AT AMAZON, software deals of the week.

ED MORRISSEY GETS A SUPER BOWL PREDICTION RIGHT. Not on the game, but on the post-Tebow spin.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: As counter-media fuels tea party movement, main stream media catches on.

UPDATE: Reader Kenneth MacDonald notes some racism:

One caller to C-Span – which aired nearly the entire convention – said the sight of primarily white and older self-described “patriots” frightened her. She said the gathering looked like a lynch mob.

Yeah, if you see a bunch of white folks and the first thing you think is “lynch mob,” you’ve got no business complaining about racism. Because, you know, you’re a racist.

But not everyone felt that way: “A Swedish radio reporter who sent an earnest piece back to Sveriges Radio on Friday, explaining how a modern-day tax revolt movement that appeared at first to be woefully fringe is looking more and more mainstream.” If only American progressives could be as free of racism as the Swedes . . . .

UPDATE: Splitting the liberals? Plus, various readers note that the event wasn’t any whiter than a Kos or Howard Dean meetup. . . ..

COLTS SUFFER the Kiss Of Death?

UPDATE: Reader Chris Martin writes: “Obama picked UNC to win the national title in basketball, and they did….so no, there’s no kiss of death…unless of course you’re a taxpayer making more than $250,000 a year…”

A LOOK AT SARAH PALIN from Tennessee Guerrilla Women.

HEH: Reagan wins: DC shut down on his birthday.

TENNESSEE TOWN TAKES DOWN TRAFFIC CAMERAS BECAUSE THEY’RE LOSING MONEY: Michael Silence comments: “But I thought the cameras were put up to save us from ourselves.” Only if it could be done at a profit. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Andrew Smith writes: “How funny would a suit against the city to force the cameras to remain – in the name of public safety? Double-edged sword, certainly, but forcing those companies into greater losses would be a thing of beauty.” Heh.

MORE ILLINOIS DEVELOPMENTS: Dem. Ill. lt. gov. candidate exits race amid furor. “The pawn broker and owner of a cleaning supplies company won the nomination Tuesday. Since then, it has become widely know that he was accused of abusing his ex-wife and holding a knife to the throat of an ex-girlfriend.”

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT: America’s Third Great Awakening. My column at the Washington Examiner.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH OBAMA’S POLL NUMBERS.

FROM ANN ALTHOUSE, a palm-writing photo contest.

CAPTION THIS PHOTO.

ROGER SIMON: ClimateGate II: Help Us Follow The Money.

POPULAR SCIENCE: This Week In The Future.

HAPPY ALMOST-VALENTINE’S DAY: A one-day sale on diamond stud earrings.

ROGER KIMBALL: Small Earthquake in La-La-land, or Why Is Sarah Palin Smiling?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues.

When the glacier story broke, IPCC apologists returned over and over again to a saving grace. The bogus glacier report appeared in the body of the IPCC document, but not in the much more carefully vetted Synthesis Report, in which the IPCC’s senior leadership made its specific recommendations to world leaders. So it didn’t matter that much, the apologists told us, and we can still trust the rigorously checked and reviewed Synthesis Report.

But that’s where the African rain crisis prediction is found — in the supposedly sacrosanct Synthesis Report.

So: the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction — 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now — and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true.

But there’s more. Much, much more.

Read the whole thing.

THE HORROR OF “My Way” Killings.

FORTUNE: How Obama Got Keynes Wrong.

FRANK TIPLER: Obama vs. Einstein. I really think you’ve got to leave this one with Larry Tribe. Obama was just the research assistant. Just don’t let Tipler see my piece on the Supreme Court and Chaos Theory. . . .

IN THE MAIL: From Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top.

MARK STEYN: “As Jonah and I have written here previously, ‘climate change’ is not only a scientific scandal but also a massive journalistic failure. . . . Like all the poodles of the environmental beat, Margot O’Neill repeats those magic words ‘peer review’ every couple of paragraphs like a talisman to ward off evil deniers. But, in the course of invoking the phrase ‘peer review’, she never bothers to look at whether the IPCC actually does it. By contrast, without benefit of the resources of a national TV news operation plus salary and benefits, lone blogger Donna Laframboise did a couple of text searches on the IPCC report and discovered multiple predictions of doom – on Himalayan glacier melt and much else – resting not on peer-reviewed science but merely on activist groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.”

