Toyota Prius has another recall, but fortunately not including my car.

Ann Althouse will be 60 years old in two months, and she can't think of anything to do about that. LOL.

Politico:

For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not be what happened on Election Day but what has happened in the weeks since.
After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further.

In Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, Democratic state legislators have become Republicans, concluding that there is no future in the party that once dominated the so-called Solid South.

That the old Confederacy is shifting toward the GOP is, of course, nothing new. Southerners have been voting for Republican presidents, senators and governors for decades.
But what this year’s elections, and the subsequent party switching, have made unambiguously clear is that the last ramparts have fallen and political realignment has finally taken hold in one of the South’s last citadels of Democratic strength: the statehouses.
Protected by a potent mix of gerrymandering, pork, seniority and a friends-and-neighbors electorate, Democratic state representatives and senators managed to survive through the South’s GOP evolution — the Reagan years, the Republican landslide of 1994 and George W. Bush’s two terms. Yet scores of them retired or went down in defeat earlier this month. And at least 10 more across three states have changed parties since the elections, with rumors swirling through state capitols of more to come before legislative sessions commence in January. Facing the prospect of losing their seats through reapportionment — if not in the next election — others will surely choose flight over fight.
Democrats lost both chambers of the legislature this year in North Carolina and Alabama, meaning that they now control both houses of the capitol in just two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, the latter of which could flip to the GOP in the next election.

George Will: Writing about "puritanical progressives," Will cites this quote: "Today's crusaders," [a] lawyer said, "come less from the pulpit than from university social science departments, but their goals and tactics remain the same."

Very funny. 

Glenn Reynolds: "The statists who argue for the destruction of the dollar and for bank bail-outs (again) and for nationalised derangement of medical care and for green-inspired economic sabotage aren’t “liberals”. They do not believe in liberty; they believe in curtailing liberty. But neither do they believe in anything which it makes sense to anybody except them to call “progress”. Progress is the exact thing these statists are now trying and have always tried to destroy, and just lately have been doing a pretty damn good job of destroying. Progress means things getting better. These self styled “progressives” are only making things worse."

Crime in Arkansas

In the annual "City Crime Rankings" (Metropolitan Crime Rankings) for 2010, Arkansas has 5 cities or regions listed in the nation's top 10 most crime-ridden. In order these are Detroit, Pine Bluff, West Memphis-Memphis, Lake Charles, La., Lawton, OK, Hot Springs, Flint, Mich., Las Vegas, Little Rock, and Texarkana. Last year Pine Bluff ranked No. 1 in the nation, and was the only Arkansas city in the top 10. The FBI is the source of the data.

Local law enforcement authorities are outraged. They note that cities report crime differently. Some crimes are more accurately reported than others. For example, murder rates are probably accurate. However, if you are mugged in Detroit it might not even be reported because there are so many muggings. The police don't have the manpower to investigate them all.

Crime hurts in many ways obviously. A city with a reputation for a high crime rate has trouble recruiting business and investment.

The Iron Bowl is today, arguably the biggest game of the year. Alabama vs. Auburn, the greatest rivalry in college sports. According to one fan, "It's not good enough for my team to win. I want you to know your team lost."

Peggy Noonan: Obama needs a Special Assistant for Reality.

Med City News has a highly critical article on Medical Advantage plans, especially the PFFS type. See this WSJ article on the future of these plans.

Holiday shopping mistakes to avoid.

Take a look at land of the free. But some fliers claim that the body scanners were deactivated today.

Glenn Reynolds has an article on the Popular Mechanics site about airport security.

Glenn Reynolds posts some interesting comments from women on Sarah Palin. “I suppose I should confess: I like Sarah Palin. I like her because she is such a problem for all these political men, Republicans and Democrats alike, with their polls, and their Walter Dean Burnham theories of transformative elections, and their economy this and their values that–and here comes Palin, and logic just doesn’t apply. . . . The Democrats are total morons for not finding their own hot mama before the Republicans did so first, or maybe I should have left off the qualifiers and called it straight: the Democrats are just plain morons, at least where women are concerned.”

