27 June 2008

Join The Dogpile

The Rott has an interesting link to a poll, subject of said poll being "what should happen with James Hansen's call to put oil execs on trial?"

All Loyal Citizens of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Empire are hereby ordered to report and vote for "fire his stupid ass" at their earliest convenience.

And for the record, we here at the farthest-flung outpost of the Empire (the sun rises two days late here at the Refuge, when it bothers to rise at all) are actually looking forward to global warming, because we hate to be cold.

26 June 2008

This Just In

The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, upholds the Constitution.

Not totally, and not enough, but perhaps enough for the camel to get it's nose under the tent.

Which is how we got to where we are at present, only in reverse.

Note to the NRA: here's something to work with. Don't blow it.

21 June 2008

Linky

Another new link.

The Political Jungle: Moonbats Beware

With a title like that I hope you have sense enough to know that tender feelings are in the crosshairs.

If not, keep your head down and your mouth shut and you should get out with only minor flesh wounds.

But for those of you that like a good fray, have at it.

Courtesy of a link found in comments on The Rott.

19 June 2008

The Government We Deserve

So now certain members of the Federal Government have come completely out of the closet.

Not only did Maxine Waters threaten to nationalize (socialize) oil companies, now they are talking about seizing control of - excuse me, Nationalizing - the refineries.

I seriously wish SOMEBODY would review a little history. To start with, see United Soviet Socialist Republic and check out how well everything worked out for them over there.

What was the last thing we nationalized? Oh yes, the TSA. Now THAT'S a success story.

"You don't professionalize until you Federalize" or some such claptrap as that.

And they want to control your healthcare, too.

Addition: Comments on Mostly Cajun reminded me that the government took over the Mustang Ranch for non-payment of taxes and ran it into the ground. These idiots are so incompetent that they can't run a house of ill repute - and I don't mean the house of representatives, although the similarities are numerous - and make a profit. Just imagine what kind of a mess they would make of oil and healthcare.

Kinda gives you a queasy feeling, don't it?

14 June 2008

God Save The Queen!

As if the UN didn't have anything better to do, they have issued a report saying that Great Britain should abolish it's monarchy.

Oil for food, mistreatment of children, not paying parking fines, criminal waste of office space in NYC, and these twits think they have the moral authority to tell a sovereign country what sort of government they should have.

I've noticed that they never issued statements about the Soviet Union's government, nor Cuba, nor North Korea, they haven't issued any statements regarding the fate of women in Muslim countries, etc etc ad nauseum, but they have a problem with Great Britain's monarchy? Pa-LEEEZE!

The UN Human Rights Council issued the report. Members of the council include Saudi Arabia and Cuba among it's stalwart supporters of human rights.

This factoid was not lost on Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, who remarked "Saudi Arabia and Cuba should pay a little more attention to their own human rights record."

I know from experience that one sure way to piss off a Brit is to insult the Queen. As a representative for the Royal Family said, "The Queen is a focus for national unity, identity and pride." And I'm sure there are plenty of Brits who will invite the UN Human Rights Council to perform anatomically impossible acts upon their persons, in perfect British style.

One more reason why the US should withdraw it's membership and issue the eviction notice.

A tip of the fedora to Barking Moonbat Early Warning System for the story.

13 June 2008

The Price

I went to help a friend the other day. He had bought a stove and we were going to move it in my trucklet.

I got there insanely early because, not knowing what traffic was going to be like, I left the house about 15 minutes before I had to. As a result I ended up loading the stove with the homeowner that my friend had bought it from and had some time to kill.

The homeowner offered me a cup of coffee, which I gladly accepted. We ended up shooting the breeze for a while, and inevitably the subject turned to gas prices.

He said something about the Government needing to "get serious" about making the auto manufacturers make fuel efficient cars. I commented that yeah, that worked so well for us in the 70's after all, and besides I wasn't a big fan of government mandating what the people will expect anyway.

I went on to say that the car company that doesn't lead the way in efficiency and alternate fuels is going to be forced out of business by the companies that do, and that the auto industry needs to be driving that particular train.

I don't know what shape or form our next mode of personal transportation is going to be, all I know is that there will be one. I'm still hoping for the flying cars that we were promised, but I'm not holding my breath.

