contention that it took a village to raise a child. As nutty as that was, at least it acknowledged that parents were members of the village. Now, whether it’s gender identification or abortion, liberals are promoting the idea that when it comes to children, parents aren’t even entitled to basic information.

One can only assume that the next step is leaving parents out of the loop when their teenage offspring start having children of their own.

As a conservative, I realize only too well how easy it is to sink into terminal depression. After all, if in spite of the longest-lasting economic morass since the 1930s, and in spite of a trillion dollar Stimulus and the abominable ObamaCare, Obama could be re-elected, anything is possible. Still, it is worth noting that in all the years since 1952, the two parties have taken turns swapping the presidency every four or eight years. The only exception was 1980-1992, when Reagan and Bush broke the cycle. That doesn’t guarantee that the Republicans will take back the Oval Office in 2016, but as a conservative, you have to grasp at straws, no matter how flimsy they might be.

While I much prefer insulting Democrats, there are times when there’s no getting around the fact that Republicans, even those of us with very little hair on our heads, can’t help tearing out what few strands we have left. I refer to the vote that confirmed the vile Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. Inasmuch as the Democrats denied George H.W. Bush the right in 1989 to appoint John Tower to be his Secretary of Defense, how is it that Republicans Thad Cochran, Richard Shelby, Mike Johanns and Rand Paul, all decided that Obama had the inalienable right to put the nation’s security in the hands of an imbecile who has stated that the Jewish lobby controls the U.S. Senate and that Iran is a sovereign nation with duly-elected leaders?

Just for the record, Rand Paul is no longer on my short list of potential 2016 presidential candidates. He now shares 278th place with Chris Christie.

…it was false reporting. I heard the topic discussed on Red Eye and believed it because some schools would be this absurd.

But not this time.

The principal of a Massachusetts school was under siege Wednesday for a report that he had canceled the school’s annual honors ceremony because it was unfair to pupils who weren’t getting any awards.

David Fabrizio, principal of Ipswich Middle School in Ipswich, told NBC News that — contrary to a local news report that quickly spread nationally — he had, in fact, expanded the ceremony.

High-achieving pupils will still get their awards at a special ceremony, just like always, he said. All he did, he said, was move Honors Night to Honors Day, so all of the pupils could take part.

It turns out that only children receiving awards could attend Honors Night, where they got to hear messages from inspirational speakers. By opening the ceremony up to all pupils, “the kids who need the inspirational speakers” can be there, Fabrizio said.

Amazing Dance Prodigy Hopes New Ballet Will Inspire Her Dad To Notice Her For Once

A famine threatens Congress.

Automatic federal cuts are bringing staffers to the brink of starvation, suggested Debbie Wasserman Schultz, at a recent House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Restaurants on the House side of Congress are increasing in cost so much that aides are being “priced out” of a good meal, she said, as Fox News reported. The comments came by way of a discussion about the impacts of the sequester on lawmakers’ office budgets. Rep. Jim Moran said he may be forced to lay off a staffer — and then Ms. Wasserman Schultz weighed in with her tale of hard times.

Just to clarify: An 8-ounce bowl of Ham and Bean soup at the Cannon Office Building’s carry-out café costs $2. A gourmet wrap or sliced bread sandwich sells for about $5. And in the Longworth Building’s sit-down cafeteria, a serving of stuffed chicken, asparagus and mashed potatoes sells for about $7, Fox News finds.

Meanwhile, Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s staffers earn between $60,000 and $160,000 per year, Fox News reports.

If a Republican said anything so dumb, he’d be held up as an example of how out of touch the GOP is.

This video from Reason sets up the story of James Enstrom and his fight against UCLA.

David French, writes about the lastest in his legal fight at The Corner:

The first decision denied the core of the defendants’ motion to dismiss a case brought by Professor James Enstrom, a case I’ve written about before. Enstrom not only blew the whistle on junk science behind recent proposed California diesel emissions restrictions, he discovered the state’s lead “scientist” had purchased his degree from a fictitious “Thornhill University” and that many members of the state’s Scientific Review Panel had overstayed term limits by decades. While the fake scientist received only a short suspension after his fraud was discovered, UCLA not only fired Enstrom, it also looted his research account of tens of thousands of dollars and failed to pay him any salary for more than a year.

Enstrom sued, the defendants moved to dismiss the case, and yesterday a district court allowed the case to go forward on all claims and against most of the defendants.