FROM RETRACTO THE CORRECTION ALPACA: A roundup of sites that still need to correct their errors.

MARK TAPSCOTT: Sarah Palin is miles ahead of every other politician in America.

Palin also demonstrated an understanding that the Tea Party movement must be independent of both major political parties, which share the blame for the country’s current morass, in order to be credible. She encouraged her Nashville audience “against allowing this movement to be defined by any one leader or any one politician. The tea party movement is not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-up call to action … it’s bigger than any king or queen of the tea party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.”

UPDATE: A.C. Kleinheider is less impressed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Jennifer Rubin.

MORE: Dan Riehl comments.

STILL MORE: Moe Lane: Speech Was A Rorschach test.

And here’s a roundup from Jack Lail.

LOTS OF VIDEO FROM THE TEA PARTY CONVENTION, including Sarah Palin’s speech from last night, is available here from PJTV.

DEMAND QUESTION TIME: Mike Wilson of the Cincinnati Tea Party emails: “I just signed the petition and will share with the rest of the tea party movement here in Ohio. If you think it would be beneficial, feel free to add the Ohio Liberty Council to the list of sponsors.”

Here’s the petition.

FASTER, PLEASE: Nanobubbles “jackhammer” cancer cells.

HEH: Maybe we can use this kind of thing for political contributions. Or tax payments . . . .

READER STEVE EIMERS references this Politico article and writes: “Why do you think they showed a picture of a white guy but referred to Antonio Hinton?” I dunno. This is Antonio Hinton.

ED MORRISSEY: “The wins in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts over the last three months did not come from people questioning Obama’s birthplace. They resulted from grassroots opposition to the Obama-Nancy Pelosi policy agenda. Scott Brown won the seat held by the Kennedys and their cronies for almost 60 years by pushing back hard against ObamaCare and the counterterrorism policies of the White House.”

SOME PICS FROM SARAH PALIN’S SPEECH. I had some idle time backstage, and my Lumix.

UPDATE: Here’s what it looked like backstage, with the PJTV video crew.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Sarah Palin was a blithering idiot until she became a devious genius.

THE GREAT global warming collapse. When a movement is based on bullying rather than persuasion, this is what happens.

SARAH PALIN’S TEA PARTY CONVENTION SPEECH will be streaming live here.

50% OFF Aerobic Training Equipment.

JUST SOME PEOPLE sitting around in their pajamas.

Plus, a Tea Party Democrat. “Meet Tea Party Democrat Jack Wilson. He is running for Congress in Maryland as an independent!”

Also, Can you hear me now?

A BETTER VIEW OF Pluto.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Is Greece Our Future?

IRAN AND ISRAEL QUESTIONS for Michael Oren.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Ha. We’re bothering the President of the United States.”

TOP BOX-OFFICE FILMS OF ALL TIME: Avatar is not #1.

A TEA PARTY CONVENTION TEA PARTY PROTEST: This is Antonio Hinton, one of the organizers of the Knoxville Tea Party, one of three folks from the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition who showed up to remind people that there’s more to the Tea Party movement than this convention. The press tried to get him to say something bad about Sarah Palin, but he called her a “breath of fresh air,” instead. It’ll be interesting to see how the story gets played.

UPDATE: More here.

HELEN GETS ALL THE GOOD INTERVIEWS:

PJTV coverage is here.

CHANGE: Honey, They Shrunk The Private Sector. “There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the last available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling. A look at what has happened to the nation’s inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, during the last six quarters is sadly instructive.”

THE STORY BEHIND THAT Hayek-Keynes Rap Video.

