pettyfoggery

Hitchens goes to meet his Maker

2011-12-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

"The author and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins described him as the "finest orator of our time" and a "valiant fighter against all tyrants including God

He maintained his devout atheism after being diagnosed with cancer, telling one interviewer: "No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises."

And, indeed, I believe he will be surprised. I wont speculate as to what happens now.
However... God evidently has a sense of humor.
How else to explain Jesus' statement to Peter: "Upon this rock I build my church." At once both a pun and highly ironic, as Peter had just denied Christ three times.

I've read Dawkins and I've read Hitchens. Dawkins rails a lot against God, a more accurate depiction of Hitchens' views would be 'Religion Poisons Everything'. I don't think that is true but, on general terms, it's not incorrect, either. And I defy the most devout religionist to negate THAT. Especially if you follow contemporary news.
But EVERYTHING?

No. Compare and contrast, for discussion's sake, the Shaker Cult v the Amish community.
Religion poisoned the Shakers. Where is the malignant effect on the Amish?

If Hitchens cited the Westboro Baptist freakshow.. or the global mission of the devout to kill, convert or gather tribute from all 'Infidels' he has a valid point.
Like I say, though, that isn't God, that's man's Religion.

I've observed over many years, that there are two general types of Atheist: Those who don't believe because they don't 'see' hard and fast proof of the greatest mystery of the universe.. and those who deny to avoid self-judgement and guilt. Of course it is usually a blend of philosophies, but with Hitchens I think it was mainly the former..

NPR, of all media, may help save us yet!

2011-11-30T08:40:00.000-05:00

Like most conservatives I developed a deep mistrust of government funded public broadcasting. The last thing a free society needs is an 'Official News Agency' and that has been borne out time and again by several small scandals within NPR and CPB showing they indeed carried water for 'Progressive' (read Socialist) interests.

But one thing that opened my eyes as to the credibility of NPR in particular was its handling of Congresswoman Giffords' shooting.
Unlike many commercial outlets, specifically the steaming pile at MSNBC, there was no jumping to conclusions as to the agenda and motives of the shooter. Indeed many of the blogs I read, usually labelled 'Right Wing Hatemongers' by the knuckledragging left, linked to NPR's coverage during the immediate hours afterward and not a few praised them for the factual coverage as opposed to fevered speculation that the shooter was somehow tied to Tea Party or Sarah Palin.

Of course it was quickly proven that the guy was simply a mentally ill nutjob despite the local sheriff's attempts to link him somehow to the right.
NPR, however, stayed the course in its news coverage and deserve all credit for not jumping to conclusions based on whatever political views the writers may have had. I, of course, recognize that not all the programming on NPR was as objective but I can separate opinion from news when I see or hear it.

Now that organization has put up several other interesting items of interest to Conservatives and Libertarians:

Read more »

Libs, Warming and the Money Train

2011-09-24T11:35:00.002-04:00

Cartoon by Josh...From Bishop Hill blog

One thing you can say about the devout of any religion, they will never change their views based on science or even fact put right in their faces. Despite serious papers such as this:
Submission to the Inquiry into Carbon Tax Pricing Mechanisms

There is in fact no empirical evidence that global warming is mainly man-made. If there was, we would have heard all about it. Tens of billions of dollars has been spent looking for it.
Climate scientists readily concede that there is no direct evidence that global warming is caused by our carbon dioxide. Instead, they say that our knowledge of how the climate works is embodied in their climate models, and the climate models say that global warming is man-made.
Models are logically equivalent to someone punching in numbers and doing sums on a calculator - models are calculations, not evidence. The problem is that the models contain many guesses and assumptions about how things work, and some of them are wrong.

Here are four bits of evidence that the climate models are fundamentally flawed...

Read the entire article

And they tend to project this irrationality upon their opponents without regard to logic or even the tendency of people to take the easy way out whether it applies to income or just self image. And they never want to apply simple rules of life experience to their own beliefs.

People who wouldnt think of investing in some crackpot scheme promoted by email spammers or have their driveways sealed by some guy in a pickup truck holding a garden sprayer will bite on 2 cents out of 100 dollars worth of CO2 sending the planet into a burning inferno.
At the same time they see no urgency when their own government's annual budget is written on IOU's.

Warmists claim that skeptics are either ignorant or financed by big oil and energy interests ignoring the fact that all their heroes depend on urgency in taxing carbon for thier livelihoods.

Who is gonna spend tax money on proving that there's no emergency and even if there is, there's really nothing we can do about it?

I'm finding that I am settling intto 'elderly curmudgeon' mode now and I really get irritated by people who dont address these simple flaws in human nature. Not so much the devout.. they are who they are. But the people who believe they may be right. The agnostics, as it were.

Let's face it.. the 'climate scientists' who promote this most urgently are exactly the same as the scantily clad woman standing more than 15 minutes on a street corner in a seedy neighborhood.
They arent waiting for a bus, they arent checking out the weather.. they're promoting their income and protecting their lifestyles.
They are whores.

As for me, I dont believe man is causing climate change to any significant extent. If carbon was doing it, the continued rise in carbon dioxide would show at least in rising ocean temperature. It isnt.
Not only that, the computer models on which all their religion is based did not predict what is happening now. More importantly, they predicted things that are not happening now.

All the extreme weather events they point out arent extreme and arent unusual when addressed historically.

And guess what... I dont really care if the earth is warming so I dont have anything invested in denying it. It wont affect me .. I'll be dead.
And somehow I think my kids and grandkids will have more urgent things to deal with. Like trying to live in more than a subsistence manner while trying to pay back the huge federal debt my generation ran up, supposedly in their name.

Danger! Man made Warming causing seas to dry up; Tax Carbon Immediately!

2011-08-31T11:17:00.001-04:00

Der Spiegel: Global Warming ... Causes Sea Level Drop…Through Weather Shifts!

Global sea level has dropped by more than half a centimetre over the last 12 months. That equals 5 metres of sea level drop over the next 1000 years – at least that’s what my computer simulation shows.

Now how on earth are the island states supposed to cope with all this expanding land? What a catastrophe! We have to immediately form a special commission charged with the task of managing the great transformation of these regions and setting down ecological guidelines. Professor Schellnhuber – it’s up to you!”

- from the notricks page.
Now, of course, that's absurd, and it's meant to be.

But the point it makes is exactly on target. When you want to find the truth you follow the money. Frauds like the Goreacle of course bray about skeptics being in the thrall of Big Oil or whoever but of course NEVER name names or end up with categorical undeniable trails... everytime they've tried to link the Koch Bros, for example, they've hit a dead end so they just lie about it.

How about we follow THEIR money.. it's been right there all along..

Reasons to be a Global Warming Skeptic

Read the whole thing but here is the money quote:

Now, it happens I did my PhD work on Federally funded modeling, from which I developed the NBSR Law (named after the group for which I worked):

All modeling efforts will inevitably converge on the result most likely to lead to further funding.

Rollin, rollin, rollin... keep up that good trollin'!

2011-08-29T17:51:00.001-04:00

Best of the last week in celebrity news:

Al Gore Says Debating With Him On Climate Science is Moral Equivalent of Racism

I say that discussion is the intellectual equivalent of '69', with raincoat.

_________________________________________________________

The Hill:

Vt. senator credits Obama with quick action on Hurricane Irene

A Democratic senator touring hurricane damage in Vermont on Monday credited President Obama with a successful response to the disaster.

"Glad Pres. acted quickly on VT disaster declaration," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) tweeted.

Obama declared emergencies in New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Virginia last week ahead of Hurricane Irene's expected landfall. The federal declaration allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize resources and predeploy response teams to areas likely to be affected by the storm.

Glad the Pres was on the ball on this.. unlike Bush and Katrina for Louisiana

Oh.. wait... that's right. You cant declare a federal disaster area unless the incompetent political hack running the state asks you to...
Never mind!

Vermont was hit hard with record flooding: some photos HERE

- Photos of Sen Leahy handing out warm blankets, serving soup and sandwiches to the displaced and suckling orphaned infants still being processed.

- Rumors that Sean Penn was on his way to Vermont with a rowboat and a carton of beer cups were untrue, according to his agents.

_____________________________________________________

In Envir-ornamental News..

U.S. to beat Brazil as world's leading ethanol exporter

With U.S. corn-based ethanol relatively inexpensive, U.S. ethanol producers have been able to win out contracts to supply countries that previously imported ethanol from Brazil. U.S. farmers have also benefited from Brazil eliminating its 20-percent import duty and lower European tariffs on ethanol.

Since the federal renewable fuel mandate classifies sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel, but corn-based ethanol as only a biofuel, it's quite likely the United States will continue to export corn-based ethanol to Brazil while at the same time importing mass quantities of the sugarcane-based biofuel from Brazil.

Milo Minderbinder, anyone?

Related..
Nestlé CEO: Biofuels Have “Returned Hundreds Of Millions Back To Extreme Poverty”
Must be some sort of trick or spin.. everyone knows multi-national corporations are evil and hate poor people.

Whatever happened to 'Question Authority'?

2011-07-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

I guess it all depends on who the authority .. dare I say 'establishment' is.

Schizo lamebrain leftists now call those who question government or funded academics 'idiots morons and deniers'.
heh...

Judith Curry, a climate scientist who is NOT a skeptic or denier because she recognizes the ridiculous flawed science and arguments fomented by the Goracle flock:
Cool dudes

Cool dudes: the denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States

Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap

article in press, Global Environmental Change.

The article is unavailable online, but I received a copy of the article and the press release via email. From the press release:

Research Highlights

* Conservative white males are more likely than other Americans to report climate change denial.

Well, here's the thing: CWM's already have a finely tuned Bullshit Detector. What the liberal left dont understand is that they have turned theirs off, so as to feel comfy with their world views.
Isnt it funny, also, that it's conservatives and Libertarians that point out the too-cozy ties of wall street and the executive legislative branch members?

I guess it's all down to whose gore is being oxed.

NASA: CO2 is not a cozy quilt, not even much of a blanket

2011-07-28T12:52:00.000-04:00

Forbes: NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Finally we're seeing science confirming what common sense tells anyone who bothers to think.

- CO2 is increasing due to human activity but because it re-radiates, not reflects, it doesnt have much effect on the real source of climate .. oceans.
- All that heat produced by human energy use is ending up in space just as it should.

Of course anyone who has common sense would know to look at the motives of anyone predicting climate catastrophe in the first place . By that I mean 'follow the REAL MONEY'.

But lemmings ave always trusted their leaders, haven't they.

To Ashley: Power Wives

2011-07-23T10:25:00.002-04:00

My niece is getting married today. Scott's getting a winner.
There's not a lot of daughters in my family - some sort of chromosome thing, I'm told.
But those few are certainly capable of 'going all Wendi' for their man.

Forbes: Wendi Deng And Wives Who Stand Behind Their Men

When May-Bowles charged toward Murdoch with a foam pie, Deng’s protective instinct kicked in, signaling to the world that she will stand behind her man through scandal, humiliation and even assault. Here’s a look at the women you’d want on your team—the power wives who have gone to bat for their men.

Murdoch Derangement Syndrome

2011-07-15T11:49:00.002-04:00

The News of the World scandal seems to have infected the imaginations of every liberal in the English speaking world.. the jackals smell blood, Rupert Murdoch blood, and they're going to go in for the kill.

Or will they.

I remember the liberals' heady days after the election of 2006, Almost every lefty blog and many columnists speculated that now was the time to IMPEACH!
Impeach Bush, Impeach Cheney, Impeach Rumsfeld.

The grounds for that action was always a little nebulous, of course, though it usually had to do with lying about Saddam's WMDs. Some of us that had seen these things before knew that 'impeachment' wasn't about to happen.
Oh, how I wished it would.

But it's not in the nature of hyenas and jackals to actually physically attack prey that can defend itself and I knew the Dem's would never impeach. It would most certainly have a bad outcome for them. Among other inconvenient revelations, it would come out that Saddam actually promoted the idea of his WMD's long after he put them out of reach in order to protect himself from them being turned against him.

News of the World occupied a special place in British news. In many ways like the National Enquirer and the New York Daily News do here. As a soccer fan, though, I rarely took it seriously.. its coverage of the Premier League focused more on player personality and gossip than sport analysis and commentary. in other words, for a sports fan, NOTW was irrelevent. I assumed it was for other subjects, as well.. just a bottom feeding tabloid. But it was the most read paper in the UK. Albeit one that actually subsidized 'The Times', an altogether different sort of paper.

There is no doubt that certain folks are going to jail for invading the privacy of private citizens, and it will be justice. But those who are culpable were not idiots, then, and they aren't now.
Whether they thought Murdoch was winking when he responded to the prior hacking bad acts or they believed that their performance was more important than News Corp policy guidelines, it's a sure thing that Rupert has culpable deniability.

Murdoch's enemies, though, see a chance to deny him his media goals; in Uk, his taking over of BSkyB, a sports network. In the US, striking against the hated Fox News. It's not clear what forcing Murdoch to lose Fox would do, though. Certainly there would be no shortage of media companies eager to assume ownership, and little chance of its format changing as a result. If anything, new owners would take the network even further away from 'the moderate center'.. I use the lefty view in that phrase; moderate to them being MSNBC.

So just as during the hue and cry for Dubya's impeachment, I really WANT a full investigation and hearing of Murdoch. The absolute worst outcome would be that he did know something and prosecuting ol' Rupert; but the next step would be using the precedent to investigate the New York Times and their role in hacking and disclosure of information vital to our national security.

Whether the lefties are stupid enough to follow that path remains to be seen. My gut tells me they are.. they never seem to see further than 2 steps ahead.

My common sense tells me that lefties are not that stupid and this is all baying at the moon. Which is, after the feasting on dead and decaying carcasses, in the true nature of hyenas and jackals.

______________________________________________________________________

Bonus:
Totally non-partisan proof that creative genius is incremental:

Reggie Watts!

-via The Crack Emcee

Byte is Back and so is Jerry Pournelle

2011-07-13T14:57:00.002-04:00

The KIM-1, circa 1970's

Byte magazine is back. It was the prime publication for the 'personal computer geek' in the seventies. All us geek old-timers know Byte magazine was the go-to source for 'What's happening now' in the small computer field. As a hardware guy who sucked at math, I was most interested in the applications. I was very good at visualizing what could be done with those early microprocessor systems, in fact I bought a KIM-1 board for use as a cassette controller for an early autodialer prototype.
Yes, I was indeed responsible for some of those spam 'Vote for Me' phone calls if you got them in the mid seventies. But I only made two of them and that would have been only if you lived in the Dayton area.

Well, what's old is new again, and a booming field in the geek community are projects involving 'microcontrollers' but compiled from high level language.
Two examples of this are 'Arduino' and 'Nerdkits'
Hopefully Byte - now online only- will cover this and regain the enthusiasm of the homebrew hobbyist.
I know I have a project I'd like to build, if I can find someone to do that pesky software work.

And Jerry Pournelle was big in personal computing futures, writing in Byte in the here and now, and with Larry Niven in some of the best science fiction.
He's back with Byte as well.

I know I'm going to be reading the new on-line Byte with some interest, hoping that we'll see some references to what's going on in the hobbyist fields, but I wont be privy to that if I have to sign in to see it.. because to register, I have to provide a whole lot of info, including my snail-mail address.

Sorry, just getting my junk mail down to a manageable amount based on info provided as long as twenty years ago. So unless there's some real goodies I'm missing, I'd rather pay money to read it.

- H/T Instapundit

Don't get taken

2011-07-12T11:32:00.002-04:00

In hot weather like we're having now, it only SEEMS like your air conditioning is more likely to fail.

But lots of people are going to be more likely to pay for unnecessary repairs and replacement than usual because they can't bear the thought of losing their comfort.

Let me just say that this sort of weather will make membership in 'Angie's List' a bargain for those who have Air Conditioner problems. The reason being of course that those highly rated HVAC companies are less likely to do unnecessary work.

I've taken care of 40 plus older residential units for ten years and in that time exactly TWO AC systems have had to be replaced. Both were WELL over 20 years old.
It pays for you to know what your outside unit - the condenser - sounds like when it's running well.
Before a compressor fails it will start to make more noise/ get louder than usual, this may continue for days, weeks or even years. But do make a note of it. Chances of that compressor suddenly failing without warning -getting louder-a re very low.
There are two common failure parts in the condenser:
The power relay called a 'contactor' and the motor capacitor{s}. When the AC suddenly quits working, odds are over 90% it's one or the other at fault.

If the capacitor fails, the fan and/or the compressor tries to run but cant get started.
- Retail price of capacitor: $25-$35

If the condensor fan motor itself fails, it will be relatively hard to turn. It should react like a pedestal fan. Easy to turn.
With thermostat in 'Off' position, try to turn the fan with a ruler or thin wood piece. If it's stiff or hard to turn, the bearings are bad.. actually usually 'dry' but it may not be worth having it lubricated. It has sealed bearing and must be disassembled to do it.
- Chances of fan motor failing electrically - almost zero. If it turns easily, and tries to start but wont.. chances of bad capacitor about 99%.
Retail price of fan motor: $150-$200.

If the outside unit does nothing at all, listen for a faint hum. That is the relay coil trying to start it. It is getting a signal from your thermostat. The A/C breaker may be tripped, in your inside box, the fuse {if any} in the outside box may be blown or the relay may be bad.
- If there's no hum, check to see if you can turn the furnace blower on by changing thermostat switch from 'auto' to 'on', your furnace breaker may be tripped or there's an electrical problem in your furnace controls.

- If there is a hum, the compressor and fan do nothing, and your outside unit is getting power, that relay/contactor is probably bad. Common in ten year old or more.

Ice on lines to condenser unit. Means bad furnace airflow 90% or low refrigerant - not likely because it only happens at a certain point of capacity. Change filter or your furnace blower is bad or blocked air return registers.
If the outside lines have ice, that means your inside coil is a solid block of ice. Turn heat/cool OFF, furnace blower 'ON' and allow at least 2-3 hours for ice to melt. You will likely have water puddling around the furnace when that's done.
Use cheap furnace filters in cooling season. The wet inside coil gets those little bits of dust anyway. and the airflow is better.

more later as I think of it.

The Not So Simple Life

2011-07-07T11:07:00.000-04:00

On another site I frequent:

Kate Moss asks Royal Air Force to stop Afghanistan-bound flights during her wedding.

Cheeky RAF said No! Imagine that.

(Who is Kate Moss again?)

***

Looking for a more authoritative source on that than Fox News - cuz they're just full of bile and hate, ya know.. also found:

Paris Hilton: 'I thought I'd be married by now'

Gem Quote:

she said that watching her reality show, The World According to Paris, helped her see the way things really were.

I guess she means she watched it sober. Too bad she didn't watch 'The Simple Life' that way.. she might have been married by now.

St Peter: "Your penance is to kiss Dr Atkins' Ass"

2011-07-05T09:18:00.006-04:00

This isn't really NEW News but the combination of the articles says something about unquestioning 'acceptance of authority', and it's more than just an 'Oooops!'
God is forgiving and I'm sure that 'good intentions' count for something on Judgement Day but if there's any justice in the hereafter for the misery of millions inflicted by educated fools, I'd think that would be the LEAST penance required.

A reversal on carbs

Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat.

And the nation's levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease have risen. "The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."

'May be linked', hell! Guess when those 'nutritional guidelines came out!

- source: {PDF File} USDA Guidelines over time

Read that WHOLE article, and then..
Low-calorie diet offers hope of cure for type 2 diabetes

People who have had obesity-related type 2 diabetes for years have been cured, at least temporarily, by keeping to an extreme, low-calorie, diet for two months, scientists report today.
...
Eleven people with diabetes took part in the study, which was funded by Diabetes UK. They had to slash their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. But three months later seven of the 11 were free of diabetes.

