LIE.

I had previously nominated FAIL as the Word Of The Year, but with everything that's happened so far, the word lie has become a strong challenger.

Science Daily:

. . . does “use it or lose it” apply to foreign languages? Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of the neglected language, new research suggests this “forgotten” language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realize.

Psychologists Jeffrey Bowers, Sven L. Mattys, and Suzanne Gage from the University of Bristol recruited volunteers who were native English speakers but who had learned either Hindi or Zulu as children when living abroad. The researchers focused on Hindi and Zulu because these languages contain certain phonemes that are difficult for native English speakers to recognize. A phoneme is the smallest sound in a language—a group of phonemes forms a word.

. . .

As it turned out, even though the volunteers showed no memory of the second language in the vocabulary test, they were able to quickly relearn and correctly identify phonemes that were spoken in the neglected language.

So maybe there's still hope for my long-ago high school German . . .

UPDATE: Fixed spelling in the title. I'm on my old computer . . . I'm not used to its keyboard any more. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

That would be highly amusing, I think.

CNN on Condoleeza Rice:

To skeptics in search of a political home, the GOP's image has devolved into that of a minority collection of name-calling, "no"-saying, backward-looking, talk-show bullying cranks -- a definition gleefully perpetuated by Democratic pols. So next time the eloquent and elegant figure of Condoleezza Rice strides onto a stage, GOP strategists worried about their party's future should pull out their notebooks.

Condi and the 'Cuda. Fire and Ice.

A boy can dream.

All afternoon, I've been sitting here, working my way through the web sites I downloaded from my Google Reader list this morning.

I'm not all the way through yet.

There's so much going on, and so little of it good for anyone, except Obama and his cronies.

This is, of course, a tactic on the part of the gang of collectivists and authoritarians who now hold all of the reins of power in the United States. Call it "flood the zone," call it the Cloward-Piven Strategy, call it being nibbled to death by ducks if you want. But simple freedom is now under attack from so many directions that it's getting difficult to be aware of all of the attacks any more.

I can easily see how most people will just tune things out, shrug and say "well, I'm sure it will all work out OK in the end." The problem is that collectivism never, ever works out well in the end. At best, the wealth of millions is squandered and destroyed for quixotic social programs which attempt to change the core of human behavior. At worst, people die. Lots of people.

So far, we're headed straight for the best case scenario I just mentioned--the mere collective impoverishment of the country to benefit the few who hold power and those who help them stay there. I don't want to live in a country like that.

Now that I've (I hope) sufficiently depressed and/or dismayed you, here's the list of the stuff I really don't want to read any more, but taken together paint a very, very disturbing picture of where this country is being taken by the Democrat leadership in Washington. I've tried to extract a single sentence or three from each of the articles (after the Read More, if you're on the main Medary.com page):

I really, really hate reading things like this. Peter Schiff, writing in Reason magazine:

The Federal Reserve's monetary base statistics show that in the last year the money in circulation has increased far faster than at any other point in American history. Thus, by the dictionary definition, we have inflation. But prices have been relatively stable because downward recessionary pressures are currently counterbalancing the upward pressures of the expanded money supply.

The new money has been largely parked in financial institutions. Thanks to government prodding and aggressive stimuli, it will soon be showered on the economy at large.When the tide rolls in, there will be more money chasing fewer goods. (Recessions reduce the supply of things.) The result: higher prices.

The government clings to the fantasy that it will be able to "mop up" this excess liquidity before the business end of inflation kicks in, effectively taking money back out of circulation. Good luck with that. Recent history clearly shows that the authorities have no political will to dispense tough medicine."Removing liquidity"would require either much higher interest rates or a severe curtailment of credit. But politicians believe that credit is the "lifeblood" of our economy. President Barack Obama himself has said so. If the Fed was unwilling to raise interest rates substantially in the middle years of this decade, when the economy seemed healthy, how can we expect it to do so now?

So, we hear today that the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low for now. But in the same breath they say that the economy is improving.

Inflation, here we come.

And who gets hurt by inflation? Everyone--but those at the bottom of the economic ladder most of all, and those on fixed incomes. They are the ones who are least able to pay higher prices, because they are the ones who have the least "discretionary income" and the least ability to move investments (if they even have any investments) into defensive investments against inflation.

The little people, the ones that the Democrats constantly say they want to help, are the ones who get screwed the worst by inflation.

Inflation like Jimmy Carter's in the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember what the 1970's were like. Disco was the least of the problems with that accursed decade.

