22 December 2008
Low Activity Alert
The Dog Farm is taking it's show on the road (sans doggies) for the holidays. Probably not much activity here until we get back to the Tundra. Thanks for checking in as always. See ya at the the airport.
17 December 2008
Saved by an American Car
Samuel Johnson, one of the leading literary figures of 18th-century England, wrote, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
So does spinning out at high speed in the rain on the interstate. It gives your mind a certain focus.
Today, someone asked me what I want for Christmas. "I've already got it," I answered.
I Throw My Shoe at You!
We saw it during the campaign, when everyone was instructed to shit their pants over the amount of money the Republican Party spent on clothes for Governor Palin. "What was wrong with the clothes she had?" they screamed. However, no one seemed too upset over what the Democratic Party spent on that one-night-only faux Roman stage show at Invesco Field for the glory of The One. What was wrong with the Pepsi Center that was already set up and paid for?
Then we saw everyone play the part of apoplectic taxpayer for considering a bailout for the Big Three after their CEOs had the audacity to travel to Washington DC in jet aircraft that were purchased expressly for the purpose of transporting the very same executives. No one ever seemed to ask how the United Auto Workers' representatives are serving the interests of their devout retirees by owning its own golf course.
Now we have to endure the same childlike shortsightedness again. Everywhere you turn, that idiot who threw his shoes at President Bush is being conveyed folk-hero status. "What a brave thing for him to do; there's no more profound display of disdain in that culture."
Oh please. If that reporter had any measurable bravery, he'd have thrown shoes at Saddam Hussein or Hosni Mubarak (the 'journalist' is Egyptian). The only reason he did what he did is that he know there'd be no gallows or firing squad for his act. The easily amused will say that this dope was trying to shame President Bush, but I think his act warrants a deeper look at the shame angle:
The reporter knows deep down that he can throw his shoe at Bush only because of Bush and it shames him. He can’t forgive Bush for that.Indeed.
You Are Worthless
This is what happen when you vote for dolts that promise you the moon; eventually, the bill comes due.Federal obligations now exceed the collective net worth of all Americans, according to the New York-based Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Washington politicians and bureaucrats have essentially mortgaged everything We the People own so they can keep spending our tax dollars like there’s no tomorrow.
Americans’ total household net worth, diminished by falling stock prices and home equity, is $56.5 trillion. But rising costs for unfunded social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security increased to $56.4 trillion – and that was before the more recent stock market crash, $700 billion bank bailout, and monster federal deficits chalked up in October and November.
12 December 2008
Reasonable Friday
First:
It's not just that requiring prior approval is a prior restraint. It's not just that you can bet your bottom dollar that prior approval is based on content. The crowning absurdity here is that MSU thinks that there is nothing wrong with placing a completely arbitrary limit on the number of people you can e-mail about a serious issue of public concern at a public university. So much for the right to petition government for redress of grievances. Apparently, MSU's IT department has overruled the Bill of Rights.Next:
Chastened no-on-8 types decide to chill out, and think twice before demanding people lose their jobs over their political activities. Ha ha, just kidding. Legendary KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour–past recipient of a Los Angeles Times First Amendment Award!–takes the unusual step of bitch-slapping Brodesser-Akner publicly.Finally:
“Che hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?” Turns out the rebellious icon that emblazons countless T-shirts actually enforced aesthetic and political conformity. D’Rivera explains that Che and other Cuban authorities sought to ban rock and roll and jazz.Make sure to watch the video on good ol' Ernesto.
11 December 2008
From GM's Ouch Division
GM sales in 2007: 9,370,000 vehicles
Toyota sales in 2007: 9,366,418 vehicles
GM profit/loss in 2007: -$38,730,000,000 (-$4,055 per car)
Toyota profit in 2007: +$17,146,000,000 (+$1,874 per car)
These are numbers only the UAW could be proud of.
Revising e-History as it Happens
KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday. The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.UPDATE: You know David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel don't have to get their hands dirty; the Devout and Faithful are already doing that for them:
Why this "clarification" has been issued is not cleared up by the item. The original item does not, as you can see, "suggest" that the meeting might/maybe happen. It says that "He's meeting" (He is meeting).... The only question that the clarification raises is about Ms. Sowers' professional ethics: Was she making it up then or is she making it up now?
I've written to both Sower and Hunt asking for comment. I'll report on any response. I doubt any response has been forthcoming. Both "reporters" have doubtless already gotten the word to be quiet "if you know what's good for you."
In fact, if you mention ROD BLAGOJEVICH in your question, at all, even totally politely in a relevant way, your question will not only be voted down but "removed" (says the site) as "inappropriate," visible only through a specific search for ROD BLAGOJEVICH.
Change.gov looked like it was going to be a nice, civil exception to the usual mob rule in Web comment sections. And maybe it would have been, with some conscientious Change.govers letting in some Blago questions. But now Drudge has linked the site, via this story, so a bunched of pissed off Obama conspiracists will jump into the game, resulting in an epic mod war and soon the whole thing will look like a YouTube screaming match.
10 December 2008
They Study it in Vienna
Dogs can sniff out unfair situations and show a simple emotion similar to envy or jealousy, Austrian researchers reported Monday. Dogs sulked and refused to "shake" paws if other dogs got treats for tricks and they did not, said Friederike Range, an animal psychologist at the University of Vienna, who led the study into canine emotions. "It is a more complex feeling or emotion than what we would normally attribute to animals," said Range.
Science Warns of Exctinction
Drivers who can position their car in the middle of a parking space at a supermarket are sliding closer to extinction, conservationists have warned.Remember - extinct is forever.
