24 December 2009

Quotable Quotes

"Killing people is easy. Being politically correct is a pain in the ass."

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Merry Christmas everyone!

23 December 2009

End Of An Era

The last big block, an L-18 Vortec 8100 496 CID monster, was completed last week in GM's Tonawanda engine plant in New York last week.

The first big block was produced in 1958 and over it's 51 year history was made in displacements from 396 to 496 and placed in everything from work trucks to family sedans and station wagons to performance icons like the Impala, Chevelle, and Corvette.

Motorheads all across the globe mourn it's passing even as greenies celebrate it's demise. Count me among the motorheads. I never owned a vehicle with a GM big block, but then again I'm not dead yet either so there's still time. Five million of them were produced, surely there's still one or two to be had.

My 62 C-10 has plenty of room for one.

SRSLY?!?!?!?!?!?

I asked before if the White House was big enough for this guy's ego.

I think I have my answer now.

HT: Legal Insurrection

18 December 2009

Say What?

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told CNSNews.com that Congress has the authority to force individual Americans to buy health insurance because the U.S. Constitution “charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.”

She must have a different copy than I do.

HT: Christopher Taylor

That's Just Awesome

Apparently "Monster Hunter's International" has found it's way, complete with patches, into the hands of soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

That's one fine looking patch!

In other news, Monster Hunter is still selling well and the second installment is due next fall. You can read a snippet from it here.

Additionally, author Larry Correia has another sort of book in the works that you can read about here. It should be on bookstore shelves in 2011.

All I can say is, keep them coming! It looks like I have a new favorite author.

Picture from Monster Hunter Nation

11 December 2009

Lack Of Something Constructive To Do

It looks like someone has too much time on their hands.

10 December 2009

Happy Birthday

To Eldest Daughter.

De Nile

A Case of Classic Cluelessness.

Because it doesn't change the consensus!

And as everyone knows, consensus is how Science! gets done.

As opposed to, say, experimentation and evaluation of results and then posting those experiments and evaluations for others to conduct their own experiments to verify or refute the results.

But hey, I'm just a denier, I guess.

Photo "Dhows on the Nile" by Jerzy Strzelecki

Songs Of The Season


Last night I heard the new song about the Christmas shoes for the first time.

Great Cthulhu, do you think you could write a more depressing song for the happiest of holidays?

We have gone from chestnuts roasting on an open fire to please give me money so I can buy Momma a new pair of shoes for her own funeral?

And what's the big idea of taking Parson Brown out of "Walking In A Winter Wonderland"? Is anyone but me about sick of the whole PC thing?

Seriously, when you start messing with Christmas carols you have gone too far.

That's it. Bob Rivers is going to sing all the carols around the Refuge this year. If you are going to destroy a Christmas carol, at least make it funny.

06 December 2009

Year Two

Two years since the diagnosis.

I had to work today so we didn't spend much time together. Like last year, we spent the time we did have not talking about it.

Thats Funny!

Here are some of Palin's jokes at the Gridiron dinner (from John King and various other Twitter feeds):

-
"It's good to be here though, really, in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals, or as I like to call it, a death panel."

-"I went out for a jog. Or as Newsweek calls it--a photo shoot."

-"Sometimes you've got to trust your instincts and when you don't, you end up in places like this "

-Palin jokes if Biden hadn't been elected and was out selling his book it would be "Going Rogaine"

- "If I need a bald campaign manager, I guess all i am left with is James Carville." (dig at Steve Schmidt)

-
Palin jokes big announcement: "Tomorrow I am going to Iowa ......noon to 3p at Barnes & Noble "

-Palin tells Gridiron about her book tour: "The view is better from the bus ... than under it."

-GovPalin at Gridiron jokes normally dem speaker next but: "McCain campaign staff asked if they could have that time for rebuttal."

-Palin jokes book title debate included The Audacity of the North Slope."