I personally think the next big thing will be electric cars powered by fuel cells, but I have been wrong in the past and I will be wrong in the future. It's more likely that the next generation of personal transportation will be unlike anything we ever dreamed of.

Think about it, when we used the horse and the horse drawn conveyance the idea of a "horseless carriage" was completely foreign to most folks. Then it was a toy of the rich. Along comes Henry Ford and all of a sudden there is a car in every driveway.

In the same time frame the train was the greatest transportation system known to man. Now the only passenger trains that run in the US (outside of local commuter rail and tourist railroads) is AMTRAK, and they only have one route that makes money.

If you were to go back in time to the turn of the last century, say 1890 or so, and speculate that in another hundred years men would go about in horseless carriages and not take the train as a general rule, you would be regarded as a blithering idiot at best. Throw in that men would fly about regularly in great metal birds and you would likely be locked up as a threat to yourself and others. And as far as flying in those great metal birds across the oceans in less than a 24 hour period, not to mention traveling beyond our own atmosphere, don't even pretend to mention that unless you are Jules Verne.

Just in the last 40 years we have reached great heights. In the last 40 years we have left the confines of our own planet, if only for a little while. We have stepped onto the soil of a completely different celestial orb, if again only for a little bit. The computers in our digital watches now have more computing power than the ones that put men on the moon.

I am typing this post on a computer that folds up and fits on my lap, it is not connected to the wall or Internet by any wires, and if I want to travel away from the Refuge I can take my 'net with me by means of a cell card that connects through the cellular network. These things were the stuff of science fiction not even fifty years ago.

I am curious to see what will spring from the fertile mind of Man in the next 50 years.

06 June 2008

With Apologies to George Lucas

Like I said kid, it's hard to beat a good blaster.


how jedi are you?
:: by lawrie malen

Spare Me Already

I can't wait for the day our "carbon dioxide footprint number" goes the way of "what's your sign" and disco.

Global warming my ass. Of course, they call it "climate change" now, as if the climate on this planet has never changed before.

Quick, someone call the dinosaurs and tell them it was all a big mistake!

I need some aspirin.

Addition, for all you stupid people. And you know who you are. Well, maybe you don't know who you are.

I'm not saying that the climate has not changed. It has, and it has gotten warmer in the last 30 years. I can remember snowstorms when I was growing up in Iowa, they would pile the snow in the middle of the main roads and take it out with front-end loaders and dump trucks. The banks in the roads would be higher than the cars. It has been many years since they have had that kind of snowfall as a regular event.

At the time, the doomsday theory was that the world would be overtaken in the next ice age, which would surely be upon us by the end of the century.

The ice age is not upon us, and the pendulum has swung back to Global Warming! as the inevitable result of all those carbon-spewing humans polluting the planet with their presence.

The globe has been warmer, even in the short span of human existence. Look up Viking settlements in Greenland, settlements that were abandoned because the world was destroyed by ice, caused by all those carbon spewing Viking Stupid Useless Vehicles running all over the place.

01 June 2008

AAAAACCKK!!!!

Today was another fishing day.

Off to the store we go after a quick breakfast to get worms, soda and ice. We pack the sodas and ice into the cooler and off we go to the lake.

We get to the lake and open the tacklebox to put the worms inside for their brief walk from the trucklet to the lake when...

Oh yeah, THAT's where the last batch of worms went!

The smell was, to put it mildly, memorable.

Everything came out of the tacklebox and got washed at the lakeside, the smell is a little better but is certainly still with us. Mom won't allow the stinky thing inside her house, so further decon will have to take place naturally, through rain action.

We caught 5 fish between the two of us, all crappie, the largest about 5 inches long. They all went back into the lake.

Just as we were drowning the last two worms a man and his two girlfriends came down and between them caught a 10 inch bigmouth bass and two catfish, the smallest of which was at least 7 inches, in about 5 minutes time. They kept the bass but threw the catfish back after letting Christopher listen to them croaking.

What, you didn't know? Catfish croak. They sound like bullfrogs, but don't croak nearly as long or nearly as loud.

The catfish catcher was standing not 3 feet from me, and all I caught in that last hour was a 3 inch crappie.

Life ain't fair, I tell you. But, like the saying goes, it was better than a good day at work.