Science Daily:

The (University of Colorado at Boulder) researchers used high-tech instruments and lab methods to analyze roughly 50 showerheads from nine cities in seven states that included New York City, Chicago and Denver. They concluded about 30 percent of the devices harbored significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, a pathogen linked to pulmonary disease that most often infects people with compromised immune systems but which can occasionally infect healthy people, said CU-Boulder Distinguished Professor Norman Pace, lead study author.

Because, you see, hygiene is unhygienic. Or something like that. As they say at Fark.com: EVERYBODY PANIC.

Or, in my version: We Are All Going To Die!

Wash your hands, everyone!

From the Cato Institute's Cato @ Liberty blog:

The correct answer when the schools come begging for more money is NO. GO DO YOUR JOB. YOU HAVE PLENTY--MORE THAN ENOUGH. SPEND IT WISELY.

NO MORE MONEY.

The problem with education isn't money. The problem with education is bureaucracy.

These photos are of the crowd basically on the Capitol Circle and just inside--that's as close as I could get. I caught glimpses of the video board that was set up on the Capitol steps, and could hear the speakers well enough, but I was never close enough to actually see any speakers. Pictures are after the "read more."

I promised some 9/12 March on Washington pictures--if nothing else, to prove that I really was there. This will be in two posts--first, the March, and second, the Rally. March pictures after the "read more."

Stacy ("The Other") McCain kindly linked an article of mine a couple of days ago.

I had no idea whatsoever that he, The Other, was in the eyes of some knee-jerk jerks a RAAAAACIST!!! (five A's and three !'s are required, of course--the 5 A's being McCain's observation, the three exclamation marks being my own spur-of-the-moment contribution).

McCain, whom I have never actually met, appears to be quite brash, opinionated, and forceful in arguing his case--which the easily confusable can easily confuse with RAAAAACISM!!! As such I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.

Surprised and pleased, of course, but SHOCKED that McCain would actually link to this humble blog in the first place. Thanks again, Stacy!

Cynthia Yockey, a self-described lesbian of recently acquired conservative political orientation, discusses this further:

This morning I see that my blog pals Dan Collins and Dan Riehl are springing to the defense of my dear friend and fairy blogfather, Robert Stacy McCain, who goes by “Stacy” and blogs at The Other McCain. I must add my voice to theirs, but with more authority, because Stacy writes in opposition to homosexual equality and I am lesbian and I support the cause of homosexual equality — for example, federal protection from discrimination in access to jobs, housing and public accommodations (e.g., restaurants, stores, sporting events, concerts, parks); same-sex marriage; repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that gays and lesbians can be openly gay or lesbian while serving in the military; and adoption.

One of the things I have marveled at and loved about joining the conservative movement is that it embodies the ideal of embracing diversity. My experience of diversity on the Left was that, sure, there’s a rainbow of races and a sort-of rainbow of religions and homosexuals believe they are welcome (which is not the same as actually being welcome), but there was a strict uniformity of beliefs that were imposed top-down and woe betide the useful idiot — like me — who tried to cash in any of those checks, especially if they then went all activist on the asses of the Lefties breaking the promises — again, like me — for passing worthless promises in the belief that that neighborhood of the Left was just ignorant and only needed activism and education so that it would keep the promises it had made of equality, inclusion, yada-yada-yada.

Even after being run out of the lesbian and gay community in the pages of The Washington Blade in 1996 for my advocacy for the rights of people in wheelchairs, including my late life partner, it was not until the spring of 2008 when I found out about Barack Obama’s 20-year allegiance to Rev. Jeremiah Wright that I began to realize that the Left is where the most vicious racism and bigotry now resides in the U.S. Over the last year, with access to a fuller statement of facts from bloggers and online magazines than I ever got from the mainstream media, I have come to see the Left as the modern embodiment of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. My perception now is that the Left espouses ideals to gain followers, but only to gain power over them, seldom, if ever, to deliver on policies in line with their stated ideals. It’s all “say one thing, do another” over there.

Emphasis mine.

To paraphrase from a once widely studied but now largely ignored book of ancient wisdom: take the plank out of your own eye first, oh ye who see RAAAAACISM!!! in every disagreement you have with someone else.

OK, I'll explain the OH NOES! -- this is a sarcastic expression of faux-concern over some usually meaningless and/or trivial complaint that someone else has offered. And, RAAAAACISM!!! is the word used primarily by the Left as shorthand for "well, I disagree with you on a deep emotional level but am unable to articulately argue the point right now so you're just a poopyhead na na na na na your momma wears army boots!" It has no relation whatsoever with any actual tendency (or, more usually, the lack thereof) to discriminate for or against any race--human, alien, NASCAR, or triathalon. As previously pointed out, it is written with five A's and (optionally) three exclamation marks.

Put me on the Free side of this picture, please.

From Mike Baron's post at Big Hollywood:

All our wealth, our ability to field armies, deliver disaster relief, build schools and highways comes from money earned in the private sector. Yet these fools continue to grow the public sector like a giant cancer on the shoulders of every American left out of the government gravy train.