California made its name as a hotbed of innovation in science, technology and entertainment. Now entrepreneur has become a dirty word.

Teresa Watanabe in the LAT

Sujata Bhatt uses online games to encourage her students at Grand View Boulevard Elementary School to aim higher: “Don’t just play games, make them.”

Now Bhatt will get the chance to teach middle school students how to launch their own businesses at a new campus approved this week by the Los Angeles school board. The Incubator School marks the latest effort in L.A. Unified to spark innovation through “pilot” schools, where district educators are given autonomy over their curriculum, budget, staffing, training and other elements.

Sounds good. Who could be agin it?

Despite enthusiasm for the school’s concept, however, the plan became entangled in disputes over its location, union concerns over job placement rules and political tensions.

The board backed off from locating the new campus at Venice High School after parents and students complained they were not informed about it until last week. Sara Roos, a Venice High parent, told the board she wanted more details about the plan, although she sharply criticized it in online comments as an “experiment indoctrinating children in the tricks of an unregulated, free capitalistic market.”

Lisa Sobajian, 10th-grade class president, submitted a petition signed by 1,000 students opposed to sharing their campus with the new school.

Sounds like the twerps could use an education…oops!

Bhatt said that she met with Venice High’s principal and teachers union representative last October, but that requests to present the idea to the faculty drew no response. District officials acknowledged their communication efforts fell short.

In any case, under an amendment by board member Steve Zimmer, the board approved the school but directed the district and Venice community to work together to seek a location.

That did not disappoint Bhatt, who said she felt “relief and joy” over the board’s approval.

“I want students to be excited about learning,” Bhatt said. “It’s about creating quality schools for kids.”

And of course the teachers’ unions are tickled that kids will learn some useful skills. Uh, actually…

United Teachers Los Angeles, however, has not weighed in on the new school. The union has looked carefully at the 49 pilot schools approved in L.A. Unified because they require one-year teaching contracts that do not place seniority as the top factor in job placement, giving administrators greater power to transfer teachers.

To control the quality of the new school, union President Warren Fletcher said those proposing it should operate it for a year to “get the kinks out” before seeking pilot status and a faculty vote on the shorter contract.

But Mohammed Choudhury, policy manager of Future is Now Schools, a not-for-profit group supporting pilot campuses, disagreed that schools should be required to operate for a year before becoming a pilot. Choudhury said that delaying pilot status would give the union a chance to lobby teachers against signing the shorter contract.

“It’s an attempt to protect mediocrity,” he said.

The not-for-profit, started by former Green Dot Public Schools chief Steve Barr, contributed $150,000 in stipends for Incubator School’s design team. Barr said it was better to place a pilot school on campuses with extra space, such as Venice High; otherwise, the district would be legally required to offer it to a charter school, which is publicly financed but independently run.

Bhatt, a teacher for 11 years who has been credited with boosting student achievement in English and math, said she came up with the idea for the school while working as an advisor for a New York start-up aiming to develop a science application for the iPad. The young entrepreneurs — many of them in their 20s who already had started their own firms — inspired her to think about how to refashion teaching to better prepare students for the accelerated advances in the digital world, she said.

“There’s a disconnect between a textbook-based world, the excitement of problem solving and the energy and innovation of the digital economy,” she said. “The reason students disconnect from school is that it’s not connected to the real world.”

The school is scheduled to open next year with an initial class of 225 sixth- and seventh-graders drawn from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds. The students will learn such real-life skills as financial literacy and time management and they will combine academic learning with hands-on tinkering. They also will work with entrepreneurial mentors in the Westside’s growing Silicon Beach and be guided to produce their own start-up business by 8th grade. The school will eventually expand through 12th grade under current plans.

Aside from the Incubator School, the board also approved two other pilot schools, Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley and WISH Secondary Media Arts School in Los Angeles.

Mary Katherine Hamm at Hot Air

Citing figures indicating that more than 100,000 federal employees owe more than $1 billion in federal taxes, a House committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would require the firing of government workers who are “seriously tax delinquent.”

The legislation, introduced by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, advanced through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It now has to pass the full House to be implemented into law.

“Most taxpayers file accurate tax returns and pay the taxes they owe on time, regardless of their income,” Chaffetz, a Republican, said during the hearing Wednesday. “Federal employees and individuals applying for federal employment should do the same.”