That 'drastic intake cut' would be about the same as Atkins' purge period wouldn't it .... Hmmmmm?

"But .. but.. it's a CONSENSUS of all Experts in the field!!!"
The really sad part is that the academics really could have gone across the campus to the Agriculture Dept and talked to livestock nutritionists and gotten some insight. Or do the believe that human metabolism is somehow separate and distinct? Or were they in thrall of some social agenda outside group?

Added: And THIS is exactly the kind of idiot who needs round the clock supervision on her diet and I presume anything else else she does!

Kiss my ass, Dr. Atkins!!!

So pretty much for the past seven months I have been on a strict diet of just protein and veggies and few to no carbs. Except for this week. My period came back after a week and a half, and add to that it's been a very stressful week. I take my anger out on carbs.

Well, guess what?

I've lost more weight this week than I have any other week, and I still have to take into account the fact that I hold water like a camel when I'm on my period. What is going on??? I've eaten NOTHING but carbs this week. I've barely touched protein.

*Scratches head* I don't get it. When I do low-carb, which is supposed to make your weight drop like that, I either lose weight really slowly or not at all. I go back to what I ate in college (pasta and not much else) and look! It's my ribcage! I have hipbones again!

I'm going back to my all-carb diet for a little while, just to see what happens.

SEVEN MONTHS!!! What a moron! Atkins never said SEVEN MONTHS.
And in about 3 more months she'll start packing on the weight again as her body craves fats and protein and she tries to make up for it in all veggy pizza. Three times a day.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Now let's talk about the 'consensus' that 2 hundredths of a percent increase of a benign gas causes water to warm. And follow the grant and funding money there to see which side's being bet on.

I cant help others if they are fools and believe folks whose income depends on finding trouble where none is, but I don't have to go along with it. And I consider it my duty to say what common sense tells me to say.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Never too early to start planning next Independence Day

2011-07-04T16:44:00.000-04:00

It's the time of year when we celebrate the breaking away from the shackles of an elitist overbearing and intrusive government which neither knew nor cared about the aspirations of the ordinary man and woman, instead only caring about the tax revenue available from its subjects. Thus July 4th can never be 'undercelebrated.'

The celebration:
Start planning now for a safe and sane 4th: I offer these tips:

*Put pets in an isolated room away from the noisy festivities, leave their favorite toy, blanket, etc, with them.

*Use welding glove to hold that sparkler, wear goggles, have another person light it. holding both sparkler and lighter at full arm extension, best to employ at least 15 ft away from flammables and over concrete driveway with no oil patch. When done with sparkler, dispose of in coffee can filled with water. Drain water from can next day and Label can 'Danger: contains sharp/piercing objects' before disposing in trash', as outlined for similar objects in the OSHA Hazardous Materials documents.

*Hold poppers well away from face and other people before pulling that string. Pull string to right angles from body to avoid hitting yourself in face. Goggles cant hurt; neither can gloves, to avoid possibility of paper cut.

* Firecrackers, no matter how small, are dangerous and best left to professionals who are trained in government approved programs to set them off safely

* Equivalent noisemaker can be made cheaply by buying a perfectly flat 1x4 x 4ft board at your home improvement store and having the trained professional cut it in half. Securely attach some sort of handle/holding device on one side of each board. If unsure how to do that take boards to union journeyman finish-carpenter to attach.

*Wearing OSHA approved ear protection suitable for 120 db environment, clap the two boards together continuously at 5 second intervals from sundown till one half hour later. You will be gratified to know you are creating the same atmosphere as you recall from your youth and are annoying the neighbors just as much, if not even more.
- do not use near small children. Maintain at least 25 feet separation to avoid hearing loss and possibility they may stick fingers between boards.

* Best thing about this firecracker substitute is it is reusable -you may even wish to paint it a festive red/white/blue and adorn with an eagle decal- and after cutting and attaching handle and optional painting, has zero carbon footprint.
- A sound activated strobe light is also a nice touch, assuming local ordnance permits their use, and though it affects the carbon footprint to some extent. Unless it runs on batteries charged by solar panels.

Thus not only are you keeping yourself and loved ones safe, you are saving the planet and far-away polar bears at the same time

Have a Safe Progressive Fourth!

Next up, ditch that carbon belching grill and build -or buy- a solar cooker.

Save the Children - Ignore the 4th!

2011-07-01T15:58:00.003-04:00

... does celebrating the Fourth of July turn you into a Republican?

Excerpt from a Harvard study:

We find that days without rain on Fourth of July in childhood have lifelong effects. In particular, they shift adult views and behavior in favor of the Republicans and increase later-life political participation. Our estimates are significant: one Fourth of July without rain before age 18 raises the likelihood of identifying as a Republican by 2 percent and voting for the Republican candidate by 4 percent. It also increases voter turnout by 0.9 percent and boosts political campaign contributions by 3 percent.

Oh.. the HUMANITY!!!

- image: vintage postcard from mommiesandbeyond.com

***

Speaking of the Children...

Remember this?

Think you'll be seeing that played on PMSNBC?

I think not... hits a little close, executive orders and decrees and whatnot.

More Schoolhouse rock classics you'll prolly not see on Mainstream Media, here

Virtual Flash Mobbing: How to push a lie and get away with it

2011-06-29T09:23:00.002-04:00

When a group with an agenda wants to misinform, all they have to do is lie in a press release.. and best if done in the lead paragraph:

Background: The Heartland Institute is holding a seminar in Dc for climate change sceptics. Center for American Progress, one of Geo Soros pets, want to discredit Heartland by linking it with big oil and the evil Koch brothers.

PRESS CALL ADVISORY: Climate Deniers Congregate in the Nation’s Capital

June 24, 2011
.......
Washington, D.C. – The Heartland Institute, a conservative group funded by Exxon Mobil and Charles Koch, will be hosting their annual Conference on Climate Change on June 30 and July 1 in Washington, D.C., boasting a full agenda of notable climate deniers.

The author of the piece is listed of course as an 'expert' in the environmental field. An expert political scientist, I'm thinking.. and liar.
I'm pretty sure the forked tongue witch is aware that oil companies long ago distanced themselves from anything to do with climate sceptics or conservative organizations. In the case of Exxon mobil about eight years ago... and why shouldn't they. It might affect their fortunes. Far better to be a friend of green causes and get some of that gravy.
BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot
As to the Koch's..they seemed to have seen this coming. Try as the left can they can never really find a smoking gun that results in days of major press headlines.
The Kochs havent been associated with Heartland for years.

And of course 'CAP' knows all this. So how do they get away with lying?

Simple. Just wait till someone picks up on it then publish a version that is more reflective of the truth, never mind the SPIN is still there.
PRESS CALL ADVISORY: Boehlert, Climate Science Experts to Discuss Extreme Weather and Refute Climate Deniers' Claims

June 28, 2011

Contact: Christina DiPasquale
Phone: 202.481.8181
Email: cdipasquale@americanprogress.org

Washington, D.C. — Climate deniers and their conservative allies will descend on the nation’s capital later this week for the annual Heartland Institute’s Conference on Climate Change, whose sponsors in years past have included groups backed by Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers. In the face of record-breaking extreme weather, from devastating storms and floods to droughts and record-breaking heat that the world has been experiencing, the conference boasts an agenda full of notable climate deniers and presentations disputing that global warming is manmade, despite the fact that the majority of climate scientists agree that human-induced global warming is real.

Never mind the linking of just about everything having to do with weather there. And the fact that just about all the 'warming advocates have disassociated those events from actual warming theory.. and that the majority of Climate Scientists no longer are sure of the CO2 theory. Or that the globe is actually warming.
But who reads a second version, or the followup, of a press release?

More on this propagandic debacle:
CAP and blunder – but Joe Romm is still invited to ICCC6

Sunday Funnies

2011-06-26T12:34:00.001-04:00

-Not really 'funny' but just shows if you wait long enough, there's an answer to everything. With the great movie, one of the main questions was 'WHO is Jessica supposed to be?'
For the rare few who don't know, Hendricks is the smart as a whip office manager eye candy on AMC's 'Mad Men'.

Requiem for Myspace: Every DotCom is a bubble

2011-06-24T12:45:00.002-04:00

In Businessweek: The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace
The article deserves a read, or at least I agree with it. And the subhead tells all:

It once promised to redefine music, politics, dating, and pop culture. Rupert Murdoch fell in love with it. Then everything fell apart

Ah.. the more things change, the more they're the same: But it doesn't address in depth the truth of the net.

The Nature (of the 'netizen) abhors a Marketing Strategy!

Early social networking sprang from Darpanet users, back in the '70s with college students or defense contractor employees banding together to talk about their off-work interests.

The real inventors of the internet

They were, as you might expect, subject oriented. This text-only discussion paradigm essentially started with mailing lists where one moderator registered an email address and wrote script to allow multiple posting and send functions to large number of subscribers. In other words you 'friended' the moderator and if he accepted you defacto friended everyone else on the list.

- This was my own first experience with the internet: I joined the 'Mustang Mail List about 1986.

- And with the mail list, came the world's First Spam Email
- understand that, in those days, you saw every bit of the headers; which meant you scrolled down through the addressees interminably to just see the message. And that's primarily what generated the HATE. It was fixed by the eighties but the first impression was not a good one. Probably just coincidence but the firm responsible - Digital Equipment Corporation though a multi-billion dollar leader in its field at the time is no longer in business.

Later came Usenet, a special protocol based service that allowed a 'Bulletin Board' type function without clunky mail servers. It was very popular for subject insiders until Usenet was declared abolished by almost all ISP's due to the ease of posting porn and concentration of anonymous porn users.

Going mainstream is the Kiss of Death

Before there was the web, before there was AOL, before there was Compuserve, or Prodigy.. There was 'The Source'

It was actually built as a new sort of marketing service for the hip in 1979. And it was the first to be bought by a major publisher, Readers' Digest. It quickly failed because the subscribers used it mainly for social networking and comment and were not really interested in the commercial parts.

It should be noted that the fate of all its successors was the same, even AOL which brought the average guy onto the net was doomed from the beginning. By the time AOL merged with Time Warner the writing was on the wall. AOL wanted to totally control content and access to net features and made it very hard to actually access the REAL internet.

All that was pre-ordained by the advent of the World Wide Web and the Mosaic interface. Now commonly called the browser.

I won't go into what the folks on the 'real internet' thought of AOL'ers. It would be hurtful. The point is that concentration on product marketing is a tricky thing. a little too much hawking of wares will quickly turn the user against you. It just took a lot longer for it to catch up with AOL.

UNLESS that sales aspect is the unabashed FEATURE of the site or service. Witness Ebay.. then Amazon. Or Craigslist.

Combine that with the fickle nature of youth, and the impatience with 'Spam' on every level and you see the future for not only Myspace but Classmates{dot}com and ultimately even Facebook. Which brings up Twitter. Where's the monetization plan for Twitter? How you gonna do it without chasing users away?

Hmmm?

Nope.. the social DotComs all have the same life paradigm:

Idea-Build-social networking self promotion-popularity critical mass- SELL!

From Reader's Digest to Time Inc to Murdoch's News Corp. The moguls will be left holding the bag.

Aint the Free Market wonderful!

Stop bitching about McD's!!!!!

2011-06-22T14:31:00.002-04:00

PLEASE!!! Are you people really such little children?
My BS detector just got set off by a FB friend 'liking' some FB group that 'exposed' the make-up of fast-food chicken, as mostly grain products.
The last time this happened, against Taco Bell, the complainant - a rent seeking Law firm 'tried to 'quietly withdraw its allegations' and hasn't been heard from since.

Taco Bell Beef Lawsuit Withdrawn

McD's recently changed their menus ESPECIALLY the Chicken offerings. Their chicken now SUX from all accounts .. mainly my wife's... but PLEASE let's not invite the government to 'do something about it'. McDonalds customers will take care of the problem.
Understand I am not absolving McDonald's of any and all blame.. Supersized Fries and Corn Fructose Drinks are not exactly healthy, but are we adults or not?!!
Are we really too stupid.. or consider other adults too stupid to make their own decisions?
And what if they made those decisions based on Government Guidelines that normal natural fats are bad for you? Answer THAT!

HHS is ALREADY getting set to tell you what you can and cannot eat.. or smoke.. if you're on the Guvmint health plan. Not 'guidelines' and nagging'.. disqualification of benefits by physicians under the plan.

Is that what you all REALLY want?

Speaking of... here's an interesting chart. Can you see what it really means?
Hint: Pertains to the first 'USDA Dietary Guidlines to recommend low fat diet rather than just moderating fats..

PDF File USDA Guidelines over time
Remember? The Science was settled! There was a concensus!!!!
So, now that they convinced you that your ancestors were stupid and you are too unless you eat what they tell you to eat, the same tactic used against tobacco will be used for your dinner table.

Feds look to regulate food similar to tobacco, with hopes of saving money on health care

If you believe, subsequent to that, that the health care regime isnt going to penalize or reduce your medical care based on your diet.. then, say, I got some great Carbon Cap and Trade futures I want to sell ya!

It's all Sen. McCarthy's Fault!

2011-06-22T09:57:00.002-04:00

How 'It's a Wonderful Life', Joe MacCarthy's paranoia, and the Mortgage crisis are connected.

The internet media is fascinating. At any given time, somewhere out there is a blogger studying history and finding nuggets of truth to make us think and relate to current events.

David Goldenberg: Why Joe McCarthy Hated It’s a Wonderful Life

..what made Senator McCarthy so angry? The part involving the maligning of fat-cat banker and slumlord Henry Potter. While Bailey (who lends money to the working poor) is the movie’s hero, Henry Potter (who focuses on the financial bottom line alone) is the villain. According to the FBI’s memo, portraying a capitalist in such a negative light was a classic communist trick.

McCarthy was, of course, right when he began his crusade to expose the Left in Hollywood but, like the evil Mr Potter, he became a caricature to be vilified because of his compulsive obsession.

Fast forward to the recent past, the red-lining, mortgage industry that typically required ten or twenty percent down and no more than 25% of gross wage payment... against the sub-prime push by Fannie Mae and the 1999 CRA. So now we recognize who represents who in the Movie, right?
Well almost.
Potter WAS a crook after all, trying to keep money he knew wasn't his.
BUT...Barney Frank as George Bailey? I think not.

Meanwhile, opinions about Henry Potter’s character have changed over the years. In light of the housing-market crisis, the fiscally responsible banker may not have been such a bad guy after all. The loans that he tried to prevent George Bailey from handing out were essentially subprime mortgages. Mr. Potter may have just been trying to stop the poor citizens of Bedford Falls from over-leveraging themselves. Who’s the evil capitalist now?

Like McCarty's witch hunt ending up going much further than was necessary... after all we SUPPOSEDLY had freedom of association and speech, even back then.. shining a light on the influential person's politics should have been enough for us. And it should never go to the extremes that it did. Just let us unwashed masses know about chicanery then decide for ourselves!

The OTHER difference is that 'Wonderful Life' centered around a community, not the country. You cannot extrapolate local to global because if you do then the crooks are far more likely to get off free. Community peer image means a lot.
Nationally, it doesn't matter, apparently, as Frank's cronies have raped Fannie and Freddie pretty much at will with no political repercussions.

And all the big bank Potters seem to keep raking it in. The banks and politicians fooled us with TARP, because we couldn't be sure. Now we can be... don't try to fool us twice.

I also find McCarthy's subsequent influence on the electorate of Wisconsin fascinating -it's taking WI voters fifty years to wash the taste of idiot conservatism out of their mouths- but that's another thread.

It's the little things that bring joy

2011-06-19T22:32:00.001-04:00

I just bought a new old car. My father's day gift to myself.
It is my third 1993 TBird in a row, #2 having given me 5 years and 150,000 miles of faithful service at a total cost to buy, repair and service of about $2000. That's right .. 2 grand TOTAL. And it always gave me fair warning when it was gonna quit. Now though #2 has 300,000 on her and she's old and tired and ready to be driven to the salvage yard.

So naturally when I saw her skin twin in a chance meeting at the auto parts store, I offered the owner $2500 on the spot. I nagged him till he sold her to me.

Read more »

Sunday Morning Sermon on Liars and Fools

2011-06-19T10:13:00.001-04:00

Years ago I confined almost all my political musings to a sub-section on a Soccer Messageboard I moderated. Since I had grown into the habit - even before there were 'web-sites', of surfing the net in the classical sense of starting at point 'A' then following links to point B'" from there to 'C" and so on. I found most my argumental backup and posted links to same.
Imagine my frustration when those who debated points against me complained of my loading my postulations with LINKS! Especially when I took care to make sure they were links to media THEY would read and or approve of.. not some RW hack site. They complained ANYWAY about my loading my posts with links!
Bottom line: they didnt care, because they weren't about to have their cozy little life-views altered by anything approaching logic and facts. Well, we're all like that aren't we.
However, since I only write this stuff to try to exercise my mental powers in the fight against the ravages of senile dementia, I carry on. And frankly I don't give a crap whether the reader follows my links or not. As long as they don't rebut with non-fact and idiocies that the links refuted.

So let me recount how my surfing went this AM:

I started at Hot Air's headline roundup:
Virginia AG tests politics from the pulpit

Summary: the VA AG tries to help define line on political advocacy by churches, but ends up just confusing matters more.
SOMEHOW, from there I got directly to the Houston Chronicle's Op-Ed criticism by a group of 'what we used to call 'Ecumenical' religious leaders on Gov Perry's 'Day of Prayer' to be held at Reliant Stadium:
Day of prayer violates separation of church and state
- First, I almost agree with the headline. Elected leaders have to be very careful when they 'proclaim' a faith event.
Perry comes dangerously close to pandering to faith. Like the unnecessary politically inspired insertion of 'under God' in the pledge when I was a kid.
But the arguments made.. essentially rebut their own point. These religious pastors are from the usual suspect 'social justice' denominations. To wit: those that actually DO preach that Jesus was a social worker / community organizer and that God just might have been a construct of man's need for order in society.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: If you worry that the practice of your religious faith might offend someone not of your faith you are, by definition of Jesus and St Paul, NOT A CHRISTIAN!
Note it is not me saying that, it is clearly stated many times in the New Testament. Find me where it says otherwise! Only thing you will find is 'Pray in Private'. THAT is valid. But so is 'Make a joyful Noise'

So that article pretty much absolves Gov Perry. It is not for me to judge his motives, that's between him and God.
And I have my own opinion of the chances for salvation for those who pervert gospel for their own viewpoints but the same applies. Do you really want me to tell you what I think of Social Justice Theology? Thought not. But it is NOT 'Christian' in the theological sense.

***

Moving on to the CONTEMPORARY 'Religion of Anti-Carbon', ie; worship of all things Gaia, there's Reason magazine's

Green Shoots Bustin' Out All Over: How Much More Awesome News Can One Economy Take?

There's a good roundup of the stupidity of the Green Economy. Notable is that the $5,500,000 stimulus grant to 'Cree Lighting' - who is btw the accepted technical leader in LED lighting - resulted in a grand total of THREE JOBS created.
Need I say more? Cree did not need that stimulus money to create jobs, they needed it to subsidize the PROMOTION of their products to attempt to get volume to a critical mass. Which may or may not work, because like in every other market venture you tend to get lazy and invest in political efforts if the Guvmint is feeding you. See GE.
LED lighting to save resources is a GREAT idea. But it will succeed on the market, not on government favor.. and cost us less in the long run if government just keeps their hands off!

***

But the cake-taker for GREEN IDIOT/LIAR OF THE WEEK is Forbes' Green Blogger

Todd Woody
Green Gulfstream: Flying To Paris On Biofuels

I've said before I was terrible in school math, but I became an Engineer anyway by being able to visualize mathematical constructs and looking up the appropriate formula. Woody is a guy who apparently can not figure OR visualize mathematically. Or he's a straight out liar!