Research teams have recorded a sharp decline in numbers over the last decade, despite strenuous efforts to educate the public about how easy it is to just put your fucking car in the middle of a parking space.
Conservationists have blamed the crisis on a combination of poaching, loss of habitat and an unbelievable fucking selfishness by a bunch of total and complete bastards who deserve to die on a spike."There are now less than 50 people in the UK who are able to do this," said Dr Logan.
Obama's Vision for America
Among the highlights:
- a proposed "O'Malley Road Reconstruction" in Anchorage, Alaska, that will cost $30 million but provide 300 (count 'em!) jobs;
- a Gadsen, Alabama "Hoke Street Sidewalk Construction to serve new Department of Human Resources facility" that's a real steal at $150,000 but will take almost surviving members of the Allman Brothers Band off the public dole (at last!);
- Police Facility Solar Panels for Lake Havasu City, Arizona, for only $400,000 and 75 jobs;
- Stormwater Settlement Ponds for Beloit, Wisconsin for $1,428 million and five whole jobs, which will feed a family of four in the Badger State, especially if they only eat government cheese;
And, literally so much more it's virtually impossible to document. But the mayors have. Don't you know that the Columbia Avenue storm sewer in St. John, Indiana needs "additional capacity" (and it will only cost $275,000 and provide 15 Hoosiers good, decent jobs)? Or that Manhattan, Kansas can finally (finally!) coordinate the traffic lights on Fort Riley Boulevard for a measly $71,250 (sure it will add only one job to the economy, but one is almost twice as much as zero when you think about!)? And that for barely over $4 million, Atlanta, Georgia can install "reflective or green roofing" on unspecified buildings, thus becoming the Reflective or Green Roofing Capital of the United States, or at least the Southeastern United States?
I'm liking the idea of American working, but I don't know how you take hundreds of thousands of white-collar men and turn them ALL into cement pourers and iron workers before the mid-term elections in 2010?
Poem, Schmoem
The prestigious MaxPlanckForschung journal needed some Chinese text for the cover, so they printed a "classical poem" that turned out to be a menu of erotic services from a brothel in Macau.
05 December 2008
03 December 2008
How Dare You Do What I Ask!
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a "community-based organization," is suing Wall Street ratings services for approving bonds backed by home loans to African American and Latino home purchasers with "insufficient borrower income levels."
The firms "knew or should have known" that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers -- a process known as "reverse redlining" -- and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates, according to the coalition's complaint.
Hmmm. Didn't community-based organizations push for exactly this sort of reverse-redlining?
You Can't Hide Behind a Newspaper and a Latte
The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D'Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back.Remember what Clyde Barrow said about why he robbed banks: "That's where the money is." Why did these brainwashed fools kill where they did? That's were the soft targets are.
(W)hat angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
And let's not forget that these are bad guys:
(Azam Amir Kasav) and the terror cell's leader began their attacks at the city's Chhatrapati Shivaji rail station. They later hijacked two cars, before police caught them. During two days of questioning, Kashmiri-born Kasav, who used the alias Ajmal Kasab, told police: 'I have no regrets'. He is said to have told officers the cell was to seek out 'white targets, preferably British and American'.
He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages. He then added that their intention was to kill 5,000 people.
02 December 2008
Jack Sparrow Nowhere Among Them
01 December 2008
Alt Fuels Save the Day
Read it all and keep it in your pocket for the next time you hear a politiciam promising to fix things. Thanks big government!The federal government has invested billions of dollars over the past 16 years, building a fleet of 112,000 alternative-fuel vehicles to serve as a model for a national movement away from fossil fuels.
Under a mandate from Congress, federal agencies have gradually increased their fleets of alternative-fuel vehicles, a majority of them "flex-fuel," capable of running on either gasoline or ethanol-based E85 fuel. But many of the vehicles were sent to locations hundreds of miles from any alternative fueling sites, the analysis shows.
As a result, more than 92 percent of the fuel used in the government's alternative-fuel fleet continues to be standard gasoline. A 2005 law -- meant to align the vehicles with alternative-fuel stations -- now requires agencies to seek waivers when a vehicle is more than five miles or 15 minutes from an ethanol pump.
The latest generations of alternative vehicles have compounded the problem. Often, the vehicles come only with larger engines than the ones they replaced in the fleet. Consequently, the federal program -- known as EPAct -- has sometimes increased gasoline consumption and emission rates, the opposite of what was intended.
29 November 2008
Who'd Log On to Get Doonsbury, Anyway?
The government is bailing out Wall Street for being evil and the car companies for being stupid. But print journalism brings you Paul Krugman and Anna Quindlen. Also, in 1898 Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal started the Spanish-American War. All of the Lehman Brothers put together couldn't cause as much evil stupidity as that.Game, set, match; O'Rourke.
Moreover, rescuing print journalism is a "two-fer." Not only will America's principal source of Sudoku puzzles and Doonesbury be preserved but so will an endangered species--the hard-bitten, cynical, heavy-drinking news hound with a press card in his hatband, a cigarette stub dangling from his lip, and free ringside prize fight tickets tucked into his vest pocket. These guys don't reproduce in captivity. And there are hardly any of them left in the wild. I checked the bar. Just Mike Barnicle, as usual. How's tricks, Mike? Where'd everybody go? Sun's over the yardarm. Time to pour lunch.
Ruttan on Mumbai
Mumbai was selected not simply because it was a so-called soft target but because it is a symbol of modernity in the world's most populous democracy. The city the West first knew as Bombay is today the symbol of India's place in the modern world, as the center not only of banking, commerce and a burgeoning high-tech sector but one of the world's great film industries. (It's worth recalling that when the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, one of the first things it did was to close the cinemas and ban DVDs from Mumbai's Bollywood.)