The bill offers exceptions for those employees and applicants demonstrating financial hardship and making good faith efforts to settle up. You’d think our friends in the fair share party would be all over this, but it turns out they only like to demonize people who are already paying their taxes. Asking the bare minimum of federal employees isn’t their bag:

Democrats on the committee opposed the bill. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the committee, said the legislation “seeks to demonize federal employees rather than ensure their compliance with tax obligations.”

David Harsanyi

…As practical politics go (not to mention personal morality), compassion is never a bad idea. But rest assured, politically speaking, the GOP will never out-”care” the Democratic Party. It will never out-empathize it. Or out-diversify it. Or be able to promise that government can do more. And it shouldn’t want to.

For starters, there’s no reason to accept the liberal definition of caring — at all. Conservatives can be as compassionate as anyone else; just look at polls that gauge who gives to charities. It just so happens that conservatives don’t like to do their caring with other people’s money. If Republicans start holding up government as the principal source of empathy, hope and charity, America can expect an even bigger arms race in spending and dependency — the kind that, in the end, burdens the young and poor and everyone else.

It’s one thing to be more diverse and open-minded, to engage all sorts of people, even to shift your opinions when generational forces or facts demand it. It’s quite another to, as Newt Gingrich explained at CPAC, become a “party focused on the right to life and the right to a good life.” To begin with, politicians are in no position to offer you a good life — or a right to it. Secondly, it’s a myth that a good life isn’t available to anyone who is genuinely seeking it. In any event, liberal populism already has a monopoly on victimhood, so there’s scarce room for Republicans in that space.

In many tactical areas, the Growth and Opportunity Project seems to make sense. Modernization and more effective outreach are great ideas. The problem is that too often, the RNC allows Democrats to define the parameters of debate. There’s way too much worrying about acceptance and far too little about persuasion.

As a practical matter, let’s concede for a moment that conceding issues such as immigration, gay marriage and abortion makes sense — and that’s the implicit message of the project’s report. I’m sympathetic on a number of points, but what’s the cost-benefit analysis? Folks in Washington are obsessed with winning, and winning is nice. But politics is their livelihood. Average Americans don’t participate in the political process to join a team; they knock on doors because — as surprising as this may be to some — they believe in something.

And even though social conservatives feel as if they’re being swept aside by Republican Beltway types, fiscal conservatism will fare no better under this thinking. The idea of free markets is a moral one — an American idea — and a sellable one. Yes, polls show that young Americans are more pro-government than ever. So it’d be nice if there were a plan to convince them of how wrong they are — as opposed to trying to sound more like the people they already agree with.

Washington Examiner

President Obama praised the growth of the U.S. energy sector during a visit to Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Il., on Friday, crediting his administration’s “all of the above” energy policy for increased oil and gas production.

“We produce more oil than we have in 15 years.  We import less oil than we have in 20 years,” he said. “We’re producing more natural gas than we ever have before — with hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it.”

Those numbers are true. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2012, total U.S. oil production rose by about 1.1 million barrels per day over fiscal year 2007, and natural gas production rose 20 percent from 2007 to 2012.

What the president failed to mention is that the growth he is so proud of has taken place in spite of his administration’s energy policy, not because of it.

A recent study by the Congressional Research Service found that all of the increased production from fiscal years 2007 to 2012 took place on non-federal lands.

We’ve all known his type.

Victor Davis Hanson:

It is not easy to ruin the American economy; doing nothing[1] usually means it repairs itself[2] and soon is healthier than before a recession.

But don’t despair: there are plenty of ways to slow down even an inherently strong economy. History offers plenty of examples. But as more contemporary models, take your pick of successfully ruined economies — the Venezuelan, the Cuban, the North Korean, the Greek, the Italian, the Portuguese, or pretty much any from Mediterranean Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. There are certain commonalities about why and how they fail. Let’s review some of them.

Government

The state can never be too big. Ensure that it is unaccountable and intrusive, in constant need of more money and more targets to regulate. The more government, the more people are shielded from the capital-creating, free-market system. Think the DMV or TSA, not Apple. The point is for an employee to spend each labor hour with less oversight, while regulating or hampering profit-making, rather than competing with like kind to create material wealth. Regulatory bodies are a two-fer: the more federal, union employees, the more regulations to hamper the private sector. The more federal mandates, like new healthcare requirements and financial reporting, the less employers profit and the fewer employees they can hire. Washington should be a growth city, absolutely immune from the downturn elsewhere, a sort of huge and growing octopus head with decaying tentacles. State jobs should be redefined as something partisan — whose expansion is noble and helps the helpless, and whose contraction is evil and the design of a bitter and aging white private-sector class.

