Thursday, April 26, 2007

Short memories

Read something like this and it's easy to imagine the fall of civilization. Well, yeah, this was worse, but how anyone can vote for Democrats after what we've seen so far is amazing. Stay home, vote 3rd party, *something*, but don't vote for those creeps.

And has everyone forgotten how miserable everything got when the Dems ran the show with numbers that could defeat filibusters and we had that insufferable sanctimonious wuss Jimmy Carter in the White House? They fouled things up so badly that we elected Ronald Reagan. We hear plenty of moaning about current circumstances, but the numbers from the Carter years show that this is nothing but partisan yammering. If you want it back, all you have to do is vote Dem.

Voting for and even declaring failure in the Middle East? Nothing the Republicans have done even compares to this Dem disgrace. And here in IL Gov. Blagojevich is grasping for huge programs like a madman while he can - the last couple of Dem governors of IL have wound up in prison upon leaving office, and he's under serious investigation.

Yet lack of enthusiasm for voting for Republicans is understandable. They never had large margins of control, they had the press fighting back tooth and nail, and many of their numbers were RINOS anyway, but still they didn't deliver what people wanted from them. So if govt is to be about nothing but wealth transfers and impotent posturing after all, we might as well vote for the Dems.

But when people like some of my relatives, who have a history of voting Democrat, start cussing the Dems, something's going on.

Did we learn nothing from Bill Clinton?

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

More examples of armed citizens resisting mass killers

Right here.

Membership of the Congresses of the United States

Greg Hlatky has done a lot of dogged work putting together this page - check it out.

In which I too mock Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow has definitely soaked up too much sun. If you read the news or any blogs yesterday you've heard of her policy prescription for saving the planet. Yep, just one square of TP per trip, folks. What with her hippie predilections we should be happy she uses any at all. And I can't wait to hear her address feminine hygiene.

I wonder if Rosie O'Donnell will be following along? Eww, that one square ain't gonna do it. She'll need to use the roofer's definition of a square - 100 square feet. Whether that will be sufficient remains to be seen - paparazzi, do your stuff!

Now just to show how classy and restrained this blog is, not that *I* didn't write anything like some of the blog comments I saw in various places. For instance, it's been suggested that the departure of Lance Armstrong was related to, um, paperwork. Stuff like that has no place on this blog so I'd never write it here. And certain words don't appear in this blog either, so I didn't title this post "saving the planet the asshole way". Nosirree, we have standards here.

And then there was the account of her and Laurie David running into Karl Rove. Sheryl Crow seems to have battered him with her finger. He took action to avoid this, and Laurie "I'm not perfect" David marveled that anyone would refuse to be jabbed in the chest by Sheryl Crow. Now we know.

(And again, this blog has standards - I would never propose that we challenge blindfolded people to poke Karl Rove and Sheryl Crow in the chest and try to tell them apart. That's *class*.)

I agree with Freedom Eden. We all have our own particular needs of course, so we can make offsetting sacrifices in other areas. Like, say, forgoing the use of private jets.

Seriously, I shudder to think of people like this running the govt.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

More overreaction to VT massacre

Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, it's a bit overstated IMO. At least, I'll trade a little liberty for a lot of safety, but even then only temporarily. Examples might be, say, quarantines.

But with quarantines we have a disease we can diagnose. If only we were so good at diagnosing mental illness. (At least the press isn't very good, anyway) Yet we're hearing rumblings about simplifying involuntary institutionalization in response to the Virginia Tech slaughter, and that's potentially very scary.

For instance, it's often very tempting to attribute disagreement to mental defects, especially in politics. In some countries it has been policy, and dissidents would wind up in mental hospitals or "reeducation" facilities.

But it can't happen here, right? In fact, it has, and the mere threat of institutionalization has been used for intimidation, Here's an example.

Now that we've seen Congress change hands twice in the last 15 years, you'd hope that both major parties would have learned something important: you don't ever let the govt have a power that you wouldn't trust your opponents with. No more political theater of Congressional investigators and special prosecutors - the Dems could just declare President Bush, VP Cheney, Tom Delay and countless others mentally ill instead harassing them, and the rest of us would cage Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, Al Gore and other spigots of senselessness.

IMO any safeguards against political or other misuse that were strong enough to be worthwhile would render the whole project useless. But I suppose I could compromise a little. So I propose the Brazen Bull Act of 2007 - Let's find the people who are in favor of simplified institutionalization and lock them up.

Who is Sick?

Who is Sick? has incredible potential. Just check it out.

Then try to imagine how much this free product would have cost if the govt had tried to implement it.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds (who I only credit about 10% of the time, as if he'd notice the difference on his hit counter) and Boing-Boing for the links.

Just watch it

I got a lot of hits for mentioning Julianne Hough last week, but that's not why I'm mentioning her and celebrity partner Apolo Anton Ohno again. Just watch the video. It's the best performance I can remember from the show after 4 seasons.

Watermelon Day

Ha, another global warming rally impacted by cold weather. And now we must suffer "Earth Day", where greens prostrate themselves before the great goddess Gaea and pledge to badger their betters another year.

This repeated collective silliness annoys me. Why? Because it's ineffective - it's nothing but a big party for likeminded poseurs. (Yeah, they need love too, but in their case all it does is spread more disease and cause abortions). Then they ride home in their SUVs and leave their trash behind.

And because they're dominated by lefties, all of their prescriptions have to involve the govt - heaven forbid that lefties would actually do or pay for anything themselves.

Who says govts can do anything? All any of them can do is take your money, spend it on what they want, pick favorites and deprive you of life, liberty and property if you don't cooperate. This doesn't work with CO2 or the sun. Increases in solar activity may well account for most of the claimed changes in our global average temperature anyway, rendering anthropogenic contributions as significant as spitting in the ocean is to the tides.

But let's suppose we puny humans are causing the change, and that we really know the consequences, that they don't result in net improvement, and that dealing with the results isn't better or cheaper than changing our ways. Then what?

After conservation, the answer lies where it always has - in science and engineering. You want cleaner power? - we're the guys who make it happen. You want more fuel-efficient cars? Tell us what you want and give us the time and money and we'll do all that the laws of physics permit. And who do you think developed, say, solar PV? An activist? A celebrity? A lawyer? A politician?

Yet when was the last time Greenpox et al ever spent a dime on engineering or basic scientific research? No, their history is about imposing additional costs on clean, reliable power sources like nuclear power. Their obsession with energy threatens our supplies, and if you think some forms of energy are dangerous, think of how dangerous it will be *not* to have the energy we need.

I suppose that the lack of support makes sense to them, because they ignore engineers and scientists if they don't like the answers. Colby Cosh gives a terrific example wrt windpower here. The problem, which ought to be obvious to anyone paying attention, is that wind is not necessarily in sync with power demands.

No problem, we'll just store the juice when it's there and dole it out when it's needed, right? Sure, once we get affordable reasonably efficient and reliable non-site-specific storage mechanisms that can work on utility scale. This will work well with solar, windpower and handling peak loads on the grid without having to keep usually oil-fired "peakers" running. Win, win, win - someone will get richer than Bill Gates if they can make this happen.

Again, where's Greenpox et al? They could be training scientists and engineers or funding research toward such a universally useful technology. But as usual they're spending it on lobbyists, exhibitionists and more fundraisers to defoliate us with their mailings about protecting the rainforests.

Lefties aren't about anything but power and control, and any issue they get involved with will be redirected to serve their political ends. The sooner the true greens kick out the reds the sooner we can make environmentalism the nonpartisan issue it always should have been.