Mon, Nov 2nd - 5:19PM

Durant's Rousseau and Revolution, p. 606
239.8 miles
windy, chilly

Today's plan was to go to the other side of Pittsburgh to a geocaching event in Westmoreland County. I'd written ahead and asked if we brought a couple of geocoins from California, could we get raffle tickets without doing the other caches, and they apparently got all excited that we would come from so far.

There were no other caches to go for nearby that we wanted to do, so we took off about 45 minutes before time.  A little road work, but we arrived maybe 2 minutes past time. Lots of nice people, some geocaching talk, a lot of food, and we got to know a little about the Westmoreland  Conservancy.  It was the WC instead of the geocachers, who actually put this on. Therefore, our Sacramento County Parks geocoins were especially appropriate.

At the raffle, we got a membership to Westmoreland Conservancy (which apparently means the newsletter) and a patch and a $15 McDonald's card.  Not badatall. This was fun. I took about 4 travel bugs.

NOBODY FOR PRESIDENT.  A bumpersticker.

Back at the house, they had hamburgers. Yummy. I really overate today.

Mark Steyn :

 If Obama's "smart diplomacy" is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?

The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie – like "President Pantywaist," as Britain's Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.

Disappointed Sarkozy shifts gaze from Washington

Ed Morrissey :
Obama has damaged relations with the UK, France, the Czech Republic, and Poland, which even Joe Biden was forced to admit yesterday.  Instead, Obama has focused his friendlier attention on Russia and Iran.  What has Obama and the US received in return?  Laughter over Hillary Clinton’s amateurish “reset button” and zero cooperation on Iranian nuclear weapons.  And this is “smart power”?

It's Mao or Never

Vince Yarnot wants to remember the look on his son's face after he scored his first goal forever! [Wish I'd seen that.]

0bama declared swine flu a national emergency.  Glenn Beck is right. This would give him a good excuse to declare martial law....

Rasmussen: -10 approval index, 47% overall approval.

From the [Instapundit] comments, there’s this explanation:

I find all these poll numbers fit very neatly within the same change in viewpoint, which perhaps is best summed up by:

January: Hooray, we’re saved!
Now: Holy crap, these guys don’t have a frickin’ clue about anything, do they?

Every once in a while, the cult of the expert implodes in this country, and the bulk of the citizenry stops believing in anything they say, whether it’s about health care, the economy, or climate change. A mulish conviction that it’s all being made up on the fly to feather well-connected nests sets in.

Mon, Nov 2nd - 7:12AM

Durant's Rousseau and Revolution, p. 606
239.7 miles
crisp, sunny

Today we took Rich's nephew to lunch.  He's the youngest of that generation and going to Pitt. We'd missed him last week when we went to look at the dinosaur bone. I connected on Facebook and we arranged to pick him up. Since we were just a tish early, we got a cache along the way.

I'm always pleasantly surprised by this kid. We went to Amish country with him when he was 16 and it was a fun excursion, but you kind of suspect that when some older relatives that you never see take you out, it'll be awkward. It wasn't at all. I told him to choose somewhere he likes but never gets to, where we could find parking, and he suggested the Bangkok Balcony.

We made two passes without seeing it, then got on foot and located the restaurant front right away. It's up a flight of stairs, another ADA nightmare (maybe there's an elevator in back.) Yummy good (spicy!) food and great conversation. I think this is one of the cousins Bernadette would really get along with.

After we dropped him back, we made another try for the cache we overshot last week.  Piece of cake this time. Then we ended up going through the Liberty tunnels, but I remembered how to get to the parkway from there, and so we did. I suppose we could have gone to West End then (I'd wanted to visit Mom's grave but we never managed that) but we were tired and ready to go home.

The stuffed flounder I was promised had turned into a seafood platter. Ooh. Ever since the first time I had scallops and they made me sick, I've avoided them.  These were OK, something Gordon Ramsay would spit out, but at least they stayed down. The shrimp scampi had the texture, but those stayed down, too.  The third thing was flavorless crab cakes. Bleck. This is not going down as my favorite meal of the trip. (I think that would be the tavern in Gettysburg.)

The war on Fox: Krauthammer. Legal Insurrection calls 0. a schoolyard bully.  "Good for the mainstream media networks. Bad for our country that our President is trying to run the country as if this were a precinct in Chicago."  Jennifer Rubin writes When Bullies Overreach.  "Obama seems bent on allowing his own flaws (thin-skinnedness, hubris) to do potentially grave damage to the office as well. And over what? Not some grand policy matter or some key personnel matter, but over the desire to exclude a news network that has criticized him."

Are the 0bamanoids as Dumb as they Seem?

The White House's Real Problem with Fox, Rich Lowry.

Peggy Noonan says it's time 0bama owned his presidency. It's His Rubble Now.

The Telegraph notes that 0bama has seen the worst poll rating drop in 50 years.

Rand Simberg, Barack's socialist mop.

Instapundit: 'BARACK OBAMA gets cold shoulder in Massachusetts. “President Obama blows into the bluest state today facing a cold shoulder from once true-blue admirers, as gay rights activists, anti-war protesters and vexed environmentalists vow to picket a fund-raiser he’s headlining for Gov. Deval Patrick – a marquee event that hasn’t even sold out.” Well, if you want to talk unpopular, forget Obama. It’s Deval.'

Oh, honey, don't do that, please please please....

0bama's Enemies List:
"The danger is that as the pressures mount and the battles accrue and the political heat intensifies, these impulses will grow stronger, the constraints on them will grow weaker, and the voices of caution and reason will continue to be ignored. If that should come to pass — if what we are seeing now is only a preview of coming attractions — then the Obama administration, and this nation, will pay a very high price."

More on 0bama driving up Fox's ratings: "If Fox News was running for office, it would have to list President Obama as an in-kind contributor."

A commenter at Don Surber:

Jim B says:  October 23, 2009 at 7:40 PM

I’ve said it before, but it can’t be repeated enough: Obama is a 14-year old boy.

The gratuitous lying even when he doesn’t need to, the blaming of others for things that are clearly his fault, the hypersensitivity to criticism, the compensatory narcissism, the “cut off your nose to spite your face” attitude, and so on.

Obama has never before been required to stand on his own feet as a man. He has been carried through life by his “mentors”: Frank Marshall, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and the Chicago political machine.

Being president is not for the immature or the faint of heart. It’s too bad that so many in this country refused to see him for what he was a year ago. Now we’re all paying the price for their stupidity.