So I’m positing a very old party: the Leave Me Alone party. I’m happy to pay taxes if they are reasonable and they go toward legitimate government functions as spelled out in the Constitution and limited in the Bill of Rights. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be forced to pony up to provide some government drone a luxurious retirement.

The Republicans could become the Leave Me Alone party, but that would require some deep soul-searching on their part. In the meantime, millions of Americans will vote like me, searching for a ray of light in the shit storm of government growth, bureaucracy and parasitism.

This amusing post at Reason Hit & Run highlights one man's search for who, exactly, Obama is referring to when he blames otherwise unnamed "well-financed forces" for attempting to block his health care industry takeover. The piece begins:

Emmanuel Goldstein was the enemy of the state in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and the target of the "Two Minutes Hate," in which the citizens of Oceania -- at the cue of Big Brother -- would rage at those undermining the state and the party.

Within the novel, it's never clear if Goldstein is real or a fabricated whipping boy for party officials and angry citizens.

Unlike Big Brother, President Obama hasn't even deigned to give us a name for the enemy of "reform." He uses only ominous, vague epithets: "Opponents of health insurance reform," "well-financed forces" and "those who are profiting from the status quo."

So I asked both the White House and the Democratic Party to name these malefactors of great wealth.

I called the White House last week, and asked for names, and was told to e-mail spokesman Reid Cherlin. I asked Cherlin about the WhiteHouse.gov statement, "For those who fight reform in order to profit financially or politically from the status quo, the president sends a simple message: 'Not this time.' "

And I asked about this line in Portsmouth, N.H: "Despite all the hand-wringing pundits and the best efforts of those who are profiting from the status quo ... "

"Please name names," I requested. "Which businesses, lobbyists or industries is he referring to?"

That's called a "tease." Go hit the links above to get--as the late Paul Harvey was fond of saying--"the REST of the story."

Tenther.

Apparently, belief that the Constitution is, or should be, the supreme law of the land is now a conspiracy theory.

Liberal activists have a new name to disparage conservatives: "tenthers."

The nickname refers to those who cite the 10th Amendment to argue that federal intervention in areas not authorized by the Constitution, like health care for example, is unconstitutional.

This follows other names such as "birthers," "deathers" and "tea baggers."

You're damn right I'm a Tenther. I'm also a Ninther, and Eighther, a Seventher, a Sixther, a Fifther, a Fourther, a Thirder, a Seconder, and a Firster.

Keep talking, "progressives," keep talking. The more you talk, the more you're exposed as small minded, bigoted, hateful, envious people whose greatest wish is to be "led" by some "great leader." Of course, you're being led to the slave plantations, but you're too busy being smug to notice that.

Via The Other McCain.
UPDATED (and bumped): He likes me, he likes me! Stacy McCain says I ""dropped the full dime" with this here humble post. Well yeah, I guess I did "inform" on the "progressives," didn't I? Heh.

That was the word on the street on the attendance at the 9/12 rally in Washington. I understand that "official" estimates are 60,000. That's laughable. I know what 60,000 people looks like.

600,000, I would believe. Not 60,000. Way, way more people than that.

I'll have pictures, later.

Yes, I'm on the ground in D.C. (Actually, at this moment, 11 floors up in my hotel room.)

UPDATE: That was the happiest "angry mob" i've ever seen. The main difference I could see between the hordes of people in front of the Capitol and the 535 politicians who work inside that building is that most of the hordes seem to have actually read the Constitution. Oh, one other difference. The hordes didn't want to extort money from me, or from you for that matter.

Mary Katherine Ham, reporting the math that the major media just won't do:

In more than 400 events: one slap, one shove, three punches, two signs grabbed, one self-inflicted vandalism incident by a liberal, one unsolved vandalism incident, and one serious assault. Despite the left's insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics. If you add a phoned death threat to Democrat representative Brad Miller of N.C., from an Obama-care critic, the tally is 7 of 11.

And if you extend the census into September, you can add the most severe injury of all, which happened during a fight at a September 2 rally backing Obamacare in Thousand Oaks, Calif., hosted by the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org. Police have not determined who started the fight, but it ended when one of the Obamacare supporters "bit off the left pinky" of counterdemonstrator William Rice after Rice threw a punch, according to police. The Obamacare supporter, who could be charged with mayhem, left the scene before police arrived, and though Rice's missing digit was recovered, doctors were unable to reattach it because "a human bite has so much bacteria," Rice told me. Several liberal commentators took the opportunity to hail the forcible amputation as a victory of government-run medicine over a hypocritical Obama critic. Because Rice is 65, he is covered by Medicare.

Oh, I await the groundswell of outrage from our friends on the left and in the media (but I repeat myself) at the apparent assassination of a pro-life demonstrator:

A 33-year-old man was in police custody for the fatal shootings this morning of a longtime local abortion protester and a gravel company owner found slain in his office.

James Pouillon, 63, was shot multiple times at around 7:30 a.m. as he protested across from Owosso High School, according to witnesses, police said.

How about everybody agrees that pointing guns at other people is generally a bad thing to do and that pulling the trigger is an expedient held in reserve only for the most dire situations of self-defense. And shouldn't that include government guns pointed at peaceful, law-abiding citizens in a form of extortion/protection racket known as "taxation," by the way?