SOME MOTHER’S DAY GIFT IDEAS.

OF COURSE HE DOES: Perez Hilton gives Obama a pass on gay marriage. Why would he do that? This seems right: “It’s not so much about the cause, it’s about feeling superior to political opponents.”

TODD ZYWICKI: Is the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel Off the Rails?

ROBERT FISK: How can you trust the cowardly BBC? I don’t, but for rather different reasons than Fisk offers.

HOW (AND HOW NOT) TO BATTLE A FLU EPIDEMIC. Some lessons from experience. “A two-week difference in response times, according to the researchers, is long enough for the number of people infected in an influenza epidemic to double three to five times.”

UPDATE: The good news is, it’s never too late to blame Bush!

BBC READERS ARE posting flu reports from Mexico City.

SALENA ZITO: Dismissing Tea Parties is Perilous:

Everybody complains about taxes and government spending, but nobody does anything about them.

Perhaps that’s because whenever they do something, they’re often labeled as racists, right-wing extremists or worse.

That’s what happened when various news organizations covered the April 15 “tea parties” across the country; the media clearly did not know what to make of such a robust turnout for the loosely organized events, and wound up dismissing or belittling them.

The tea party movement may or may not go forward — but anytime the media or politicians dismiss a grassroots effort, they do so at great peril.

People attending those tea parties were consumers and voters, with a decent number of registered Democrats and independents sprinkled in.

State Rep. Josh Shapiro, a Philly-area Democrat set to run for Republican Arlen Specter’s U.S. Senate seat, was not keen on the rhetoric at some of the events, but he is wise enough not to ignore the real concerns of angry Americans.

Elected officials “should be trying to figure out where that anger is coming from and address it, rather than trying to find ways to dismiss it,” Shapiro says.

Read the whole thing.

WHO IS JOHN GALT? Andrew Lloyd Webber warns of an “exodus of talent” from Britain as taxes skyrocket. “I write this article because I fear the inevitable exodus of the talent that can dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in. It is inevitable, given that other countries are bidding for entrepreneurs. . . . So I ask the Government to reconsider what it is doing. More than ever before we need to keep high-flying professionals in the UK. We can’t, as we have done in the past, dump on them through penal personal taxation.”

WELL, GOOD: Statins Guard Against Prostate Cancer. Plus a bonus: “Other studies found they also reduced chances of erectile dysfunction.”

HOPE AND CHANGE! In South Carolina Town, Economic Calamity Since Obama’s Inauguration. “During the final stages of the presidential campaign, Hackett obsessively tracked Obama on CNN and spent Election Day driving her neighbors to the polls so they could vote for him, but now she avoids watching the news. It puts her in ‘a dark mood,’ she says.” It always seemed as if he was overpromising.

HATE SPEECH UPDATE: “Rednecks” demand apology from Garofalo.

British MP tells interviewer: “If you read that Miss California is murdered you will know it was me”. Good to see that all that political-correctness stuff has put an end to hateful talk . . . .

HMM: Fear and disbelief stalk Mexico City’s eerily empty streets. If people are really staying home to this degree, how long can the city function? Will grocery stores get filled, drug stores supplied, etc.?

Bad news for the already-suffering tourist industry. Or is it all just hogwash?

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Jacks emails:

I live around Toronto. During SARS life carried on even though churches were very empty, the subway was very empty, the restaurants were completely empty. For weeks!

The idea that someone would come to Toronto for a meeting was a joke. And they really didn’t want you visiting them either. It was weird to be a near pariah.

My sympathies to what Mexico is about to get put through, and it wont be because of some kind of politically incorrect issue, fear from biological sources like virus generates a deep and real concern from people, no matter your language, skin colour or religion. If people wouldn’t come to Toronto with a reputation for cleanliness, good health care and modern infrastructure….well I can’t imagine what sort of multiplier will be attached to Mexico, that lacks some of the aforementioned in its reputation.

And they’re in a worse position to weather the loss.

MORE: Ohio Boy’s Swine Flu Matches Deadly Mexican Strain.

STILL MORE: A roundup and thoughts at Aetiology. Here’s a later post from Aetiology, and here’s a roundup of older swine-flu and pandemic flu posts.

