Thank you Captain Obvious...

McCain Says His Environmental Stance May Anger Republicans.

Gee.. ya think so?

After all, he's been poking conservatives in the eye for his entire career. Why should he stop now?

Just think of this: if John McCain is so willing to turn his back on conservatives and flip-flop during the PRIMARY SEASON, what's to keep him from turning his back on conservatives after he becomes President?

Do you really think he's going to appoint conservative judges?

Any which way you look at this election, we're screwed.

It's only by a matter of degrees, my friends. It's only by a matter of degrees.

The Great Wealth Redistribution Act of 2007...

Click here for the details:

A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.

Note especially the usual suspects of RINO co-sponsors.

So the bill imposes a tax that would allow a larger proportion of people worldwide to live on $1.50 a day, so all the good little limousine liberals can go home, knowing that at least they did something (of course, with other people's money).

First of all, if one wants to eliminate world poverty within a generation, one does not need to export more liberalism a-la handouts. What one needs to export is freedom and capitalism, and quit kowtowing to all the tin-horn dictators that stifle free enterprise and instead keep their citizens in physical and economic shakles.

Second of all, as my dear friend Bones corresponds,

This is another tax on Americans...to be paid to the UN...

It's on the Senate calendar for a vote.

...as much as 0.7 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product -- or $845,000,000,000.00 for welfare - aka income 'redistribution' - to third-world countries.

May I remind you that every tax extant is an un-Constitutional theft from your pockets, from your savings, from your retirement, business, investment and educational resources.

Guess who's sponsoring the bill?

Bones

Oh, I don't know-- could it be the biggest socialist since Dhimmi Carter?

Pot Meet Kettle

The DNC's pit-bullswine and all-around blowhard John P. Murtha had this to say about John McCain joking about an "IED gift" for John Stewart:

“Imagine a presidential candidate making a joke about IEDs when these kids are getting blown apart, it's outrageous!” Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha fumes.

John McCain, of course, was a lot more civl in his response than he had to be:

“All I can say to Murtha and others is lighten up and get a life.”

Like I said, Senator McCain was a lot more civil in his response than he needed to be, or perhaps should have been. A fairer, more appropriate response to the gasbag, IMO could have gone something like this:

"Imagine a sitting member of congress pronouncing guilt of "murder in cold blood" on a platoon of Marines without any evidence or even a formal brifing, during a time of war, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy that wants them dead, all for the purposes of cheap, political gain."

So until "Jihad Jack" Murtha apologizes for becoming a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, not to mention denying the basic civil right of presumption of innocence for those who have sworn to defend the Constitution with their very lives, then he has about as much room to talk as the space that exists between the crack of his bloated phat backside.

Just a spoonful of sugar?

Taking a cue from the venerable Mary Poppins, Governor Pawlenty signed a bill into law today that would simultaneously help veterans, while continuing to promulgate the biofuel fiasco.

Governor Tim Pawlenty has signed a bill that requires diesel fuel to contain a greater share of plant-based fuel and allows soldiers' family members to take time off for military events.

When speaking with governor Pawlenty in February of this year, he gave me his assurances that he understood that biofuels were more of a liability than an asset, to wit,

Pawlenty acknowledged that the production of corn- and soy-based ethanol was having unintended consequences, and that there has been a huge move away from food-product ethanol and toward ethanol created via corn-based by-products, animal waste and other "refuse-to-energy" alternatives.

Why, then, would Governor Pawlenty sign into law a measure that would continue a failed energy policy, that of using much-needed food and precious growing acreage for biodiesel products, with the inevitable result being exponentially increasing food prices?

He can sugar coat it all he wants with veterans benefits up the wazoo, but the unshinable turd that is the biofuels sham remains.

Pawlenty should have known better.

Perhaps he got the U.S. confused with the number of Heinz varieties...

"57 states with one left to go"

Then again, perhaps Obama was speaking about 57 different mental states... judging by the video, he appears to have made his most recent appearance (and has since taken up residence) in the State of Psychosis.

And the man has the gall to suggest that McCain is the one who is "losing his bearings?"


(h/t Powerline)

P.S.--Obama suggests that his staff wouldn't allow him to visit Alaska or Hawaii.

Aside from the fact that the residents of Alaska and Hawaii no doubt owe Obama's staff a debt of gratitude, this nonetheless conjures up a frightening picture of the future President Obama: "Well, I wanted to visit the Middle East to broker that deal with the Iranians, but my staff wouldn't let me go."

Or, to add a reductionist twist: "I wanted to go to the playground, but my mommy said I couldn't go!"

And he expects us to believe that he has what it takes to be "commander in chief?"

Geesh--some people's kids.

Another reason to cancel your National Geographic Subscription:

Yet a telling piece of the real environmentalist agenda:

Americans Rated Least Green

by Queenie Wong

WASHINGTON — Americans rank last in a new National Geographic-sponsored survey released Wednesday that compares environmental consumption habits in 14 countries.

Americans were least likely to choose the greener option in three of four categories — housing, transportation and consumer goods — according to the assessment. In the fourth category, food, Americans ranked ahead of Japanese consumers, who eat more meat and seafood.

The new "Greendex" rankings are the first to compare the lifestyles and behaviors of consumers in multiple countries, according to the National Geographic Society.

It plans to conduct the 100-plus question survey annually and considers trends more important than yearly scores, said Terry Garcia, executive vice president of National Geographic's mission programs.

"This is not just a one-time snapshot," Garcia said. "Some of the most important information may yet be revealed."