The places the killers struck -- luxury hotels, a railway station, a hospital for women and children, the Chabad Jewish center -- are all powerfully linked in the popular mind with the modern world. As the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has argued, the jihadis have linked anti-Americanism, anti-British sentiment (the assumption is that London is Washington's lap dog) and anti-Semitic antagonism toward Zionism into a potent new ideology. To the extent it seems to find an increasingly sympathetic hearing in some fashionable sectors of the intellectual West, including the U.S., Levy correctly labels it "the socialism of imbeciles."Like all the totalitarian movements that have come before it, hatred of liberty and Jews is the real foundation of contemporary jihadism, and not the traditions of Islam or its canonical prescriptions.
Your Next Car
All new for 2012, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the mandatory American car so advanced it took $100 billion and an entire Congress to design it. We started with same reliable 7-way hybrid ethanol-biodeisel-electric-clean coal-wind-solar-pedal power plant behind the base model Pelosi, but packed it with extra oomph and the sassy styling pizazz that tells the world that 1974 Detroit is back again -- with a vengeance.I see that the story 'predicts' that Ted Kennedy will be involved. Wonder if that means the car will also float.
We've subsidized the features you want and taxed away the rest. With its advanced Al Gore-designed V-3 under the hood pumping out 22.5 thumping, carbon-neutral ponies of Detroit muscle, you'll never be late for the Disco or the Day Labor Shelter. Engage the pedal drive or strap on the optional jumbo mizzenmast, and the GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition easily exceeds 2016 CAFE mileage standards. At an estimated 268 MPG, that's a savings of nearly $1800 per week in fuel cost over the 2011 Pelosi.
Even with increased performance we didn't skimp on safety. With 11-point passenger racing harnesses, 15-way airbags, and mandatory hockey helmet, you'll have the security knowing that you could survive a 45 MPH collision even if the GTxi SS/Rt were capable of that kind of illegal speed.
28 November 2008
Garbage in the News
Can you imagine that? Of course not. But try imagining it's a basketball game; somehow it's way more believable:
The New York Knicks have suspended guard Stephon Marbury one game, without pay, for refusing to play in Wednesday's game against Detroit.There is none too severe a way to declare Marbury a colossal loser.
"A player's central obligation is to provide his professional services when called upon," said Knicks president Donnie Walsh in making the announcement. "Because he refused the coach's request to play in the team's last game, we had no choice but to impose disciplinary action."
According to the New York Post, Wednesday was the second instance in which Marbury was asked to play and refused. The Knicks are on the hook for Marbury's $21.9 million salary this season. If the club waives him, Marbury will inevitably clear waivers in two days and become a free agent.
27 November 2008
20 November 2008
I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone
Oh there's so much more . . . if you've got the stomach for it.
15 November 2008
Gone Darker
Sad times at the dog farm. We lost one to cancer.
I've had dogs basically my whole life. Cinder was the first one that I had any say in acquiring. This morning I was part of the decision to let her leave - also my first. Like the rest of the pack, Cinder was a second-hand dog that became a first-class member of our lives. We speculated she was the runt of her litter, being slight for a Labrador Retriever, but she carried heart enough for the largest of breeds. She was both a happy and stoic dog. Sometimes she seemed to carry herself with her head down, figuratively and literally. Content to play the role of the #3 dog here on the farm, she never really took a back seat to any other.
Cinder was still water running deep. She was a casual city dog in the city and went into High Instinct Mode when traipsing rural tracts. She never demonstrated much interest in birds or varmints, but I remember the first time she heard a coyote howl. She froze solid at an open window, ears locked forward and head up. You could have crashed cymbals together behind her and not broken her attention. That was the same weekend we saw her accept a big, new bone, run to the edge of the yard, dig a hole and bury it; just like in cartoons. It was the only time I've seen a dog actually bury a bone.
She also was quite unimpressed with other dogs. During a neighborhood walk or trips to dog parks, she accepted our custom of meeting and greeting others, but she took that in stride, never strained a leash or ran ahead just for sniffs. On the rare occasion another dog might display aggression toward any of us, Cinder, the smallest of us, flashed her teeth, shot up her fur and charged forward declaring she was the one to be dealt with first. After a few seconds of that rare but warranted Ms. Hyde, she put it away and went back to her normal Doggie Jeckyl.
For Mrs. Octane and myself, Cinder was not our first dog, but she was the first that required us to face that awful decision. We thank her for enriching our lives, rounding out the pack, her companionship to the old Golden Retriever and her guidance to the young Great Dane/Mastiff/Clydesdale. They will miss her in their own ways and then move on as dogs do.
There's nothing like a good sturdy breed, and fourteen years is an excellent run for a Labrador Retriever, but it wasn't long enough.
It's never long enough.
14 November 2008
More Reasons Al Queda Hates Us
FORT BELVOIR, Va. - Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody will become the first female four-star general in U.S. military history Friday, and later that day will assume command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command from Gen. Benjamin S. Griffin in a 2 p.m. ceremony at the AMC headquarters parade field.
11 November 2008
Fred is Agitated
(Fred Smith) has come to hold the get-rich-quick Wall Street financiers in more than a little disdain. He views the heroes of the U.S. economy as the companies that actually produce real goods and services. He sees the Wall Street collapse as an inevitable byproduct of investment bankers building multitrillion dollar debt pyramid structures.Read it all. It'll help you laugh at the childlike explanations the economy you get from Tee Vee news.