The time bomb is ticking. Do Obama and his band of merry collectivists know enough basic economics to avoid a replay--or worse--of the "stagflation" of the Carter era? I wouldn't bet on it. Judging from the drunken orgy of deficit spending that Washington has been on since the bank crisis that threw the election to Obama and the disastrous TARP bank bailout, it appears very much like our political leaders--sadly, in both major parties--think that money just appears magically out of nowhere, whenever they want it to appear, and in whatever amount they want to spend.

"Tax the Rich!" they say. Because rich people are too stupid to move their assets around so that they won't have to pay additional taxes!. Yeah, that's a plan. Because stupid people are often the richest ones. If the rich people you know hang out in Hollywood or in Washington, you might come to that conclusion, I guess.

"Wring out the waste and inefficiency in government programs!" they say. Sure. If that was so easy to do, it would have been done by now, don't you think? If Ronald Reagan couldn't manage to disband the Department of Education, and we can't manage to cut PBS, NPR, and the NEA free from the government teat, where exactly will such "savings" come from?

There's only one place where all of that money will come from, one way or another.

It's going to come from the person you look at in the mirror every morning.

How's that hope and change working out for you?

Are you scared yet?

You should be.

OK, they call it Five health care promises Obama won't keep but "it's the thought that counts," isn't it?

The five promises:

1. No Individual Mandate
2. Complete Transparency
3. Enable the Government to Directly Negotiate Drug Prices
4. Allow Drug Importation
5. Lower Premiums by $2,500 for a Family of Four

If you couldn't believe Obama's promises then, what makes you think you can believe what he promises now?

Meanwhile, Social Security is about to go into the red. Just like George W. Bush said it would--and got blasted by Congressional Democrats for trying to actually fix the problem.

Maybe we should figure out how to pay for all of the bloated government "entitlement" programs we have now--or figure out how to update them so that they won't bankrupt this country--before we create the Mother of All Entitlements in health care, and before the Chinese completely cut off their lending to us?

Hmmm?

Science Daily--Computers can now lip-read better than humans:

A new study by the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggests computers are now better at lip-reading than humans.

A research team from the School of Computing Sciences at UEA compared the performance of a machine-based lip-reading system with that of 19 human lip-readers. They found that the automated system significantly outperformed the human lip-readers – scoring a recognition rate of 80 per cent, compared with only 32 per cent for human viewers on the same task.

This may not--in the long run--be a good thing.

(It's about 7 minutes into this clip . . . but what the heck, you've got the seven minutes to spare, don't you?)

Via Jungle Trader, this from the New York Times:

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city (Cairo) would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.

Oops.

I successfully resisted the temptation to title this post "Monkey see, monkey do."

In Ars Technica (which did not resist that temptation, you will note if you click through to the article):

Empathy isn’t only limited to humans. The chimpanzee and many of our other primate relatives are fully capable of processing complex emotions and behaviors. Chimps can also learn new abilities by watching their peers' actions and copying them. Matthew Campbell, a post-doctoral fellow at Emory University who studies primate behavior, and his colleagues wanted to see whether chimps identify with computer animations the same way they do with expressions from real-life animals. The (perhaps) surprising answer: yes, they do.

That's what President Obama says, so you can't get more official than that.

CNN as quoted at Cato@Liberty

"For us to say you have to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," Obama said in response to persistent questioning, later adding: "Nobody considers that a tax increase."

So, that means that Senator Baucus, who wrote the Senate health care bill, is a nobody, too. The Foundry blog of the Heritage Institute explains ("MAGI" is "modified adjusted gross income," "FPL" is "family poverty line"):

The Merriam Webster Dictionary is not the only document that identifies the Baucus bill mandates as a tax middle class tax increase. There is also the Baucus bill itself, whose text on page 29 reads:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the minimum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.

And who would be enforcing what President Obama insists is not a tax? Heritage’s health care team explains:

In order to enforce these provisions, the Baucus bill would require individuals, health insurers, employers, and government health agencies to report detailed health insurance information on all Americans to the IRS, adding significant administrative costs and reducing privacy protections. The IRS would also be required to report personal income data to state exchanges, insurance companies, and employers, because premium credits and out-of-pocket limits would depend on income.

And the individual mandate is not the only middle class tax hike in the bill:

[B]eginning in 2013, the bill would impose a new federal excise tax on high cost health insurance plans. The tax would be applied to health plans valued at $8,000 for single policies and $21,000 for family policies. Because not all workers in such plans are high income, many will likely be on the receiving end of a middle class income tax increase, which contradicts President Obama’s promise that “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

I think the President is a liar. I must therefore--I'm told--be a RAAAAACIST!!!