IN THE MAIL: From Joshua Muravchik, Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One.

REPORTING: “Fox has the list of donors, which comprises a set of interlocking slush-type funds that pay for the anti–Tea Party campaign. The largest of these is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME,) which has kicked in a total of $9.9M in a single year to two funds that provide the cash for the non-grassroots movement. Yes — government workers’ money is being used to fend off Tea Party protesters.”

ILYA SOMIN: “The Australian, British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces are all among the best in the world. If they allow gays to serve openly with no ill effects, that strongly suggests that the US can as well.”

MICHAEL BARONE: Team Obama Grows Stupid. “The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics.”

FUDGING UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS? “No one will know what the error rate has been with the establishment survey from April to December 2009 until the numbers are revised again in February 2011, three months after the 2010 midterm elections. But a great deal of skepticism seems warranted. The establishment survey assumes that new firms generated almost a million new jobs over those nine months. At the same time, the household survey just happens to show that about a million more jobs were lost than the survey of firms indicates.”

ABC NEWS: Wall Street Bonuses President Obama Once Called ‘Obscene’ and ‘Shameful’ Now He Doesn’t Begrudge.

THIS ALMOST MAKES SENSE: Obama To Hire Keith Olbermann As Press Secretary?

OUCH: Columbia Journalism Review to Salon and Max Blumenthal: You Can’t Just Make Stuff Up.

JOEL KOTKIN: Don’t Overestimate China — Or Underestimate America. “It is a sign of the times that conservatives as well as liberals often underestimate the Middle Kingdom’s problems – in addition to America’s relative strengths. . . . The Japanese experience best illustrates how wrong punditry can be. Back in the 1970s and 1980s it was commonplace for pundits – particularly on the left – to predict Japan’s ascendance into world leadership. At the time distinguished commentators like George Lodge, Lester Thurow and Robert Reich all pointed to Europe and Japan as the nations slated to beat the U.S. on the economic battlefield.”

MISUNDERSTANDING THE TEA PARTY: “The Tea Party movement is a political Andromeda Strain to the media, a baffling outbreak of viral unhappiness which has thus far defied every attempt at diagnosis. This is unsurprising, since the media has little interest in listening to what the Tea Party is actually saying. Instead, they attempt to stuff this remarkable grassroots movement into a variety of scary costumes, so they can be conveniently dismissed.”

Related: It’s The Constitution, Stupid.

WOMEN SKI JUMPERS AND THE OLYMPICS: Their rejection is our loss.

CHANGE: Republicans Surge in New ABC News/Washington Post Poll.

PJTV: I talk with John Avlon about his new book.

VIDEO CLIP: Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths.

AFTERBURNER WITH BILL WHITTLE: Grand Old (Tea) Party: The People Are Furious And The Party Must Understand Why.

IOWAHAWK: Heart Of Redness. Joseph Conrad would approve.

JIM MEIGS: Target Toyota: Why the Recall Backlash Is Overblown.

CHANGE: Special elections net Republicans two new seats in New York Senate. “In Tuesday’s 4 special elections to fill vacant NYS Assembly seats, Republicans won 3 of the 4 races – and garnered a net gain of 2 seats. While this is not enough to affect the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Assembly, this will have an impact on the political landscape immediately ahead – particularly in the race for Governor and for control of the NYS Senate.”

GREG GUTFELD’S RED EYE beating out Larry King and Anderson Cooper.

DAVID FREDDOSO: Tea Party Favorite Debra Medina Gaining In Texas Race.

MATT WELCH: Back To The Drawing Board.

In just about every speech at their 2008 convention, Democrats promised voters that a change in the White House would, in Barack Obama’s formulation, restore “our moral standing” in the world. Replace the unilateralist cowboy at the top with a humbler multilateralist, and the path would finally be cleared to fix vexing international issues such as curbing carbon emissions and dealing with the mullahs in Iran. Like many of the party faithful’s long-nurtured beliefs, this hope has disintegrated on contact with reality.

“America is losing the free world,” said a January headline in the Financial Times. While that statement is exaggerated, the sentiment behind it has been gaining traction around the globe, especially in the wake of the climate conference debacle in Copenhagen. It’s not just that the less confrontational American president has been unable to deliver results. He can’t even get his phone calls returned.

Some find this development more surprising than others.

BYRON YORK: Poll: Republicans gain on Obama, public welcomes GOP power to block.

HMM: China Dumps US Asset Backeds and Corporates.

CLIMATEGATE: MoveOn’s Triple Whopper.

THE SEIU FAILED ON THE BECKER VOTE, but it was certainly in the loop.

RON BAILEY ON Malthusian objections to life extension.

