We are back from the great white (literally) north. We had a nice visit with the in-laws, though Steve was gone most of the time, stalking Bambi at deer camp. Andrea and Pam went to a mac & cheese tasting held at several wineries around Traverse City. Let's face it - it was a grown-up progressive. While they were out on the town, I was watching Elena. She and I took a car ride to Empire, then Glen Arbor, and back. Nothing too exciting, but I wanted to get out of the house.

So Thanksgiving at my mom's was nice. I ate a lot, of course, and there was even less concern for moderation than normal. (I'm not one to count calories is what I'm saying.) Andrea made a great chocolate pecan pie and the turkey, potatoes, et al that mom made were also excellent.

So let's continue on with Obama broken promise of "change".

Greg Craig was named as chief White House Counsel. He's a lib's lib lawyer. He headed Clinton's anti-impeachment team after the president committed purgeory. He was also an attorney for John Hinkley, who shot President Reagan. No wonder Obama likes him - he shot a Republican.

He Advised Ted Kennedy regarding the 1991 rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith. He also helped out Fidel Castro by acting as the lawyer for Elian Gonzalez's father, Juan, in returning Elian to the Hellhole known as Cuba. Last but not least, he worked with groups connected with the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

Tom Daschle, former senator from South Dakota turned lobbyist, will be heading up Health and Human Services. His primary responsibility as Majority Leader while in the Senate, before his defeat in 2002, was to obstruct President Bush's attempts to get legislation passed. He will be responsible for B.O.'s attempt to socialize the health care system to make it run as smoothly as other government controlled system, like Social Security. I have all confidence that the results will be the same.

Is this "Change" that B.O. voters voted for? More Washington insiders and lobbyists? Maybe it's time to admit that he is not the Chosen One, he's just another politician who lied to get elected.

Oh, and Obama is most likely going to delay repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy for the armed forces, a policy he committed to repeal. How un-fabulous is that? The Village People are probably lining up now, ready for action - what kind of action, I don't know.

Obama promotes fiscal restraint, big spending. That is the title of a Detroit News article. Uh... huh?

A day after introducing the captains of his economic team and promoting a giant jobs plan, Obama on Tuesday was to lay out his budget belt-tightening vision. The dual images -- big spender and disciplined budget watcher -- were designed to give both political and economic assurances to the public, the Congress and the financial markets.

...

[Obama's economic team] will also be part of an administration that will drive deficits to new heights with an economic plan designed to save or create 2.5 million jobs and redirect the economy over the next two years. Economists from across the political spectrum, including some who have served as informal advisers to Obama, have put the size of an economic recovery package as high as $700 billion over two years.

This $700 billion that is continued to be mentioned is a fallacy. There seems to be no end in sight for the money that Congress is going to spend, as Bloomberg.com points out:

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

I went to Champps to watch Monday Night Football last night - though I only watched the first half, there was a lot of scoring, so it was a fun game to watch.

I had the Powerplay Platter, which consisted of Buffalo wings, chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, and potato skins. Overall, it was good, though the tenders seemed a little tough. Four sauces were provided, including one that I couldn't identity - it may have been groundhog juice, I'm not sure.

I also made a stop at Home Depot to purchase painting supplies. Elena decided the wall would look much better with some pen doodling, and it isn’t coming off, so I'll be doing some painting. I'm sure it will look horrible, trying to match paint that has been on the wall for three years, but it's all I'm going to do right now. I'm sure this will not be the last time I have to paint over some of Elena's artwork.

Elena was in one of those moods yesterday. She started off well, sleeping until almost 7:00 - yes, that is a good for a weekend. I had an enjoyable walk through Sleepy Hollow State Park, about 15 minutes from my house, but other than that it was rough. She didn't have a good nap, and that made her crabby all day. Crabby and clingy are not a good combination. Luckily, she slept well last night - I would have been out of the running for "Father of the Year" if that had happened.

Andrea outdid herself last night - the kitchen was a real disaster. But, she fixed a complex meal involving steak, shrimp, mashed plantains, rice, and a very good sauce. The filet mignon she made last weekend topped it, but it was still a nice meal.

Turns out the major cause of the Minneapolis bridge collapse a few years ago was not the lack of federal funds and an "aging infrastructure", but an engineering error, as reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators probing the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis said Thursday that the structure was heavily loaded with construction equipment -- equivalent to the weight of a 747 airplane -- hours before a set of improperly designed joints failed catastrophically.

The added weight, combined with errors in the original design of the so-called gussett plates, appeared to produce the breaking point in the Aug. 1, 2007, disaster that killed 13 people and injured 145.