As we retrace Charles Lindberg’s 1927 pioneering flight across the Atlantic to Paris, the 50-50 blend of biofuel and petroleum aviation fuel in the right engine is burning 68 percent less carbon than the fossil fuel in the left engine, according to Rekoske.

Get that? If you suppose that the biofuel component has ZERO carbon content, my brain tells me it could reduce carbon burning by no more than 50%. What does YOUR brain tell you?
Here's a hint about 'Woody's brain':

By the time the G4 lands at the Paris Air Show, it will have saved a net 5.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

Yes he really wrote that. And it's on 'Forbes' and I took a screen shot of that page.
Think hard, my few readers! All we have to do is make about 250 transatlantic fights in that Gulfstream using PURE bio-jet in both engines and the ENTIRE ANNUAL US Carbon emissions are wiped away!!! Praise Gaia.. she has absolved our sins!

I'm not even gonna comment on using farmland to grow fuel instead of food. Or the fact that diesel is used to grow it.
And DON'T say 'Bio-Diesel'. Unless you believe that perpetual motion machines are possible.

If you dont get that by now you are too stupid to ever get it. Which puts you into the 'FOOL' category. Meaning the IRS should double your taxes to pay for this crap, and leave the rest of us alone.

A new Little Ice Age?.. oh.. and a piece of Africa is breaking off.

2011-06-15T10:18:00.001-04:00

It was just a few months ago that the Sun woke up and we began seeing sunspots again after a long delayed start of a new solar cycle, but already those who study these things for a living see signs that this feeble peak activity isnt going to amount to much and we may see the next cycle skipped altogether.
Stunning Press release:“All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.”
What's interesting about this is that, unlike the global temperature records, there has been a constant charting of solar activity since about the middle of the LAST global cold spell. - That would be the one that ended farming in Greenland and killed the vineyards of Great Britain.. yes the one Michael Mann and the Warmists dont want you to think about. And there's a strong scientifically noted connection between solar activity and climate.

NASA JPL on New Insights on How Solar Minimums Affect Earth

As the warmists continue to raise the cacophony on the imminent catastrophic results of a trace gas increase.. meaning.. give us your money and quit using oil and coal to save us all.. especially the children. Within a short time we're likely to see a reversal of immense magnitude and scientists running out for grants on how to prevent people from freezing to death.

***

In other interesting REAL SCIENCE news {meaning: as opposed to rent-seeking 'Climate Science'}, a formerly extinct volcano in Somalia's Eritrean region has erupted just months after new papers affirmed older ones that the rift in that area is subsiding rapidly and part of NE African continent will be isolated soon by an extension of the Red Sea.
'Soon' meaning: next month... within our lifetimes.. or within a million years.

But the real news in this is the connections to tectonic shifts - meaning the near simultaneous Chilean activity- point to yet more eruptions elsewhere, and a definite Pinataubo or Summer of St Helens effect.

Yes... even MORE cooling in the short term.

Archbishop of Assehatte Burned Again

2011-06-12T15:20:00.003-04:00

- Iowahawk

Peter Hitchens in The London Daily Mail has a few corrections for 'His Eminence, the Asshat of Canterbury' on the subject of 'Christian Charity'

Blessed are the Spongers? That’s not what St Paul said, Archbishop

why does the Archbishop of Canterbury speak as if it was obvious that we should treat people who can work, but won’t, in the same way as we treat those who are truly in need?

As Dr Williams has decided to take up political commentating, I think I shall do a little bit of Archbishoping. Here beginneth the first lesson: In St Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, Chapter 5, we read: ‘If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’

And in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, St Paul rubs it in, in that way he has: ‘This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.’

This seems pretty clear to me, and a dozen generations before my own knew these words by heart and lived according to them. They gave to charity and supported the helpless and needy with all their might.

That's the best takedown of this simpering idiot, Williams, since Iowahawk did it in 2008.
Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte.

{excerpted here}

An Archbishop of Canterbury Tale
...............

75 And so it went, the pilgryms all

76 Complaynynge of the Muslim thrall;

77 To eaches same the Bishop lectured

78 About the cultur fabrick textured

79 With rainbow threyds from everie nation

80 With rainbow laws for all situations.

81 "But Father Rowan, we bathyr nae one

82 We onlye want to hav our funne!"

83 "But the Musselman is sure to see

84 Thy funne as Western hegemony.

85 'Tis not Cristian for Cristians to cause

86 The Moor to live by Cristendom's laws

87 Whan he has hise sovereyn culture

88 Crist bade us put ours in sepulture.

89 To be divyne we must first be diverse

90 So cheer thee well, thynges could be wors

91 Sharia is Englishe as tea and scones,

92 So everybody muste get stoned."

93 The pilgryms shuffled for the door

94 To face the rule of the Moor;

95 Poets, Professors, Starbucks workers

96 Donning turbans, veils and burqqas.

97 As they face theyr fynal curtan

98 Of Englande folk, one thynge is certan:

99 Dying by theyr own thousande cuts,

100 The Englande folk are folking nuts.

101 BURMA SHAVE

----------------------------------

I'm a poor Christian, performance wise. But at least I'm not an Anglican and have to pay attention to what some idiot head of a 'National Church' spouts as Social justice theology.

And God forgive me for judging others but I think I'm committing a pretty minor sin here when I say this guy, head of the Church of England, is either stupid or evil. Hmm.. can you be both? Maybe for St Peter to decide?

What could possibly go wrong?

2011-06-10T16:31:00.001-04:00

Enterasys Wants You to Friend and Tweet with Your Switches and Routers

From CIO:

Enterasys this week rolled out software that allows network admins to access its management system via social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com's Chatter.

Our DoE Gestapo

2011-06-09T11:49:00.001-04:00

The first hint for many of us.. which I missed but some found curious was:

WaPo: Education Department buying 27 shotguns

Now we know WHY..

No Really: SWAT Team Raids House at 6 AM and Handcuffs Father of Three Young Kids to Execute a Dept. of Education Search Warrant for Estranged Wife's Defaulted Student Loans

STOCKTON, CA - Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said.

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

"He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there," Wright said.

According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there - Wright's estranged wife.

"They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said. [...]

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans.

Oh.. wait!

It wasn't the Stockton SWAT team, it was the Department of Education 'OIG'.. no doubt using some of those 27 shotguns.
And it wasn't a loan default that got them called into action but possible criminal fraud..

Dept. of Education SWAT Raid Update: Not for a Student Loan, DoE Says

Well!!!!

All BETTER, then! We are INDEED becoming more egalitarian, don't you notice? Now white collar crime like fraud and embezzlement is treated exactly as if it were done by armed robbers. Besides being easier in the sleuthing side, it's more fun and you get a chance to use all that swell assault training.

As a favorite blogger of mine often sez... "They told me if I voted for McCain, {insert outrageous activity here}.. and they were right!"

Quasi-Intellect Leads to Insanity

2011-06-05T14:22:00.002-04:00

Further proof of the imminent end-times:

Foreskin Man!
- decidedly 'Aryan Avenger' style, wot?

Yet another Joo-hate effort by the atheist quasi-intellectual bunch!
For all you soft-hearted idiots out there..

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/womens-health/articles/2009/03/25/circumcision-guards-against-stds

I'm sorry.. I'm no longer soft-peddling my views for those of you who read Lame-Stream-Media by the 'learned and Informed' who eschew the least bit of common sense because of their 4 or 7 years of academic indoctrination.

If you are stupid enough to take the word of your 'intellectual betters' over F@##$$4king common sense given you by God, you and your children deserve what you get!

Take it from one whose procedure was botched and suffered pain in adolescence because of it.. I'm STILL glad my mom did it!

H/T Hot Air!

***

For some more better news:

No handicap here:

***

BONUS!!!

Bank of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It

DailyMail: President Obama wolfs down TWO chili dogs and fries... the day after his wife unveils new dietary guide

- If some of you hadnt yet noticed.. to get the REAL Scoop on some of the fascinating by-play in our government{s}, you have to read the BRITISH papers. Since it's not THEIR government.. hence no danger of being summarily excluded by Guvmint minders, they are free to look at ours.. unlike some unfortunates at the SF Chronicle who ask the wrong questions.
Good on OUR Pres. for doing .. or eating.. what he feels like with no regard to 'PC' .. shouldnt we all have that degree of choice? .. after all..

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
–Thomas Jefferson

Why you MIGHT think he was talking about the corn Ethanol fuel, or GoreBull Warmening scams!!!
Or that to lose weight you need to go on a low-fat diet. After all the science is settled.. err.. well.. it WAS settled, wasnt it.?

Fannie and Freddie Frauds finally explored

2011-06-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

Several years ago I posted on a soccer messageboard what I thought was the primary reason for the financial mess. It's all gone because someone supposedly hacked the site and the admin just wiped it out.
That was the CRA of 1999.

Funny thing is that most people using their common sense KNOW that government 'fair housing' programs incited the banking houses to get creative with those junk futures instruments. But in that thread all I got for rebuttal was mealy-mouth party memes.

But you'll get howls anytime you try to point fingers at exactly WHO was responsible. Because people will not admit that their political heroes would screw something up so badly. So far, the only politico I'm aware of who's come close is Bill Clinton. He said perhaps 'we went a little overboard'. I'll say! Before that you never heard all those mortgage brokers advertise 'no money down, up to 100% financing'.

Well someone has finally written a book on it and because of their credentials maybe someone will actually LOOK at Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their role in the bust.

Volokh has thoughts and the link to the book:
A Book Length Account of Fannie and Freddie and Their Role in the Financial Crisis

Looks interesting. Maybe we'll get some justice in knowledge rather than just blaming the banks.

Palin exposes Media Boobs

2011-06-01T09:13:00.002-04:00

Michelle Malkin has a precious writeup on how Sarah Palin has turned the tables on the very media that has mocked her since she's been in national politics:
Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus

This is especially good:

The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta griped that "reality TV star Palin" was "treating pol reporters like paparazzi -- needing and hating, inviting and making chase." Perhaps Franke-Ruta needs a reminder of what a truly parasitic press-pol relationship looks like. I have stacks of Obama 2008 profiles exulting over his glistening pecs and soaring oratorical skills, followed by countless spurned-lover laments from reporters disappointed about the control freaks who stage-manage his every press appearance.

As if they haven't ALWAYS treated Palin as if they were 'paparazzi'. How would you catalog Andrew Sullivan's fascination with her?

As my friend and blogging colleague Doug Powers put it: "Reporters whining about Palin are like kids who can't reach the cookie jar because she keeps moving it."

It's too bad the 'journalists' have forgotten how to do 'investigative reporting'. REAL press in the old days would be able to sniff out where she's going, obviously someone is expecting her somewhere. And you can bet it's not a union convention.

Now they'd rather just blame the stalkee for their own laziness.

And if they do figure it out that she's toying with them, they'll do it anyway:

NYT: Palin Dismisses the Media, but They Come Back for More

Free journalism? Well... Sometimes you DON'T get what you pay for.

2011-05-29T12:55:00.004-04:00

Rainey, LATimes.. On the Media: The price of 'free' journalism

If you don't care to read it, the thing is focussed on the recent sale of Huffington Post and the subsequent complaint by its writer/bloggers that they got nothing for their content input that made Arianna Huffington a lot of money.

Implicit is the concept that perhaps content is worth more than what was directly paid for it. Interesting. Especially that this was published at nearly the same time as the NYT paid grudging respect to Matt Drudge, acknowledging that he is still very much the arbiter of what is news and what is not. IOW, most of the paid press reads him and puts their fingers in the wind accordingly. I hope everyone sees the irony there.

Contrary to the writer's apparent point, I contend that there are three forms of 'news' information: opinion, certifiable opinion, and factual rebuttal.
- non-factual rebuttal falling into 'opinion' category.

Opinion as provided by HuffPo, is just that, one person's (or publication's) opinion. And you know what they say about 'Opinions.. everyone's got one, just like...' If HuffPo was forced to pay for content, that might be a good thing, in the big picture. Folks that write dross that's easily refuted might be shed to protect the overall reputation.

Certified {not to say 'paid'} Opinion on the other hand, is more like legal publishing; ALL the pertinent factual information is addressed. You don't go to court on precedent supplied by Google search, or Drudge or even free internet caselaw. That would be Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw. Or Bloomberg on stock performances and Corporate Reports.

Free factual rebuttal is exactly what the internet bloggers are best at.
- Ask Dan Rather.. oh, wait dont. He's a 'victim' you see! Ask the 'scientists' at UEA on Climategate. The fraud of 'Global Warming' has been well and truly exposed almost exclusively on the 'net. By people doing it for FREE!

OTHER than that, you PAY for vital information and indeed that is how the internet is now shaking out. What once was more or less free.. like the on line white pages, is now only readily available for a fee. Did anyone seriously expect it to be otherwise? Who is going to pay for factual verification of someone's name, address and phone number?

Standards and Practices
News and journalistic standards used to be such that you could count on the front page to be a factual uncolored account. Who, What, When Where, and why or how. The latter being certifiable facts behind the issue or event. And the 'why or how facts' mostly disappeared from news reports sometime in the late sixties or seventies. Some say because of USAToday. I say EVEN BEFORE that in my local paper.

We held the Wall Street Journal in high regard then, because it continued providing the factual background. The Opinion pages and sometimes Features were colored by POV, the news was generally not.

I refuse the premise that the only useful opinion is that which is compensated, at any rate. Going back to when dead tree news was still king, the publication might publish any sort of nonsense or opinion that it wanted to... whether on the Front, Editorial or Op-ed pages.

And that is why we also read the Letters to Editor. Once in a while or often, depending on the publication's journalistic standards, those letters presented facts that devastatingly rebutted the compensated professional's viewpoint. That content was free, and whether it's on the net article comments or printed on the pulpwood, it always will be supplied free of charge by the writer, who is usually more knowledgeable on the given subject or issue.

I appreciate the content providers for HuffPo wanting to be paid and submit that HuffPo certainly had the ability to gauge the value of the content to its readers and pay accordingly but what those writers should understand is that their credentials have nothing to do with the value of their content in the eyes of the general public. And Arianna's apparent hypocrisy on the subject is beside the point.

Paid Writing - Free Music? Does Not Compute!
However.. since a few of those same writers advocated that the net should allow free dissemination of other creative product, such as music and video, I think it rings hollow.
As does the idea that HuffPo is popular for its original content. The only value I see in it is argument against viewpoints published elsewhere and LINKED. Thus it goes one step, perhaps, beyond Drudge or even Instapundit.

Meanwhile NYT has re-erected its pay wall, trying to put a price on access to Dowd, Krugman et al. They brag of 100,000 subscribers in the first week. I don't care. I can find the same opinions in Washington Post or the Guardian or the Independent. Only some of the NYT Features have original content other than crass opinion. And most political opinion there has to pass through its editorial board to match their publisher's whims. In doing that they open themselves up to charges -by 'free' writers- of crass biases.

But the most important thing is that, paywall, writer compensation or not, the Media can't hide behind 'value of content' and force those who can rebut them to do the same thing.

Fair or not, the market decides.. for now, anyway. That is the beauty of the 'net.

Meet Meghan McCain, Blonde.

2011-05-28T22:17:00.005-04:00

"..and what do you call the other one?"

Meghan McCain is nowhere near that ditzy, but she's not exactly establishing herself as a serious commenter, either.
I, along with most other people, first became aware of the Senator's daughter during his 2008 campaign. One of my favorite bloggers noticed that she had started one of her own, logging life on the campaign circuit from her viewpoint.
I was disappointed, though, as her point of view was as shallow as it could get. We never got an insight on anything from her, alternately gushing about how super they were treated and then the hard travel schedule.

She hasn't grown up much in the years since. New York Times Magazine just ran a human interest Q & A on her: Inside Meghan McCain’s Bachelorette Pad

Some samples:

HUMAN OBSESSION: I am borderline obsessed with Sofia Coppola. She is unbelievably talented and has a famous father and established herself as a force...

Well, Meghan.. you have a famous father and I suppose you have established yourself as a force

BODY IMAGE: I wake up every morning with large breasts, and it doesn’t affect me. But people had a meltdown when I posted a photo of myself on Twitter. I found such extreme sexism in it. I’ve spent as much of my career having my weight and body commented on as my writing and politics.

Uh, no. Not in the sites I read, comments on your boobs referenced far less than the other meaning of the word as applied to you.

And here's a hint why:

FAVORITE DEMOCRAT: I like Anthony Weiner, the congressman from New York. He has YouTube moments I find entertaining, and he’s married to Huma Abedin, who works for Secretary of State Clinton. I have to tip my hat to him for landing such a hot woman.

Ironically this same day, the web is 'all-a-twitter' about a pic supposedly of Weiner in his gray tighties showing a boner. {no comments on 'vienna sausages, please} but that has nothing to do with this... other than chuckles and grins.
Read the rest of the piece. Then read Meghan's wiki.

In terms of economic policy, she has remarked on The Rachel Maddow Show that "I didn't even take Econ[omics] in college. I don't completely understand it so I'd hate to make a comment one way or the other. That's – truly of all the things – I keep reading and I just don't understand it."

Well, now. There's really nothing wrong with not understanding Economics.. and especially when you admit it. But economics is what the crux of the Republican Party platform is about.
And if you don't understand our economy is in deep trouble and why, and you're pro-choice and pro-illegal immigration and pro gay marriage then you might as well be a Democrat. Cause they have such good cool people.. marrying hotties and all.
So shut up about Bristol Palin. Somehow I think if Bristol went to college, even Columbia, she probably would take at least one Econ course and probably WOULD understand it.

So let's face it.. Meghan does blonde women a disservice by reinforcing the old 'skin deep intellect' stereotype.

She may not actually be that dumb, most blondes arent really. But I can't imagine what she would have to say that would fill more than one book.

*****

Speaking of celebrities.. here's the Celebrity Headline teaser of the Week:

"Mila Kunis has finally realized....

{wait for it}

.. she was dating Macauley Caulkin!"

Now THAT'S FUNNY! I dont care where yer from.

I'm not linking it because it was a teaser for those sites that have you clicking from one to another just to finally get to the punch line.

Why Women hate CFL's

2011-05-28T11:31:00.001-04:00

Not only are people finding Compact Fluorescents not saving much money in power bills, and not lasting as long as claimed.. unless there's special circumstances, but women HATE them when they try to dress or put on makeup.

- I find that ones installed outside last long time though switched on and off. Of course it takes forever for them to warm up.
- Also left on ALL the time typically last a couple of years.

I guess we guys all know it's really hard to find good ones to install in proximity of both woman and a mirror.
via XkCD, Doghouse Diaries hints on the reason why:

- Note: I have a minor blue color misperception {light blue eyes, 'Electric Blue' turns into a blob that hurts my eyes} and I cant see any difference in some pinks plus some color gradients, like 'eggplant', seem out of order to me.

XKCD has a lot more to say on the subject but it develops on why women see color differently than men.

Whatever the case, it's obvious even to me that CFL's fall short in the color hue department. Cool White or Daylight is the only acceptable color temperature.

Add to that the mercury 'hazmat' problem.. which is laughable on the single broken bulb handling, yet pretty serious when a whole truckload gets smashed.
- by the way the recent tornadoes present that problem. All the smashed Lowes, Home Depots and Walmarts turned into hazmat zones by broken shelf stock. Now..Imagine a warehouse FULL of CFL's!

Sadly even LED lighting, though making great progress, still hasn't solved the color hue to the extent of traditional bulbs.

Farmers Nervous.. and we should be, too.

2011-05-26T09:34:00.002-04:00

With all the extreme weather we've been having and the coverage of tornado damage and deaths in the midwest and south, another aspect that has even more long term consequences for the world is the inability, because of wet fields, to get corn in the ground.
Marietta Ohio Times

As of the start of this week, only 11 percent of the state's corn crop had been sewn, compared to the nearly 90 percent average for this time of year.

