IN THE MAIL: Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives.

HOW ABOUT “Parasite Cartels?”

UPDATE: Violent SEIU Mob Arrested After Charging Troopers in WA State House. Rage all you want, looters and moochers, but the gods of the copybook headings will not be impressed. And they’re in charge now.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s the attack of the cash register.

STRONG SHOW OF SUPPORT IN TAMPA for Cuban prisoner of conscience.

NARRATIVE FAIL (CONT’D): Spending Cuts, Not Policy Riders, Held Up A Deal. “House and Senate Democratic lawmakers spent most of Friday attacking Republicans for holding up a government funding measure over a controversial social policy rider to defund Planned Parenthood, but a source close to the situation said that Democratic attacks were ‘just a ruse.’ In fact, the issue of how to handle the abortion-related rider was decided Thursday night: The Senate would take an up or down vote on the matter. But White House officials told reporters early Saturday that funding for women’s health groups was the sticking point.”

Fanservice.

MARK STEYN: “What with all the budget talk, I was just wondering whether that third war – or kinetic scope-limited whatchamacallit – was still going. You remember, it was in all the papers for a couple of days. So I guess things have gone quiet because it’s all wrapped up now? Apparently not. . . . If you wanted to devise a forlorn emblem of the impotence of the hyperpower, this non-war for non-victory is hard to beat.”

UPDATE: Gaddafi Forces Besiege Rebels in Ajdabiya. “Scarcely three weeks after the U.S. military launched Operation Odyssey Dawn, the war in Libya is beginning to look like President Obama’s worst failure to date.”

As I said: “Waging war halfheartedly, on the cheap, and by committee is not a formula for success.”

Some criticized me for this position at the time, but it appears to be being borne out, as it generally is. War seldom rewards half measures.

THE MANAGEMENT MYTH: “The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter.”

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals.

MICKEY KAUS ON THE BELTWAY INSIDERS’ PROTECTIVE LEAGUE: “From another perspective, it looks like a tacit conspiracy of Washingtonians not to sacrifice the jobs of any of their friends, or the local economy, by any kind of actual slimming down (of the sort a private company in similar straits would have undertaken years ago). … In effect, the respectable ‘pivot to entitlements’ position says,”we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT.” … Why not wring the fat out of government first?” Why not do both?

TEA PARTY 1, OBAMA 0: Video of Bill Maher: ‘Obama is a Terrible Negotiator – Does He Not Even Know a Jew?’

DODD HARRIS: “Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen on Thursday filed a filed a Petition for Supervisory Writ [PDF] directly to the state Supreme Court over a circuit court judge’s temporary blocking of the Budget Repair Bill. The petition is absolutely devastating to Judge Sumi’s actions with respect to the bill.”

SORRY, I’M GOING WITH JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK SMITH.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Feds Defend Twitter Dragnet On Wikileaks Supporters.

LET THEM BUY HYBRID VANS: “No doubt, even folks who disagree with President Obama on just about everything would pull back from endorsing a ten-child family unless the parents can afford them. But that’s pretty much the point: Doubling the fuel bill on the car by which the large family gets around reduces affordability. Moreover, it reduces affordability for a family already in particular circumstances, and it’s not inconceivable that the family size resulted from adoptions meant to rescue the children from worse. To declare that the father should spring for a large, expensive hybrid vehicle is to skirt the question, to put the blame for difficulties on the asker, and to impose government priorities on a highly diverse population — diverse not only in the liberal meaning of multiracial, but in the more significant (more conservative) meaning of varying circumstances and priorities.”

Also, is there such a thing as a “hybrid van?” My Highlander Hybrid SUV is really just a minivan with plausible deniability, but you can’t buy a full-sized van — or even an actual minivan — that’s a hybrid, can you? Apparently, people are begging for them, but none have appeared. Clearly, this calls for more government subsidies! And over at The Truth About Cars they’re wondering “why doesn’t anybody make a hybrid van?” So maybe some enterprising reporter will ask the President what model he had in mind?

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

CHANGE: Georgia leads the way in taking on Eric Holder’s DOJ.

THE PROBLEM CONFRONTING AN ECONOMIC RECOVERY: Demand is slack because everyone who could afford more crap already owns more crap than they need or even want.

THE TENNESSEE EVOLUTION BILL IS DUMB, but Doug Mataconis is wrong to blame Republicans for anti-evolution sentiment — Tennessee passed plenty of anti-evolution bills under Democratic legislatures too. Remember the Scopes Trial? It would be fairer to say that the new GOP legislature, the first since Reconstruction, is carrying on a Democratic tradition. . . .

Speaking of Scopes, that’s a good excuse to plug Ed Larson’s excellent A Summer For The Gods. Also, here’s a documentary on the Scopes trial that I did with Ed Larson and John Seigenthaler, originally on Court TV.

NERD HEAVEN: Every episode from every Star Trek TV show to be available for instant streaming on Netflix.

WHAT DO YOU SAY to an alien?

As I’ve suggested before, it might be best to keep quiet.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Outlet Sale.

PJTV: Trade in Our SUVs? Can We Trade In Our President Instead? (Bumped).

If you like this programming, please consider subscribing to PJTV.

SOME THOUGHTS in response to my earlier advice on the Planned Parenthood ad:

One thing that seems odd to me is that if you emphasize the importance of government funding for “women’s health” more generally — with talk about cancer screenings and STDs — then how do you explain the gender bias? Why should we be all fired up about women’s health and not men’s health? Is there a special role of government in taking care of women? Why?

Because women want an Uncle Sugar to take the place of a husband? Meanwhile, does Planned Parenthood provide cancer screenings for men? You’d think I’d know, but I don’t.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Yes, at least at my local office, PP provides testicular/prostate cancer screenings for men, along with STD testing and treatment and vasectomy referrals. Not a clue about their offices in other areas. They also provide adoption referrals around here along with abortion referrals. All the abortion referrals go out of town since our only abortion doctor was murdered by a “pro-life” zealot.

As I also pointed out, women are heavy utilizers of health care throughout life whereas men tend to to be serious avoiders until middle age. Women are more than twice as likely as men to have regular checkups and screenings, even after you factor in the pre-middle-years male avoidance. (I’ve seen this at work in jails as well — the line for sick call for women is always MUCH longer than in the men’s wards.) To some extent the discrepancy is simply that that’s where the big demand is, and to some extent one has to look to the Anglo-American attitude of women and children first. Our welfare systems are certainly geared that way.

It was Nixon, by the way, who first brought federal funding into the PP mix in 1970 with Title X. I think they would survive just fine without Title X, myself. It’s only about a quarter of their federal funding — the rest is earned Medicaid fees for other service provision. If you’re familiar with Medicaid payment schedules, you know they’re not subsidizing abortion mills with Medicaid payments. More likely the other way around.

Meanwhile, reader Patrick Cox notes that women already get 1/3 more health care dollars than men. Clearly we need affirmative action to remedy this disparity.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’m not the first to note this: “Although women tend to love the notion of government control more than men do, it is women who will be told they’ll have to cut back. On treatments. And years. You know we’ve been taking more than our share.”

THE TRUTH ABOUT CARS: Review: 2011 Lexus IS350 AWD.

HOW TO TELL if your neighbor is a bombmaker.

IT’S LIKE A ROTARY ENGINE FROM BIZARRO-WORLD, or something: The Wave-Disk Engine.

WHY FACEBOOK open-sourced its datacenters.