I wonder if the demand for higher gas and other taxes to pay for our "crumbling infrastructure" will subside? Hmm, maybe not - the politicians need people to think there is a crisis to validate their confiscatory tax rates.

Jennifer Granholm thinks your car will power your house through the use of advanced batteries. Uh, sure. And maybe since there is so much crap on TV, my flat-screen will double as a toilet.

Still on the subject of toilets, Jack Simms, at the World Toilet Conference,announced that the flush toilet was unsustainable and that the water used in toilets should be used to save water. And an Australian "expert" wants to tax flushing the toilet. Now I know what happens when I flush - it goes "down under" to fertilize goofy Australian "experts."

The movement of Greenland ice is slowing. Al Gore is probably preparing a speech to tell everyone not to worry about this whole global warming thing after all.

I just had lunch at DeLuca's and it was fantastic. I mostly ate the Meat Special - really, how can you go wrong with pepperoni, ham, sausage, bacon, and ground beef? That is pizza heaven. But, I also had a slice of Spinach Pizza, which Andrea recommended, and it was also very good. DeLuca's probably has the best pizza in Lansing, so if you're looking for a great pie, head there.

It’s NBC’s annual global warming scare week, and one of the items mentioned was the receding glacier of Mount Kilimanjaro. So I decided to find out why. It seems most likely that lack of precipitation and evaporation are the causes, since the average temperature high on mountain is below freezing. Climate Audit has a nice article on the subject, and one of the comments made a good point about disappearing ice:

How do you ice cubes disappear in your frost free freezer. Global warming?

Another possibility, which is talked about in that article and in others I've read, is the reduction of forests surrounding the mountain. As stated on National Geographic:

According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession. "Clearing for agriculture and forest fires—often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives—have greatly reduced the surrounding forests," he says. The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.

That makes sense - less cloud covers means more sunlight reaches the ice leading to fast evaporation. But would that cause such a dramatic decline in glacial ice? Of course, being National Geographic, it goes onto to tell a doomsday story about how the glacier will disappear because the earth is heating up, which is not true - temperatures have been declining in recent years. And note what the World Climate Report mentions:

Consider that, for example, between 1953 and 1976—a period of global cooling—a full 21% of the glacier’s original area disappeared, as Thompson reported in 2002. Where were the dire forecasts of disastrous results from global cooling? At the time, it would have been completely logical (if ultimately false) to predict the following: “If this cooling trend continues, Kilimanjaro’s glaciers will completely disappear by 2015.”

So the reduction started long before the widespread destruction of the local forest – it actually started in the 19th century. It seems more likely that global weather patterns are to blame for the receding glacier, and since that is something we can't change, maybe we should not cause radical changes in our economic policy and lifestyle which would make zero difference to the environment.

Okay, can we just admit that Obama's appeal is a strange cult of personality issue? Now, B.O. is going to be on the Washington D.C. metro card. That's just not right.

I remember being in Egypt about 10 years ago and seeing huge pictures of the president on walls and bilboards all over the city, and thought it was, well, odd. It gets even creepier when it happens here. But Dear Leader cannot be out of site for any time, lest subversive thought creep into one's mind.

In the interest of making sure the purchase of underwear and socks is convenient for everyone, Ed Rendell is bailing out a department store chain:

Gov. Ed Rendell announced today that the state will direct $35 million of federal Housing and Urban Development money to Al Boscov and his family to help them purchase the bankrupt department store chain.

Well, there you go. Apparently, the Boscov department store chain was "too big to fail." I guess we don't have to worry about our Michigan-based Meijer from going under, should things take a turn for the worse with them - they're too big to fail too. Especially with a 9.3% unemployment rate we have here in Michigan. Give 'til it hurts!

Date time was last night, so Andrea and I went to Omi Sushi in East Lansing for some raw to partially-cooked fish. I'm still shocked that I actually like sushi, but I do, especially with wasabi and soy sauce. Good stuff. We later stopped at Melting Moments to finish off stuffing ourselves, and in between the eating, we went to Barnes & Noble and bought a stack of books for Elena. I got her a new Sandra Boyton book. Since I read to her, I get the books I like. So there.

I read a great article on American Thinker called Orwell's Children about the similarities of Orwell's 1984 and today's political and social climate. I especially liked this quote about redefining language:

Language must be brought to heel. The Nazis did this by inventing meaningless words like "Aryan science." Marxism foisted upon us words like "capitalism," which means nothing at all but which has so infected our minds that we reflexively use this silly nonsense word instead of freedom. Politically correct language is rampant. We come to view words like "discriminate" as inherently evil, and other words like "viable fetal mass" have replaced the reality of murdered babies.

And later in the same article:

Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)

Our slide started long ago, but it just got steeper.