SO THE FOLKS AT READY ACOUSTICS did the sound treatment for my studio, and a while back I got a big package from them with more cool stuff. Unfortunately, since my studio is now a TV studio I didn’t really have any place to deploy them. So I sent them to my brother, who offers the following review:

A little while back three tall boxes showed up here at the Rubber Biscuit Studio loading dock. They were plastered with “Fragile” stickers… but when we opened them up we found that they were a set of Ready Acoustics APS 2400 Acoustic Panel/Bass Trap stands. Now, our main tracking and mixing rooms are already decked out with Ready Acoustics panels and Bass Traps, so we are already fans. The idea of having some stands that would let us use the same panels as Gobos was a cool one… so we promptly set the intern to putting them together. At first he complained that there weren’t any instructions, but we told him that if he was expected to figure out a patch bay, then he ought to be able to figure out how to put the stands together. Within a half hour he had them all together. Each one came with a set of allen wrenches, too, and you can never have too many allen wrenches sitting around.

As soon as we looked at them, it became apparent that the whole “fragile” thing was unnecessary. These things are fit! The adjustable center portion of the stands could double as a mortar tube. Assembled, each one probably weighs in at 20 pounds. With the tripod feet, these stands are very stable. This is good, because having something fall over and take out one of our vintage C12′s would be a serious bummer. Overall, these stands are very well thought out. If you have the Ready Acoustics Chameleon panels, there is a spot on the metal frames that will screw right into the upper cross bar of the stands. Even the panels without the frames have loops that will fit right over the center tube. They can be mounted either vertically or horizontally, allowing you to use the panels as gobos for amps, pianos, or even as a portable vocal booth. Indeed, the beauty of these stands is that they can help adjust to a number of tracking or mixing situations. More and more studios are realizing the importance of quality audio treatments. Most, though, are fixed in place. These stands let engineers adjust to a number of shifting tracking and mixing situations. Such flexibility can help take your studio to a whole new level.

Any studio that is looking for a sturdy yet flexible audio treatment solution should look into these stands.

So there you are.

OBAMA’S ELECTION: Proof that America is still racist! Well, admitting otherwise would threaten a sweet gig for a lot of people . . . .

QUESTION: Why is Obama ignoring trustees on future Medicare costs?

LOTS OF TEA PARTY CONVENTION COVERAGE at PJTV. Interviews with Dana Loesch, Andrew Breitbart, and more. Both live and non-live.

TOYOTA’S “DECONTENTING:” Demand the Denso Pedal!

WELL, GOOD: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal Seems Certain.

SHE DIED WITH HER T-SHIRT ON, Eulogy To The Unknown Campaign Volunteer; Obama Misstates Facts.

IN THE MAIL: From Glen Cook, Shadowline.

ERIC HOLDER HEADING UNDER THE BUS? “Even more ominous for Holder: Rahm Emanuel is making it clear to all those concerned that he disagreed with a string of highly controversial and politically disastrous decisions by Holder.”

MICKEY KAUS: The education of young Ezra Klein.

ANTI-SEMITIC VIOLENCE IN EUROPE: Seems like old times.

GEORGE WILL: The United States Of Fiscal Folly.

SOTU BOUNCE OVER: Obama back down to 44%.

AN HOV DUMMY BUST.

THANKS TO MICHAEL TOTTEN for filling in yesterday while I was traveling and busy. Be sure to check out his site for more cool stuff.

HERE’S THE LINK FOR PJTV COVERAGE OF THE TEA PARTY CONVENTION. Breitbart’s speech will be streaming live about 10 am Eastern.

And here’s an interview with Andrew Breitbart. Plus, I talk to Dana Loesch.

BBC: Climate scepticism ‘on the rise’, BBC poll shows.

UPDATE: Effort underway to suspend California’s global-warming law. Until unemployment drops below 5.5%.

CLIMATEGATE: For IPCC, Writing Is on the Wall … and It’s in Chinese.

WWII VS. THE PRESENT: Aerial image comparisons via Google Earth.

JIM TREACHER: This pretty much covers what we know so far about the vehicular assault on my person. “To recap: I was hit by an SUV while crossing a DC street legally, the driver who hit me is a federal agent who failed to identify himself in any way, I’m about to undergo reconstructive surgery to repair the knee injury he admits he caused, and somehow I was issued a jaywalking citation whose particulars in no way match what was seen by multiple eyewitnesses.”