MORE ON THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS: “A Feb. 2 letter from Glenn A. Fine, inspector general for the Justice Department, to Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, ought to give pause to lawmakers of any party. In effect, the letter says there is no independent authority that can investigate any decision by the department to stonewall congressional inquiries. If the department refuses to answer congressional questions by asserting legal privileges that have never been recognized in U.S. history, the IG is powerless to assess allegations of certain sorts of departmental misconduct.” They told me if I voted for McCain we’d have a rogue Justice Department that worried about politics more than law. And they were right!

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: NY Times Swings, Misses At IPCC Story: Readers Still In Dark.

SCHUMER’S WALL STREET DONORS look for revenge.

WELCOME TO the harem.

CATHY YOUNG: A Rand Revival?

ANOTHER VICTIM OF DEMAGOGUERY: Vegas hotel closes:

Luxury hotels have also suffered from the backlash from the so-called “AIG effect,” referring to the uproar caused by American International Group’s decision to fly top brokers and executives to a resort shortly after receiving a bailout check from the U.S. government.

“The whole demonization of luxury meetings and companies’ pulling back on having their high-end meetings in luxury hotels — this has had a tremendous impact on Las Vegas,” Deuschl said. “I can’t think of another destination that has had to defend itself more against comments from politicians.”

Hope and change. The hotel employed 350 people.

SCOTT JOHNSON: The Campus Intifada, Cont’d.

FIGHTING BACK: Paterson pens J’accuse letter to Times editor.

“DRILLGATE?”

SHOCKER: Anti-Tea Party Web Site Part of Scheme to Funnel Funds.

MARKDOWNS ON new Blu-Ray releases.

DOUG WILDER TO OBAMA: It’s Time To Clean House And Start Firing People.

COMEDY PLAGIARISM at The Daily Show?

RETRACTO, THE CORRECTION ALPACA, now has a theme song.

SO HOW’S THAT SMART DIPLOMACY WORKIN’? China PLA officers urge economic punch against U.S.

DANA LOESCH: “I disagree with Allahpundit.”

FROM THE CINCINNATI TEA PARTY FOLKS: Liberty Snowmen.

AN IMMIGRATION SCANDAL in Britain. Since the rulers don’t please the people, I guess they decided to get a new people. Good luck with that . . . .

ABUSIVE LAB TEST: Handheld Vacuum Cleaners.

FINANCIAL CRISIS: Berlin looks to build Greek ‘firewall’.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “If this is how we react to a snow storm, what are we going to do when the Russkis invade?”

UPDATE: More:

Sitting here in DC right now (Tuesday afternoon). It’s a ghost town. Little traffic….still downtown streets with no serious attempt at clearing snow. And, of course, the government shut down…the one bright spot.

A private utility that did not take steps to deal with a situation like this would be broken on the regulatory wheel. Politicians, not so much.

Indeed.

CHANGE: From “staying the course” to “staying on course.” See, that’s totally different. . . ..

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH has some questions regarding the Andrew Sullivan / Leon Wieseltier spat.

Meanwhile, I’m surprised that this item on The Atlantic’s Political Wire refers to me as a “die hard critic” of Andrew’s. I don’t think I pay enough attention to him to merit that designation.

UPDATE: Could be worse. Could be Oxford.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Poul Costinsky writes: “Even if Andrew is antisemitic, he is not antisemitic-antisemitic. Har har.”

AN ETHICAL PLEDGE FOR NEUROSCIENTISTS?

Don’t miss my PJTV show on this, either.

U.C. IRVINE’S Free Speech Problem.

JENNIFER RUBIN: Phony Centrists Pay The Price For ObamaCare.

“BUT DON’T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT THE MYRRH NEXT TIME:” Frankincense may cure cancer.

AGING RATE INFLUENCED by genetic variant?

SCOTT STEIN: Put down the political pom-poms.

PREDICTION: U.S. Solar Market To Double In Next Year.

FASTER, PLEASE: By Stimulating Stem Cells, Bioactive Nanogel Regenerates Cartilage in Joints.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

TIN EAR:

Robert Gibbs showed the words “hope” and “change” on his hand as he started his daily briefing with reporters on Tuesday.

Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.

Leaving aside its lameness — stepping on the President’s message, and demonstrating, once again, that Robert Gibbs is never intentionally funny — it really seems to me that bringing up the whole “hope and change” schtick nowadays isn’t doing much for the White House, but rather is simply reminding people of how the original promise of this Administration has failed to bear fruit.

UPDATE: “Tell me again who the childish ones are, here?”

RE-ENGINEERING the human immune system.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: Don’t Dis The Wiccans!

BOEING FLIES its biggest plane to date.

IN THE GUARDIAN: If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too. Thanks to Shannon Love, who found it via Slashdot.

THIRTY KNOTS OF SPEED, in a sailboat.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY ON DEFICITS: The Limits Of Blaming Bush. “In his latest budget request, President Obama added roughly $1.6 trillion in spending over the next ten years on top of what he requested last year. Can President Obama blame that extra $1.6 trillion on former President Bush? No.”