An emergency meeting is planned for this morning in Columbus at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to address the issue, according to an official with the local Ohio State University Extension Office.

Indpls Star

Barely half of Indiana's corn crop for 2011 is planted and several million acres of seeds still must go into the ground with just a week remaining before Wednesday's optimal planting deadline.

- via Instapundit

This isn't just a localized problem it will affect everyone, national and global.

Global Food Output May Be Hurt as Climate Shifts, UN Warns

Drought in China has affected 6.5 million hectares of farmland, the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said on its website on May 20. China has ordered the operator of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's biggest, to release water to replenish the Yangtze River and counter the local region's lowest rainfall in half a century.
.....
In the U.S., floods along the Mississippi River and its tributaries have affected almost 3.6 million acres of cropland, causing the most damage in Arkansas, the American Farm Bureau Federation said on May 23. Floods in Canada's Frenchman River Basin may be the largest since 1952, and the waters slowed the nation's sowing, the Canadian Wheat Board said on April 20.

And some of us olders know that precipitation tends to even out during the year. Too much rain now will likely be countered with too little when the ears of corn are filling.

And yeah, it will even affect gas prices:
Bloomberg

Ethanol moved higher with corn, which rose on the Chicago Board of Trade as storms stretching from Iowa to Ohio may bring rain by tomorrow. Planting is behind the normal pace because of excess rain, with some of the biggest delays in Ohio, North Dakota and Indiana.

On the last, our government could help by telling the petroleum refiners to reduce ethanol in gasoline or eliminate it altogether.
- dont worry, your car can handle that just fine and your gas mileage would probably increase.
Only problem with that, of course is that the Agribiz corporations are very good friends or our elected.

So dont bet on it.. just remember where the real problem lies.. and it's not with CO2 global warming. Because temperatures have NOT gone up they are decreasing at the moment. The weather patterns {not climate} HAVE shifted due to ocean current changes and la Nina, but not for the first time nor will it be the last.

Retread your DVD library..watch them in B&W

2011-05-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

from Flavorwire: 10 Modern Movies That Are Better in Black and White
Great idea.. turns adventure films into suspense films! And makes suspense films like Halloween and Fargo even spookier

Great example of that:

You appreciate them in a whole different way

O'Reilly / Stewart on Common at WH sends my blog hits up 500%

2011-05-17T11:11:00.004-04:00

Note: 'Pettifog' means 'Make a big deal over little or nothing.'
-You're welcome. That's not exactly how I write on my blog but reflects how I like to look at everything related to an issue.

Blog hits went from minuscule to noticeable in one fell swoop... because first O'Reilly then Stewart use the term 'pettifog' several times to describe overstating the importance of an issue. In this case inviting the Rapper 'Common' to the White House.
Article in HuffPo on the 'debate'. The word first comes up about 4:48 of part 1.

All the traffic increase came from Google search of 'Pettyfog'.. meaning users were unfamiliar with the term and misspelled it.
I explain my spelling in 'about'

{So when} I got on the then young internet, I adopted the identity "Pettyfog" as my online personna. It was a play on words from the Dickensian use of 'pettifog' {self-important minor bureaucratic blather, not the 'evil lawyer' use, and I used 'y' instead of 'i' for two reasons. 'Little Fog' being one, identifiability the other.

- the HuffPo staff did add a definition later, spelling it correctly.

But.. on the issue of Common: I expected from the HuffPo account that O'Reilly had gone off the deep end again. He truly is often guilty of blowing things up to ridiculous extents and he did pettifog here, somewhat. But hell, Stewart does the same thing. I dont watch either of them for that reason.

O'Reilly is right in that it does define the White House. Stewart's on shaky ground.

But it's still trivial because we already should know this would happen, the invite's a sop to Obama's most solid constituency; 2012 is just around the corner and he hasn't done much of anything for them, yet.

Apparently there is now ..

2011-05-15T08:04:00.000-04:00

.. GOOGLE ENTRY FOR “CAPTAIN SEXY BANJO.”

Instapundit posted:

THERE’S NO GOOGLE ENTRY FOR “CAPTAIN SEXY BANJO.” Well, maybe this will fix that problem.

And lo.. it sure did

And yet... none of the 90 or so links listed were for Amazon{dot}com.

Taliban 'Tet' a dud; MSM weep!

2011-05-14T11:20:00.002-04:00

On May 8 the Taliban attacked the provincial capital of Kandahar in a much anticipated effort to repeat the NVA/ Viet Cong Tet offensive which the US won militarily, utterly destroying the attacking forces, but the press blew into a 'We Cant Win' meme.

Despite their loads of bombs and sniper tactics, the Taliban failed miserably.

But Time Mag and the NYT aren't giving up on their Cronkite-ish theme. 'Analysts', particularly those with facial hair to make them look serious and wise, are free to put any sort of spin on it they can think of:

NYT: Broad Taliban Attack Paralyzes Kandahar

The attack ended as night fell Sunday, when the last two suicide bombers were killed in a hotel near the provincial headquarters of the national intelligence department. Spent casings littered the streets “like hail after a storm,” one Kandahar resident said, and ranks of police officers stood guard at official buildings.

The scale and organization of the attack as well as the targeting of government buildings suggested that the Taliban had been planning it for some time — and that they had relied on support from inside Kandahar.

Among the places singled out were the provincial governor’s palace, the police headquarters, the transportation police headquarters, a police substation and other buildings used by the military, according to a NATO statement.

Those are among the most well-guarded spots in Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan and a major base for NATO forces. Still, the 27 insurgent fighters involved in the attacks were able to move in those areas while toting explosive vests or driving vehicles laden with explosives, raising questions about complicity with the attacks.

- summary. None of those targets were captured, let alone occupied. And yet the tone is one of 'woe' with the inevitable negative statements from locals who fit the profile.

Time holds out hope even after the one sided debacle:
Afghanistan: A Taliban Offensive Hopes to Repeat Vietcong's Tet Effect

So much so that Time's bearded wunderkind writer former anti apartheid activist brings up a totally off the wall statement by Gen Westmoreland about the enemy in Nam, months previous to Tet:

{{Tet's} historical impact was to mock the triumphalist claims of General William Westmoreland, who had told Americans months earlier that the Vietcong were on the ropes and unable to mount a major offensive, and that the war would soon be over.

Of course there's no parallel example in the modern military effort, but hey.. that was just too good to pass up. And never mind most of us who were actually voting age adults, and paying attention at the time, thought Westmoreland was an idiot.
Well the writer was alive, too. Maybe ..what.. six years old.

The Washington Times has a different view of the Taliban flop.

...the Taliban launched a major attack on Afghan government targets in the insurgent’s spiritual capital of Kandahar. Press reports called it a “vengeance attack” for the killing of Osama bin Laden a week earlier. Time magazine forebodingly compared it to the 1968 Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. The general tone of the coverage was thick with knowing dread.

The outcome of the attacks was far from the doom presaged in the press. “All of the Taliban involved in the Kandahar attack were either captured or killed,...”

At a heavy price, no doubt? Well it disrupted everyday life in the city for 30 hours. Does that count.. guess it depends.

The series of attacks in Kandahar reached none of their assumed objectives. No Afghan government public buildings were seized and the insurgents inflicted few casualties. The most underreported good news story was that the defense of the city was conducted by the Afghan National Security Forces. “The ANSF did a really good job,” our source said. “They were calm; they were capable.”

But all that good news didn't change the theme for the IDIOT Leftist press. And it never will.

Bureaucrats rethink "All your cash are belong us"

2011-05-12T00:28:00.000-04:00

Dallas police have change of heart on cash found by teen

From WFAA

There are new developments in the story of Plano teenager Ashley Donaldson, who turned in $2,000 she found in an envelope on the ground in North Dallas — only to find out that when no one claimed it the city planned to keep it.
Dallas police Chief David Brown issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying the department will follow a provision in state law in determining what happens to the funds.

But previously:

On Tuesday, police said under a new city policy, the unclaimed money will go into Dallas' general fund — not back to the person who found it, as in years past.
"We appreciate your honesty," said Dallas police spokesman Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse. "We're going to put the money to good use. It's not going to be wasted, but put to good use for the City of Dallas."

Now the reason I highlighted Cpl Janse is that he probably hasnt been a civil servant long enough to become SO EVERLOVING FREAKING STUPID as to think the government claiming found money is a good idea.
And it probably wasn't even the Dallas chief.. No, that takes years of 'public service' and would be someone who has a law degree and also one in 'political science'.

It takes that sort of training to acquire the myopia needed to believe that it was a good idea for future crime solving.
Because, you see, the first think I thought when I read the original article was
"What!!! No one who hears about this and finds an unmarked envelope with cash in it will bother turning it in."
And lets face it, that could be money from a drug deal. And the loser might be dumb enough to claim it; it's happened before.
If that was the case, THEN the police would keep it and there's precedence for that but the finder would get some satisfaction from helping out the police.

And you know what.. I'm just a guy with some common sense but I noted there were others who got that point. Only those who think the people are there to serve government wouldn't get it.

* * *

There's a lot more to the story about Ashley and her family on the WFAA site, read the 'related' links

WSJ: Giggles and Grins column

2011-05-10T10:39:00.000-04:00

For some muted chuckles on world and national affairs, in a large national paper, you could do worse than bookmark the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today"

In the May 9 edition, The bin Laden Book Club, we learn:

- bin Laden was a fan of idiot savant Noam Chomsky and commented favorably on Jimmy Carter's geo-politics

- John Kerry thinks it's a good time to raise taxes.

Now that Osama bin Laden is defunct, John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking former junior senator from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam, thinks it's time to raise taxes.

note: Rush probably wishes he had copyrighted that.

- The New York Times still largely has a staff of Blow-hards and Coastal Elitists

But the best stuff is the skim of the 'net - linked news articles, at the bottom of the article, which usually include things like:

Life Imitates the Onion

which uses wordplay to add silly summaries to straight news headlines
and

Questions Nobody Is Asking

and

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking

which are not pointing to the same issues, btw.

Everyone should bookmark that section.

Science: Man-Brain > Food, Sex, Sleep.. all the same.

2011-05-06T19:55:00.007-04:00

LiveScience Article: Men Think About Sleep & Food as Much as Sex

... men paid no greater attention to sex than they did food and sleep, Fisher found.

Men think about sex every seven seconds, right? Not according to a new study that finds men ponder sleep and food as much as they do sex.

The median number of thoughts about sex by college-age men was 18 times a day to women's 10 times a day, the study found. But the men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more.

"In other words, there was nothing special about sexual thoughts," study researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, told LiveScience. "Males thought more about any of the health-related thoughts compared to females, not just thoughts about sex."

So... since men think about those three more than women do, the question is 'What are the women thinking about, instead?
- Hmmm.. On further rumination, I'm pretty sure it relates to what they are wearing and how they look in it.

And the subjects of beer and sports wasn't even covered, leaving an even larger gap. One that surely can't be explained completely by "Do I look fat in this?" can it? Naw.. it's probably "Wonder if the kids are all right?"

I was a little troubled, at first, by the 'thinking about sleep' part. Then I realized it was college kids and I remembered being that age. I too missed a fair amount of sleep on occasion. Closing time was 1:30 even on weekdays back then.

Now I'm sixty eight and for me it's mostly 'food - nap - food - sleep'.

And I never think about beer unless someone else brings up the subject.
But when I DO think about beer, I think about a Dos Equis

Taking out the Trash

2011-05-02T12:36:00.002-04:00

First, kudos to President Obama for giving the go ahead to erase the Al Quaeda mentor.
Second kudos to Navy Seals for collecting and sanitizing the garbage.

But we all must realize that this is somewhat equivalent to 'capture the flag', where one side steals the talisman of the other and it was not only captured but deep-sixed so that it could never be used again.

As a symbolic victory it cannot be denied as a scoring coup. In reality it changes little other than to underscore that the US will only put up with so much humiliation from its supposed 'ally', Pakistan, who knew full well where bin Laden was stashed and did absolutely nothing about it in order to appease its large population segment who still live in the dark ages.

There will, no doubt, be reprisals from these cretins, and we don't know where or when. But it's important that they don't get away with it, on the premise of 'allowing free expression from other cultures'.
You can be sure there will be some sort of street demonstration, in the UK, against this action. You can also be sure that unless it breaks out into full riot, the British will treat these stinking Islamists with kid gloves. Jailing and charging as few as possible.
On the other hand if native cultural Brits counter demonstrate with the same sort of rhetoric and actions, they will be jailed and prosecuted for hate crime or anything else that applies and to the full extent of British law.

And THAT would serve greatly to repair the damage to Islamist morale that losing bin Laden inflicted. Nothing is more important to terrorists than to show how weak and ineffectual their opponents are. From the embassy hostages in 79 to the first WTC bombing to the Cole to the attacks on the two African Embassies. they had their way until the two towers fell.
It could even happen that way in the US... already the 'progressive left' is mewling about International Law being violated. Well when the other side is bringing knives to the fight, you throw away the Marquis of Queensbury rulebook.

So... Taking out the Trash, finally, is a good thing. That the garbage collector comes around often and as scheduled is most important.
___________________________________________________________

Deep Background:
The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden

Taxes: WWJD? - "Jesus would take it all"

2011-04-26T22:24:00.002-04:00

.. or so says Monsigneur Larry O'Donnell of the Holy Church of Social Justice. aka MSNBC.

Seems that Rush got on the subject of what Jesus would say about the rich being taxed enough. And the 'WWJD' thing got him probably a little flummoxed so he shifted the meme to what most of us would consider firmer ground; "What Would Jesus Take?" Rush answered himself; "Nothing."

Obviously this is too much for some people, especially those who might say Jesus was a social activist, or a community organizer:

Now I'm not a very good Christian, but I believe. And I've read the Bible through a few times. The first, when I was young, scared the stuffin's out of me. Then as an adult I learned how to read it. And read it through twice. With all verses in context of those coming before and after. In fact the Gospel only really makes sense in context of the Old Testament.

So.. in those terms this guy's takedown covers the particulars O'Donnell cited pretty darn well.

But I've got another thought on it. Or maybe.. would like to advise O'Donnell of a few words also in the Bible.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

as well as..

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.

Now since we all have to act on our own beliefs and free will, something that O'Donnell seems to have a problem with, I'm gonna have to desist writing 'My Judgment' on that. After all it's possible O'Donnell is right and I am wrong.

If we believe the Bible, we know the devil is a great deceiver and may have pulled scales over my eyes and I've got it all wrong. But, from what I've always believed, I have to side with Rush.. Jesus wouldn't TAKE anything. Isn't that what Free Will is all about?

So, I can't speak for Jesus any more than Rush can. But, when I see what O'Donnell thinks, 'Pharisee' comes to mind.
Read more:
MSNBC's O'Donnell Slams Limbaugh As Biblically Ignorant

"Trump, you Magnificent Bastard!"

2011-04-22T15:24:00.002-04:00

.. so says the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams in his blog.

This morning I read a news item saying that some folks at NBC think Trump might be pretending to run for president to boost ratings. The story noted that ratings for his TV show are up 20% lately. I laughed out loud because sometimes I forget that at least half the country doesn't realize he's just screwing with the media.

The magnificent part of this whole thing is that he's putting no effort whatsoever into concealing his prank. That's what I love about the guy. He knows that no level of clownery in a field of clowns will single him out as the one clown that doesn't really mean it.

In other words, the conservative electorate are being 'Punked'.

Sadly this is one more time Adams shows his acumen in separating out all that is unattractive in human nature.

He goes on to cite Trump's loudly voiced opinion on the birther nonsense. Then explains that Trump is no dummy having graduated from Wharton. While I'll demur on how smart that really makes you, I can't really argue it.

The birther issue is a stupid issue. It attracts the same sort of divisive, idiotic thinking that the 9/11 'Truthers' projected.

Somehow Trump has managed to cross basic issue agendas and gain following from those in both the mainstream GOP and Tea Party, despite some glaring inconsistencies. Approving Eminent Domain for Commercial Development being another sore point. Of course he approves it, he uses it.
I've seen similar behavior before and thought.. well maybe the guy really could open up some discussion, though certainly we dont need yet another narcissist President. so I didn't say anything. Now I think it's true, especially now that 'Dilbert' points it out.

Yet another elitist showing that the electorate are foolish.

Just 'Bastard', in my view.

80/80 rule: Why the Masses are too stupid to govern

2011-04-21T11:44:00.003-04:00

Australia is set to implement a carbon tax in 400 days or so. The interesting part is the present Labor/Greens coalition was elected on a promise of no carbon tax. Yet it seems that was the core of the coalition agreement, so there will be a carbon tax.

The purported aim of the tax is to help save the planet. Australia's efforts, if totally effective, reducing global CO2 emissions by a whopping 1%.
Except the PM, Julia Gillard is now solemnly saying that it wont hurt the poor, or industry, or energy companies; somehow all these will be kept whole and job-producing coal exports won't suffer a bit.
Amazingly enough, the 'rough crowd' doesn't buy it.

Tim Blair, a columnist-blogger, who amuses greatly just by pointing out things things like this, focuses our attention on a great piece by thinker/writer/PhD in Architecture,
Elizabeth Farrelly: Democracy is blocking intelligence

It may be, as one correspondent wrote last week, that advertising works on the "80/80 principle", the assumption that 80 per cent of Australians have an IQ average of 80. Now I'm fine with stupidity in advertising. Indeed, I expect nothing less - isn't that why God gave us the mute button? But what makes the 80/80 thought especially gripping - as in, by the throat - is how much it explains that branch of advertising we call politics.

Everything is dose related. Whether it's arsenic in your diet or radioactivity in the sea, small amounts now and then are OK, even beneficial, but large amounts, repeatedly, are bad and even terminal. It's the same with almost everything else - cars, houses, chocolate, holidays, even happiness.

For one person to live in an acre of grass and trees is perfectly harmless, even lovable. But for the numberless hordes to do it means an end to wilderness, clean air and polar bears.

By the last, I assume the verdant one-acre domicile is meant for those who truly appreciate and will protect it, like herself and her peers. Certainly not for a jobsworth, barely getting his ticket out of high school, who owns a couple of pizza stores.

She sets all this up by invoking Thomas Jefferson and the beloved 'pursuit of happiness' phrase. And the summary is that either the pursuit or the happiness - maybe better, BOTH- must be rationed and regulated for the good of the whole.

I wonder if maybe the government might issue a license to pursue? Hmmm..
Or just POSSIBLY.. that license to pursuit of happiness is inherent in completing post-graduate studies.
You know, I think that's it! After all it IS a 'Doctorate of Philosophy' isnt it.
And Elizabeth Farrelly has one in Architecture! Leads one to think it isnt so much continuing education in engineering and architectural sciences as it is meant to further appreciation and application of architecture in civilization and society.

So that PhD, really not mattering what field it's in, is indeed a pass into the hallowed halls of the intellectual. Giving the bearer full rights and privileges of the governing elite / protector of the stupid masses.
Which is probably what Jefferson had in mind in the first place, right?
And which, taken to the utmost, explains Noam Chomsky {Dr of Linguistic Mechanics} so beloved by the progressive intellectual elite that he needn't even bother debating his awesome philosophies.

The whole point is that when you read opinions like hers, you should start thinking about what the attack on the previously benign, harmless, beloved of all plant life Carbon Dioxide, really means.

Fragrant Dried Petals and Leaves

2011-04-20T14:58:00.000-04:00

Attractive men have long... ring fingers: study

For the visual test, the results were unambiguous. "The longer the ring finger compared to the index -- that is, the greater the exposure to testosterone -- the more attractive the face was rated," she said by phone.

"I feel pretty.. oh so pretty..."
pffffft!

______________________________________________________________________

Facebook poll:

Do you think they should put prayer back in school?

