Answering the questions Glenn Reynolds won't!

Mr. Question

Seems Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame has become the shrinking violet of the blogosphere. Maybe it's because he's pork-barreling around the Cayman Islands ("giving a speech" - hahaha, Glenn, good one!), or maybe it's because he's just gotten old and lazy like me, but he sure seems to ask or repeat a lot of questions while leaving the answer dangling. So here we go with his questions-without-answers, followed by the answers supplied by me:

Glenn's Q: Which successes were those?
My Answer: Obama got to more than 90 rounds of golf played.

Q: They’re not really going to ask for an exemption for themselves, are they?
A: Of course they will. Sheese.

Q: Johnny Depp-Gate: What Did the Mainstream Media Know and When Did They Know It?
A: They knew everything from the beginning, natch.

And same place:

Q: Hmmmm…“Why don’t White House visitor logs report Hollywood Halloween guests?
A: Because they are Democrats and they don't have to. Who's going to call them on it? The press? See just above.

Q: What Does Keith Olbermann Have Against Bald People?
A: Same thing he has against everyone else: he hates them.

Same post:

Q: I wonder what his boss thinks of Olbermann’s tweets attacking the follicly challenged?
A: This assumes his boss even thinks much of Olberman at all.

Q: Why can’t their candidate do this?
A: Because. He. Is. Mitt. Romney.

Q: THE DRUG WAR — WHICH SIDE ARE WE ON AGAIN? (This, being is all-caps, is therefore REALLY URGENT!)
A: The drug lords, of course.

Q: Can Qatar bail out France’s banlieues?
A: And all the rest of France, too.

Q: POLITICAL WIVES: Do They Hold All The Power?
A: Why would political wives be any different?

Q: IS POP CULTURE IN PARALYSIS?
A: No, it's in rigor mortis.

Actually answered this one:
WANT TO SEE YOUR PREEMIES IN THE NICU? Not if Jay-Z and Beyonce Are In the House.

It won't do any good to point out that some of these unanswered Qs were actually posted my temp blogger Ed Driscoll. It's Glenn's site and the buck stops there.

Answers! We demand answers! And thanks to me, not Glenn, you got 'em!

The future of aerial drones

Japan's ministry of defense has developed a spherical flying machine that can hover like a helicopter, fly forward like an airplane and can even roll along the ground.



Conceptually, this machine is similar to circular-winged aircraft that were developed decades ago. Aerodynamicists have long known that circular wings can be extremely efficient. They are part of the class of design known as non-planar wings.

The aerodynamics of nonplanar wing systems that form closed loops are very interesting. Such configurations include box-planes, ring wings, joined wings, and "spiroid-tip" devices. Wings that form closed loops, such as the ring-wing illustrated below, do not eliminate the "tip vortices" or trailing vortex wakes even though the wing has no tips. Still, the vortex drag of the circular ring wing is just 50% that of a planar wing with the same span and total lift and the concept has been studied at several organizations, including early aviation pioneers, a major aircraft manufacturer, as well as several toy companies.

Israel and the "land for peace" fiction

Caroline Glick :: The land-for-peace hoax:

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

The conflict is not about land. 

The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.

The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders."

Read the rest.

The Left's only question: Who is to rule, that is all

The New Authoritarianism by Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin - City Journal

Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.

"Progressives" have no absolute belief but in themselves. Their purpose is power. Political power is their bread and meat. It is their religion, their overriding quest. As I explained in, "The Po-Mo Deconstructed Presidency,"

One of the basic tenets of postmodernist linguistic deconstructionism (which I learned how to do in my postgraduate studies at Vanderbilt) is that all text is tainted by bias and that objective points of view are impossible. Hence, the objective of expression is to exercise power.

Hence, there is no such as thing as objective truth and statements are never more than propositional in nature. A statement's truth content is never more than opinion, and opinions are nothing but expressions of power. Therefore, in a basic sense, all speech is power directed.

This is a fundamental world view of the Left and is derived directly from Marxism, as reworked by Leninism. Since Marx held that his communist theory was literally scientific, his economic-historical forecasts were not simply likely, they were certain. To understand and partner with this inevitability was to be "on the right side of history" (which is where that overused cliche comes from). As formulated by Lenin et. al., truth is therefore not statements of objective facts, but assertions that move the communist revolution and its fulfillment closer to reality. "Truth" is therefore pliable and impermanent, the concept of truth being only practical. In practice, all of language became subservient to the dominance of the party, a fact recognized by George Orwell in his novel 1984 and its concept of Newspeak.