-
Andrea Mitchell: At press dinner Palin "joked" person next to her on plane looked at picture of Obama and Chinese leader and asked which one is the communist

(That one falls flat, apparently Andrea Mitchell's twitter-fu is weak. The joke was that she was looking at the Newsweek cover of Obama and Chinese leader Hu, and the person in the next seat said "Hu's the communist." She joked that she thought he was asking a question.)

-
On being on the same program as (Barney) Frank "And I'm the controversial one?"

Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ commenter ODB.

04 December 2009

Scandalous!

Did Tiger Woods pay Rachel Uchitel to stay quiet about an affair?

Who cares. Tiger Woods is not in a position to waste billions in taxpayer dollars.

Enough already. There are more important things to focus on.

16 Years

Happy Anniversary Boo.

03 December 2009

The Latest from Beltway Bob

"Several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this week.

Except that now it's pretty clear that the data used to reach that conclusion is erroneous and cherry picked, and in fact the calculations and models used to manipulate that data is itself fallacious.

There's a reason people don't trust politicians and their spokesmen. Wonder what it is.

Going Rogue

I just got done with "Going Rogue" and enjoyed it immensely.

I was not a fan of John McCain because I thought he violated the oath he took first as a Naval officer and then as a Senator when he co-authored the legislation known as McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform (but what should be known as the Incumbent Protection Act). When the McCain campaign called me asking for my support, I let them know in no uncertain terms that McCain-Feingold had torpedoed their campaign as far as I was concerned, and that I could think of nothing that would make me vote for them.

Then they nominated Sarah Palin for VP, and it all changed. In Sarah I, as many Americans, found someone that I could support, someone that I could vote FOR, instead of supporting because the opposition was worse. I was disappointed in the media hatchet job that she got during the campaign, I was angered by the treatment the McCain staff gave her both during and after the campaign, and it just drove home for me the feeling that John McCain may have been honorable during his stay in the Hanoi Hilton, but he was no longer that man. If he had been, he would have hammered the staff members that instigated the treatment, instead he said nothing.

In the book Going Rogue Sarah Palin speaks about growing up in Skagway Alaska, about being elected to the Wasilla City Council and then as Mayor, and finally as Governer. She talks about the issues and problems and the steps she had to take to overcome those problems. It's a refreshing insight and it makes me more convinced than ever that she would have been a good VP and a better President.

Unfortunately she made a huge mistake.

Governor Palin, if you somehow stumble onto my little corner of the world and read these remarks, please understand that I'm not finding fault. In truth I wouldn't have done so well, and in fact would have probably done worse. I know this about myself, which is why I have never attempted a run at public office. I don't have the temperament for it. But you do.

The mistake surfaces in the book when she meets the man who would serve as her campaign chief of staff. The guy was an economist who had no clue as to how a campaign was to be run. "It seemed odd that we were being put in the hands of a man who had never run a campaign before," she writes, "but Andrew seemed like a nice guy, and it wasn't my call."

It was your call Governor. As soon as it wasn't the mistake was made. Later on you remark that your hometown media proclaimed "And the Sarah Palin we once knew, is gone." "I wasn't" you say, but in fact as soon as you let the campaign manage you instead of you managing it, you were.

In your run ups to previous offices you took the bull by the horns. You managed your own campaign, sometimes by instinct, and always did what you thought was right. Your mistake was in not continuing that when you ran for VP. Those people were not going to serve in the office, and as soon as the campaign was over they would be gone. We were not coming to rallies to see them, we were coming to see you. They did not have an incredible approval rating as the Governer of the Union's largest state, you did.

Don't let anyone change you from being who you are, because we love who you are and that's why we supported you. Your instincts were right. If the campaign wasn't going to let you be who you are, you should have told them "Sorry, I don't think this is going to work out for either of us" and then gave the whole story to the Alaska press, the ones who knew you, when you got back home.

It will be interesting to see what comes next.