The knee jerk for most who've seen it eliminated is 'yes'.. BUT.. the keyword is 'put back in'
The older I get, the less I believe in Ritual Prayer and more I believe in spontaneous silent prayer. And that is Biblical.
Which means: No, not really. Look at it this way.. watered down invocations to everyone including Gaia. And possible use of prayer rugs to show 'solidarity'.

No thanks.
_______________________________________________________

How Japan Compares With The World In English Proficiency

or

'Which Furriners Speak English Good?'.. note the Dutch rank #2 to the Norse. Why do the Dutch seem to have a more North American, than British, accent? Dunno.

Texas History Re-Writ

2011-04-20T14:14:00.001-04:00

President Obama: "Texas has always been a pretty Republican state, for, you know, historic reasons."

'Aggresive Reporter' Interview seen here: NPR
LBJ? Sam Rayburn? Lloyd Bentsen? Ann Richards?

And this was from a Columbia University Poli-Sci major. As far as we know.

Well, I'm not. so there's that. Reckon the girls on 'The View' will comment?

h/t Powerlineblog

What an odd coincidence!

2011-04-17T15:32:00.000-04:00

April 13, 2011
Internet gambling is coming to D.C.

April 15, 2011
FBI shuts down poker sites in major online gambling crackdown

I'm sure it's just a failure to communicate.. or something

Geeks v Suits

2011-04-17T12:25:00.030-04:00

Sometimes even cynics take Sunday off
It occurred to me after a little tiff on a soccer message-board that I'm becoming far too sarcastic and cynical in my typing. Paying too much attention to current events and news coverage of those events can do that to you. At least that's the excuse I'll use for the moment.

So I decided I would look around for some good news to comment on. There really isn't a whole lot of that, unfortunately, but I'll settle for anything the least bit neutral and I did stumble across a theme I'm pretty familiar with:

Code Monkey vs Biz monkey
- To put it another way, the eternal struggle for supremacy in the workplace of the Geek squad and the MBA mob.
The discussion seems to boil down to which is most important in the pecking order of a startup company

In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)

MBA's with buzzwords and the ability to raise a million dollars around some web idea are not scarce. They are fungible.
People who understand technology and are willing to bend it to their will, on the other hand, are scarce. They can't be found with a classified ad on Craigslist or in a blind project ad on eLance.

Which was referring to...

Read more »

.. and if you can't teach it, regulate it

2011-04-16T17:34:00.003-04:00

Not always a good idea to match up a bureaucrat with a politician/lawyer/small businessman, that has more than half a brain.

Easy pickin's ... courtesy HotAir

Of course they don't look at jobs, they just look at political leverage and tax/fee/fine possibilities.

Nor do they even attempt to address the Cost of Living multiplier effect of any energy tax.
- If tax adds one cent at the beginning of a product's supply chain, it's probably 10 cents or more at the end of it.

This tax and regulation environment explains why there's a freaking mob rush of even 'Green' industries to get out of California.

Read more »

Gore: Global Warming a lot like the Civil Rights Movement

2011-04-16T11:35:00.001-04:00

via Ed Morrissey

The Hill: Gore to young advocates: Battle industry lobbyists to turn the tide on climate

“You need to ask that question and other related questions. Don’t they see the evidence, don’t they hear what the scientists are saying, do they actually believe this lying from the large carbon polluters, that the scientists are making this up?” Gore added.
He went on the offensive against climate change deniers, citing a litany of extreme weather events – ranging from floods in Pakistan to droughts in the U.S. southwest – and noted that nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the last 12 years.

All of which has been proven bullshit by scientists NOT trying to make a buck in more funding.

Want to see Al go red-faced to critical mass? Bring up his claim that Venus is super hot because of runaway carbon warming.
Ask him what the median temperature is in Venus atmosphere where the air pressure is the same as earth sea level.
Interesting that, despite Venus being closer to the Sun and CO2 making up about 60% of its atmosphere, Venus' median air temp at an altitude equating to 1 BAR is about the same as Earth's
No Al. It's NOT like the Civil Rights movement. It's more like the Carpetbaggers era.

How Guvmint Stuff Works

2011-04-16T10:08:00.002-04:00

Back in 2005 the Science was settled. The climate was warming like never seen before and we were causing it.
The UN wanted its share of the carbon mitigation/reparations pie but it had to provide something to justify the shakedown... so it put some eager interns to the task and somehow found an estimate of 50 million climate change refugees by 2010.

And that story remained on their website right up until this week.

Anthony Watts has the story of the inept effort to 'disappear the inconvenient facts':

The UN “disappears” 50 million climate refugees, then botches the disappearing attempt

How much credibility should you give any group, which YOU indirectly fund, that attempts to cover up their mistakes rather than simply say they were wrong and explain how it might have happened?
_____________________________________________________
More from WUWT, this time real climate science.
Ocean cold/warm water fronts mix CO2 much more than previously thought

Read more »

More Pie?

2011-04-16T00:15:00.000-04:00

Look at this pie again!

- Townhall: Michael Ramirez

via Ace:
Another way of looking at that pie. Take those numbers, Divide by 100 MILLION

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Need a video.. there's yet another way of seeing it.....
Read more »

Two Signs of the Times: Lady Liberty Faux and Personal Massagers

2011-04-15T14:12:00.001-04:00

Post office uses image of Vegas Liberty statue for stamp by accident

- somehow seems fitting, dunnit!

Walgreens as a Sex Shop?

- yeah, I've been noticing those 'personal items' sections have been getting more and more 'in yer face'.

Oh.. I almost forgot: a little bonus sign of the times:

Carbon-neutral Bra's

- Funny, I thought that problem was solved in the sixties.

How much longer till AKC comes clean on Rotties and Pit Bulls?

2011-04-15T10:40:00.001-04:00

Yet another tragic story of child killed by family pet..

Mom: Baby Attacked, Killed By Dog

Police are investigating the death of a 7-month-old baby whose mother said was attacked by the family dog.

Katrina Mitchell called 911 Tuesday afternoon saying her infant daughter had been attacked by the family's Rottweiler.

This is a tragic story, yet anecdotal, and we only hear about these things because of the ubiquitous capacities of the internet. But one thing is clear when you read enough of them; you never hear that the family Jack Russell Terrier, or Labrador Retriever attacked the baby. Last one I recall that was not a Pit Bull or Rottweiler was a Great Dane. And while it MAY have happened, I cannot remember a family German Shepherd (Alsatian} attacking a child.
Dog 'Experts' explain the attacks by those two ferocious breeds away by saying they were improperly trained or socialized.
Sorry but Bullshit! We all can't ship our puppies off to Cesar Millan to be trained properly.

Read more »

Reporter Snookered by Warmists?

2011-04-12T22:04:00.002-04:00

WUWT: Fish carried up a mountain on backs of llamas to escape global warming

The endangered vendace, that has been in Britain since the Ice Age, is in danger of dying out as lakes and rivers warm up because of man made global warming.
.....
Lord Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency, said British species have to be protected from climate change.

"In addition to the anticipated warming of lakes and rivers, we may also see an increase in the occurrence of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.

"All of these could have an impact on much of the native wildlife in England, especially aquatic species such as the rare and specialised vendace, so we are taking action now to conserve the existing populations."

Emph mine.

Now comes the determination: Is the reporter just stupid/incompetent or a liar.

Her own readers took her to school in the comments, here
If you notice, her readers are better at research vetting the facts than she is.
And what will she write if the colony fails because water temp is too low?

I'll go easy on her: She is probably one of those who labored away in J-school 'to make a difference'
- so she is just an idiot, trusting in 'EXPERTS'. Experts at getting funding for their organizations.

New Improved Federal Budget Pie Chart

2011-04-12T15:33:00.003-04:00

User Friendly Pie Chart

- Townhall: Michael Ramirez

This was done just prior to the 'agreement' but I guess you can see the 'crumb factor', right?

As it turns out, those crumbly 'cuts' weren't all that, anyway. CBS NEWS:

Many of the cuts appear to have been cuts in name only, because they came from programs that had unspent funds.
For example, $1.7 billion left over from the 2010 census; $3.5 billion in unused children's health insurance funds; $2.2 billion in subsidies for health insurance co-ops (that's something the president's new health care law is going to fund anyway); and $2.5 billion from highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation.
About $10 billion of the cuts comes from targeting appropriations accounts previously used by lawmakers for so-called earmarks - pet projects like highways, water projects, community development grants and new equipment for police and fire departments. Republicans had already engineered a ban on earmarks when taking back the House this year.
Republicans also claimed $5 billion in savings by capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an arcane bookkeeping rule -- used for years by appropriators -- placing a cap on spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to claim the entire contents of the fund as "budget savings." The savings are awarded year after year.

Read more about it at AoS:
Suckers! We were fooled again.

The total amount appears to be somewhere between $8 and $14 billion actually cut.

That's out of $1,650 Billion shortfall this year. Genius!

Note: Comments disputing the numbers will be accepted and researched and corrected if need be. Comments pointing at something else - like 'Soze yer mom!' will be sent where they belong: the shitcan.

Trump and the Birther Nonsense

2011-04-12T15:02:00.003-04:00

Just a few weeks after Hawaii's Governor said he was going to end it once and for all, then didn't have anything new to offer, Trump has restarted the controversy. .
It's ridiculously distracting.
But let's put the blame for this where it REALLY belongs: On the State of Hawaii's stupid privacy laws. Only the subject can see the original certificate.

The records dept, as directed by state legislature, of Hawaii skates around the issue here:
Dept of Health faq on Obama's vital records

The pertinent clause is

2 Index Data

Haw. Rev. Stat. §338-18(d) states, “Index data consisting of name and sex of the registrant, type of vital event, and such other data as the director may authorize shall be made available to the public.” Refer to link above for HRS §338-18.

Index data consisting of name and sex of the registrant, and type of event is made available to the public. The director, in accordance with HRS §338-18(d), has not authorized any other data to be made available to the public.

Once the election was over it's done. Unless there's absolute outright provable fraud, and there's no real indication of it, the whole thing is moot. What's important is that it doesn't happen again.

But dont hold your breath... you're going to just have to trust authority.

2010-12-14T12:02:00.022-05:00

Long, Long Ago...

Reminisces of youth, and other disjointed crap.

I just turned 68 and of course got a lot of congrats and remarks on my facebook page.
To all those peeps, thanks. I understand. I also got asked why I missed our fiftieth reunion which most celebrated this year.

FIRST, I happened to have been called to Canton in August and September, to assist my youngest on a major renovation on his twenties vintage Sears house. This consisted of lopping off everything above the 2nd story ceiling joists and building all new from there up. The crew consisted of me, him, his two teenage boys and their friends. In other words, he did the work and I helped. And they mostly watched, humped some lumber, and swept up now and then.

- I did make it to Homecoming though. There's that.

2010-06-13T09:07:00.001-04:00

No Comment needed...

heh...

2010-06-06T13:38:00.006-04:00

Dumb Soccer Apology of the Week

Every World Cup Brings out the grouches who don't understand the game, think it's boring and just as soon as their baseball game is over or while they wait for the latest Pro Rasslin' PPV, sit down and dash off a letter to their local paper telling us exactly how boring it is.

Sadly some papers let someone who ALSO doesn't really get it handle the response. That's case this week with an editor of the Columbus Dispatch:
Soccer takes a few kicks from guilt-ridden uncle

Mr. Stein: It’s nice to see that there are others (Mailbox, last Sunday) who find soccer a bit yawn-inspiring.

I think the last sentence in your reply best made the point: “Soccer is an equalizer; anybody can play it.” It does even the playing field, I suppose. But in this case, it seems to flatten it.

Bravissimo? For most, I’m sure this is true. “Boringissimo” is what guiltily comes to mind for me, even as I dutifully watch my nieces play it.

— Ron _____ by e-mail

Ron: Soccer is not for everyone, obviously, but it sure seems to me that the World Cup is strong enough that even the staunchest blue-blooded American sports fan would find reason to tune in. Do your nieces know you’re a closet hater? Bad Uncle Ron.

Since I can't get to the original letter, we have to refer to that. The 'Soccer is an equalizer' statement obviously means that all you need is a ball or something that looks something like a ball, some open space and you can play soccer.

Sadly some take it to mean that anyone can play the game and equate that to the excitement factor. As I said, some of these guys are baseball fans.. Do you know what the average Brit or European soccer fan says about baseball? That it's 'a game for English schoolgirls (Rounders) and boring as hell.'

Here's some more ideas:
- Golf is a great equalizer, anyone can play it.
- Chess is a great equalizer. Anyone can {try to} play it.

And how about 'Basketball is the Great Equalizer'....

Well, I'm sure you get the idea. Come ON!!! It's NOT like soccer is sucking up hours and hours of sportcenter every week. And someone please ask me what I think of Ultimate Fighting as a sport.

2010-06-04T13:04:00.003-04:00

Whither Neanderthal?

The advancement of human civilization is owed to TRADE. Period.
- With a hat tip to Bishophill blog

It's been proposed for some time that the Neanderthal died out because the Human understood, and perhaps invented, the concept of barter.
Free trade may have finished off Neanderthals

Shogren tested his theory with simulations of population growth. He even gave the Neanderthals, who were larger than Homo sapiens, a head start by assuming they were better hunters and individually brought home more meat - which may or may not be true.

But because humans were allowed to trade, in two of three similar simulations, they overcame this initial handicap and ousted the Neanderthals within 7000 years. In the third simulation, the two ended up co-existing.

Now, Matt Ridley has come out with a book: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
in which he proposes that progress is based on expansion of the concept of free trade.

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.
The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.
In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.

Think about all ancient civilisations that you've read about. Isn't it true? The Roman Empire - trade. The Chinese: trade (Remember: they were initially just a bunch of feudal tribes.)
One can easily assume that the Neanderthal were 'self-sufficient' hunter gatherers, much like the Australian aborigine, and had no need to trade other than with the next group. They instead migrated to follow the resource.

And let's look at what happens when trade is restrained. Ever wonder why the Pacific is full of 'Polynesians'.. EXCEPT for Australia? Why there were no Abos in New Zealand and no Maoris in Australia? To this day, the Australian native race follows a different path; The path of nomadic self-sufficiency.

And why did Columbus sail west? Because Italy insisted on controlling trade with China. Why did the US break from Great Britain? Restraint of trade.

Why did the German, French and even Spanish colonial systems fail? Restraint of trade.. in order of naming them, there, the trade was all one-way.
Why did the Japanese Empire rise and fall so spectacularly? Restraint of trade and Elitist hubris in the course of it. If the Japanese had even offered the appearance of equal and fair trade for goods and services, the populations in their expansion might have reacted differently. But they all hated the Japanese and some do to this day.

Alternatively the English had a benefit, they moved to the colonies and molded their lifestyles to suit. Same with the Dutch. There's notable exception available there for debate, but you can't deny the home population ended up absorbing the best of the conquering culture.

Now this brings us to the uncomfortable realizations of the above concept, which is:

Trade or be Traded.

If we could take the way-back machine and somehow do away with the African Slave Trade and instead, only admit to Western Expansion, it seems to me that the African Negroid race might be in danger of extinction. I don't mean just the English part of the human trade, I mean going back millennia and stopping Bedouin cultures from dealing in it.

This is 'controversial', to say the least, but this is what maddens me when I hear Reparationist babblings. If there had been no slave trade.. meaning no value in their lives.. the frank alternative would have been to isolate and decimate the population. That's what the Japanese would have done. And the Chinese before them. It's not conjecture, it's empirical fact.

But that didn't happen and there is no possibility of the black race dying out. Society and Culture evolves and with that comes the much ballyhooed 'Diversity'. Never mind it had to do with slavers.

So.. that connects us with the fate of the Neanderthal. That's all good, in the end, right?

Not according to Libtards like Georges Monbiot. Here's what he has to say about Ridley and his book:
The man who wants to Northern Rock the Planet

Brass neck doesn’t begin to describe it. Matt Ridley used to make his living partly by writing state-bashing columns in the Daily Telegraph. The government, he complained, is “a self-seeking flea on the backs of the more productive people of this world … governments do not run countries, they parasitise them.”(1) Taxes, bail-outs, regulations, subsidies, intervention of any kind, he argued, are an unwarranted restraint on market freedom.

Then he became chairman of Northern Rock, where he was able to put his free market principles into practice. Under his chairmanship, the bank pursued what the Treasury select committee later described as a “high-risk, reckless business strategy”(2). It was able to do so because the government agency which oversees the banks “systematically failed in its regulatory duty”(3).

On 16th August 2007, Dr Ridley rang an agent of the detested state to explore the possibility of a bail-out. The self-seeking fleas agreed to his request, and in September the government opened a support facility for the floundering bank. The taxpayer eventually bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of £27bn.

So.. there you have it. Monbiot does what Moonbats ALWAYS do: they excoriate the messenger rather than debate the concept.

NEVER MIND that Northern Rock was put in the same position as financial institutions in the US by the same government meddling in financials.

To wit: creating the bags of soon to be worthless instruments and encouraging trade in them.

I mean to say, this resulted in a de-facto restraint on trade by over-governance. The inevitable result is same as happened centuries ago, the Tea Party.

You see, the educated and informed always believe they are educating and dealing with Neanderthals, that we are unable to grasp nuance and needful of enlightened guidance.

Thank God ancient humans didnt have the time for that. They were busy trying to negotiate with the people over the horizon.

2009-10-14T12:30:00.004-04:00

Signs 'I'm past it' - selling my Mustang 'SVO Convertible'

A 1988 Mustang "SVO Convertible". Born in my own driveway/garage.

Yes, that's a custom grill opening treatment, cut out the LX bar.
I took pride in the fact that it looked so familiar but no-one had ever seen one just like it before. Double takes from other Mustangers were precious!

This car was my last car freak effort, after I'd built a couple XR4 ti's for my two oldest sons and put together at least 4 79-85 heaps for other kids.

I mean I used to be able to ID really small differneces and models easily. Now I find I cant ID the latest Mustangs on sight.. couldn't even tell the diff between and 09 and 10 without 'em side by side. That sux.

I modified the original LX with
Rear Running gear from a 1984 SVO (anti-wrap bars) and a Front full K-member from 1986 SVO
(Obviously 5 lug)
Aftermarket 15" wheels

86 TC Engine and ECU, Short Block needs rebuilt. Who cares, though... When someone answers the ad, I'll throw in extra TC/XR4 engine running fine when pulled, plus another cracked-seat head from 86 SVO, both stored in-gar ten years. Crap 'shrouded chamber' head for 88 2.3 N/A is in car.
I paid a 'pro speed shop $750 to redo the short block and they eff'ed it up royal. NEVER go to a 'speed shop that adverts on regular local tv. That's why I'm throwing in the extra 'good engine' free.

Turbo spins but needs rebuilt, var 2.3 turbo-FI parts includ orig 84 SVO turbo. Various Intercooler and turbo parts and extra SVO IC body. Several ECU's.

Several T-5's from 2.3's includ original from 84 SVO with bad 2nd gear synchro included.

Scoop orig, grafted from deer-hit 84 hood.

This car is a full resto-project, though it should be streetable with engine change and new fuel pump, started okay till fuel pump quit running key-on, relay engaged. Rust condition when stored was fair to moderate, by current standards for 88 vintage for SW OHIO. IOW, passenger/driver floor to firewall transition probably needs attention. Trunk lip bad.
Driver side doorskin, rocker panel and rear fender flare was replaced by me, thus not professional, Body work over that was by pro, but he didnt rustproof the trunk lip, and he radiused the scoop graft part line (against my wishes) to factory appearance, thus it cracked.

Interior: Stock LX Red, 'fair'. Carpet needs replaced. Top Fair, pads discolored, original - not repl'd with top.

Also have var wire harness from XR4/TC's.