THE GEORGIA GUIDESTONES: Obviously, the mysterious stranger who commissioned them was a visitor from the future. Start outlining your novel now . . . .

RAISING BILL GATES: A “headstrong” child, he required correction that a few would probably call abuse today. And he benefited from growing up with a strong father. So what’s happening to this generation’s Bill Gates?

I’M SURE THAT COMES AS A RELIEF: Clinton says US never will `sell out’ Lebanon.

WHERE’S MY HOPE AND CHANGE? Is America now an exceptionally bad country?

CONTAGION ON A SMALL PLANET: “An urbanizing planet knitted by transportation is an extraordinarily welcoming world for infectious disease, particularly easily transmitted viruses like the flu.” Just one more reason why we need space colonies, as soon as possible!

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT? Obama feels fine.

ROLL CALL: Watchdog Groups Want Ethics Panel Probe of PMA Ties. “Democracy 21 and other good-government groups are expected to ask the House ethics committee next week for an investigation into lawmakers with close ties to defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said . . . . Democratic leaders have remained in a defensive crouch in the wake of reports that federal investigators are probing the earmark empire of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the defense-spending chief in the House and a close confidant of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But that position is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Since news broke in February that federal agents raided the offices of the PMA Group and the home of its founder, former House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense aide Paul Magliocchetti, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has kept the issue front and center by calling votes on whether to force an ethics probe. His first attempt gathered 17 votes from the majority party, but Democratic defections on subsequent votes have mounted, reaching 27 on his seventh and latest attempt before the spring recess.”

HOW THE ASSOCIATED PRESS defines “assault rifle.”

FIGHTING THE SPREAD OF FLU with humidifiers?

MECHANICS AT WAR: Joe Pappalardo reports from Afghanistan.

UNITED STATES DECLARES PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY over Swine Flu.

UPDATE: Text of the briefing is here.

Plus, some thoughts on economic effects, from Daniel Harrison. And CDC recommends planning for school closures. We’re already seeing some of those. Maybe you should get some sun. (No, really.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Silence offers Swine Flu Central. Stupid swine. Me, I’m going to have a pork chop for dinner — just to get even.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire. Including some cool iPhone apps.

DRUG-VIOLENCE SPILLOVER: More hype than reality?

FOUR THINGS TO CONSIDER before you try to join the Amish.

AT THE WAPO, whittling down the corrections backlog.

COULD FOOD SHORTAGES bring down civilization?

MICHAEL S. MALONE: Who Will Be Tech’s Next Winners And Losers?

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: How quickly can Swine Flu make you sick? About 90 minutes of CNN should do it.

JANET NAPOLITANO’S mea culpa.

Now if she can just apologize to the Canadians.

A FLU PANDEMIC SURVIVAL LIST. Probably still too early to panic yet, though.

UPDATE: Or maybe not . . . .

IN THE MAIL: Aaron Klein’s The Late Great State of Israel: How Enemies Within and Without Threaten the Jewish Nation’s Survival.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: “U.S. public health officials did not know about a growing outbreak of swine flu in Mexico until nearly a week after that country started invoking protective measures, and didn’t learn that the deaths were caused by a rare strain of the influenza until after Canadian officials did. . . . U.S. public health officials are still largely in the dark about what’s happening in Mexico two weeks after the outbreak was recognized.”

UPDATE: “Where’s Gerald Ford when we need him?”

Plus, a reader emails: “Drudge is doing a bang-up job of keeping US informed of what is going on. MUCH better than our duly appointed public officials.”

ITALIAN CRUISE SHIP fights off pirates.

Knoxville, Tennessee. On Market Square, taken yesterday when the Insta-Daughter and I were downtown for the Rossini Festival.