He sees a big problem in that so few Americans now pay any income tax. "We're now at a point where a very large part of the population pays no federal income tax at all. When you have a majority of the population that realizes that you can transfer money from the productive to themselves, that's one of the great questions for the future of civilization, as far as I'm concerned."
"Many of our current policies are not conducive to continued economic leadership. We restrict immigration when we have thousands of highly educated people that want to come to the United States, and some of our greatest corporations [are] crying out that we don't have the scientific talent that we need to develop the next generation of innovations and inventions . . .
"That's where all wealth comes from . . . It's not from the government. It's from invention and entrepreneurship and innovation. And our policies promote a legal and regulatory system which impedes our ability to grow entrepreneurship. Lastly, if we want to make [America's workers] wealthier we have to quit demonizing quote, big corporations."
Utopia; Found On No Map
“Utopia” is Greek for “nowhere”: a made-up word for a make-believe place. The search for nowhere inevitably deprecates any and every “somewhere.” Socialism, which is based on incorrigible optimism about human nature, is a species of utopianism. It experiences the friction of reality as an intolerable brake on its expectations. “Utopians,” the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski observed in “The Death of Utopia Reconsidered,” “once they attempt to convert their visions into practical proposals, come up with the most malignant project ever devised: they want to institutionalize fraternity, which is the surest way to totalitarian despotism.”
Obamania may be a harmless enthusiasm that will spend itself naturally in the coming weeks. Then again, its “spread-the-wealth-around,” egalitarian tendencies may presage something far graver. It’s just possible that Obama actually believes what he says about redistributing wealth and sitting down for cozy chats with dictators, etc. In that case, the country is in for a very rude awakening.
10 November 2008
Change You Should Have Seen Coming
That didn't take long did it?Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.
Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.
09 November 2008
In Case Flight Simulator is Way Too Intense.
It's only for the most bold among us.
08 November 2008
Oh By the Way . . .
The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.
Counting from June 4, Obama was in 311 Post photos and McCain in 282. Obama led in most categories. Obama led 133 to 121 in pictures more than three columns wide, 178 to 161 in smaller pictures, and 164 to 133 in color photos. In black and white photos, the nominees were about even, with McCain at 149 and Obama at 147.
But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager.
One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.
Well ain't that a coker? Thanks for copping to that now. To the Washington Post and other dead tree establishment media - see ya in the recycling bin.
06 November 2008
04 November 2008
03 November 2008
"I'm Telling Everyone."
(A) visiting instructor at St. Olaf, Philip Busse, confessed on The Huffington Post blog site to stealing several John McCain campaign yard signs along a rural stretch of Highway 19 in southern Minnesota. Over the summer, the highway had been "speckled” with yard signs for the Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Busse wrote. “By early October, however, there were no McCain-Palin campaign signs on the eastbound stretch of Highway 19. It wasn’t because loyalties had switched, but because I pulled them out.”Is this guy seven years old or what?
Mr. Busse goes on to say that “yanking out the signs and running like a scared rabbit back to my idling car was one of the single-most exhilarating and empowering political acts that I have ever done.”Oh yea, crime is okay as long as you believe it's 'political.' Maybe I could bloody his nose and he'd be fine with it solong as my motoves were political. Can you believe someone with such an immature and narrow perspective has a teaching position at a place charging $44K for tuition? Seems like the new-hire screening process is a bit lacking down there.
(A) St. Olaf spokesman is quoted, saying that Mr. Busse’s actions are “in direct conflict with the college’s values and mission, and we do not in any way condone them.’Okay, then fire this clown. Why does everything on Earth so pathetically one-sided with some people?
UPDATE: From Oregon, drives a Subaru; what a shocker!
When the Dummies Tell You to Not Be Dumb
ACORN's second line of defense has been that fraudulent registrations can't turn into fraudulent votes, as if the felony of polluting voter lists was somehow not all that serious. But that defense goes only a short distance. "How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?" says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state's photo identification law. "It's almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there's no way to trace it."
Put Your Hands Up for Detroit!
Read it all.In 1950, America produced 51% of the GNP for the entire world. Of that production, roughly 70% took place in the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
The productive capability of this small area of earth staggers the imagination. Virtually everything that rebuilt the industrial bases of Europe and Japan came from those eight states. Cars, planes, electronics, machine tools, consumer goods, generators, concrete - any conceivable item manufactured by industrial humanity poured out this tiny region and enriched the world. The region shone with widespread prosperity. People migrated from the South and West to work in these Herculean engines of industry.
The wealth, power and economic dominance of the region at the time cannot be overstated. Nothing like it has existed in human history. Yet, a mere 30 years later, by 1980, we called that area the “rustbelt” and it became synonymous with joblessness, collapsing cities, high crime, failing schools and general hopelessness. What the hell happened?
Obama happened.
02 November 2008
01 November 2008
31 October 2008
In Case You Missed it
Point - Lileks.It’s the usual Keillor twaddle – a humorless, scattershot ramble of run-on sentences and unsourced assertions, and I didn’t see anything that set it apart from the dozens of sour broadsides that preceded it. He doesn’t like Sarah Palin, although if she was on the Obama ticket he would have found a few nice words before falling silent on the matter, just as the wisdom and august judgment of Biden seems to hover beneath his radar. He is also angry about Republican economics, because, as he stated in a previous column, they deregulated everything and caused the whole mess. In his imagination, sixteen GOP Senators dressed like the fellow from the Monopoly game took a break from playing polo – with slaves dressed up as horses, of course, ha ha, capital idea, Smidley – and somehow did something which was totally unrelated to the sub-prime mortgage issue. I suspect he believes that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd woke nightly from sheet-soaking nightmares in which the loan standards were
loosened just a bit too much, and every time they went to the office intent on fixing this mess, gol dang it, John McCain dragged them into a coatroom and administered ether. Amazingly strong fellow.It doesn’t matter what Clinton signed; it doesn’t matter that Bush and McCain tried to raise alarms; there’s not an jot of responsibility on Keillor’s side, because if anything goes wrong it can be traced to the one simple fact that shapes his world: the other side is composed of despicable, cowardly, dishonest, cynical bastards still upset that Jolson's reputation is sullied by his use of blackface. On his side: angels. The man makes a Manichean look like an agnostic Unitarian.