On the other end of the equation, ensuring 50 million on food stamps, putting over 80,000 a month on Social Security disability insurance, and extending unemployment insurance to tens of millions all remind the jobless that life is not too bad (thanks to the government), and certainly a lot better than working at a “low-paid” job that equates to giving up federal support. To paraphrase Paul Krugman, the more and the longer the jobless receive, the less likely they are to take chances looking for a job. That too might be again a good thing if you wish to slow down the economy. In general, even Arnold Toynbee, a man of the Left, acknowledged that the greedy drive of the scrambling private sector was not as pernicious to civilizations as the collective ennui produced by vast cadres of lethargic and unaccountable public “servants” doing supposedly noble work.

The Law

To ensure capriciousness and unpredictability for both suspect employers and investors, make the law malleable, even unpredictable from day to day, in the style of an Argentina or Venezuela. Redefine the law as what is deemed socially useful. For federally subsidized bankrupt auto companies, creditors should be paid back on the basis not of contractual law, but of nobility — why borrow to give a rich man a return on his superfluous investment, when a retired auto worker might have to pay a higher healthcare premium? Boeing wants to open a non-union plant in South Carolina? Have the NLRB try to stop it (and illegally staff the NLRB with recess appointments[3]). Illegal aliens? They are neither illegal nor aliens, as federal immigration law is itself a capricious construct. Does the Senate really have to present a budget? Do presidents need to meet budget deadlines? Who said there is a Defense of Marriage Act?

What law says that gays cannot serve overtly in the military or women (more…)

Reuters

A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when scarcity has become a global security issue.

The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin – just one atom in thickness – it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis.

“It’s 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger,” said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. “The energy that’s required and the pressure that’s required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less.”

There are still issues to be solved before this becomes an actual product. But if it does, this “small” story in today’s news could be turn out to be a world changer.

Why do I vote GOP? Not because I love the party, but because in most cases, their policies make the most sense.

But that puts me in a minority, according to The Hill:

More voters trust the Democratic Party than the Republican Party on budgetary issues, according to the results of a new poll for The Hill — even though a strong majority actually prefer Republican fiscal policies.

The discrepancy would appear to be rooted in the GOP’s image problem, as the party attempts to recover from a bruising general election and recalibrate for a new generation of voters.

Respondents in The Hill Poll were asked to choose which of two approaches they would prefer on the budget, but the question’s phrasing included no cues as to which party advocated for which option.

Presented in that way, 55 percent of likely voters opted for a plan that would slash $5 trillion in government spending, provide for no additional tax revenue and balance the budget within 10 years — in essence, the path recommended by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) last week.

This was almost twice as many voters as opted for a proposal that would include $1 trillion in added tax revenue as well as $100 billion in infrastructure spending, and which would reduce the deficit without eradicating it.

Only 28 percent of voters preferred this option, which reflects the proposal put forth by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last week.

The GOP has its share of dorky candidates, but so do the Dems. The GOP doesn’t have the mainstream media rooting for them.

James Taranto at Best of the Web

‘Spending’: Letting You Keep Your Own Money
“The Real Spending Problem,” according to a New York Times editorial with that title, is that the government is letting you keep too much money:

Each year, the government doles out tax breaks worth $1.1 trillion. . . . Tax breaks work like spending. Giving a deduction for certain activities, like homeownership or retirement savings, is the same as writing a government check to subsidize those activities. Functionally, they mimic entitlements. Like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, they are available, year in and year out, in full, to all who qualify.

This is nonsense. Consider the tax deduction on home-mortgage interest (not homeownership per se). If it worked like Social Security, the government would simply pay part of your mortgage each month or send you a check to offset the cost. Instead, you get to deduct the interest from your income before paying taxes. If you have little or no income–say you’re retired and living off savings, or you have a big capital loss one year–you get no benefit.

There are good economic and individual-freedom arguments against these sorts of tax deductions and credits, but not because they constitute “spending.” A better way of looking at them is that they are the equivalent of a tax on not engaging in certain behavior. Seen through this lens, the mortgage-interest deduction is a tax on renters, and for that matter on homeowners who are debt-free…

A federal judge has struck down a Missouri law exempting moral objectors from mandatory birth control coverage because it conflicts with an insurance requirement under President Barrack Obama’s health care law.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig cites a provision in the U.S. Constitution declaring that federal laws take precedence over contradictory state laws. But Fleissig emphasized that she was taking no position on the merits of the Obama administration policy, which requires insurers to cover contraception at no additional cost to women.

