Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest implores that this performance spread far and wide. Go, little video!  ..bruce w..

Yep. It really is worse than you thought. Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.  ..bruce w..

Remember Chris Christie, the Republican who defeated Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey last year? Well, here’s his address to a joint session of the New Jersey legislature about the budget crisis there. I can’t embed the video, so you’ll have to go over and watch it. I have to agree with Hunter Baker’s assessment (hat tip to him for the link to the speech) that this speech is “one of the most astounding speeches and demonstrations of leadership I have ever seen.” It really is worth the time to watch because it represents everything that we’re not seeing out of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress with regards to fiscal honesty and responsibility.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem in New Jersey, the annual state budget is currently around $17 billion. However, New Jersey has $90 billion in unfunded pension and medical benefit costs. Gov. Christie points out that New Jersey would have to spend $7 billion every year going forward — nearly half of its annual budget — to make those unfunded pension and medical costs good.  ..bruce..

[Welcome to all and sundry coming over from Ace of Spades.]

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web daily mailing comes this posting from the DOJ Civil Rights Division for a Voting Section trial attorney:

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Applicants must possess a J.D. degree, be an active member of the bar in good standing (any jurisdiction), and have a minimum of three (3) years post-J.D. experience. Applicants must have substantial litigation experience, such as handling discovery, litigation strategy, motions practice, brief writing, interviewing witnesses, taking and defending depositions, trial preparation, trial practice, and negotiations. Applicants must have excellent interpersonal skills, be mature and self sufficient, communicate effectively orally and in writing, and possess excellent professional judgment.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

In addition, the following qualifications are preferred: (1) substantive knowledge of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and other statutes enforced by the section; (2) familiarity with the various analytical approaches utilized to review voting changes under Section 5 of the VRA; (3) experience investigating and/or litigating voting rights or civil rights cases; (4) federal judicial experience; (5) experience serving as the lead attorney in federal court cases; (6) familiarity with statistical methodologies used in civil rights cases; (6) and fluency in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or vietnamese languages.

Sounds pretty stringent. But then a few paragraphs down is this (emphasis mine):

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information. For additional information for applicants with targeted disabilities, please contact the Civil Rights Division’s Disability Program Manager, Diane Petrie, at (202) 514-3934; see also http://www.jan.wvu.edu/LEAD/index.htm and http://www.opm.gov/disability/PeopleWithDisabilities.asp.

Isn’t there an inherent conflict between the required and preferred qualifications and those targeted disabilities? Then again, perhaps not in the current DOJ. ..bruce w..

[Here are two other recent ASIP posts you may want to check out: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Obama as Zaphod Beeblebrox.]

Over 40 years ago, Pete Seeger wrote a song ostensibly about an Army platoon on stateside maneuvers but actually referring to the escalation of the Vietnam War.  Here are the lyrics:

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That’s how it all begun.
We were — knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
‘Bout a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were — waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, “Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nellie,”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I’ll lead on.”
We were — neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around men!
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Than the place he’d once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
‘Bout a half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I’m not going to point any moral;
I’ll leave that for yourself
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We’re — waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

I found myself wondering at the end of President Obama’s State of the Union address how many of the Democrats in the House Chamber had that song or thoughts along those lines running through their minds.  ..bruce w..

I just heard Chris Wallace talk about having a press lunch with Pres. Obama today and that Obama seemed quite sure of himself, unfazed by the Massachusetts election last week and the subsequent collapse of Obamacare, and looking forward to his State of the Union address tonight. I immediately flashed back to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (which I first listened to in its original radio format some 30 years ago on our local [Houston] NPR station). One of the major characters is Zaphod Beeblebrox, “ex-confidence trickster and part-time Galactic President” who is on the run, having stolen the starship Heart of Gold at its christening. He is, to put it mildly, very sure of himself:

“Look I’m here with cool OK? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. Now, will you move before I blow it?”

During the course of events, Zaphod get put into the Total Perspective Vortex, “allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected”:

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”

So what happens when Zaphod Beeblebrox is subjected to it?

The door of the Vortex swung open.

From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly. He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.

He waited for him to flop forward out of the box, as they all did.

Instead, he stepped out.

“Hi!” he said.

“Beeblebrox …” gasped Gargravarr’s mind in amazement.

“Could I have a drink please?” said Zaphod.

“You … you … have been in the Vortex?” stammered Gargravarr.

“You saw me, kid.”

“And it was working?”

“Sure was.”

“And you saw the whole infinity of creation?”

“Sure. Really neat place, you know that?”

Gargravarr’s mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body been with him it would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging open.

“And you saw yourself,” said Gargravarr, “in relation to it all?”

“Oh, yeah yeah.”

“But … what did you experience?”

Zaphod shrugged smugly.

“It just told me what I knew all the time. I’m a really terrific and great guy. Didn’t I tell you, baby, I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox!“

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. ..bruce w..

A wonderful video with a big hat tip to Gerard Van der Leun over at American Digest.  ..bruce w..

Best $200 I ever spent. I’m going to be smiling for days.

Contrary to a lot of the spin coming out of the Left, here’s what Rasmussen found:

In the end, Brown pulled off the upset in large part because he won unaffiliated voters by a 73% to 25% margin. The senator-elect also picked up 23% of the vote from Democrats. [Our polling shows that 53% of voters in Massachusetts are Democrats, 21% Republican and 26% not affiliated with either party.]

Coakley also barely carried a usually reliable Democratic constituency. Union workers went for her by just six points, 52% to 46%.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters in the state say health care was the most important factor in their voting decision. Brown made it clear in the closing days of the campaign that he intended to go to Washington to vote against the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Twenty-five percent (25%) of Massachusetts voters say the economy was most important.

Forty-seven percent (47%) favor the health care legislation before Congress while 51% oppose it. However, the intensity was clearly with those who are opposed. Just 25% of voters in Massachusetts Strongly Favor the plan while 41% Strongly Oppose it.

Fifty percent (50%) say it would be better to pass no health care legislation at all rather than passing the bill before Congress.

And as a reminder: “No, they’re not going to see this coming.”

2010 is shaping up to be a very interesting year.  ..bruce w..

Not so well, as it turns out (details over at Big Government). In the meantime, the Obama Administration continues to play games on “jobs created or saved”. ..bruce w..