MURTHA UPDATE: New York Times: House Heavyweight Feels Threat to Power. “In the weeks since the news that prosecutors had raided the offices of the PMA Group — a lobbying firm founded by a former Murtha associate that became a gateway to his office and his biggest source of campaign money — about two dozen rank-and-file Democrats have risked his wrath by calling for a House ethics investigation of the matter. One Democrat has even foresworn seeking earmarks for the military contractors in his district because of ethical concerns about the process. . . . Now Mr. Murtha lost another fight to block a new rule requiring competitive bidding on earmarked contracts. Furthermore, one of his usual lieutenants — Representative Peter J. Visclosky, Democrat of Indiana and member of the defense subcommittee who is chairman of the energy and water panel — unexpectedly switched sides to back the new restrictions, perhaps because he too is under new scrutiny for his ties to the PMA Group. . . . Even among donors, mainly defense interests, Mr. Murtha’s standing appears to be slumping.”

UPDATE: Obama’s revenge?

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Obama’s Grave Pakistan Problem.

FLU UPDATE: Experts to advise WHO on pandemic alert phase. “International experts will convene on Tuesday to advise the World Health Organisation (WHO) whether to raise the current pandemic alert level due to the new flu virus in Mexico and the United States, a WHO spokesman said.”

UPDATE: Asia on Alert Over Swine Flu Threat.

ANOTHER UPDATE: CDC confirms swine flu in New York. “Mayor Bloomberg announced in a news conference Sunday morning that the Centers for Disease Control confirmed cases of swine flu in a Queens school.”

BEA ARTHUR HAS DIED. Lots of video at the link.

DON LUSKIN: TARP Looking More Criminal by the Minute.

PJTV: Fourth of July Tea Party plans progress.

COMPUTER PROGRAM to take on Jeopardy.

FROM FABIUS MAXIMUS, some weekend reading recommendations.

JOANNE JACOBS: Textbooks Push The Softer Side of Islam. And wishing it will make it so!

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S Costanza Strategy. Hey, it worked for George.

WEIGHT TRAINING lowers your blood pressure.

A TEA PARTY PROTEST IN WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK: Hundreds turned out, though the focus was local.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog report with video and pics from the West Tennessee Tea Party in Jackson, Tennessee.

THIS IS TROUBLING: Mexico’s Calderon Declares Emergency Amid Swine Flu Outbreak. And this is also troubling: “The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported.” Luckily, though, I expect that if President Obama were going to catch this, he would have gotten sick by now so I guess he’s in the clear.

UPDATE: The World Health Organization is worried: “Experts at WHO and elsewhere believe that the world is now closer to another influenza pandemic than at any time since 1968, when the last of the previous century’s three pandemics occurred.”

More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Felipe Solis story is questionable. AP says he died “a week later,” not the next day. And reader Michael Waters emails that Mexican press reports say the cause of death was a heart attack. So stay tuned.

MORE: Drudge is going pedal-to-the-metal on this one, but I think it’s a little early for panic just yet.

STILL MORE: Not everyone agrees with me: Swine flu spreads panic in Mexico City.

The Mexican capital was a fearful place on Saturday, as residents donned surgical masks, avoided shaking hands or simply stayed home amid a swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 20 people and perhaps as many as 81 across Mexico.

Mexico City has become the epicenter of the sickness, which is suspected to have infected 1,324 people nationwide by Saturday night. Mexican President Felipe Calderón issued a decree allowing the federal health department to enter homes and forcibly quarantine people, and the authorities ordered all schools closed until May 6 in the capital and neighboring Mexico State.

Is this an overreaction, or an underreaction? At this point, it’s impossible to say. The most likely outcome is that this will just be a flu outbreak. But we’ll see.

MORE STILL: Reader Chuck Pelto writes:

I don’t think he’s in ‘panic’. Otherwise, we’d be seeing NOTHING, as he had fled to the proverbial hills.

Instead, he’s providing useful information. More useful than I’m getting from other sources. Indeed, it’s as in my days as a young officer in the 82d. The neighbor across the carports from me in the duplex, on-post, married officers’ housing was with the division intelligence battalion. Over beers he intimated that he got better information from the wire services than he did through official channels. I saw the initial reports on Drudge and forwarded the links to my local public health department. They were pleased to get the ‘heads-up’, as I get the impression that their ‘official channels’ were still sort of ‘asleep’.

Late, yesterday, they were working and sent out a one-over-their-world press release alerting everyone to ‘get ready for trouble’. That’s 60 hours AFTER Drudge started carrying this information.

Whether people ‘panic’ over it is THEIR problem. Not Drudge’s. Nor mine.