India and Brazil tied for the top score: 60 points out of 100. U.S. consumers scored 44.9.

The survey, conducted online by the polling firm GlobeScan, asked a cross-section of consumers about their house, energy use, transportation, food, purchases of goods and other activities.

Brazil ranked high, for example, because the average household is physically small, most homes aren't heated, few are air-conditioned and Brazilians tend to use on-demand water heaters.

Did you see that? Brazillians are to be held in high esteem because they don't heat their homes. Try doing that in St. Cloud Minnesota in January. Their homes are small. They live a backward existence. Do you see where this is going? Do you see where the enviro-whackos want to take us?

For instance, India is ranked second as "more green" than the United States. India? Green? Have you ever tried taking a dip in the Ganges River?

Have you noticed that the dirtiest, most backward, disease-ridden and hygienically- challenged countries are rated the highest, and the cleanest, most advanced nations are rated the lowest?

This, my friends, is emblematic of the ultimate aim of the environmentalist whacko movement; that we should live a 15th century existence, with the entire world reduced to living in a collectivist pit of misery reminiscent of a middle-east fifedom, save for the enlightened, elite few.

So, go ahead and cancel your National Geographic subscription.

On second thought, better keep it. It may serve as a useful reminder of the continuing insanity the sane world is up against.

Democrats: Let them eat wind.

I can't find the quote anywhere on the net, but yesterday, when listening to the top of the hour news, I heard Dem. Senator Harry Reid (D-Morticians Union-Nevada) exclaim (and I'm paraphrasing here) "We will not compromise ANWR nor any other environmentally sensitive place, nor will we allow the building of refineries. Instead, we will go after "big oil."

How in the name of the living mother of Frank will that increase the supply of oil and/or gas by one drop?!?

How will the refusal to add more refined oil to our national supply bring down market prices???

Do the democrats have a political death wish this year???

If I were the top dog in the GOP (which I'm not), I'd take Dingy Harry's statement and hammer him with it until election day and beyond.

More of Dingy Harry's madness:

May 7, 2008

Nevada Senator Harry Reid joined other Democratic senators at a press conference this week to unveil the Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008, a bill that addresses the root causes of high gas prices. Seven years of the Bush Administration’s disastrous energy policies have enriched Big Oil and market speculators at the expense of American consumers. “Nevadans are paying more and more every day to fill up their gas tanks, yet Bush Republicans only offer more of the same failed energy policies that brought us to this point,” Reid said.

Address the root causes of high gas prices???? Nevadans are paying more and more every day to fill up their gas tanks, Dingy Harry, for the simple fact that you and the environmentalist-whackos have blocked every friggen attempt to allow us to tap into our own resources!

Never mind the fact that it was Bill Clinton who originally vetoed ANWR back in 1996, saying then that it wouldn't make a difference, since it would take ten years before the oil could be extracted.

Well, it's been over 10 years now, and some oil from ANWR sure could have come in handy right now, couldn't it?

I lay the blame for our current energy debacle at your feet, Harry Reid, the democrat party, and RINOs along with the Sierra Club, Earth First and every other enviro-whacko who saw it fit to put their agenda ahead of what would be the ultimate economic suffering that our nation is currently enduring.

Those are the "same energy policies" that brought us to this point, Harry Reid. YOURS.

So Where's the Mouse?

A great eye opener as to where we're headed as a society:

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus:

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan's Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

Read the entire, amazingly true article here.

A singing telegram from a jack-ass...

Blogging lite again...

It's been extremely busy at work, and when I finally get home, family time has been primary...

Things should lighten up in a couple of weeks...

Sorry for the light posting as of late!

Wednesday Hero Blogburst 5-7-2008

CSM Robert Prosser and LTC Erik Kurilla
1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four)


LTC. Erik Kurilla and CSM. Robert Prosser's story is an amazing one. One that Michael Yon has told far better than I ever could. Warning. The site contains very graphic images. Some may want to turn off images before viewing.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

In a "DOH!" moment...

Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy admitted that corn-to-ethanol mandates are linked to increasing world hunger:

On the Spot. (CNSNews.com) - Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday that they believe there is a connection between federally mandated consumption of ethanol, a gasoline additive made from corn, and world food shortages.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that increasing amounts of ethanol be used in the United States to dilute gasoline. The law called for 4 billion gallons of ethanol to be used in 2006, 6.1 billion gallons in 2009, and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

As the demand for corn has increased because of increased ethanol consumption, the Washington Post reported this week, the number of acres used to grow wheat in the U.S. has contracted, contributing to a shortage of wheat on the world market and an overall increase in world grain prices.

"I think very definitely there is a clear connection between our ethanol use and world hunger," Kennedy told Cybercast News Service . "The connection is becoming more evident and understood more every day by the American people. And they understand that there is very little that's being done to address the problem."

Well, it appears that our good murdering senator from the State of Massachusetts has finally bought a clue.

They better have a clue.

It was the liberal-nutjobs along with big agriculture who used these mandates as yet another good-intentioned paving stone on their highway to hell.

The jig is up; and as Rev. Wright is so fond of saying, "The chickens-ah; have come home to roost!"

Well, at least he doesn't have to worry about that anymore...

Story says that Saddam feared getting AIDS in prison...

Live-bloggin' Lakeside

I was able to get away a little earlier than I thought so the wife and I headed to Detroit Lakes to air out the camper after a long winter's hibernation.

God how I love summer!

Lite Blogging

I'm volunteering at Camp Courage this weekend for a retreat for children with brain injury and their families....

Back on Sunday!