“It’s a sign of another thing: that liberal men are wimps who can’t handle the hot potato that is a combination of feminine sexuality and female political brilliance.”

Big Government: "The real difference between the Israeli and American approach is the target.  Israel tries to identify and stop the terrorist while the U.S. targets the bomb or other weapon. This approach does not change whether there is a left or right wing Prime Minister in power because the government realizes for Israel, the fight against terrorism is a fight for its very survival. Thus her government and citizenry have a view of preventing terrorism that is unencumbered by the political correctness which restrains efforts in the United States."

Volokh Conspiracy: Did Stalin commit genocide? This post is based on a new book by Norman Naimark called Stalin's Genocides.

I've always been suspicious of programs that focus on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and fail to mention the Soviet Union. They were guilty of the same crimes. That seems like a bias to me.

AP: The jawbone found on Aruba does not belong to Natalee Holloway.

Thomas Sowell on TSA security, so-called. The Obama administration has utter contempt for us.

Security theater

Popular Mechanics interviews security expert Bruce Schneier: TSA scans "won't catch anybody," he says. They are not supposed to; they are merely "security theater."

The iPhone will auto correct some of your text, but sometimes it screws up big time. See here.

Secret Service Clint Hill recalls Jacqueline Kennedy. At the assassination he's the one who jumped on the back of Kennedy's car.

After 47 years, what do we know about the Kennedy assassination? Well, this link contains one view.

NoLeftTurns ask if the TSA screening is the end of diversity?

We pass all passengers through the same, cumbersome screening because we want to pretend that all Americans are equally likely to be security threats.   In short, we do it to avoid profiling.  The effort does credit to the tolerance of American soceity.  On the other hand, tolerance is not the only good.  There are limits. 

What we are seeing now is, I suspect, a reflection of a frustration Americans have with the worship of what is called diversity run amok.  By pretending that all passengers are equally likely to represent a threat, we have stretched the myth of sameness past the breaking point.  The same is true in other cases.  For example, a landlord cannot tell someone from India whose cooking stinks up the hallway outside his door by cooking his native cuisine that he is in violation of a general policy against stinking up the hallway.  Were someone from anywhere else in the world to cook the same thing, however, the landlord could tell him to nock it off.  Similarly, were that same person from India to stink up the hallway one night by cooking Italian food, the landlord could say something. That's absurd.  Given how intrusive the screen is becoming, it's no less absurd not to profile.

Baby boomers, especially women, are confident about sex.

Mike Huckabee says Sarah Palin may "run away with it" in the 2012 Republican primaries. He wants to run himself, but seems to be waiting to see what she will do.

Wednesday, November 24, the day before Thanksgiving and the busiest travel day of the year, is National Opt-Out Day. OK, I'm opting out.

George Will on TSA shakedowns:

The average American has regular contact with the federal government at three points - the IRS, the post office and the TSA. Start with that fact if you are formulating a unified field theory to explain the public's current political mood.

Everyday we are losing our freedom. 

Cloud computing is an idea that's catching on fast. You can access your data anywhere, and you don't need backups. But is it really secure up in the clouds?

TSA bumper stickers

See Ann Althouse on TSA bumper stickers.

Megyn Kelly is in the 2010 GQ Men of the Year issue.

David Sanders, recently elected to the Arkansas legislature, filed HB 1005 to change the nickname of Arkansas back to the Land of Opportunity. It is currently the Natural State. Well, this is really, really important.

NOTE: Some of the information in the link is incorrect. I don't believe Arkansas was ever officially called the Toothpick State.

Jesse Ventura says he will no longer fly and be abused by TSA.

Powerline reacts to the TSA nonsense. I believe there is a revolt developing against their so-called security.

Don't Touch My Junk!

Charles Krauthammer: "Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?"

As usual Charles says it best: 

The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn't need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning "I rely on God," killing all on board.
But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?
This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time and try my patience. But don't touch my junk.

See Ann Althouse's comments. 

