"I'll Be Back!"

The Hillary-nator:



Never count out the truly ruthless. This gets more interesting by the day.

Blood 'n' Guts

Camille Paglia comments on the Democratic bloodbath that will be the national convention. Obama is kickin' some serious Hillary-Fried-Chicken booty on the east coast, but it ain't over yet. The super-delegate issue is still out there with Hillary pulling out all the stops including whoring out her own daughter.

With any luck, things will get so ugly that both parties will be in tatters, and Bob from Iowa will win on a a write-in vote by the five people that bother to show up at the polls in November.

Universal Health Care

Anyone who spends any time here knows that I have serious problems with how we do health care in the United States. But if anybody thinks that having the government take over health care will fix anything needs to read this. Follow the links. Think. (I know it hurts, but try anyway.)

Is this what we really want?

Coming to a Concert Stage Near You

How long before Slash has one of these?

Wicked.

Istanbul, Not Constantinople

Most recent visitor is from Istanbul, Turkey. Feeling a little They Might Be Giants coming on.

America's Most Miserable Cities

I worked in number 1 and lived in number 3. Both rankings are more than deserved. No real surprises here other than why people put up with it.

Go Obama, Go!

Or is that "Run Obama, run!" I was (mostly) kidding about his current success being unhealthy for him. But I think this guy is serious. Given that my predictions generally fall into the pessimistic column, I'm generally happy to be wrong. For the sake of what's left of our Republic, Lessing and I had better be way off base.

Special Guest

I've been busy being really lazy and sleeping a lot so I didn't blog this in a timely fashion:

Guess who came to dinner Thursday night? I didn't realize it, but Toni Tennille lives not far from here. The waitress thought she recognized her, and confirmed it when she paid with a credit card.

Almost famous!

Big Climate Post

Several interesting articles popped up in the various feeds and trackers I use, so rather than make a separate post for each one, I'm just going to do one of my infrequent mega-posts.

First up is a new study that confirms the findings of dozens of other studies: If you take into account all the CO2 produced, burning ethanol produces more CO2 than burning the equivalent amount of gasoline. This has been known practically since the scheme of blending alcohol into our gasoline was cooked up back in the early 1980's. The entire ethanol "industry" from the corn field to the gas pump is nothing but a fraud that involves the transfer of millions of dollars every year from taxpayers to the farming and energy sectors. Ethanol is a complete failure economically and environmentally. Enough already.

One issue I have with the article is lumping all biofuels in with ethanol made from food crops. If the focus was shifted from making ethanol from corn or soybeans to making ethanol or methanol from saw dust, tree bark, lawn clippings, switch grass, etc., or even light crude from turkey guts, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But we have to save the family farm, and what better way than by running up world food prices by burning crops in our cars.

Next is a somewhat humorous article about Georgia trying to move the state border in order to gain access to more water. Georgia has been hammered by drought and population growth resulting in massive water shortages. No one is taking this border-moving nonsense seriously. At least not yet. But massive, centuries-long droughts have occurred before and will happen again. Watch for water wars in the next couple decades.

The next two article are closely related. One is written by a real scientist working on the IPCC blasting the extremism in an up-coming National Geographic special. Understand that this is a guy that finds a six-degree shift "plausible." What he finds ridiculous is the projected effects. One point that he makes is key to understanding just what it is we are talking about:

It’s 90 degrees from Pole to Equator, and the hottest and coldest places on Earth, Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression and the Antarctic Plateau, are 83 Degrees Celsius apart.

In other words, if you stay at the same altitude, a difference of one degree Celsius is the same as driving south one degree of latitude, or about 69 miles.

If one degree is nature’s answer to Lynas’ question, the flora and fauna of Newark, New Jersey has about a century to adopt to the climate of Newark, Delaware. If the answer is three, make that Newport, Rhode Island, and Newport News, Virginia. If, defying statistical gravity we see the six degree Celsius shift that is the focus of the Special Effects industry 22nd century shockumentaries will compare footage of Birmingham, Alabama today with Birmingham, Michigan tomorrow. Don’t expect a lot of Oscars, because the summers Alabama’s biotreme already endure are about as hot as even nature stoked on CO2 will be able to deliver—the sun is not going to get hotter on our account.

That last sentence is a good lead-in to the final article that discusses a fact little-known and never-discussed in the Al Gore camp called the Maunder Minimum. Every few centuries, the sun cools off. We are due, and there is some evidence that we may be moving into one. The last time this happened in the late 17th century, humanity was blessed by "massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe." Sounds like a fun time. The article's conclusion:

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

...

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

Why do I have the odd suspicion that neither of these studies will be mentioned as a counterpoint to the National Geographic Channel's hysteria-fest?

News for Diabetics

I've never believed in all the magic numbers that the drug industry constantly throws at us: weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar. All arbitrary, and all seem more about selling ever-higher amounts of medication to people than making us healthy.

Or even keeping us alive, it now seems.