Goodbye to a Real Hero
All day long, curious Berliners came to Tempelhof to catch a glimpse of the airport. Many brought their cameras and they took pictures of the vast, echoing hall and the imposing architecture. A few businessmen rushed to catch the last flights. For many people, Tempelhof was always the ideal inner-city airport - it used to serve short-haul commercial flights.
One passenger, Joerg said: "It's a really sad day. Tempelhof is special, there's so much history here. It's a mistake to shut it down. It's not like other modern airports, there's no stress here, it's lovely and relaxing. I love the nostalgic atmosphere here."
From June 1948, hundreds of Allied aircraft landed at Tempelhof. The planes dropped coal, food, medicine and other supplies to the residents of West Berlin, which had been cut off by the Soviet Union. At the height of the airlift, one Allied aircraft landed at Tempelhof every 90 seconds. The Airlift was an extraordinary umanitarian operation and it kept people alive in West Berlin for 11 months until the Soviet Union ended the blockade.
As a reminder of the airport's rich history, an old "candy bomber" DC-3 took off from Tempelhof on Thursday night. "Candy bomber" was the name given to the crews who dropped sweets attached to parachutes to German children during the Airlift.
I Am Undecided
With 320 pound-feet of torque at the flywheel at a breath off idle (1,000 rpm), the ZR1's engine is supremely tractable, quiet and refined around town. The close-ratio six-speed gearbox is slicker than a Glock soaked in KY jelly. The net of it is, then, that the ZR1 sacrifices very little to the war gods, not even fuel economy. You can stick the gearshift in sixth and get 20 mpg at highway speeds.Either way, it is great car porn.
Now the four-lobe Eaton supercharger is fully angered, the gas is pouring down the V8 gullet, and the exhaust flaps are wide open. Can you hear me now? In 8 seconds -- long, loud, delirious seconds with a soundtrack from every NASCAR movie ever made -- you're in three-digit territory.
Meanwhile, the ZR1 has more lateral grip than the world's current supply of Polident. On big, fast, neck-wrenching esses and sweepers and mountain switchbacks, the ZR1 just puts a shoulder down and carves through them. The two-mode dampers, set on Sport, null out whatever body roll might have the temerity to sneak past the oversized anti-roll bars. The ZR1 might have a touch of stiff-nosed, low-speed understeer, but with the phenomenal, right-now torque at your toe, rotating the car is as easy as dialing in the radio.
Day Off for the ACLU
Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and a maxed-out contributor to the Obama campaign, has confirmed that she approved the check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher after the Oct. 15 presidential debate.UPDATE: Watch what you say about Obama, or you might get tossed off the plane:
Jones-Kelley explained her governmental prying by saying, "Our practice is when someone is thrust quickly into the public spotlight, we often take a look" at them. For example, she cited the case of a lottery winner who was found to owe back child support. But Wurzelbacher didn't win the lottery; he merely asked how much more of his hard-earned money was going to be taxed away under the Obama plan.
Contrast this investigative frenzy with the refusal of Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Bruner, to use government records to check the thousands of new voters registered by ACORN and others for registration fraud. She also refused notify local election officials when fraud was discovered.
The Obama campaign will target anyone who says this emperor has no clothes. It wasn't long ago that a team of 30 lawyers, investigators and Democratic party operatives trekked up to Alaska to find dirt on Sarah Palin. Now they're after Joe the Plumber.
This is Obama, folks. Get used to it. Remember what the captain told Luke: "You better get your mind right."The Washington Times, N.Y. Post and Dallas Morning News -- three newspapers that recently endorsed John McCain -- have been kicked off Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's plane in the final days of his campaign.
"This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama's campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter's pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign," said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon. News
"I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn't using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign," Mr. Solomon.
30 October 2008
Just the Everyday, Typical Conflict of Interest
I so want the election to be over, over, over . . .House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers recently sent two letters to Attorney General Michael Mukasey deploring a news leak that the FBI is investigating Acorn, and warning Justice to focus instead on "voter suppression." Barack Obama has also joined in this political intimidation, demanding in two letters that Mr. Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Justice staff who he claims are engaged in "unlawful coordination" with John McCain's campaign to pursue "so-called 'election fraud.'" There is zero evidence that such coordination exists, but it is remarkable that a Presidential nominee would dismiss election fraud as a myth.
Justice has also failed to enter the fray in Ohio. As many as 200,000 new voter registrations in that state are suspect, yet Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is refusing to follow the 2002 Help America Vote Act that requires her to verify these registrations. The Ohio Republican Party sued Mrs. Brunner, but the Supreme Court said the GOP lacked standing. Justice does have standing -- it is charged with upholding that law -- but has ignored the fight. The Justice excuse is that it isn't appropriate to file litigation so close to Election Day.It doesn't help Justice's credibility that attorneys charged with supervising voting issues are avowed Barack Obama supporters. According to Federal Election Commission data, James Walsh, an attorney in the Civil Rights Division, has donated at least $300 to Mr. Obama. His boss, Mark Kappelhoff, has given $2,250 -- nearly the maximum. John Russ, also in Civil Rights, gave at least $600 to Mr. Obama.