Claire Berlinski: You would think that if anyone in the world needed to keep anyone from blowing up their planes it would be the Israelis. How do they do it? They profile. And they start with in-depth interviews.

Have you wondered about purchasing a MacBook Air or an iPad?

Popular Mechanics looks at full-body scanners.

James Carville: "If Hillary gave him [Obama] one of her balls, they'd both have two," Democratic strategist James Carville told the Christian Science Monitor at a breakfast on Thursday morning.

Florida Republican John Mica calls for ditching TSA and their damn scanners. This pseudo security is nonsense.

Natalee Holloway's dad says that officials ask for dental records. 

A woman is suing the federal government after TSA screeners exposed her breasts to everyone in the area.

What's going to happened with the Cam Newton-Auburn controversy? We don't seem to be getting any closer to finding out.

Mike Ross voted against Nancy Pelosi for House minority leader. That's something at least.

A thirty-something woman lists all the things she wishes she had done before she was 30. 1. Gotten Pregnant. Easier to conceive. Probably easier to carry the dang thing, too. Oh, well.

Is accreditation in higher education a waste of time and money?

Nancy Pelosi will stay on as the Democrats' leader in the House.

What is a classroom like at Cornell University? Via Ann Althouse.

Michael Barone reviews George W. Bush's memoirs, Decision Points.

Under Obamacare starting next year you may have to visit your doctor and get a prescription for ibuprofen and other OTC meds.

Faculty Lounge: An Alabama law professor goes over to the dark side -- Auburn!

Knoxville News: "Muslim who shot soldier in Arkansas says he wanted to cause more death."

I saw an article in today's paper (no link yet) about QR (quick response) codes that are showing up every where: Target, Best Buy, even on business cards. These are square bar codes that contain information about a product. You scan them with your smartphone. See here. You can generate your own codes containing any information you wish to share.

Since getting an iPhone some months ago, I'm been thinking that I don't need a stand-alone GPS, a digital camera, a land-line phone, a digital calendar, and other things. Now Yahoo Finance has a list of 10 devices that smart phones are replacing: PDAs, video cameras, MP3 players, digital cameras, handheld video games, GPS, PCs, regular cell  phones, watches, remote controls.

That's the list. I would add Kindle or Nook to the list with the IBooks app. Others come to mind: outdoor thermometer, compass.

See also "15 Things you can control with your iPhone."

The ADG reprinted this Amity Schlaes column comparing the New Deal with our correct administration. You may have to subscribe. See her website.

Resign

The Washington Post calls on Obama to step aside after one term as president. Amazing.

Emmett Tyrrell has a hilarious column. One quote: "Liberalism has been a distinctly minority party for a long time. Take away their media support, and they are about as popular as the American Prohibition Party."

Pilots and passengers are objecting to the patdowns now required in some airports.

Steven Den Beste's prediction on November 4, 2008. Via Instapundit.

Telephone companies want to drop residential phone books. ATT will not publish the Little Rock white pages after next year, according to the ADG. That's OK. I seldom use it anymore, relying on an internet lookup. Times change.

Dogs Decoded

NOVA broadcast a program last night called Dogs Decoded. Fascinating. Scientists are now researching how dogs came from wolves, their relationship with humans, their intelligence, and much more. They are truly man's best friend. You can watch the entire video by following the link.

Today is Veterans Day but it used to be celebrated as Armistice Day, the end World War I. The war ended on 11/11/1918 at 11:00 A.M.

Tet Offensive

I'm glad to see a new book on the Tet offensive of 1968, especially one in which we win. See James S. Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. In fact we won the battle, but everybody listened to Walter Cronkite. See Gary Larson's review.

Truong Nhu Tang, VC war minister, called Tet a "staggering loss." It was a "major irony," he wrote, that such a defeat "was transformed by our propaganda into a brilliant victory."

On Cronkite see here. 

Democrats are pressuring politically toxic Nancy Pelosi to step aside.

It will be interesting to see how the Cam Newton story turns out.