I love Maher’s “I just saw these statistics…” Just now? Perhaps it’s best to know a few things before commanding a soap box.

by Burt Prelutsky

With all the questions swirling around in my brain, it’s a wonder I can ever fall asleep. Some nights, the only solution is for me to count Senate Democrats jumping over a fence.

For instance, liberals regard themselves as the salt of the earth and view conservatives as a bunch of cold-hearted rotters. And, yet, research has shown that not only do conservatives donate far more to the needy, but they do it out of the goodness of their hearts. On the other hand, it always seems as if the only way that liberals can be persuaded to cough up anything for charity is through the purchase of concert tickets. Remove Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, from the mix and liberals would forget that Africa even exists.

Liberals insist that no nation is better than any other nation and no culture is superior to any other. In both cases, they have America in mind. They even go so far as to state that rock, rap and hip hop, isn’t inferior to the music created by Beethoven, Bach, Copland, Prokofiev, Gershwin, Debussy, Porter and Kern. The clodhoppers insist that if the kids like it, that’s really all that counts. It seems to me that if the only standard that matters is if the lowest common denominator likes something, a strong case could be made for cannibalism. After all, if it all comes down to personal taste, who’s to say that those who prefer chicken and fish or fruits and vegetables are any higher up the food chain than those who hanker after parboiled people?

Speaking of food, I recently came across a list of last dinners requested by serial killers on Death Row. I found it interesting. Timothy McVeigh opted for two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Ricky Ray Rector ordered steak-fried chicken, a glass of cherry Kool-Aid and a slice of pecan pie. In the end, he passed on the pie, with the cryptic comment that he was saving it for later. Victor Fequer, who must have taken a leaf from Cyrano de Bergerac, ordered a single olive, but insisted it be served on a ceramic dish. John Wayne Gacy, who had been a KFC manager, ordered a bucket of original recipe chicken, along with a dozen fried shrimp and a side of French fries. Apparently he hadn’t heard that fried food will kill you.

You can’t imagine how many attachments, links and videos, well-meaning, but seriously misguided, people send me every day. Al Gore always claimed he invented the Internet, but I have to believe that God invented the Delete key, and God knows I’ve been thanking Him ever since.

Come to think of it, one reason that I tend not to join groups is because too many people are enamored of their own voice, and they don’t come with a Mute button. When I was on the Board of the Writers Guild, sometimes as many as 12 or 13 of the 16 members would let the president know they wished to address a certain issue. Two hours later, the motion would be called and the final vote would be 16-0, which is exactly what it would have been if nobody had uttered a word. I doubt if I’m the only person who is convinced it works the same way in the House and Senate.

Socrates allegedly said to one of his young disciples, “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”

To which, I suspect his wife, Xanthippe, replied, “The trouble with being married to a philosopher is when you tell him to hang up his toga, and not leave it on the floor, he says, “Hush, woman! Can’t you see I’m philosophizing?”

One of the great mysteries of modern life is how it is I keep hearing that there are 11 million illegal aliens in America today, which is exactly the same number that was being tossed around a dozen years ago. Are we expected to believe that none of them gave birth and that, moreover, in spite of there not being a fence at our southern border, Mexicans anticipated there would be an economic collapse seven years before it actually happened and simply stopped sneaking in?

Speaking of our terminal financial condition, one has to pity Obama when you realize that as bad as the economy he inherited in 2009 may have been, the one he inherited in 2013 was even worse.

Whenever I hear the Republican mucky-mucks talking about re-branding the GOP, I’m reminded that re-branding is what cattle rustlers used to do, adding an extra squiggle or two here, turning an “S” into an “8” there. I’m also reminded that someone once pointed out that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll likely fall for anything.

One mystery that continues to elude me is how it is that in spite of satellite surveillance, we never seem to be able to find and destroy all those terrorist training camps we keep hearing about. And how it is that thousands of those Islamic freaks can make the trek from Libya to Mali, not only more safely, but more quickly, than I can get across the San Fernando Valley? Are they cleverly disguised as sand fleas? Or, perhaps, even more cleverly, as sand?

Finally, I recently heard that Obama intends to visit Israel for the first time since moving into the White House. That’s what happens when the Jewish vote for the Democrat in a presidential election falls below 70%.

And believe me, if it had dipped below 69%, I’m sure he was prepared to undergo a circumcision.