Editing Themselves Out of Work
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward.
So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal? The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.
I DO Have a Tip For You
Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed. Once in the restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going toredistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--thehomeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.
At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.
26 October 2008
Headline Sunday
24 October 2008
Another Day in Socialist Paradise
Maybe Sean Penn can save Venezuela, like when he saved New Orleans.Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez.
The OPEC nation has suffered three nationwide blackouts this year, and chronic power shortages have sparked protests from the western Andean highlands to San Felix, a city of mostly poor industrial workers in the sweltering south.
The problem suggests that Chavez, with his ambitious international alliances and promises to end capitalism, risks alienating supporters by failing to focus on basic issues like electricity, trash collection and law enforcement.
C'mon, let's get going with the free health care, free college, free food programs, free mandatory exercise program every morning in the People's Square . . . .
What? The government and its Glorious Leader are not fulfilling your every Utopian need? Well, at least you can call someone about that, right? Maybe not:
Li'l Kim; still rotten to the core after all these years.North Korea is clamping down on mobile phones and long distance telephone calls to prevent the spread of news about a worsening food crisis, according to the United Nations investigator on human rights for the isolated communist country. In a report to the UN General Assembly, (the government of North Korea ) is using public executions as a means of intimidating the population, and using spies to infiltrate and expose religious communities.
Available food is disproportionately directed to the political elite, the media is controlled by the state, there is no political participation, and dissidents and those with religious faith are persecuted, as well as those who return to North Korea after
illicitly leaving the country across the Chinese border.
Oh, Like THIS Is News
Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4. Another 8% say journalists don't favor either candidate, and 13% say they don't know which candidate most reporters support.
A separate study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looks at the media’s recent campaign coverage and finds that McCain received significantly more negative than positive coverage between the GOP convention and the final debate. The study says that press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so.
Dude; Where's My Bailout?
Oh, please. How long will this jive play out? There's other really fun news about the food-based fuel scam:Ethanol producers are jockeying for a seat on the increasingly crowded bailout bandwagon. Just last Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer addressed the plight of those poor, poor businessmen who got locked into the cost of corn this summer. Just like oil and natural gas, the current price is half of what it was at its peak.
Schafer claims that “the ethanol industry is too important to the nation to allow it to go into more financial difficulty.”
Ethanol - smells better every day!The Des Moines Register reported the other day that Iowa’s ethanol plants contribute 15 Percent of greenhouse-gas emissions found in the state’s new inventory of major manufacturers, businesses and power plants.
Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources found that the largest portion of the state’s overall emissions came from fermenting grain at the plants and not from burning natural gas or coal. In addition, burning biomass such as switchgrass at various
industrial plants added another 0.13 million metric tons.
21 October 2008
Freedom of the Press, If the Price is Right
The Obama campaign is putting a hefty price tag on the best camera and reporting positions for news organizations covering Barack Obama's outdoor election night activities in downtown Chicago. If a reporter wants access to the file center--which will be the best place to find Obama officials and spokesmen--be prepared to write a check for $935. The cheapest place a reporter could stand on a riser with a view is $880.
This is an outrageous pay to play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets. I am not asking for a free ride--but this is pricey and does not take into account some reporters won't need power, cable, internet or food but will crave the access more than the food. As I was talking to this unnamed spokesman about this enormously expensive set-up, he did say--that a news outlet could rotate people in and out of the tent on that one credential.
Great.
A general media area will be created where a reporter could watch for free, but the set-up is separate, unequal and clearly second class when it comes to getting top access to campaign people.
Obama's top donors--not the masses who donated the $5, $10 and $25 the campaign brag about--will have VIP access throughout election night and received an early heads up a week ago to plan to spend Election Night in Chicago.
Oh How Subtle Art Thou?
Minnesota politicians are scrambling to jettison campaign cash donated by Tom Petters, the Twin Cities businessman accused of high-level fraud. "We are giving the money to the Boys & Girls Club for this cycle," said Mark Drake, spokesman for Sen. Norm Coleman, referring to $4,600 Petters contributed to the senator's campaign since 2003. Coleman's campaign got another $2,000 from Petters during the 2002 race for U.S. Senate.So, Norm and Amy both got money from the now-poison Petters, it not being uncommon to donate to both parties. Evil Norm got about $2k more than Sainted Amy, but both campaigns are giving the money to charities. I guess we should move along.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, is giving $4,200 she got from Petters in 2005 and 2006, and additional contributions from some of his associates, to the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and other groups.
Hey, not so fast. Let's check the wording of the above. Norm got $6,600 SINCE 2002, and Amy got $4,200 and change in the JUST the '05-'06 cycle. Go back and reread it. I'll wait.
OK, now what if a dummy like me went to an impartial source find different information, like Amy actually got $73,700.00? Does that mean the really smart people at the StarTribune either couldn't find this information or does it mean they chose not to tell you about. Oh, how'd Norm do? Go look for yourself.
So is the Strib stupid, lazy or complicit here? None are very becoming for a major-market news daily, but I'm willing to entertain other explanations, should they ever come. I mean besides the explanation that the Strib can't resist pissy partisanship.
20 October 2008
Walking the Streets of Tolerenceville
The party of hate rides again. Sometimes it's laughably naive. Othertimes it's uglier. And that ugliness finds itself in the most interesting places.
You Can't Handle the Truth
A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a “defensive” stance towards its conclusions.Part Two - Never expose youth to something they may find appealing:
The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.