Of course, half of that article is telling everyone to not jump to conclusions on the basis of one study, blah, blah, blah. Of course, if one study seems to hint at the possibility that there may be a slight chance of some benefit from me being prescribed yet-another $30-a day drug, my doctor never hesitates. But the possibility that my blood sugar or cholesterol or whatever may just naturally fall outside of the medical industry's arbitrary "normal" range and that artificially forcing my body to conform to those arbitrary ranges may be unhealthy or even deadly? Now, now, lets not be hasty here....

By the way, did I mention I am shopping for a new doctor for the third time in a year?

After CAFE

Another entry in the "those who abuse us for our own good" file: The nanny-staters have finely admitted that increases in the CAFE standards really don't accomplish much, so now they are shifting the focus to VMT ("Vehicle Miles Traveled" for you poor, unenlightened sots). So how do you reduce the number of miles people drive? The same way you force people to do anything else they don't really want to do:

Tax them for doing it.
Use those taxes to fund boondoggles like Detroit's People Mover that rarely does.
Dictate where people will live.
Dictate how people can use their private property.

In other words, business as usual.

Personally, I think it's great to live where I can walk to work and Debbie only drives 7 miles round trip. Today, I realized I didn't have any quarters to do laundry, so I walked down the street to our bank: total round trip time: 20 minutes. Grocery store: 5 minute walk. Post office: 7 minute walk. Library: 8 minute walk. Ice cream parlor, art gallery, city park, an even dozen restaurants, a museum, the high school soccer field: all within a 10-minute walk. It will take a lot to convince me to ever go back to our previous situation where the nearest loaf of bread was a forty-five minute drive round trip. No thanks. But I want the option to do so if I wish without having to placate a bunch of whiners that just can't stand seeing someone else doing something they disagree with.

Unnecessary Things

Anyone that knows me understands that I just don't get the modern mall. To me it is just acres of junk sold by no-nothing teens with bad hair and worse attitudes. Why anyone would spend five minutes in such a place is completely beyond me. So I don't go. Simple concept, right? No one is forcing me to go there and spend my hard-earned money in yet-another womens clothing store. If you chose to waste your time and money there, go for it.

However, for a vocal and, at times, far too influential segment of humanity, that isn't enough: "I don't like it, therefore you cannot do it." is the cry of the wanna-be statist. It matters not what "it" is. It could be McDonalds, malls, or Mormons. The government must do something to rid us of this scourge. Of course it goes without saying that you don't dare even a glance at their sacred cows.

Euros Accepted

Should we be worried that stores in NYC are now accepting Euros and other foreign currencies?

Probably.

Will we?

Nah.

The Illusion of Competence

Fred Reed's latest column is on-line. He asks what I think is a very good question: "How can such incontinently funded agencies [CIA, NSA, Mossad, OGPU, NKVD, KGB, DIA, Savak, MI6] of very smart people accomplish so little?"

Or is it that we only hear of the failures? Let's face it, "Today in NYC, no buildings were successfully blown up." is hardly compelling news.

At Least We Have Company

As the United States slides into insignificance, it's nice to know that we will have company on the way down.

Ye flippin' gods.

Making Money on the Internet

The internet, and computing in general, is clearly a disruptive technology that is throwing a monkey wrench into everything from how people sell their used furniture to the music industry. So the question becomes when most physical things are free or nearly so and digital media drives the cost of entertainment to zero, how do you make a living? In the past, this was only supposed to be a problem for musicians, authors, etc. but 3D printing will move that problem into many other industries.

Here is one idea. I'm not sure I buy it, but it is interesting to contemplate how, or if, this would work.

Obama Hangs Tough

I can't believe Obama is still in this, and in fact may have even edged into first place. Look for incriminating photos suddenly appearing on the internet. Or maybe Hillary will just Vincent Foster the guy.

This could get interesting.

Slow Week

I was looking through some photos last night and realized that we haven't done anything or gone anywhere in a month. Part of that is financial; until I start getting regular paychecks, we don't even have the extra gas money to do local sight-seeing. The weather hasn't helped much. It seems that we have freezing rain or snow every Sunday which is our only day that we both have off work. And we have been incredibly unmotivated. We both are trying to adjust to the new schedule now that I am working regular hours, so sleep and meal patterns are disrupted.

Today we at least got out of the house, did a little shopping, drove out to Arcosanti to pick up some mail, and dropped off a package at the post office. Nothing exciting, but it was good to get out of the house. While we were out and about, we used a couple free movie passes that Debbie had won at work to see Juno. Whoever wrote it has a strange sense of humor, but it was what movies are supposed to be; mindless entertainment.

I heard that there was some sort of game played down in Phoenix yesterday that was used as a loss leader for car and beer ads. Anybody catch who won? Or how about who played?

A Little Global Warming Please?

Sounds like the folks in Oregon could use some global warming right now.

Yes, Mommy Dearest

Great. Now every high school kid working at McDonalds in Mississippi will have to judge if the person at the counter is obese, by sight, and refuse them service.

God save us from these nags.