Throw in Flowmaster stk# 42553, NIB.

All stuff listed obviously sold as-is. The car and stuff has been stored over ten years. I guess I'm never going to reaquire 'the jones'. Coming back to 'car freak status' only happens once in life, I suppose. Or twice.. for me; from early twenties to late thirty's, then after ten years off, to late forty's early fifty.

Dont respond here... this isnt an ad. It's a statement of pride in what I've done AND that I've lost interest in fixing up this stuff.
Look up Mustang club adverts in SW ohio to get contact info.
I dont want to haggle. Dont want to catalog and list everything. Dont want to drag car out of shed and photograph everything.

I'm only gonna ask $1000 for all the above. If that's really too much, guy better make a case for his offer.

Any idiot just saying "What will you take, cash, right now?" will be asked to leave premises. Those guys piss me off royal. Last two times I sold cars, I did state selling price and that happened. Both times the idiots showed up later and asked where the car was. I just smiled.

Anyone showing up without trailer will be asked to put up $100 earnest money cash to hold it for ten days, N-R of course. Ever have someone ask you to hold something 'till tomorrow? Yeah.. right.

Also will discount 79-86 Fox dashpad, NOS never installed but out of box, and correct for SVO, for $150 to car buyer.
$250 otherwise.

I'm a prince among men!

2008-08-29T20:33:00.008-04:00

What they're saying...

AP: Palin would be 'fragile' president

MADISON, Wis. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would make a "pretty fragile" president, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton said Friday as politicians trotted out their talking points on Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's surprise vice presidential pick.

- Then WHY are most conservative bloggers ecstatic? I dont think these people understand exactly how Palin got where she is.

That Includes O'Reilly just now on his show... he thinks she's lightweight. He hasnt watched this clip of her on US Energy Policy, including criticizing Dubya for his plea to Saudi's to increase production:

But then O'Reilly notes this:
Under Breaking News banner on MSNBC: "How many houses does Palin add to the McCain ticket?" Seriously.. video

From OpenLeft

She's appealing and well spoken on TV but she said several times this year it was unlikely she'd be picked as VP... maybe because she knows she's not capable? But she's ambitious and competitive so what the hell why not.

How is she going to campaign full time with a baby? Is that any way to treat your child? Can she handle the VP duties and also raise a baby, a 7 year old, and a 13 year old?

My friends, please welcome the Mayor of Wasilla and her eskimo First Gentleman.

- -- - - -

A Kos Kid says Palin not only wants to outlaw abortion, she belongs to a SECRET SOCIETY that wants to outlaw CONTRACEPTION!!!
- I expect he doesnt think anyone will actually READ the link he provides.
- - -- - - -
Oh, hell... it's too much to keep up with, just check out this google search and wonder if they can spell it "Miss Ogeny"

On Craigslist

Sarah Palin swimsuit

got a be a pic out there somewhere. Will the religious hardliners vote for a woman that was in a swimsuit competition?

Their counterpart taliban wouldn't.

2008-08-29T18:26:00.004-04:00

Whooaaaa! First REAL Palin 'scandal'?

On kos:
Palin's faked "pregnancy"? Covering for teen daughter?

~~Supposedly David Sirota reported it on the Thom Hartmann show. Trying to find some sort of transcript for that.~~

UPDATE: I just asked David Sirota, in his own diary, whether there was anything to this. He says he never mentioned this to Thom Hartman. Knew nothing about it! Whoa!

Apparently her teenage daughter was out of school, unseen, for months, because she "had mono".

I'm not quite sure what to think of this. Seeing as how she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest maybe she's actually not a hypocrite.

Normally I'd say this is a totally private issue for them, but seeing as how she's quite willing to butt into the private lives of every other American woman, I think it's fair game.

UPDATE:

Okay, 11 comments in and already some people are crying out to delete this. So I'm adding a poll:

Well, That's somewhat refreshing, coming from kos. But the PREMISE presented is a little troubling.
- - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - -
UPDATE: On Palin's 'Troopergate' investigation as noted in the post below, FloppingAces has the skinny
- Between choices of "Something or Nothing", looks like Nothing.
Bottom line - Palin fired a guy she appointed. Where's the beef? Actually she didnt even fire him; she said he wasnt doing well in that role, wanted to move him to one he was expert in and he declined.

2008-08-29T10:51:00.006-04:00

McCain Rolls the Dice with Palin

Gotta admit ... he's still the Maverick.

She has not much more executive experience than anyone else on these tickets. And the pundits are saying that it's a mistake because Biden, in face to face will tear her apart. That remains to be seen; what does McCain know that we don't? I bet she will surprise.

Her baggage is that she's conservative. But that's her strong point too. Ted Stevens and other corrupt GOP Rep are also baggage, but she ran for Gov and won on a 'throw the bums out' platform.

The scandal to uncover.. she's quarreling with the chief law enforcement officer in Alaska about his failure to fire his relative on the AHP. It may be uncovered as a personal vendetta as her sister was involved. Or not.

UPDATE: Time: Dems go after Palin

They'd better watch out... she's no Dan Quayle... or even Geraldine Ferraro. For some reason some Dems say Ferraro was a disaster. I dont recall it that way. I liked her then, I still like her and thought she was the strong suit of that ticket.

Additional points: Palin dismissed her security detail, sold the 'Governor's airplane'. Fought the Oil companies' pipeline plan. Fought the state GOP on several 'old boy' fronts.

But ThinkProgress triangulates on the Brother in Law situation.

So.... if her staff HADNT pushed to fire the guy... it would have also been seen as 'insider corruption', right?

Oh.... you think she will hesitate for one minute to throw Ted Stevens in front of the bus and back over him, herself?

Typical Lefties; grasp at any straw... let's hope they keep doing that.

And.. sigh.. she was FOR taxing 'windfall Oil Co profits'??!! So much for her being in 'Big Oil' pockets. {Sarah.. there's NO SUCH thing as a 'Corporate Tax'!!!!}

Talkleft's Big Tent Democrat is impressed and thinks Obama had better tread lightly

2008-08-27T01:27:00.002-04:00

Penn & Teller: World Peace!

In which the "Bullshit!" artists cut away the drivel and drive a stake in the heart of partisanship.. in their own inimitable way!
Linking to the LGF three part embed from Youtube. Dont worry, there's no editorial comment there. It's here:

Got that, you morons?

No subsidies, no tariffs. No tax breaks to 'even things out'. No long lasting sanctions or embargoes... no matter WHO or WHY or how much money their expats piss into your campaign slush funds.
No Diplomatic Immunity for two bit chiselers from half-horse petty fiefdoms. They embezzle from the UN, they go to jail. They rape and pillage the people they're supposed to keep safe, they get turned over to the victims' families in the middle of the night.

2008-08-26T21:46:00.003-04:00

Farting Contests can be fun......

But, sooner or later, someone drops a turd and spoils it.

Thus, I've at least temporarily shut down political commenting on a soccer site forum I mod and invited an eclectic group of people from there to post and comment on here.

I have no idea if they will and I have no idea what they're gonna say. Judging from the first couple guys {howdy Paineist and Indigo} who accepted i probably wont agree with 'em all the time, either. But it'll be fun trading the harangues, anyway.

Maybe I'll at least get the blog-ometer back up to ten a day or so.
An open blog for comments on whatever.

2008-06-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

Carnival of Cretins

Well, kids.. today we have a surplus of idiocies to share:

Juan Cole repeats Ahmadinejad's ridiculous claim that the US planned to kidnap or assassinate him on his recent trip to Baghdad.

Even Cole's commenters found that to be just a little too far out.

Pat Buchanan claims the Holocaust was preventable.

If Britain had only not guaranteed Poland's safety, of course. Because then there would have been no larger war. Never mind he had started terrorizing Jews from the outset.

Finally Rep Hinchey retracted what he said here:

Link: sevenload.com

- sorry, I dont buy the retraction. First Maxine Waters threatened it, now Hinchey. When under stress you say what you really mean. I do, dont you?

2008-06-16T12:14:00.000-04:00

Ross Perot is Back!

Thanks to 'fulhamag' on the FulhamUSA non-soccer subforums, we get to see this little gem of a PowerPoint presentation on the state of our country's economy and dire warnings on the future, if something is not done about curbing entitlement legislation.

Suicidal Spending

- Perot's foreword is here: Perotcharts{dot}com

Watch the entire thing... and please think about what you are seeing there, before you grab onto a single kernel of truth. Consider it in its entirety; The truth is not always able to slap you in the face.
I fully expect some to use that presentation selectively as fodder for their views on particular administrations, but the presentations do not reflect the true states of the economies, should changes not have been enacted.

Example: The late nineties budget surpluses.

This has been used to show that the Clinton Administration with the Republican fiscal conservative congress produced what we all want. True.. and False. Dont forget that a large part of the economy at that point in time was based on speculative gross product...i.e; the Internet Boom which fueled huge growth in the IT and Commercial Real Estate sectors. In the end much of the 'Product' was vaporware, much of the taxable income based on jobs which were a result of that boom.

The conclusions I draw are simple:

1. We cannot tax ourselves out of deficit. It LOOKS like we could if you accept one or two charts at face value, but the entirety of the piece shows otherwise.

2. The proposals for a National Health plan must be very carefully considered in the light of what we can see as a result of current limited programs.

In a practical sense, attempts to curb mandatory Health and Retirement spending growth suffer the inevitable backlash from the 'entitled', who object to any change which might reduce their expected standards of support.

2008-06-15T17:54:00.000-04:00

A Milestone Reached

On this father's day, my son and I went to my wife's store to pick her up for lunch. Not finding her, I went to the service desk and had her paged. She didn't respond.

A few minutes later the girl at the desk went on break and saw my wife in the employee lounge.

"There was a gentleman looking for you to take you to lunch."

"Oh, what did he look like?"

"He was a fairly tall elderly man..."

The wife just couldn't wait to tell me about that.

Added:
I should also have noted that the same kid ALSO gave me my own Domain name.. thus this blogspot based rant-fest also appears on 'Pettyfoggery{dot}com'.

In the future, I'll probably use the Wordpress module he installed as well, but for now the blogger edition is reflected on the site.

2008-06-09T10:10:00.000-04:00

Oil: How long till the Europeans get smart..

.. and start protesting US oil policies?

Gasoline at $4 a gallon? If only.

As prices across America hit an average $4 a gallon over the weekend, European motorists, truckers and economic planners wrestled with fuel costs around twice as high, blamed not only on the soaring price of oil but also high government taxes levied at the fuel pump.

That has made few people happy. In the latest show of distress, Spanish truckers Monday began a blockade of their country’s border with France, lining up their rigs in a crawling strike to protest the cost of diesel. In France, farmers on their tractors did the same, offering a foretaste of a planned national strike by truckers next Monday.

- from BarcePundit, which adds:

Anyway, those guys should be protesting at the Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, UAE embassies, and not create a mess for everybody, not turning the whole country upside down in the hope thatt he government gives them some subsidies. Why don't they raise their prices, as we all do when our costs raise? Yes, it would hurt the consumer eventually, since the increase would pass along the chain, but it would allow us to either clench our teeth and pony up, or change our habits. Neither of the two possibilities sounds as holding the whole country hostage, does it?

Not very helpful, I'm afraid. Some estimates are that the top thirty percent of the market price per barrel is speculative.

If the Europeans paid attention, they'd recall those taxes were always there and it's not going to help by shifting net tax revenues over to some other economic sector in order to subsidize transportation fuel costs

What they SHOULD be looking at is the failure of the US to address its part in easing the speculation.

Things like this: Fortune: The politics of oil shale

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- You'd think this would be oil shale's moment.

You'd think with gas prices topping $4 and consumers crying uncle, Congress would be moving fast to spur development of a domestic oil resource so vast - 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone - it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

You'd think politicians would be tripping over themselves to arrange photo-ops with Harold Vinegar (whom I profiled in Fortune last November), the brilliant, Brooklyn-born chief scientist at Royal Dutch Shell whose research cracked the code on how to efficiently and cleanly convert oil shale - a rock-like fossil fuel known to geologists as kerogen - into light crude oil.

You'd think all of this, but you'd be wrong.

Last month, the U.S. Senate's Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located). Most maddening of all - at least to someone like myself not steeped in the wacky ways of Washington - the swing vote on the appropriations committee, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted with the majority even though she actually opposes the moratorium.

"Sen. Salazar asked me to vote no. I did so at his request," Landrieu told The Rocky Mountain News. A Landrieu staffer contacted by Fortune doesn't dispute this, but notes that Landrieu did propose a compromise which Republicans rejected.

That's good.. blame it on Republicans, without defining WHY they might have rejected it. But that's beside the point... Republicans have shown to not be averse to having their pockets lined with special interest money.
As long as that money doesnt come from ' big oil' which is the 'antichrist'.

For Colorado's Senators, it's easier to figure out WHY they balk.. even if that goes against their state's overall economic interest. Again, follow the money.. not far.. just to Aspen and Boulder.

It's no secret, just under-remarked that Colorado has turned blue politically in the last twenty years and much of that is due to an exodus from California of various blends of the rich liberal leisure class. Oregon doesnt want them anymore and said so at the end of the eighties.

So they move to the next best. In the process, giving credence to a view that Aspen is the center of liberal interests in Colorado and the University of Colorado is their center of 'informed thought'. Which resulted, of course, in such as Ward Churchill.

Ah, but back to oil... The interview does touch on the nut of the issue:

Quote:

Fortune: Has oil shale development always been a partisan issue or is this something new?

Sen. Allard: It is something new. The issue with the Democrats now is they want to cut off any source of carbon. And there are those in the Senate who believe the more expensive you make gasoline, the less driving people do and you force conservation by making driving so expensive people can't afford it.

Well.. the rich will always be able to afford to drive, whatever the price. We arent talking about the guys who live in Aspen.. or in Boulder, either.

We're talking about Joe Sixpack, who works in construction or in factories, or has his own service business. What galls the liberals is that Joe barely made it out of high school and yet has the temerity to own 2.5 cars, a motorcycle, and a boat which he uses to go waterskiing a couple weekends and one week a year.

In any JUST society, Joe would have a delivery truck, used only for business, maybe a motorcycle but a bike would would be better, and all else would ride public transit. His watersports would consist of a picnic on the riverbank and riding the ferry.

While those who invested tens thousands in their academic liberal arts education would have their salaries adjusted appropriately and they would have the toys of leisure. As befitting their learnedness and ability to expound on all things philosophical.

And if we actually started drilling in all the known fields in the US, the bottom would drop out of oil futures, and the powers that be would actually have to raise taxes to keep fuel prices up. Thus be transparent.

For now, they are content to go on pocketing cash from the leisure liberals while paying lip service to green groups.

If only we could figure a way to siphon a percentage of oil revenue from these new fields directly into the politicians bank accounts, the problem would be solved.

hat tip to InstaPundit, twice.

UPDATE:
Well, Look at this... via ProteinWisdom...According to the Guardian the highly educated and informed people at the World Bank have come to the same conclusion I, using only common sense, came to years ago.
Does that make me smart? No... it makes the case for stepping back and thinking about what you are really doing.

2008-01-06T11:54:00.001-05:00

Noam Chomsky

Living proof you don't actually NEED ten thousand monkeys at typewriters. Just one trained as a 'semanticist' will do.
- pettyfog

That's a 'copyright' statement for me, on that. I haven't read that anywhere alse, anyway

What brought it to mind was I just read Charon QC's Blawg Review where he says he found Chomsky's video lecture on the US election system 'fascinating'.

Is that some gentle irony poke at 'quasi-intellectual gibberish'? Dunno.. I've never totally mastered British wit.

2007-12-20T12:03:00.000-05:00

Two California Families

Fred Dominguez had moved from LA to Northern California to be near his kids, who lived with their mother, Lisa Sams.
He took the three older ones, 12 thru 18, out to cut a christmas tree Sunday, after church, and they had not been heard from since. The worst was feared as a storm had moved in on Sunday and now another was coming and there was little window for an air search.

Lisa Sams said she had faith in Fred as he was a good dad and wouldn't let anything happen to his kids. Her mother said the same about Fred, but said he had no experience in the wild while the kids did. Nonetheless she was sure they would stick together as a family. A ground search, headed by the local authorities and Fred's best friend who is also Lisa's fiance, had found nothing and the situation was grim

They were found just 24 hours ago (Wednesday afternoon) on the last pass of a CHP chopper as the snow began to fall again; they had taken refuge in a culvert and laid out help messages in the snow.

They were checked out and treated for hypothermia and frostbite, at the local clinic and released a few hours later. Alexis, 15, was treated again for frostbite this morning.

- - - - -- - - - -

Earlier, Wednesday, it broke that Jamie Lynn Spears, 16 year old sister of Brittany, and a role model for sub-teens, as a star on Nick's Zoey 101, is pregnant by her HS boyfriend. She has stated that she is moving back to Louisiana to 'raise her baby in a 'normal environment'.

In related news, it's rumored that a parenting book being authored by the girls' mother has been shelved by the publisher.

UPDATE: The Spears girls' mom wont miss the revenue from that 'parenting guide' as she seems to have sold the story rights on her daughter's underage pregnancy for $1 Million.

Isnt that interesting.

On the OTHER hand, look at the Dominguez story again, the divorced mother's faith in, and support of, the childrens' father. The fact that the divorced mother's fiance is also the divorced father's best friend.

You tell me which family is mature and sophisticated.

2007-11-17T18:39:00.000-05:00

Gold Standard? Why not something we HAVE already.. Oil!

In a post on Megan McArdle's blog, Why is the Gold Standard Crazythere's plenty of dicussion on the dollar's woes in the international market and how that might have been addressed if we were on the Gold Standard, as Ron Paul proposes.
An interesting throwaway in the comments section got me steaming.
Gold is God's money, he created it and all can access it freely. And he is not making any more.
That's silly. If that's so, let's outlaw trading in gold and let God set his own price for it.
The same can, for practical purposes, be said for diamonds. I mean natural diamonds ARE being made, but no one is waiting around for them.
Anyone want to go on a diamond standard? And of course all gold is not yet found.

It seems to me that using any traded commodity as a backstop presents the same problems. Let's face it, the current PRACTICAL currency backstop is another commodity: OIL.
Everyone who thinks a barrel of oil costs $90 to produce and deliver raise hands. The REAL value is around $25-$30, if I'm not mistaken.

I have a serious question.. when gold and silver were used as currency, what was their actual practical value?
Please name a product that, of necessity, included gold or silver. And no, jewelry and coinage DOESNT COUNT!
I can only think of medical instruments, or containers which needed anticorrosion/antibacterial properties.

The use of those precious metals as actual currency declined at one and the same time as they became necessary in industrial products... in essence, electronics.

Which brings us back to diamonds, considering that world goods production wouldnt suffer a damn bit if all natural diamonds suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke, we could simply fill the void where they were used in production with different processes or replacements that we have manufactured.
Considering DeBeers, Russia and the difficulty in establishing value, no one in their right mind wants to use diamonds as currency.

Yet we are, in effect, using oil as the standard, and letting trading cartels set the price.

Oil is tied to every indicator of productivity and we shun management of it; while, like Russia with its diamonds, we sit on vast reserves.

Or do we shun management of oil?

I sincerely doubt that we would be talking about the currency's financial distress if oil was trading at its true cost: $35. Which is a propitious number. Because, for the longest time, at the end of the Gold Standard, the set value per oz was.... $35.

But it was a false value. In other countries gold was on the commodities market and the price fluctuated accordingly; which made it REALLY difficult to have a real monetary policy when your currency was based on something with only a virtual value on the one hand but was affected by industrial needs {electronics}on the other.

We have the same problem today. The price of oil is a virtual value.

We could produce and deliver enough oil, from our known reserves, to replace our current imported crude at a cost of $35.