As Orwell put it in 1984, "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Lewis Carroll understood this quite well in Through the looking Glass.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'

And that is the only question the Left is interested in. This explains why George W. Bush's policies were bad when he was president, but are good when continued by Barack Obama. Statements about policies are not really about the policies, but about getting or keeping power. That's all.

Update: The SF Chronicle's Deb Saunders explains how this has worked in the last few weeks, another example of when the Republicans did something, it was bad, but when the Democrats do it, it's good.

Stalin responds to Hitler Downfall mashups

What might have been, Uncle Joe.

Why Obama should be called, "Your Excellency"

An Occupy leader in Iowa thinks that President Obama should be called, "Your Excellency."

Well, there is good reason.

In November 2008, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of his transition team, appeared on "Meet the Press." She told host Tom Brokaw that "Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."

Shouldn't someone who had reached the political heights that Jarrett had reached know that kings rule but presidents are elected to serve and are accountable to Congress, the courts and the voters? ...

A little more than three years after Jarrett declared Obama's majesty, his spokesman Jay Carney warned on the day of the Iowa caucuses that "if Republicans choose the path of obstruction rather than cooperation, then the president is not going to sit here . .. he's going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority." ...

Clearly our American arrangement of checks and balances written into the Constitution is an impediment to this president. Before Carney made his statement Tuesday, Obama himself said in October that "we can no longer wait for Congress to do its job. ... So where Congress won't act, I will."

As the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon notes, "All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution." Why?

But clear beyond the slightest doubt is the language of the statute (itself unconstitutional on any number of grounds not relevant here). As my colleague Mark Calabria wrote yesterday, “authorities under the Act remain with the Treasury Secretary until the Director is ‘confirmed by the Senate.’” A recess appointment, even if it were constitutional, is not a Senate confirmation. There is simply no wiggle room in that language that gives Cordray any authority, as litigation will soon make plain.

Except, of course, that we have a "living" Constitution, which means that you can use it to justify whatever you want to do. So Obama's actions were illegal? Sez who? Congress, especially the Senate, whose delegated powers Obama just usurped? That is to laugh. Congress, especially the Reid-led Senate, will not raise a whimper.

God's plan just fell apart, I guess

RealClearReligion - A Divine Call Won't Get You Votes

Michele Bachmann explained at the beginning of her campaign why she was running, "It means I have a sense of assurance about the direction I think that God is speaking into my heart that I should go."

And she is not the only one "called by God" to discover that apparently God didn't help her follow the call very well.

There is a certain way of speaking among evangelical Christians (not all, necessarily, but as a demographic) that uses divine call or revelation as a crutch to prop up what the speaker wants to do or persuade others to do.

Examples:

When I was a landlord, my last tenant told me that God had revealed to them that I was to allow them to break their lease early and with no penalty. My reminder to them that they had also told me when signing the lease that God had led them to rent my house was of no import. It's easy for God to change his mind when you change yours, yes?

A Baptist church member whom I have know for decades told me that one day the Sunday School superintendent walked up to him and said, "God has told me that you are going to teach our youth class!" To which the member replied, "God didn't send me that memo."

Which brings me back to presidential politics. The linked article also includes this nugget:

Herman Cain explained his call this way: "Whether that is ultimately to become the President of the United States or not, I don't know. I just know at this point I am following God's plan."

So Cain's campaign was a divine plan that apparently included public humiliation? (Actually, since the Lord "has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts," maybe so. The question for Cain is just where is he with the Lord now? And that's a question for all of us, too.)

There are three things I have learned about God's call:

1. I am not a messiah, only God is a redeemer, deliverer or savior. So I view very suspectly people who claim to be called by God to save the rest of us, whether religiously, politically or socially. The people whom I would say really are doing that, however slightly or greatly, have all been mortified that it they are God's instrument. Which leads to ...

2. The object God's call is to make more apparent the glory of God among people, not to exalt the hearer of the call. That means ...

3. God's call almost never corresponds, even remotely, with what you want to do. Hence, any specific desire that exists, however slightly, in your heart that a subsequent divine call seems so wonderfully to endorse is almost absolutely not the voice of God but of the Deceiver. God's will is rarely appealing, at first.

And so, at the cusp of this New Year, to be reminded of the Wesleyan Covenant of Commitment:

Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants. Give yourselves to him that you may belong to him. Christ has many services to be done. Some are more easy and honorable; others are more difficult and disgraceful. Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both.

In some we may please Christ and please ourselves. But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. It is necessary, therefore, that we consider what it means to be a servant of Christ. Let us, therefore, go to Christ, and pray:

I am no longer my own but yours, O God.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or trodden underfoot for you;
let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and with a willing heart
yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
So be it. And let this covenant renewed on earth be fulfilled in heaven. Amen.