STEPHEN GORDON REPORTS ON HIS EXPERIENCE AT Thursday’s House Call On Congress.

THOUGHTS ON CONSISTENCY. But if Bush was Hindenburg, then what does that make Obama?

QUIN HILYER: “Conservatives need to take a deep breath, relax, and stop bashing Joseph Cao. The man never claimed to be a fully committed economic conservative. He represents a district that is about 75 percent Democrat and 62 percent black (or thereabouts).”

You could see that when I interviewed him.

A BUNCH OF new releases on Blu-Ray.

BETTER SCREWED than rude.

FABIUS MAXIMUS CONTINUES TO INSIST that I misread a post of his — this one — in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre. That’s certainly possible, and certainly I don’t claim to know what he meant better than he did. I took his post on military stress as an endorsement of the PTSD-theory, and an implicit rejection of the Muslim-terror theory, but that was my inference, nothing he actually said.

OUCH: “Life is full of mysteries, but chief among them in this Marine wife’s mind at the moment is, ‘Just how stupid does this White House think we are?'”

CALLING ALL BLOGGERS for a bipartisan project to support veterans. With John Hinderaker and Joe Trippi.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON Obama’s Fort Hood Massacre reference: “I’m trying to imagine the political environment that Washington Democrats occupy. A President glibly lays out that analogy, and it is received — without any wincing or taint of disgust — as awesome inspiration. These are the minds that will be making decisions for us for quite a while.”

SHORTENING WORMS’ LIVES by adding sugar.

THE ROAD FROM SERFDOM. “Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down and with it communist rule in Central Europe. Within little more than two years, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the transition from communist dictatorship to free market democracy began in much of the former socialist commonwealth. . . . In spite of its monumental failure to bring social peace and material abundance, socialism is enjoying something of a renaissance. From Venezuela to Bolivia to South Africa, government ministers espouse the supposed virtues of socialism. Even in the West, some policies are taking government intervention in the economy to levels unseen in decades. Given the renewed interest in alternatives to capitalism, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the last time that socialism was tried with real gusto.”

Socialism is an opportunistic infection of the body politic. It occurs when defenses are low.

INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS: Reporting from Singularity University.

FAR FROM A LAB? Turn a cellphone into a microscope. “In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.”

One step closer to the tricorder.

HEALTH CARE that’s always a scare.

BEST MOVIES AND TV OF 2009.

BRITISH CORPORAL BECOMES MISS ENGLAND.

SOCIAL SCIENCE in the Drug War zone.

PROGRESS: ‘Space elevator’ wins $900,000 NASA prize.

GOODBYE, RUBY TUESDAY? “Not quite. The stock has rebounded to $6.54, and the company has raised money to pay down debt. Even if a sense of imminent doom has passed, however, nobody is yet calling Mr. Beall’s makeover a success.” I haven’t tried the new menu yet, but my complaint about the old one was that the food got more expensive, and more fattening, while tasting worse. (The turkey burger, for example, became an over-800-calorie monstrosity, but didn’t taste nearly as good as the older, lighter version). I guess I’ll have to check them out again — we used to go there once a week, but I haven’t been to a Ruby’s in many months.

But there’ll have to have been big changes to justify this bit:

“If you really care what you put in your body, Ruby’s is a good place for you,” says Mr. Beall, as the wait staff clears away the plates. “If you don’t care, hell, go to Hardee’s.”

Earlier posts on Ruby’s here and here.

UPDATE: Reader Billy Rawl emails:

We hardly ever eat lunch out, but today some friends persuaded us to join them at our local Ruby Tuesday. Although the place was crowded the service was impeccable, the food was wonderful, and none of the staff during our whole visit ever addressed us as “you guys.” I couldn’t think of a thing to suggest on the online survey that would improve my next visit. I would be returning even if I didn’t get $4 off my next entrée for filling out that online survey!

I’ll give ’em another try, maybe, although I looked at the nutrition information on their website and their turkey burgers are mostly in the 1100 calorie range. That’s two Big Macs worth of calories. For a turkey burger. You do better with a full slab of barbecue ribs. That’s just wrong. There’s one for 890 calories, which puts it just shy of the 920-calorie Double Whopper. Still pretty lame. Can’t we get a 500-calorie turkey burger?

LONG-TERM TEST RESULTS on the VW Jetta TDI.

TREATING the pain epidemic.

LOOKING AT THE PERFORMANCE OF Chevy Volt batteries in cold weather.

DISSING FREE SPEECH.

IN THE MAIL: Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded–and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.

JERRY POURNELLE: “I would have thought that the Obama administration is at least as responsible for the US response to the Swine Flu problem as the Bush administration ever was for the New Orleans response to Katrina, but the media are not reporting it that way. I wonder how those who stood in long lines for hours only to find that there is no vaccine feel about the government’s coming takeover of the entire health care system? Will the new health care system work more smoothly than does, say, FEMA? Is there any reason to think so?”

UPDATE: Thunderous Applause.

ANOTHER UPDATE: List: Blue Dogs Who Voted for Pelosicare.

MORE: Roger Kimball: What It Means.