Sure, we ARE managing oil.. only in the wrong direction. The inflated price of oil is being addressed by the proponents of 'manmade global warming' theory.
The remedy there is, of course, to make the backstop commodity obsolete, thus reduce price, in favor of increasing "Human Productivity per bbl Used". Sounds sort of similar to the argument for replacing gold as the standard, doesnt it?

This is a strategy, though, that depends on the demonization of the commodity, sort of like saying "Gold is the instrument of the devil" or gold promotes a deadly disease.
In oil's case, that relies on the literal temperature of the globe and tying carbon to it. If we enter another tangible ice age or cooling, all is lost, and oil is still going to be artificially overpriced.

If we simply opened up all our oil ranges and started producing and setting the price at 'cost plus' in the free market, the price of oil would plummet back down to true value.
And VOILA!!! Suddenly the dollar would regain its 'health' and no one is going to be quibbling much about how much of the currency is held in foreign hands.

Sure there would ALWAYS be a hedge built into the value based on perceived future scarcity, but it would be more wisely addressed at maybe ten percent. And, just as in falling sky predictions of 90 years ago, that 'peak point' just keeps getting pushed out.

It wouldnt kill TRUE development of alternatives, either. There are technologies which can address replacing $35 oil. Of course grain ethanol isnt one of them. And it just might not be profitable to slash/burn eco-forest to grow ethanol beets, either.

2007-11-15T12:49:00.000-05:00

And the KELO Keeps Rollin' Along...

via Instapundit:

Drew Carey, in Reason, on
Eminent Domain used against the poor

I guess you dont have to be all that old to recall being taught that Eminent Domain was for PUBLIC PROJECTS, for use by all the community, not to increase tax revenue.

While you're on Reason's Site, check the sidebar for their previous articles on KELO. Especially, read this one.
As suspected, the intellectual liberal elite see nothing wrong with it.

2007-11-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

Comfy in My Neo-Con Skin

One good thing about the Ron Paul campaign is that I've faced up to my political niche.

I'm not just basing it on the fact his views are archaic and his remedies, like reverting to the 'Gold Standard', impossible to enact in the real world. Or that his support is drawn primarily from various fringe groups most of which seem to have anti-semitic ties. Or that Pat Buchanan, a 'classic, Big C' Conservative is less odious in his world and domestic views.

I guess it goes back decades to my reflections on how the US might have done better in Indo-China. I shocked a lot of people I know when I said, then, that I believed that emerging countries indeed would work better under socialist-style central planning, while encouraging private enterprise on the personal and local level. I would qualify that, of course, that this should be accomplished under the guidance and advice of some super-national body.

Like the UN.. Yeah, I know. The UN has devolved into the LAST international body you'd want supervising any nation. But it COULD have been an amalgam of the IMF and WTO, couldn't it? Unfortunately there's corruption problems within those groups as well.... but I digress.

At any rate, OTHER than how I feel about the above anomaly to anyone who considers himself basically conservative, I dont think it is me that has changed so much as the Republican Party and the libertarian and Conservative segments of the party.

I believe in social safety nets but not in entitlements.. like S-CHIP expansion.

I believe the US should avoid ANY international agreements that restrict its global influence, differing with SOME Neo-Cons on Law of the Sea Treaty.
But if we did what Ron Paul advocates, the result of that withdrawal to isolationism would only result in some other power, most likely China or Russia stepping in to fill the void. Does ANYONE want that?

And I believe in 'Nation-Building'. Which has been disparaged by the left as the US attempting to build hegemony by installing governments in its likeness. Of course they KNOW that's not the case from practical review of actual events.
Even the original vision of a 'new Iraq' built on their existing power bases.

REAL politics insists that we have to work closely with governments such as Saudi Arabia which has an absolutely odious human rights record.

REAL politics has us keeping former -and possibly future- enemies, like China, close with trade ties when possible.

And you know what? If our foreign interventions really resulted in hatred in those subject states, then the average guy in Viet Nam would hate us.

And, as many returning GI's and folks like Megan McArdle have found, that is simply not the case.

But the interesting conundrum on why it is the citizenry of our former and current allies seem to 'hate us' more than those of our former and current enemies is grist for a whole other post.

2007-11-11T20:34:00.000-05:00

To Never be Spit on Again!

Via Instapundit:

Gifts of Thanks for the Troops

... the military is much smaller now than during World War II, leading some analysts to posit that a rift exists between soldiers and citizens and that those making sacrifices on the battle front are disconnected from the society whose freedoms they defend. The American people are oblivious to the war, they claim, as well as to the men and women who are fighting it. Some have even suggested that the only way to close the gap is to return to conscription.

But these observers of the social scene have never served in Iraq.

Those of us overseas know that "support the troops" is more than a slogan. Here we are besieged by what my master sergeant calls "paper love," the cards, letters, posters and other gestures of support sent by people across America. The paper love is often accompanied by packages of snacks and comfort items. Some mail comes from family members, but even more is sent by private citizens and troop support organizations. The war has inspired a remarkable level of civic involvement that goes largely unnoticed -- except by those of us in the field or recovering stateside.

Read the comments, though. Evidently because Major Elizabeth Robbins, US Army, wrote this and it was printed in the Washington Post, some could not resist applying their views as to the war.

I swear to you Elizabeth, that if ever again, our soldiers and sailors in uniform are accosted and spit upon as they were after Viet Nam, there will likely be some witness that will take umbrage at it and beat that sniveling bastard into the ground, at pain of arrest and conviction for assault.

We are proud of our military and the job they have done as their duty, whether or not they personally agreed on the justification for the war.

And they can be proud of their sacrifices, as we are of them.. and the families of the fallen who have sacrificed in their own right.

2007-11-02T20:27:00.000-04:00

'ex-Liberal in Hollywood' is Back..

And with a vengeance!

Moonbat Articulates DNC Plan

I missed him.

2007-11-02T19:01:00.000-04:00

Climate Change and Terror - both 'spooks in the night'

Category:
Effete Intellectual Posturings on 'Politics of Fear'

Climate Change and the ‘Politics of Fear’

In The NY Times, by Sewell Chan:

Is the environmental movement, like the war on terror, premised on a “politics of fear”? In other words, does it try to unify people by scaring them with threats to their basic survival?

That was the provocative thesis advanced by Alex Gourevitch, a doctoral candidate in political theory at Columbia University, at a panel discussion on Tuesday evening at the New York Public Library. He was confronted by vigorous dissent from his fellow panelists and from some members of the audience.
The panel discussion was organized by n+1, a political and literary journal published twice a year, begun in 2004. A. O. Scott, a film critic for The Times, wrote in 2005 that the journal “is explicitly and without embarrassment devoted to the idea that thought can advance.”

Pretty much gives you the whole idea.

First, since the Terrorists we 'fear' have already demonstrated their intent and abilities, while we have yet to walk down Broadway with waves lapping at our ankles, they ARENT QUITE the same thing.

While the speaker on which the article is based is endeavoring to 'advance thought' those of us who ALREADY think without help from our better, more informed intellectuals have pretty much solved those problems.

I fear Islamo-terrorists about as much as I fear a mugger on the East Side of Columbus. In other words, I know he exists without someone explaining it but I will still go there if needed while remaining vigilant. If I warn someone else that they should be careful when in the same locale, am I then 'playing on their fears'?

If I am SEEN that way then am I advancing the politics of fear?

Duh.

What I ALSO dont 'fear' is global warming, whether or not it's man enhanced. For one thing, I have less hubris for my species than that. Dinosaurs did not contribute to species extinction when they ruled the earth... and we have far less influence on flora and fauna. Taking nothing away from those who are ever-vigilant.. they certainly DO point out the possibilities for the rest of us.

What MOST of us venal pedestrian types do, however, is try to make lemonade out of the possible deluge of lemons. While the wonks sit and talk and warn of impending doom, the engineers and marketers are out there warding it off. Already the reaction of the market .. based on corporate greed, dontcha know.. has resulted in advancing adoption of high efficiency transportion, heating and lighting.

Maybe THAT'S the answer to the crisis in the State Department... fire those sissies who wont go Danger Close in Iraq and get some risk takers in there.

But I guess the REAL Question is: Can thought advance without a Doctoral Dissertation?

2007-10-14T13:31:00.000-04:00

Gen. Sanchez Apologizes to Media and Public

“I now regret that I devoted the first half of that speech to saying completely worthless things that didn’t merit a mention in the news reports. It’s a good thing that our wise media gatekeepers protected readers, listeners and viewers from my time-wasting remarks.”

- From Scrappleface

Heh!

2007-10-08T17:28:00.000-04:00

Lib Derangement Syndrome

Yeah, I've got it and I'm gonna admit it. Right here.
The realization came to me when I was commenting, on a messageboard, on the 'Phony Needy Kid' that the Dems put up on Saturday to berate Dubya for his veto of the SCHIP bill.

Well, that freeper put up a lot of time on his research unearthing the true facts but they didnt sway my lib debate friends one little bit.

This was the response:

"There's lies, damned lies, and then there's RNC spin doctoring" -- with apologies to Mark Twain.

Hmmm.. Would fit right on the average bumpersticker wouldnt it? And suitably devoid of rebuttal on the ACTUAL VERIFIABLE facts put up by the freeper.

And you KNOW the juices flowed right then. This is what I wrote:

You know what, I dont know why I have to put up with this. Yeah, 'Joe'... you and I are buds, outside this forum and I really like everything you write.... outside this forum ...but when I cant tell whether or not you are trolling me, I have to assume after a while you are.

If other people feel comfortable with lobbing meme grenades, without support, without backing it up... without ANYTHING to substantiate their views other than 'Everyone Knows...'
Yet NEVER feel outraged enough at their OWN party to even hazard the LEAST criticism of it. Then I have to wonder.

When a political discussion cant be held with any response other than what fits on a bumper sticker, then I wonder.

When I sense a feeling of relief that I DONT bring up issues on which the Dem talking points are unbelievably STUPID.. then I wonder.

When the Dem Lie machine does something as stupid as accuse Limbaugh of disparaging REAL soldiers who disagree with the Iraq war! then I wonder. No one who listens to Rush could believe that. The Dems know that. They dont care that they are going to make conservatives ever MORE outraged with them.

They WANT this split. They WANT this political war because they are sure their political terror machine will wear down the average guy to the point he just throws up his hands and quits. Quits Listening.. thinking.. voting.

It is the Soros/Kennedy/Clinton lie machine that wants to widen the schism they started when they LIED to Bush 41 about the tax increases and how they wouldnt use it in the next presidential campaign.

And which they exploited with the Kennedy-Bush administration 'No Child left behind' act. Once passed, the bleating about 'unfunded mandate' began. There's no NEED to fund it if schools simply teach the basics that are tested on and try to make kids understand the basics rather than teaching them liberal politics.

Dems dont give a F00k about the two party system, either. or bi-Partisanship!
Complaints on how Republicans 'hinder' the business of the Congress dont hold up on close scrutiny. The ONLY 'compromise' that counts with them is the compromise of conservative principle. They've been successful at that.

Naw... the more dummy grenades you hurl at me, the stronger I am in my convictions. The more I see of Dems and their corruption, which EASILY leaks over into everyone else on the Hill, btw, I'll not excuse GOP on their Cocktail Party feel-good politics, either.

But you all ALREADY know that. And others of you know I use caps for emphasis, not to release my primal scream. but you know that too.

But now you know I have Lib Derangement Syndrome.. or at least I will admit it. When's the last time, or the first, you saw a Lib admit they had BDS?

I think that's significant, somehow, I feel better already.

What's the next eleven steps?

Yep. That's what I wrote. But I didnt publish them on that site. I did it here. He'll likely read it anyway... but it's NOT exactly the same as calling him out.

Like I say, I like him plenty otherwise. He's a great guy, a good writer, and a talented musician. I think the brain damage is localized.

2007-10-05T23:59:00.000-04:00

Everyone Should watch the Dog Whisperer

It's on National Geographic Channel and it's more about people than animals.

2007-10-05T22:16:00.000-04:00

Sex and the Mujahadeen: The ATM courier Assassin

You guys think I post random associations! Here's another guy who sees 'connections'.

In an article in the Philly Inquirer on how the couriers were 'assassinated', the author immediately associated to the terrorist's primary recruiting and motivational tool:

Among other quotes, Wiki has this Heinlein gem (which makes me want to shut down all distractions and seriously read the guy):

Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil. Limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word 'psychology' was ever invented. It works, too.

It works, but why? Can't these people figure out that they're simply being had?

So, you say, what makes them any different from the bulk of Fundamental Christians?

From my view, plenty. I was raised Protestant, but even we had a form of personal confession.
For you that weren't raised in any church, the exhortations against lust are real, but so is the forgiveness for it. Imagine that there was NO assuaging of the earthly guilt... that ONLY in the afterlife could those urges be relieved.

For the Christian, the afterlife is taught as relieved of all lusts... in Islamism of the oppressed those lusts are fulfilled. Those who read Dante's Inferno must, like myself, think of those '72 virgins' as demons with second sets of teeth.

As a 13 year old taking catechism, I wondered about the true nature of 'Original Sin'. I thought it must be more than just sexual in nature.... and I wondered if that apple of knowledge was not lust but guilt and the subsequent rage and blame over those who shove immorality in our faces.

I think that even more in these times.

2007-04-12T10:43:00.000-04:00

Andrea Canales, I'm Calling You Out

In our world of soccer fandom, I'm nobody, she's somebody; but she has a blog like many of us.

In blogs, you write down stuff that you normally might not post or issue else where... for instance scroll down and see how I felt about the Wynalda interview.

In this post, however, she takes us to task for publishing 'off the record' comments. Saying it was not something a professional would do.
- I'm hoping she will allow me to use her view in my rants on political figures and the media. For there's many instances of 'Pro's' doing just that.

She makes good points on what should be 'journalism 101'.. and she makes good points on how this hurt Wynalda.

I'm not going to address any of the issues on how the interview happened, but here is what frosts me;

She assumes, without attempting the least bit to follow up, that just juicy parts of the interview were simply transcribed and posted with no thought of consequences and no attempt to verify the veracity of the facts.

Thus she has NO idea what went on behind the scenes.. the presumption is that we didnt care.

She doesnt see my email inbox on it. She doesnt think about whether or not I attempted to email Wynalda to get his views.

I suggest anyone reading this just TRY to find a way to email Eric or anyone else who's on the announcing staff of ESPN.. if it's not a program email link, it's hard as hell to find it, and when you do, you see that it will pass through some intern's mailbox.

She evidently didnt bother to read the interview within context of the setting that was carefully crafted in the Head and lede, let alone the intro of the interview itself.

And she certainly must not have looked at the tone of the site, and the best way to do that - other than reading OTHER articles- is to look at the site forum. There's no real ranting and raving on there, if you discount the 'politics threads', that is. We have many Brit Fulham Fans commenting on that messageboard who say the others are too 'pedestrian' for them to frequent.

So just WHO is making comments on a 'soccer-blog' without addressing all the elements?

But the MAIN thing that frosts me is she was still commenting on it. If it was 'un-pro' then ignore it and let it die.

Or is the 'uncoolness' of the interview posting just too juicy to pass up?

She's not alone; witness Rome making sure that his fans could find the site by pronouncing it phonetically, note SportCenter listing the site address for more than enough time to make sure the viewers could memorize or jot it down.

I smell fish.

2007-04-05T00:11:00.000-04:00

Beers with Jim Rome

This week I had a role in a minor sport brouhaha. I was the editor of an interview by a soccer fan with Eric Wynalda, a Hall of Fame soccer player and current ESPN Soccer Analyst, which was posted on a website I admin.

And, despite some misgivings, I left in a graphic reference by Wynalda to Jim Rome. One which, in context of the interview, was fueled by passions felt by all of us each time Rome makes a disparaging reference to our favorite sport. To wit, Wynalda spoke for all of us little guys.... and I felt it displayed the passion he had for the sport and how he felt about promoting it.

The references and threats, of course, were not literal. I'm sure that Wynalda wouldn't do physical harm to Rome any more than anyone else disagreeing with his views. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Wynalda would extend himself to prevent Rome from coming to harm.

But inactions ALSO have consequences. If I had removed that part, then the interview would have stood well enough on its own. We would have gotten a fair number of hits, though nothing like the huge number we got once word spread around the net and Rome mentioned it on his show.

The author, not a writer but a regular fan, would have objected and he would likely have posted it elsewhere, but I would have been off the hook as would the site owners.

That of course is no excuse. And I accept my responsibility for the guarded nature in which Wynalda will treat any ordinary guy wanting to talk to him in the future.
And the fact that he had to issue the boilerplate apology, not only on Rome's show but on Sportscenter.

The upshot of this, of course, is that Rome wasn't harmed in the least, only Wynalda was. Rome might even get his ratings hiked a fraction of a point And I can safely say, from the vantage point of years, that Rome might have spoken on a passionate subject in much the same way.

And that is what really bothers me; Wynalda's passion and rantings are real... and what he really think, while most viewers believe Rome's are just show biz.

Somehow, within this incident, that just doesnt seem right.

2007-03-28T10:08:00.000-04:00

Waging war against war {and stuff}

..and those who make war and those who dont care much one way or the other and those who just want to get to work and those ipod wearers and cellphone talkers and meat eaters and everyone else who consumes anything without praying to it first.

Daily Ablution, always good for poking sticks at the lunatic left has a good one here:

Towards a Deep Green Stone Age - By Any Means Necessary

About a gathering of 'concerned citizens'...

"We will broadly outline our options for confronting and dismantling civilization, the pros, cons, and considerations of each,and a sharing of resources for people interested in considering different avenues of action."
.."Is a serious meeting to address the destruction of our planet and potential effective resistance. It will include theoretical discussions of serious and confrontational strategies and tactics."

Summary: Civilization offends us we will pluck it out.

For all their moronic blather about "creating a world based on mutual aid, love, justice, and connection to the living world", inspired by "environmentalism, feminism, deep ecology, spirituality, anarchy, indigenous lifeways, anti-oppression politics, peak oil and collapse theories, and past struggles for justice", a look just under the surface reveals their real aim - to bomb us back to the stone age. Literally.

While most of us following the links in that might dismiss these nutjobs, I'd advise against it. We did the same about Islamo-terrorists {some still do}. and the danger of these lunatics aligning with Al Quaeda, with whom they fully sympathise and admire, makes a pretty effective fringe group.

I think the real problem is that it's possible for someone who is certifiably insane to actually put together a program that sounds somewhat reasonable to those who worry constantly about the earth being destroyed by us.
And these people are well on the way to certifiable lunacy.. especially considering their implausible outcomes by method used.

The desire for humanity to revert to stone age 'hunter gatherer' status totally ignores that doing so will result in only the strongest and most wily surviving their blitzkrieg against any form of industrial process.

If you looked at the backgrounds of these people, it's highly likely they fall into the urban academic. In the society they advocate, they would be the first to wither away and die.
Because the same stone age 'da Vinci' they admire for his cave paintings probably did them right after bashing in the head of the cave-painter from the next clan over in a dispute over a possum. Or, if he was vegan, a cluster of berries.

So even Ward Churchill, who preaches regularly from the pulpit of academic idiotry, though he claimed to be indian, probably never learned to live off the land. One assumes he would survive by eating fawning graduate assistants.

To wit: Only NRA members, and Pro Bass fishermen have a good chance of making through their desired holocaust. And Ted Nugent will be their prophet.

And if wishing for your own type to become extinct in the name of saving the earth for those you despise isnt insane, what is.

2007-03-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

An Old Fashioned Blog

One of the problems with being inspired to write by reading is once the habit is started, you cant get rid of it.

You change the choice of topics, but it's reading nonetheless. And it's worse when you're interested in EVERYTHING!