College used to be about opening minds. Today, college is about slamming the door in the face of those that do not tote the mono cultural ideology that runs nearly every campus.The College of St. Catherine administration has barred CNN commentator Bay Buchanan from speaking on the St. Kate’s campus, according to Ken Doyle, president of the Minnesota Association of Scholars. The St. Kate’s College Republicans, a student organization, was planning a tea and discussion with Ms. Buchanan, in conjunction with the speaker’s scheduled same-day lecture at the University of Minnesota. “The students were planning a really classy event,” said St. Kate’s physics professor Terry Flower, advisor to the group. “They’re all about intellectual diversity and the marketplace of ideas.”
From the St. Kate's website, its student handbook indicates that their students are supposed to enjoy freedom of expression: Students enjoy the collective assurance and protection of free inquiry and open exchange of facts, ideas and openness. Students are free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment on debatable issues. This free exchange in no way diminishes the responsibility of the student for learning the content of a course.
17 October 2008
Beware the Motorcade
Well, we can't have that, can we?
Obama-Biden simply can’t tolerate an outspoken citizen successfully painting the Democratic ticket as socialist overlords. And so a dirty, desperate war against Joe Wurzelbacher is on. The Left’s political plumbers are attacking the messenger, rummaging through his personal life, and predictably wielding the race card once again. It’s standard operating procedure for the Obama thug machine.I've seen Joe Biden's neighborhood. No one making less that $250,000 a year could live there in the first place, plumber or not.
In response to Joe’s question about why he should be “taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream,” Obama sermonized that Wurzelbacher needed to “spread the wealth around” because “it’s good for everybody.”
And the next morning, six-term Sen. Biden launched the first salvo against the Ohio entrepreneur on NBC’s Today Show, challenging the veracity of his story: “I don’t have any ‘Joe the Plumbers’ in my neighborhood that make $250,000 a year.”
It seems the lesson here is that if you see the motorcade and entourage coming down your street, run inside your home and draw the shades - for the glass-house gang is coming and they know how to throw stones.Slick Joe is the one who tells fables about visiting a diner in Delaware that hasn’t been open in years; spins yarns about getting “forced down” in a helicopter over Afghanistan because of perilous conditions that turned out to be weather-related, not al Qaeda-related; and continues to slander the family of the man involved in his wife and daughter’s fatal car accident (crash investigators cleared the now-deceased driver of drunk-driving, despite Biden’s insinuations). But I digress.
Wurzelbacher never claimed to be making $250,000 a year. He told Obama that he might be “getting ready to buy a company that makes about $250,000, $270,000" a year. His simple point was that Obama’s punitive tax proposals would make it more
difficult to realize his dream. Obama’s followers couldn’t handle the incontrovertible truth. Left-wing blogs immediately went to work, blaring headlines like “Not A Real $250k Plumber!” Next, they falsely accused Wurzelbacher of not being registered to vote (he’s registered in Lucas County, Ohio, and voted as a Republican in this year’s primary). Next, they called him a liar for identifying himself as undecided. Only registered Democrats and fake Republican tools used in mainstream media stories and YouTube debates are allowed to use that label, you see.
Then, suddenly, the journalists who wouldn’t lift a finger to investigate Barack Obama’s longtime relationships with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright sprang into action rifling through citizen Joe Wurzelbacher’s tax records.
UPDATE:
(The reporting of everything Wurzelbacher) warns any future citizen who might dare question Barack Obama that his life will be closely scrutinized for any irrelevant but embarrassing information. Oh — I almost forgot to mention: Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. So do his companies.
UPDATE 2:
The whole "He's not a licensed plumber!" non sequitur is really fantastic. So, if you happen to be standing in front of Obama when he publicly reveals his socialism, what does the media do? Demands to see your papers. That's just delicious, is what that is.
16 October 2008
Today in the Contrarian News
Item 2 - Glaciers started receding after the US Congress rejected the Kyoto Accords.(A) 19-year-old St. Cloud man told police he has found small baggies of dog feces in the back of his pickup truck for the past few weeks. Donald Esmay tells KNSI-AM the feces started appearing in his truck right after he put a 2-foot-by-4-foot McCain sign there. They confronted the 45-year-old man, who admitted to it and said it was childish. When police later spoke with the neighbor . . .he told officers he did it because he "hates McCain."
Item 3 - Republicans are trying to spin the vote in swing states like Ohio:Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.
"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.
When the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay. There was simply a wall of ice across the north side of Icy Strait. From the 1800s until now, the Muir Glacier just kept retreating and retreating and retreating. It is now back 57 miles from the entrance to the bay, said Tom Vandenberg, chief interpretative ranger at Glacier Bay.
Does it mean anything? Nobody knows. Climate is constantly shifting.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said a preliminary review showed that 200,000 of the 666,000 voters who have registered since Jan. 1 must have their eligibility verified to comply with a federal court order. Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien confirmed that he is investigating alleged voter and registration fraud involving 13 newly registered voters who came to Columbus for a get-out-the-vote campaign and used the same address, a small East Side home.
O'Brien told The Dispatch that he is investigating allegations that 13 out-of-state residents recently registered to vote, all listing their address as 2885 Brownlee Rd. They apparently were in Columbus working for Vote From Home, a group working to increase young-voter turnout in Ohio and using the house as their base of operation, O'Brien said.
When a reporter visited the three-bedroom, 1,175-square-foot home, a middle-aged woman answered the door and immediately turned the conversation over to a young woman, who declined to identify herself and would say only that she didn't think the reports of potential voter fraud are accurate. "Everyone who is registered to vote here is within the parameters of the law," she said, as the woman behind her shouted, "Just shut the door!" Then, the door closed.
15 October 2008
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Suez Canal
The captain was defenseless against the 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He had little choice other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates were not banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.