UPDATE: More from Megan McArdle.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Cops lodge felony snowball-throwing charges.

HOW TO GET A DATE. It’s the comments that are more interesting.

VIDEO: Audio Myths Workshop.

THE HORROR OF sexual anorexia.

IN THE MAIL: From Hank Paulson, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System.

BYRON YORK ON JOHN EDWARDS: Why The Media Ignored A Scandal. “It turned out that many journalists just didn’t want to report the news and didn’t try very hard to uncover the facts.”

BYRON YORK: White House: People Who Criticize Us Are Helping Al Qaeda. They told me if I voted for McCain we’d see for-us-or-against-us jingoism from the White House — and they were right!

CHANGE: Gallup: Obama approval hits new lows on economy, health care, deficit.

NEW YORK TIMES: U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege.

LEON WIESELTIER: Andrew Sullivan has a serious problem. “Sullivan is hunting for motives, not reasons; for conspiracies, which is the surest sign of a mind’s bankruptcy. These days the self-congratulatory motto above his blog is ‘Of No Party or Clique,’ but in fact Sullivan belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington. . . . And this is not all that is disgusting about Sullivan’s approach. His assumption, in his outburst about ‘the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing,’ that every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one. Bigotry has always made representatives of individuals, and discerned the voice of the group in the voice of every one of its members. . . . Having demanded that the Jews behave apologetically in America, Sullivan now demands that the United States behave apologetically in the world–that it adjust its relationship with Israel to the preferences of the Muslim peoples. This is a little like decrying the election of a black president because it will inflame white racists. . . . To me, he looks increasingly like the Buchanan of the left.” Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: On consideration, I don’t think this gets it quite right. Andrew certainly has a lot of hate, but unlike Buchanan he seems less . . . fixed in exactly who he hates at any given moment. I think it’s more of a frog-and-scorpion kind of thing and not a traditional idee fixee hatred like anti-semitism.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dan Riehl: Sullivan is actually not an antisemite.

HMM: Stay rates for foreign Ph.D’s rebound.

TIGERHAWK: “If the ‘jobs bill’ contains card check unionization, it will be a ‘jobs bill’ only insofar as it destroys them.”

POLL: Carol Shea-Porter’s Antics Catching Up To Her.

POLL: “Three-fourths of independents have a favorable view of the tea party movement and say one-party control of the White House and Congress has been bad.”

JENNIFER RUBIN: New Black Panther Case Investigator Getting a Lifetime Judgeship?

MEGAN MCARDLE: Shoe, Meet The Other Foot.

PJTV: I talk with RedState’s Erick Erickson.

PHOTO FROM HANOI: “This is too easy.”

UH OH: Trouble for Charlie Crist?

GENE HEALY: Time for “Question Time?”

HOW GOLDMAN SACHS helped Greece mask its true debt. This is interesting in itself, but it makes me wonder how much similar chicanery is out there undiscovered . . . .

UPDATE: Related: Why Sovereign Debt Pain Has Only Just Started.

AND NOW FOR THE REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS: Brooklyn Decker gets Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover.

BLUE ON BLUE: Ben Nelson To Filibuster Becker for NLRB.

TRANSPARENCY: Financial Crisis Commission Grills Top Bankers Behind Closed Doors.

SOME NEW LENSES from Nikon.

HEH: Bush was right, says Obama.

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE: Surveillance Society: Obama Takes a Blue Pencil to the Bill of Rights. They told me if I voted for McCain we’d live an Orwellian nightmare of surveillance and repression — and they were right!

RAND SIMBERG responds to astronaut Tom Jones. “While my admiration and gratitude to Tom Jones for his service to our nation, both on the planet and off, is unbounded, I believe he is wrong in his description of the new space policy as a ‘path to nowhere.’ In so characterizing it, he falls prey to the same mental traps as many of us have for the past forty years since Apollo, in which we don’t have a real manned space program unless we have something that looks like Apollo—a goal to send a few NASA astronauts to a specific place by a specific date on a really big rocket. Not to mention spending an eye-boggling amount of money on it. In this mind set, anything that doesn’t fit within that model is turning our back on the universe.”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: What Is Iran Planning For Thursday?

BUDGET FOLLIES: How do California and Greece compare?

PAM GELLER on Joy Behar.

PIONEERING BLOG SITE “NASHVILLE IS TALKING” shuts down Friday.

BEWARE STATISTICIANS bearing advice. Well, unless they’re named Michael Barone, anyway.

RADLEY BALKO: Calculating The Number Of Innocents In Prison.

A MEDICAL UPDATE from Jim Treacher. Plus this: “Have you seen the website for the U.S. Department of State? It’s lovely.” I can’t find the part that says “We apologize for running over Jim Treacher,” though.