For example, I can give you detailed, flow sequenced, training in how auto fuel injection {almost all based on the Bosch Jetronic system, did'ja know!} works... and how to solve engine problems based on that. Of course that's one of the PRACTICAL things I have read.

But mainly I read on politics, which can drive you crazy when you pay too close attention.

So it's great and refreshingly distractive when I ran across a real old fashioned blog - two links away from Tim Worstall, of course.

Free Man in Preston is a GREAT read... the guy has everythingto appeal to a former corporate IT wonk like me. He doesnt go into the tech stuff, though... he just observes from that particular perch in what is essentially a witty diary.

Handle With Care Friday, Jan 19
“Tim, the reason you’re going nowhere,” said Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, blazing into the conversation like she’d been shot from a cannon, “is that you don’t have clearly defined goals. You don’t know where you want to be.”

What I was actually intending to say, before she’d interrupted, was that I was going nowhere until I’d finished my lunch, in response to an order from Death to fetch some stuff from the data centre. I tried explaining this to Stella but once she starts, she’s not easily stopped.

She was wearing a black trouser suit, expensive looking, finished off with orange trim. It said “I’m a not to be fucked with executive, with a hint of Hare Krishna to show my spiritual side.”
I meanwhile was wearing my new jumper, in black of course, woven from a supernaturally soft fabric, probably wool or something like it, which I was casually splattering with tomato soup. It said “Boyishly cute. Sloppy eater.”
We appeared disconcertingly colour co-ordinated.

“You want to do this and you want to do that, but all your projects end up lost in the fog. You spend your time floundering, blah, blah…”

Oh for goodness’ sake. I looked outside. Today the world through my window - streaked with a thick layer of grime following yesterday’s gales - had a soft focussed, Vaseline on the lens quality about it.
Rex the security guard was clearing up fallen debris - broken slates, the former contents of dustbins, a milk float down by the generators - striding along with slow, deliberate purposefulness. He looked like a character in a bizarre litter themed porn film. Don’t dwell too long on that.

Tabs walked by with an armful of reports and Terry said, “January’s such a miserable bloody month. Some people seem to shutdown through sheer misery.”
“Do you actually have any ambition, Tim? At all?” asked Stella.
“Yes,” I said. “For you to stop bugging me.”
“It’s beyond me,” Terry continued, lost in the dimly lit cubicle of his mind, “how anybody is ever born in September.”

Rex was fishing milk crates out of branches with a long pole. It reminded me of those hooked poles they had at school for opening windows with. Terry said that sometimes he knows how those Jehovah’s Witnesses must feel. They keep knocking on the door but they’ve long since given up hope of ever being invited in. Milk bottles were scattered on the grass like rotting apples.

Later on, after the going home bell had sounded, Stella told me how her friend Becky has been offered the chance to work in China for three months. It would be a great opportunity for her, career-wise and as “an enhancing, you know, life experience”. She’s an ambitious girl, and the bank she works for would look on it favourably if she were to go. Less favourably if she didn’t. I guess this is what today was all about.
“Just three months?” I asked.
“That’s what she said.”
“And when does she have to give her answer?”
“Possibly longer if it goes well. And if she wants to.”

Ivan the Terribly Thorough swept into the room, a one man flash-mob with a vacuum cleaner. He switched off to dust around the window sills and said that ambitions are all well and good, but handle with care.
“They’re like wishes. Allow them a little privacy,” he said, as dust spiralled skywards above the radiator.
“It’s bad luck to say them out loud,” and then he was gone.

Oh, to write like that!

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-03-10T23:52:00.000-05:00

From UK channel 4 - 75 minutes: The thread is unraveling from Enviro-Emporer Gore's New Clothes

"We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.
According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it."

So there!

2007-03-10T12:47:00.000-05:00

18 Doughty Street & : A new 'Appreciate America' movement!

The love between America and our Motherland, despite all efforts of the left in both countries, is not dead. 18 Doughty Street is a web streaming 'alternative political views source attempting to provide encouragement for those who don't buy the "Evil America" or the "BusHitler" meme.

The associated blog, BritainAmerica.com has already attracted the vultures.... who desperately attempt to keep the nonsensical Bush Bashing paradigm alive.

Comments

I am a Tory who loathes Bush.

I object to:
- misleading people over fsith-based welfare
- a scandalous fiscal record
- a remarkable disregard for the stature of the Supreme Court
- a terrible record on human rights

I would certainly have voted for Kerry.

Posted by: Mike A | March 06, 2007 at 03:09 PM

* * *

JF
Problem is most Americans have a super-individualistic mindset. Most decent Brits would regard the average American voter as selfish in the extreme. Most normal people over here would have happily voted Kerry.

Its time we decent Conservatives dissocitated ourselves from the loutish bible bashing Republicans accross the atlantic.

PS Theres a reason the Bush heartlands are referred to as the fly-over states!

Posted by: si | March 06, 2007 at 06:47 PM

* *

Scooter Libby - Don't drop the soap or you'll get what the American people have had since 2001.

Posted by: Volunteer | March 06, 2007 at 10:13 PM

* *
So if you don't love President Bush you have no 'recognizable Conservative values' according to JF. What a complete moron!

Posted by: malcolm | March 06, 2007 at 10:59 PM

Which comments of course encourage talking point circles, as we have to point out that Bush is only conservative on national security and tax-cut-fueled economic robustness. On spending initiatives, and illegal immigration, he is anything but conservative.

And of course, since I'm a fairly independent thinker, I'd like to point out a few 'simplistics' in this video ad, from 18 Doughty Street; A World without America.

In the height of the Cold War, it was common for the Soviets to claim that Russian Scientists had actually invented most everything credited to the west, including the Telephone and wireless communications {yes, I'm aware of Marconi}. As one who has read up on various technology historical claims, I'd have to say that it's indeed possible that they were correct.

Not 'probable' but possible. The difference in how those discoveries would have been handled, of course, makes the issue moot. In Czarist Russia, there would have been no appreciation of the value to the average person. In the Soviet, even more, the inventions would have been looked on with suspicion and distrust.

So what is really important is not that some technology was born or made practical in the US, but that there was a freedom to exploit it. And, unlike more restrictive societies, the products quickly trickled down to all of us.

And THAT is what makes the difference, in more ways than just market forces but political agendas as well.

Here's how the above video came about, what judges for the winning ad wanted to see:

To me, this video is more evocative than the result. Of course, we have no way of knowing that without the US, there wouldnt have been some other balancing force, perhaps Great Britain, as it is closest than any other country to our ideals... I cant even rule out Japan. But the point is that just like our humble hero in "It's a Wonderful Life" America HAS made a difference.

2007-02-19T08:10:00.000-05:00

Death of a WebSite

Matchnight.com, which a few years ago was one of the influential soccer sites in the US is shutting down on March 31.

Not only was it the official host site for the Columbus Crew, before MLS consoplidated all club sites for marketing purposes, it continued to be host for the official Crew messageboard, as well as hosting numerous other 'unofficial' MLS and USL fan oriented forums and news sites. Most of those will find new hosting resources and continue on, but it wont be easy, anymore, for fans to just click a dropdown and see what fans of the 'other sides' were saying.

But it's the forums which were the 'canaries in the mine' on this. When you see partipation on a messageboard go from hundred of posts a day, and upwards of 20 or so members and lurkers, down to 1 or 2 at a time and maybe a couple posts a day, the writing is on the wall.
No matter there is a nice layout, and occasionally good articles, it's the daily conversation that makes a website, or a happy-hour bar, for that matter.

For such a sport site is a 'community' and when the residents drift away there is no more need for the structure where the community gathers. the reason for the vacancies are legion, perhaps, and never as easy as you might think. I used to argue my politics on there, against the typical 'lib-meme' advocates who never had an answer for any of the hard questions of history. there were one or two who saw things differently, they could post reasoned responses, but it was the 'role-playing' on there which caused me to throw up my hands and quit.
I left to argue my politics on Another soccer site. and found this time I was alone... this time I didnt have 'CrewArsenal' occasionally watching my back. But, while I had to argue against the dark side on my own, at least I dont have the tantrum-throwing infants responding with various cute 'smilies' dredged in from somewhere else.. where words and reason are discarded in favor of 'attitude'.

Sooner or later, though, 'attitude' wins out. All they need do is keep on throwing their tantrums and adults leave for more serene surroundings. Which is somewhat ironic, as the only choice left for the Crew fan seems to be 'BigSoccer' which is the archtype of the restrictive, market driven site. A case where there was a product before there was a site.

Such is life, though.. and something always comes up to replace that which you love. Just waiting.

2007-02-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl Entertainment Committee for '08... Get Weird Al!

Like most occasional music fans, who NOW watch halftime mainly to see how bad the entertainment is.. no, not to see if someone's boob flops out.. I have to say that Prince's effort was among the recent best And I never much liked him. Ummm,never mind the 'Purple Rain' rendition; what a 'walk-through'!

But the PRODUCTION still sucks! The whole concept of 'filling the field with kids and air-pressure props and marching bands and light shows and smoke machines' has become a parody of itself.

And since that isnt likely to change much as the Half-Time committee seems to think any performance has to be dumbed down for us older/hick plebes, I have an great idea.

Let's go whole hog and embrace the nuttiness.

And there is no one better at that than Weird Al Yankovic. It would be a snap for him, he can take on elements of ALL the past mediocrity of the show and make us like it so much he'll get a standing ovation.

And it fits in well with the drift of the Super Bowl Commercials over the past ten years... gone are the 'break-through ads' like Apple's famous '1984'; now all the best are keyed on either irony or whimsy, or parodies of themselves.

What's even better is that Al has a great voice and an excellent music and production staff and those who didnt get the humor {or listen to the lyrics} would think they saw a really good musical performance.

And I guarantee that the day-after water cooler talk would be great.

2007-01-12T17:56:00.000-05:00

Fulham faces West Ham; and Boa Morte, Who Has a New Shirt and Something to Prove

It's been just over a week since Fulham reached a deal with West Ham United transferring Luis Boa Morte, from his Craven Cottage home of five years, to Upton Park.

Saturday, West Ham host Fulham with Boa Morte and his team looking to get even for comments made by Fulham boss Coleman about his former skipper's play this season and predictions that West Ham is relegation fodder.

These two teams drew 0-0 at Craven Cottage just three weeks ago on December 23rd. In that match, West Ham left-back Paul Konchesky was shown a straight red card.

While newly appointed manager Alan Curbishley enjoyed a dream start to his managerial duties at ther East London club with a 1-0 win over Premiership leaders Manchester United on December 16th, things have gone south since then in league play. Over the busy holiday fixture period the Hammers lost to Portsmouth and Manchester City at home and also fell to Reading by a whopping score of 6-0 on New Years day.

Last weekend the Hammers did put things together in the 3rd round of the FA Cup with a 3-0 win over strugglers League One strugglers Brighton. And Boa Morte, playing in the new shirt for the first time, figured mightily in that crucial win with an assist for the first, and a set-up for the second goal.

Fulham on the other hand comes into Saturday's match on a bit of a roll. While it is not a winning roll, it is not a losing roll either. Fulham has gone six matches in all competitions unbeaten with the last five being draws. Their last loss came at Liverpool on Saturday, December 9th.

Since the defeat at Liverpool, the Cottagers defeated Middlesbrough and drew with West Ham, Charlton, Chelsea, Watford and most recently Leicester City in the 3rd round of the FA Cup.

One might look at the recent run of form by Fulham as the Cottagers missing opportunities to pick up six Premiership points against strugglers West Ham, Charlton and Watford, but a draw is always better than a loss.

Clint Dempsey, though signed wont be eligible to play for another week, while paerwork is processed. The other new acquisition, Montella, is expected to see action.

Prediction: West Ham 2-1 Fulham Reason, too much hot blood for Fulham to handle.

Blatantly cadged from Chicago Tom's match preview on FulhamUSA

2006-12-22T12:20:00.000-05:00

Jimmy Carter: A retrospective.

Some years ago I watched Jimmy Carter on an interview on Charlie Rose. I was moved to gush on a forum I wrote on, then, that he probably was the finest human being ever to be President. With the publishing of his new book and reading some critique and news around it, I am tempted to repudiate that view.
But I wont.. though I now believe the man is unfit to ever hold public office; unfit then, unfit now!

If I had to write a one-line view of Jimmy Carter, it is:

Jimmy Carter: Always ready and willing to give away that which is not his.

2006-12-16T10:11:00.000-05:00

Lamar Hunt: The Measure of a Man

This isnt going to be a lengthy thribute to Mr Hunt. There are, at the same time, many and not nearly enough personal testimonials available by Google.

All I can add is that all those players and reporters from Football, Soccer and Tennis realms are exactly right.

How do I know? Because I spoke to him for about thirty seconds, and that's all it took to find out about Lamar Hunt. When I spoke, he paid attention, shook my hand and focussed on me and what I had to say.

And imagine how many times that happened to him every day

2006-12-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

'Breaking News:' Circumcision and STD's!

Forbes: Circumcision Reduces HIV Rates, U.S. Studies Confirm

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 13 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. researchers in Africa said Wednesday that they found that circumcision is such a good defense against HIV infection that they shut down two studies early, and instead offered all participants a chance to be circumcised.

Altogether, now...

Duh!

2006-12-12T16:50:00.000-05:00

Muslim speaks out! Here's what we need more of..

From a Muslim outlook, imams have missed the point on flight behavior

The first thing one must understand about this whole hullabaloo with the Muslim imams taken off a Phoenix-bound plane in Minneapolis is that it most definitely was not about the right to prayer or freedom of worship.
.... it is certainly not about victimization.

But let us look at the response of the imams since the incident.

They rushed toward the media never looking back. They have taken their story of victimization to every soft media they could find. They then stoked the same tired Muslim flames of victimization through their own political pulpits in mosques around the Valley.

Organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the Muslim American Society also immediately jumped on board, even before the imams' flight reached Phoenix the next day, and began whipping up the drums of victimization.
...
As a devout Muslim, I have watched this painfully protracted saga unravel, fearing what comes next. The media, especially print media, have bent over backward to hear minorities' fears.
Yet public opinion has not seemed to budge in favor of the imams. The lesson here lies in why. It has to do with credibility.

Yes... exactly, the good doctor sees what we all see. It's all about acting out, then crying victim!

Because these imams and their handlers just don't get it, it's time we Muslims found leadership and organizations that do.

Our predicament is unique, fragile and precarious. We Muslims are a relatively new minority in a nation that gives us freedoms that no other Muslim nation would allow.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, a radical subset of our faith community is seeking to destroy the basis for this liberty.

Either we predominantly direct our passions against these radicals or Americans will not count us as allies in this consuming struggle.

God bless and protect you, doc!

Keep trying to get that message out.

2006-11-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

An easy path to a BCS playoff?

As things are turning out, it looks like the BCS National Championship game will pit the two concensus top teams.. as long as USC doesnt stumble under the hooves of a Trojan Horse.

But there will still be whining and moaning, particularly from SEC teams fans.

Can we all agree that any of the top 5 teams might deserve the crown?

Can we all agree that any SEC team (for example purposes) that cant make the top five rankings DOESNT deserve a shot?

Good.. most of you get it. For the rest of you, maybe it's the SEC that should adjust.

Now, can we agree that the BCS ranking processes legitimize in-season games and preclude both scheduling of outright patsies and looking too far forward to bigger games? By that statement I refer to computer rankings which have some pretty sophisticated algorithms to rank based on strength of schedule down three or four levels.

So..IF we must have a playoff, then I suggest we do it as a modification of the current system.

Top 5 BCS qualify for the national championship.

#1 automatically in the NC game. This is NOT a free pass! It's a reward for being top of national rankings.

Then:
2 plays 5
3 plays 4
ALL at neutral sites at least 100 miles from home stadium; winners play a semi-final in New Years Bowl Games (alloted as current system does)

NC game a week later, as it is now.

If BCS takes the end-of-season #1 as automatic qualifier, that means you cant just schedule patsies and go to the playoffs. And means the season will be played to win each and every game.

Some are, strangely, moaning that too much is made of computer rankings but they will also complain that the 'big schools' get too many votes.
I humbly remind them of the two 'humans' voting WVU as #1 for several weeks running.
We all knew, at least I did, that was idiocy. And it has proven to be idiocy. But I dont think the computers ranked them #1, did they!

I have gotten over the 'Hate Notre Dame' syndrome specifically because of introduction of computer rankings. It wasnt that I just hated them... I hated them because, watching their games, I felt they were highly overrated.

The reason I came up with that playoff scenario is that it would require the least reorganization of the bowl system and guarantee a clearly able top 5 contender a real shot at the national championship.

I dont see how anyone could mind doing away with conference championship games but I dont think my system would necessitate that; it's up to the schools, as it should be.

2006-11-24T12:15:00.000-05:00

The gospel of Tony Hendra

How to become a serious HuffPost contributor:

Attend Cambridge to understand world and how it really works

Become intellectual by consorting with Cleese and other Monty Python originals

Somehow, while writing on the New York scene'; become 'saved'*

Write a book about it: Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

Have your daughter claim you sexually molested her as a child, and of course deny it. Of course that might be because, as you admitted, you ignored your family 'in order to screw as many hippie chicks as possible'.

*Or ... maybe you WEREN'T actually 'saved'....

A Christian might harbor dark thoughts about an 'enemy' .. might even wish him dead... surely, though, he wouldnt repeatedly invoke God in a prayer wishing him dead.

Any more than he would ask God to help him get in his neighbor's wife's pants. But, somehow, that wouldnt surprise me, either.

2006-11-19T06:56:00.000-05:00

Ohio State - Michigan: No Rematch, Please!

It has turned out as I said.. or feared; Michigan a 3 point loser in Columbus, which may result in them ending up ranked as #2 at the end of the season.

Mike Hart of Michigan said after the game that he wanted a rematch and that it would turn out differently on 'neutral turf'.

It very well might... the problem with that idea, though, is that the National Championship game is being played in the home of the Fiesta Bowl. And if you think that is 'neutral ground' you havent been paying attention the last few years.
It might as well be Paul Brown Stadium. Guarantee Buckeye fans already have scooped up most of the hotel accomodations; and to locals who are interested, the Buckeyes are probably their second team.

There's lots of opinion in the press, including the Detroit papers, against a rematch, and I think they are right. It would cheapen the unique BCS process which I'm beginning to like more and more {obviously dont know if I'd feel the same if the Buck's lost, but I think I would}.

And if OSU plays someone else and beats them soundly, and Michigan trounces whoever they play in the Rose Bowl, that will do more to establish who is really king on the hill than if they played each other.

Unless you want to see the Buckeyes REALLY paste the Wolverines.. which I dont. One of the unique characteristics of college football fandom, which makes it fun is the illusion that 'your team' might have won the big National Championship game, "IF ONLY....".
Well, I'd like to bash the illusions out of the minds of some of them... and, for that, there's be nothing better than if OSU pounded Notre Dame into dust and Michigan pushed USC into the Pacific.

2006-11-15T18:25:00.000-05:00

The "Godfather Dems" of our times..

Reading back-posts on Gateway Pundit on how we keep getting fooled it occurred to me that Jimmy Carter is a very dangerous man.

The mullahs have fooled Jimmy Carter and other democrats before and they are fooling them again now says Zucker. Hasn't Carter done enough in creating militant Islam? When is the left ever going to learn? Why do we have to pay for their ignorance and cluelessness?

Read it all... it also explains how Carter gummed the works with North Korea.

And it struck me...

If Al Gore invented the Internet, didnt Jimmy Carter 'invent' international terror by weapons of mass destruction and Islamic Terrorism?

Of course, Gore didnt REALLY invent websurfing and such, I doubt he even thought of it; he was pushing a national supercomputer consortium in which net connectivity was vital.. and Carter didnt intend for things to turn out as they have when he gave up tokens, as a gesture of good will, with both Iran and North Korea.

Nonetheless...