Walmart vs Amazon

AP: Wal-Mart is offering free shipping on online purchases with no minimum purchase for the holidays. No doubt Amazon is putting the pressure on them. You can buy just about anything at Amazon with no tax and no shipping over $25.

Cruise from hell

AP: Diabetics aboard the crippled cruise ship Carnival Splendor have had a very difficult time. I'm very much in sympathy with them as well as all other passengers. I have just canceled all my plans to take a cruise, lol.

Big Journalism: The NYT thinks its readers are stupid. They can't figure out how much they are paying. But I agree they are stupid. Anybody with any sense canceled a long time ago.

Used car tax

Jason Tolbert: Arkansas Republicans are floating the idea of cutting the used car tax. It needs to be reformed, to be sure. If you pay more than $2,500 for a used car (even one cent over that) you trigger the whole tax. $2,500 is too low anyway. Something like $5,000 would be better.

People on the troubled cruise ship, Carnival Splendor, are being towed and they are eating Spam. Better than it was.

Need advice for Medicare part D for 2011? This is the prescription drug plan with the infamous coverage gap, i.e., donut hole. I'm in the donut hole now and just paid $113 for a prescription. Not too happy.

George Bush appeared on the Oprah show to talk about his new memoir, Decision Points.

Cruise ship from hell. 

Update: The ship is receiving supplies and may be towed to San Diego.

Italian researchers say that men who have a happy sex life with their spouses live longer. "Increased sexual activity produces more testosterone, which leads to less depression and a better cardiovascular performance which means an improved metabolism."

Washington Post: 5 Myths about George W. Bush.

AP: As Baby Boomers age, one in five drivers will be 65 and older. This is an important issue for seniors. Public transportation is not available in most cases. We can't let people take our cars away from us and put us under house arrest.

Edmonds: 10 mechanical myths about cars.

AP: Kids who text more than 120 times a day are more likely to get have sex or use alcohol and drugs. That's not to say that texting is the cause of these behaviors. We may need to be reminded that correlation is not the same as causation. Some other factor may be the cause.

Ed Morrissey compares the Kindle and the iPad. He uses both, but I think he favors the iPad. One of the commenters said that if you have a iPhone, you don't need either of the other two devices. I agree.

Ilya Somin: Legal challenges to Obamacare may have a chance if they focus on the mandate to purchase government-approved insurance.

Who knew? Using a laptop can reduce a man's sperm count.

Barry Rubin has an interesting sports story. I don't believe he's reading too much into grade-school soccer.

Fallen from heaven

Walter Russell Mead: "No president in my lifetime has fallen from heaven to earth as rapidly as President Obama.  Others have lost popularity and lost control of Congress, but none fell from such a height.  Who can forget the rapturous cries of joy when he was elected in 2008?  Who can forget all those predictions of a ‘transformational presidency,’ hailing the one term Senator from Illinois as a new Lincoln, a new FDR, and (my personal favorite) the ‘Democratic Reagan’?"

iPhone users: check the alarms you have set in the Calendar. There may be a glitch associated with the switch to daylight savings time. I use this feature but I don't rely on it.

Carpe Librum, the last independent bookstore in Knoxville, Tenn., will close at the end of the year. The economy is bad but...

Besides the crushing economy, Carpe Librum suddenly faced yet another new competitor: e-books and e-readers such as the Kindle and Nook, which have finally taken off after years of attempting to lure consumers away from printed books. According to the Association of American Publishers, for instance, e-book sales were $39 million for August, a 172 percent increase over August 2009 ($14.3 million); calendar year to date, sales grew 193 percent. Throw in big-box retailers like Target and Walmart with discounted bestsellers, and buying books has never been more convenient—a trend that’s been devastating to traditional, independent sellers who mostly stick to list prices in exchange for offering a more selective stock and helpful clerks.

The most recent book I purchased was for iBook on my iPhone. My wife purchased the latest John Grisham at Wal-Mart.

Truth be told, I'm surprised I'm reading books on my iPhone, but the iBook app is really great. While I'm waiting for something, I can just read a little bit and I don't have to even carry around a paperback.

Tiger Woods has finished his first winless PGA season.