24 INCHES OF GLOBAL WARMING. At least that doesn’t sound quite as much like a porn flick. . . . .

EUROPE REELS amid investor fears. “Markets got a brief break from the selling after the U.S. Labor Department reported that the U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9.7%, but investors were ultimately confused by the figures, which also showed that the world’s largest economy continued shedding jobs in January. . . . Behind the anxiety over Europe’s debt problems are recent gyrations in the market for insurance-like contracts called credit-default swaps. On Friday, the cost of insuring against a default by Greece, Portugal and Spain using such contracts shot to record levels before abruptly reversing course ahead of the U.S. data. Prices of these countries’ government bonds – especially bonds maturing in a few years – dropped as banks and other investors continued to scale back their exposure to governments with heavy budget deficits.”

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND to appear with disgraced 9/11 Truther?

TEA PARTY’S NEXT CHAPTER: “Here’s what’s clear: This is pure people-driven politics facilitated by the Internet. This is an ideological mix of libertarianism and conservatism with the common denominator being lower spending and smaller government.”

CULTURE SHIFT: Starbucks: Bring your guns!

RON BAILEY: How the World Trade Organization could open up Internet access in China.

Daniel Drezner is unconvinced.

TACKLING THE IMPORTANT SUBJECTS: 6 Underwear Styles A Dude Shouldn’t Be Caught Dead In.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010. I’m seeing it right here at the Tea Party convention.

FROM HILLBUZZ, SOME ADVICE TO TEA PARTIERS: Go after DNC donors. “The only way to take down the current DNC, and drive the Liberals out, is to eliminate the DNC’s revenue stream. To do that, pressure must be put on all the major DNC donors to just stop giving to the current Democrats in office, and to the DNC itself.”

AN AP ADMISSION: Obama Sounds Contradictory. You think?

RETRACTO, THE CORRECTION ALPACA, targets Charles Johnson.

RICHARD SHELBY: Unrepentant porker. Somebody put up a Tea Party challenger!

NEWS: WaPo: Hey, a Republican budget plan actually cuts the deficit.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Bruce Sterling.

SHOWDOWN IN TEHRAN: In six days, on the 31st anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, we may see the biggest and possibly the bloodiest confrontation yet between the regime and its enemies, the Iranian people.

PROGRESS OF SORTS: Gen. McChrystal says the situation in Afghanistan is serious, but at least it’s no longer deteriorating.

JESSICA BIEL eats a chocolate-covered cricket.

BIG BROTHER wants you to be happy.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

GOOD GRIEF: High school girl arrested and handcuffed for doodling on her desk.

SO THAT EXPLAINS IT: Why a six-hour flight now takes seven.

ASSOCIATIVE MEMORIES: “AI researchers in the 80s ran into a problem: the more their systems knew, the slower they ran. Whereas we know that people who learn more tend to get faster (and better in other ways) at whatever it is they’re doing.”

GET A CLUE: Hezbollah is not the IRA.

CHANGE! Harry Reid trails four Republicans.

WOW: New Texas gov poll shows Tea Party candidate Debra Medina would defeat Democrat; Perry still leads.

JOHN ZOGBY: “Winning without at least some of the Tea Party sympathetic vote is, at the present moment, a tall order.”

TIM PAWLENTY goes after Obama on foreign policy.

WE’LL SEE HOW THAT WORKS FOR YA: Obama dismisses pleas from his own party to move to the center.

JIM HOFT: ABC Reporter Attacks: “Funny, Berman’s never been this hard on Team Obama.”

WOMEN’S EGGS: Mostly gone by age 30?

STEPHEN GREEN IS jealous of my PJTV assignments. As he should be!

IS NOTHING SAFE FROM GOVERNMENT REGULATION? The Australian government now bans small breasted women from porn. It’s for the children. No, really.

UPDATE: David Harsanyi emails: “Banning of small breasts? The Mammy State.”

WHAT IF QUENTIN TARANTINO directed the Super Bowl?

PHYSICISTS PROVE TELEPORTATION OF ENERGY IS THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE.

THE BEST VIEWS ever captured of Pluto.