Good point.

Plus, reader Michael Greene sends this Swine Flu google map.

FINALLY: Reader Santiago Valenzuela writes:

It seems to me to be much ado about nothing. True, swine flu is a little more deadly than the flu that goes around, but it doesn’t have me worried like the avian flu did before. For the avian flu I actually started stocking up long-term food (though rice, beans and jerkey for months on end never seemed like a good life, it at least meant I wouldn’t have to depend on infrastructure that seems remarkably fragile in these instances) and I ordered antivirals from Russia (sadly, it went bad a year or so ago and I disposed of it properly.) Had a whole little plan worked out.

To be honest, though, this one doesn’t seem nearly as bad as the avian flu, lethality-wise. So I’m not worried about it in particular.

It has reminded me to restock on antivirals, but for a different reason. I think far too many people are simply unprepared for any sort of emergency – even a short term one. I had some antibiotics and antivirals and stores of food on hand not just for pandemics, but because I think it was a generally useful inventory to have. For any number of emergencies – either social or personal (losing a job, riots, pandemic, whatever) I was prepared to batten down the hatches and ride it out alright.

Now I’m married (just a few weeks ago!) but my wife is very amenable to my survivalist tendencies. So its back to stocking up for me. The investment is tiny (I think antivirals and enough food and water to last a human a month ran just a couple hundred bucks!) and the payoff in terms of peace of mind, if nothing else, is tremendously valuable.

Just a thought. All this pandemic worry would be a lot less sensational if the majority of the population was prepared for simple emergencies like this.

Well, as I think I mentioned, my brother got a letter from the State of Ohio a while back advising him and all residents to have a months worth of food and necessaries stored against an avial flu outbreak. Ready.gov has similar recommendations. I think it’s too early to panic on this, but it’s never too early to make sensible preparations, most of which will protect you against the disaster no one expects as well as the one everyone is worried about at any given moment.

On the other hand, you want your gloomy predictions, here’s one. Can’t vouch for its accuracy, and in fact I think it’s unlikely to be borne out. Hope I’m right, of course. . . .

Plus, reason to take a breath and relax. And a roundup from Jules Crittenden.

SOME LESSONS LEARNED, and advice for next time, from a PJTV citizen journalist.

CAR LUST: Remembering the Karmann-Ghia.

HER BALLAD OF TIMOTHY GEITHNER is moving up toward a million views on YouTube, but singing lawyer Anne McKinney has followed up with That’s Pelosi!

THE END OF 100 DAYS: A New Federalism Amendment?

WELL, ONE WOULD HOPE SO: Health Agencies Warily Monitor Swine Flu Strain. Related item here.

Also, New York school children likely infected with swine flu.

WHAT’S WRONG with wind power.

ADVICE TO TENNESSEE DEMOCRATS, FROM MICHAEL SILENCE: “Dissing bloggers is not something I would recommend.”

REAL BIBLICAL STUFF: “Charla Muller was reading Galatians 5.22-23 in her Bible study group when she decided what she was going to get her husband, Brad, for his 40th birthday. Perhaps disappointingly for him, it wasn’t an iTunes voucher. Instead, she was going to give him the gift of sex for 365 nights.” Hmm. Plus this: “Muller concludes with some advice for married couples: ‘However often you are doing it, double it. And six months from now, double it again. It’s proof that you’re here, alive and very together’.”

JOE HICKS: President Obama and Miss California vs. Gay Marriage.

GERMANS EAGERLY VIEW our plunge into national poverty.

WHAT HAPPENED TO STRETCH ARMSTRONG: With video.

MORE PICTURES OF Israeli women soldiers.

STUART TAYLOR ON THE “TRUTH COMMISSION” WE REALLY NEED. (Via TigerHawk.)

Plus, from Tom Maguire: “I back the CW on this – Washington and the Obama agenda will freeze if Obama does not Move On. So speaking as someone with no love for either Bush or Obama’s likely agenda, I say to the Truth Commission idea, bring it on. Nancy Pelosi being sworn in to lie about what she knew and when she forgot it – she has to be less dangerous to the country that way. . . . I’m counting on my President to do the right thing.”