Jill Clayburgh is dead at age 66.

Loving bad girls

An intriguing book entitled Wanted Women: An American Obsession in the Reign of J. Edgar Hoover by Mary Elizabeth Strunk. These women range from Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker to Patty Hearst and others.

Easterner David Brooks is clueless about the geography of the Midwest.

John Steele Gordon on the history of midterm elections.

Byron York:  "Here's Barack Obama's problem when it comes to dealing with newly elected Republican members of Congress. They are convinced they won because voters rejected Obama's agenda of national health care, spending and bailouts. But Obama cannot admit that his agenda -- his legacy -- is fundamentally flawed and that voters repudiated it. The result will be irreconcilable conflict."

New Deal or Raw Deal?

I meant to post a link to this Thomas Sowell column a day or so ago. He discusses a new book by Burton W. Folsom, Jr., called New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. He spells out the failure of the Roosevelt administration to end the Depression of the 1930s and its consequences. We are following the same path. Should be informative.

The problem we face around the world is not global warming, but global aging.

Historian Robert Dallek tries to put the Tea Party movement in historical context, but misses the point when he compares it to Huey Long and others of his ilk. Long wanted more left-wing government, not less. Recall his Share the Wealth slogan.  In my view, the correct comparison is the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party.

FOX News All-Stars discuss what the 2010 election was all about, and they don't agree. My 2 cents is that it was about healthcare. That is what people don't like, and that was driving this election. But the economy was a factor also.

George Will, commenting on the recent election, nails it as usual: Americans rejected liberalism, which has become increasingly intrusive.

"These ideas," [economist Don] Boudreaux says, "are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else's contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments." Liberalism's ideas are "about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of 'Big Ideas' that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people."
This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power - are government commands and controls - superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."

Many people are dropping cable TV, but it's not clear why, except that it's too expensive. That was my reason. Is it Netflix? But they don't offer much live sports. Or any?

In Tuesday's elections, Arizona banned affirmative action in state government, including public colleges and universities. Not sure what that really means in a practical sense.

Law professor blog rankings, minus Instapundit.

AP: How will the new Congress affect the stock market in 2011?

Popular Mechanics: You can replace your laptop with an iPad. I'm not convinced. It involves too many workarounds. But I do like the iPad.

RealClearPolitics recalls this story:

Last January, retiring Arkansas Democratic Rep. Marion Berry told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that he worried about overconfidence in the White House regarding their prospects for avoiding a midterm election blowout.
"The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me,'" Berry said. "We're going to see how much difference that makes now."

Yes, now we see.

Michael Barone's thoughts on the election results.

Tsunami

It was a conservative reaction of a size not seen in decades. Blanche Lincoln lost. Tim Griffin won Arkansas' second district. Rick Crawford won in the first district. All of Bill Clinton's campaigning amounted to nothing. The next House will be controlled by the GOP and will toss out Pelosi. The Senate is almost evenly divided. Krauthammer says the Obama agenda is dead. He experimented with hyper-liberalism and the country said NO.

Ann Althouse: "It's so sad for the Democrats. They gave us so many things. Gifts. Expensive gifts. That we didn't want. That they bought with our money."

In Arkansas three constitutional offices went Republican: Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and Commissioner of State Lands. Four of six Congressional seats were won by Republicans -- three House and one Senate. Mike Ross kept his seat because he woke up in time to vote against Obamacare. Republicans also did well in the legislature. We've seen nothing like this since Reconstruction.

Jason Tolbert sums up the night: Republicans won big.

Today is election day, the day we have either been waiting for or dreading. I'm ready for the election to be over one way or the other.

When I went to vote, I found the polling place almost deserted. Not many voters present. Last time I was there, it was crowded. Not sure what that means. Driving past it later, the number of cars seemed not to have changed much.

However, the early voting in Arkansas was heavy.

Walter Russell Mead: "This is not a good place for a great country to be.  I am glad that Democratic hubris is getting a well deserved rebuke; I am only sorry that the consequence may be to reinforce GOP smugness."