Within a period of three days, those pirates who had boarded the ship and opened the cargo container with its gritty sand-like contents, all developed strange health complications, to include serious skin burns and loss of hair. And within two weeks, sixteen of the pirates subsequently died, either on the ship or on shore.
The exact nature of the cargo remains officially a mystery but officials in Puntland and Baidoa are convinced the ship was carrying weapons to Eritrea for Islamist insurgents. "We cannot inspect the cargo yet," Osman said, "but we are sure that it is weapons."
Given the large number of deaths from the questing Somali pirates, it should be obvious that when the contents of the ship’s locked cargo containers finally descended onto the land, the death toll would be enormous. This ship was nothing more nor less than the long-anticipated Iranian attack on Israel.
The Government You Elect and the One You Don't
The St. Paul Port Authority, tasked with bringing business into St. Paul, is kicking out a profitable, tax-paying, unsubsidized, woman-owned, 48-year-old family business. It is a company that pays its 43 employees — nearly half of whom are union members — an average wage of $24 per hour with full medical benefits.This part of St. Paul is, uh represented by a do-gooder socialist who obviously prefers the heavy hang of government policy to free enterprise and is helping chase away those who are currently paying the freight for all the jive dreamed up by the city council. In the last hour, I heard the real estate guy from the Saint Paul Port Authority say outright that they are happy to bulldoze legitimate existing business in order to wring even more tax revenue from the same land.
While showing this successful company the way out of town, the Port Authority has not found a replacement. What the St. Paul Port Authority is engaged in is little more than real estate speculation with $10 million of taxpayers' money.
Its current actions are an attempt to use a trumped-up environmental concern to return Minnesota to the bad old days when city planners had a free hand to push for their pet projects by abusing their eminent domain powers, using boatloads of taxpayer dollars, and turning property and subsidies over to private developers for so-called "economic development." The developer gets the land and a sweetheart deal, the Port Authority gets to crow about a new project, and the rightful landowner gets the boot.
(The port authority) claims that Advance's site must be taken for environmental remediation and points to high levels of methane and lead to justify the taking. What the Port Authority refuses to acknowledge in public, however, is that Advance's property complies with all the MPCA's directives.
All you can do is fall on your knees and hop that 'representative government' doesn't deep you unacceptable tomorrow.
13 October 2008
Some Thoughts on Graffiti
This is not art, nor is it culture, nor is it a thoughtful statement on our times, nor is it the expression of one's soul.
This is the unintelligible scralwings of the childish and self-centered and nothing more. How else could one more loudly scream their own ignorance, illiteracy and outright failure as a human being than by tagging the property of others?
So, captain spray can, do you still think graffiti is art? First, grow up. Second, send me your home address, or that of your parents, or that of your grandparents. I'll come by at some unexpected hour, when no one is looking and practice my Broken Window via Brick Expressionism on the place. What? Not interested? C'mon, man; it's my ART!
Didn't like my glass work? Let me make you a counter proposal: Call me a mere 15 minutes before you again tag my garage. I'll meet you in my alley and we can compare our artistic endeavours. You practice your form of art on my garage and I'll practice my interpretation of dentistry and orthopedics on your person.
To sum up - if graffiti is such a legitimate, profound and important artistic exercise, why is it only practiced by cowards in the dark on the property of others?
12 October 2008
How Very Presidential
Barack Obama told the Iraqi government that George W Bush should not be allowed to strike a deal on the future of American troops in the country without the approval of the US Congress, it has emerged.Nice.
Mr Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, also said that the deal should be delayed until President Bush was out of office, according to Iraq's ambassador to the US - though this is denied by Mr Obama's campaign.
Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the US, told the Washington Times: "In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [deal] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration was in place." He added that Mr Obama had said "The new administration will have a free hand to opt out" of the deal.
11 October 2008
NHL Network Grows Up
By the way, good times downtown tonight.
09 October 2008
08 October 2008
Time for a Spark
Read it all - there's nothing not to like here, unless your stock and trade happen to be socialist/populist redistribution of wealth and credit manipulation (cough OBAMA cough). Also, why should anyone who promises a tax break to people who don't pay any taxes ever be worthy of a vote?(S)uch a proposal would include a cut in income taxes, and tax rates, for every American who pays taxes. The alternative system would impose no income taxes on the poor and what is often called "the working class" (the bottom 40% of income earners who don't pay federal income taxes now). This proposal would also eliminate federal income taxes on the middle class, the middle 20% of income earners who pay only 4.4% of all federal income taxes today.
And such a tax reform would be an antidote to the class warfare, neocollectivist tax policies of Barack Obama. If implemented, it would also jump-start the economy. Under this optional tax system, savings would increase and investment would soar as capital around the world is drawn to a suddenly more confident U.S. economy. This new surge of capital would end the credit crunch, and allow old businesses to expand and new ones to start. Wages would grow, along with the overall economy. And as the world invested in America, the dollar would strengthen, as happened in response to the tax cuts that generated the 1980s Reagan boom. This would ease inflationary fears and pressures on the Fed.
Mr. McCain also proposes to abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which is currently slated to grow to impose a trillion dollar tax increase on the American people in just a few years, burdening 25 million middle-class families. Abolishing the AMT would save middle-class families $2,700 on average per year, a cut of $60 billion each year from current law. Mr. Obama, by contrast, offers tax increases on savers, investors, small business, employers, and other job creators, a trillion dollar plus spending increase, and new regulatory burdens. That has no prospect of restoring economic growth. It will only do the opposite.
Good with Harpoon Throwin'
The self-riotous take a black eye on this one.The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.
One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.