UPDATE: Porter Goss points up the amnesia from Democrats:

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

– We understood what the CIA was doing.

– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed “memorandums for the record” suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately — to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president’s national security adviser — and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Our political class is a sorry lot, regardless of which party is in charge, but it hasn’t improved since the election. It just feels less constrained.

RADLEY BALKO: Putting MADD in Charge of America’s Highways. “With Hurley in charge, MADD’s goals will become NHTSA’s goals. That’s troubling because at heart, MADD is an activist organization. The groups once-admirable goal of raising public awareness about drunk driving has over the last several years morphed into a zealous, evangelical teatotaling campaign. When a coalition of college presidents recently asked for nothing more than a new debate over the federal drinking age last year, for example, MADD called on parents to boycott the presidents’ schools.”

HEH: “Two men attempted to carjack Ted Mazetier, 84, of Tacoma, Washington. So he beat the crap out of them. Very Gran Torino.”

I THINK THERE WILL BE LOTS OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR prosecutions relating to the bailouts, for various financial-fraud and securities issues.

ASTROTURFING in Boston.

WIRED: The Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop It. “For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that’s exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive potential of solar storms. . . . Such a catastrophe would cost the United States “$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year,” concluded the panel, and “full recovery could take four to 10 years.” That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages. Needless to say, shorting out the electrical grid would cause major disruptions to developed nations and their economies. Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth’s geomagnetic shield, meaning we’ll have less protection than usual from the solar flares.” Plus this: “Kappenman also points out that when the transformers blow, they can’t be fixed in the field. They often can’t be fixed at all. Right now there’s a one- to three-year lag time between placing an order and getting a new one.” Plus, what we should be doing with the stimulus money.

IN THE MAIL: Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto.

I really liked his A Soldier of the Great War.

ABC NEWS ON JOHN MURTHA’S VANITY AIRPORT:

JENNIFER RUBIN: Government Bullying of Private Industry More Serious than Imagined. “Three cheers for Andrew Cuomo! No, honestly. He’s taken a break from extorting AIG execs to give up their bonuses to expose a far more frightening extortion plot: the effort by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to force Bank of America to go through with the Merrill Lynch deal — and conceal the mammoth losses from the shareholders.” I continue to wonder why this isn’t a massive securities law violation.

ALAN BOYLE: How Smart Can The Grid Get? But it needs to get not only smarter, but tougher and more disaster-resistant.

GIVING PROPERTY RIGHTS second-class constitutional status.

NOEMIE EMERY: Let The Hearings Begin! “Let’s tell the truth about all the liberals who went on record supporting real torture, not to mention the Democrats in Congress, when it was cool to want to seem tough on our enemies, who couldn’t be too warlike. Then war and tough measures stopped being cool, and ‘world opinion’ became more important. Nothing like statements under oath to revive ancient memories! And rewind the tapes.”

FOUNDING BLOGGERS V. CNN: Counternotice Submitted: Countdown to Re-Posting — or a Lawsuit.

MORE ON THE SWINE FLU outbreak. Good news: Tamiflu works, and a vaccine is being developed.

UPDATE: More here. How worried should you be? I dunno. Some readers caution against a repeat of the 1970s swine flu fiasco, but the situation appears to have already gone well beyond that.

HARTFORD COURANT: Ethics Complaint From Judicial Watch Says Price Dodd Paid For Cottage Amounts To A Gift.

Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint Friday against U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, saying the price Dodd paid for his cottage in Ireland amounted to a gift from a friend and accusing the senator of failing to report it as such on government disclosure forms.

“It’s relatively straightforward,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “It looks like he is getting taken care of in Ireland, and he’s not reporting the nature of the gifts he is getting as a result of his being taken care of.”

Dodd’s office responded angrily, attacking Judicial Watch’s credibility, criticizing the group’s complaint and criticizing The Courant for reporting it.

No defensiveness here.

TODAY IN L.A., it’s the Grilled Cheese Invitational!

MORE ON EARMARKS from Keith Hennesey.

RANDY BARNETT: How Tea Partiers Can Make Washington Pay Attention.

“QUIET SUN” BAFFLING ASTRONOMERS, new flu outbreaks, and worries about “civil unrest.” I feel like I’m in a John Ringo novel. That is, when I don’t feel like I’m living in Fallen Angels.

PUNISHING A doctor-patient romance. I agree that it’s hypocritical to punish consensual relationships more harshly than serious medical mistakes. But not surprising.

Plus, from the comments: “How do you get emotionally dependent on someone you see for a 3 minute visit?” Heh.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN:

What does it means when you have an editorial in the US News and World Report that says gun control is unconstitutional, period, and the Baltimore Sun runs an article about the ineffectiveness of the gun control movement?

It means victory.

MICKEY KAUS: The Hole in TNR’s Big Obama Theory.

Plus this: “Do the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department really think they can keep the results of the ‘stress tests’–i.e. which banks are in trouble and which aren’t–secret until May 4? With no flurry of trading on insider knowledge?” I hope somebody at the Public Integrity section is tracking congressional stock trades . . . .

A BIG SPRING CLOTHING SALE at Amazon. (Via TigerHawk).

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: WaPo: “In Connecticut, Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has been in free fall for the better part of the last year — the result of a hopeless presidential bid (in which he moved his family to Iowa for a time) as well as entanglements with scandal-tarred companies like Countrywide and AIG.” And don’t forget that Irish “cottage!”

CDC SWINE FLU INFECTION-CONTROL GUIDELINES.

UPDATE: World Health Organization “very, very concerned.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Raising alarm” among U.S. officials.

WOMEN’S SKI-JUMPING LAWSUIT wraps up in Vancouver.

FALLOUT: Homeland Security replacing intel official: “The head of the Homeland Security agency responsible for a controversial report that suggested veterans were being recruited to commit terrorist acts in the U.S. is being replaced by a former FBI and CIA official. . . . The announcement came on the eve of a scheduled meeting between Ms. Napolitano and the head of the American Legion, who expressed outrage last week at the report.”

GOOD QUESTION: Why Doesn’t The Stimulus Include Money For Painting Roofs And Roads White? Some earlier thoughts on that subject here.

PIRACY UPDATE: Petraeus: Shippers should consider armed guards.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN THIS WOULD HAPPEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Political Extremism Infiltrates the Pentagon.

I’D FEEL SORRIER FOR THE C.I.A. FOLKS, if they hadn’t run a multiyear leak-war against the Bush Administration. Did they really think electing Obama would improve their situation? Once again, they don’t seem to have gamed things out to the end.

UPDATE: Charlie Foxtrot: The CIA is not monolithic. Well, true — but lack of organizational discipline has its price. If CIA leadership had wanted to shut down those leaks, I think it probably could have.

BUY IN BULK! “If not for the on-off interrogation show trial debacle, the biggest presidential misstep of the week would have been the laughable effort to nibble $100M out of the federal budget.”

It’s a target-rich environment. More: “But this is what the Obama team is forced to resort to — silly symbolic efforts because of the trap they find themselves in, or rather, have put themselves in. They have created a massively irresponsible budget that will, over time, eat up more and more of the GDP and strain our ability to finance our debt. And the public, independent voters especially, are very nervous about it. Figuring that the public isn’t paying much attention to the number of zeroes, Obama throws out a number that used to sound like a lot of money — $100M. But the public is perhaps smarter than Obama reckons, and the administration’s critics aren’t playing along with the charade.”

TALIBAN SPOKESMAN BLAMES AMERICAN WOMEN. Make that a geographically-challenged Taliban spokesman.

WOUNDS THAT a letter and a visit cannot repair.

MORE FROM STEFAN SHARKANSKY: Speaking of Ron Sims: “King County Executive Ron Sims, who is ultimately responsible for any records violations under his administration, appears to be on track for confirmation as Deputy Secretary of HUD. Sims is also well known for the Yousoufian public records scandal.”

REMEMBERING J.G. Ballard.

SAVING ENERGY with Kill-A-Watt?

DELL GOES IN for plastic surgery.

BEING A BLOGGING GADFLY CAN BE LUCRATIVE! Just ask Stefan Sharkansky: “King County has now settled my public records lawsuit for $225,000, one of the largest settlements for public records violations in state history.” Read the whole thing. No, really — it’s big.