Saturday, May 9, 2009

Wiener of the Week

There are government policies that can make you scratch your head. There are policies that can make you irritated. And then there are policies that can elicit just one response: WTF?!?!?!

Gov. Deval Patrick’s free wheels for welfare recipients program is revving up despite the stalled economy, as the keys to donated cars loaded with state-funded insurance, repairs and even AAA membership are handed out to get them to work.

But the program - fueled by a funding boost despite the state’s fiscal crash - allows those who end up back on welfare to keep the cars anyway.

“It’s mind-boggling. You’ve got people out there saying, ‘I just lost my job. Hey, can I get a free car, too?’ ” said House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading).
Am I hallucinating here? Did I just read that financially-strapped Taxachusetts is giving away fully insured cars complete with AAA and free repairs?
The state pays for the car’s insurance, inspection, excise tax, title, registration, repairs and a AAA membership for one year at a total cost of roughly $6,000 per car.
I did read that right. But why?
Kehoe defended the program, saying the state breaks even by cutting welfare payments to the family - about $6,000 a year.

“If you look at the overall picture, this helps make sure people aren’t staying on cash assistance. It’s a relatively short payment for a long-term benefit,” Kehoe said.

But Kehoe admitted about 20 percent of those who received a car ended up back on welfare, and while they lose the insurance and other benefits, they don’t have to return the car.

“Given the state’s fiscal condition, paying for AAA and auto inspection costs is outrageous,” said Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield). “There are so many families out there trying to deal with layoffs and pay cuts. You have to wonder what the state’s priorities are at this point.”
[emphasis mine]
Talk about fiduciary irresponsibility! Free cars. No strings attached. No responsibility. It's so typical of what passes for Progressive thought.

I'll let Representative Jones have the last word, which I'll second:
“I just don’t see this as a core function of government.”
Amen to that, brother.

Taxachusetts, you're the Wiener of the Week

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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Oklahoma is OK

As the economy continues to swirl around the bowl and the federal government takes over more and more control of the economy, a growing discontent is rising in "Red" America. Last month transparent phonyGovernor Rick Perry of Texas made the assertion that his state had the right to secede. Given that it was at a Tea Party and he was clearly pandering, no one took it seriously at the time - nor should they have. Rick Perry is a weasel, and he was simply saying what the audience wanted to hear.

This little shot over the bow SHOULD be taken seriously.

Although Gov. Brad Henry vetoed similar legislation 10 days earlier, House members Monday again approved a resolution claiming Oklahoma’s sovereignty.

Unlike House Joint Resolution 1003, House Concurrent Resolution 1028 does not need the governor’s approval.

The House passed the measure 73-22. It now goes to the Senate.

"We’re going to get it done one way or the other,” said the resolutions’ author, Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City.

"I think our governor is out of step.”
Ya think? 73-22 is a pretty healthy margin for ANY vote. And why exactly did the Governor veto the original bill?
Henry vetoed HJR 1003 because he said it suggested, among other things, that Oklahoma should return federal tax dollars.
What a frickin' weasel! Grow a set, man! How the deuce do you expect to get Uncle's foot off of your neck when you're still accepting his money? Sheesh!
Key said HCR 1028, which, if passed, would be sent to Democratic President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress, would not jeopardize federal funds but would tell Congress to "get back into their proper constitutional role.” The resolution states the federal government should "cease and desist” mandates that are beyond the scope of its powers.

Key said many federal laws violate the 10th Amendment, which says powers not delegated to the U.S. government "are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution lists about 20 duties required of the U.S. government, he said.
And a chorus of angels sang.

FINALLY!!!!!! People are FINALLY waking up to the reality that the Feds have exceeded their Constitutional limits and are running amok. Considering that this federal takeover has been ongoing since the tail end of the 19th century, one has to ask:

What took you so long?!?!??!

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Death Knell: Part III - Persecution of Non-believers

Global Warmist - To be defined as a global warmist, a person must have all of the following traits:

1) An absolute belief that humans are primarily or even completely responsible for causing a mass climate change which will raise the average temperature of the planet.

2) Will not entertain the idea that it is possible that natural phenomena may cause climate change, regardless of any evidence.

3) Believes it is a good thing to throw billions upon billions of dollars at an idea that may or may not work to stop climate change, "just in case."

4) Believes that natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes are an indirect result of humankind's actions to cause climate change.

5) Shouts down, puts down, and insults anyone whose beliefs run contrary to their own, rather than having intelligent discourse. A zealot for their cause.


From The Urban Dictionary.



The four tools of propaganda employed by Global Warmists to perpetrate their fraud, as pointed out in the previous Death Knell post, are Hysterical Predictions; Persecution of Non-believers; Data Anomalies, Questionable Practices, and Bad Models (read: fraud); and the Governmental Full-court Press to force the issue.

This installment addresses the Persecution of Non-believers.

This is quite possibly the scariest aspect of the AGW worship-the-Earth crowd. How on Earth can science function in this kind of environment? What kind of environment, you ask? What follows are links and a brief explanatory blurb detailing the 4 types of intimidation employed to ensure that "the right answer" is being parroted by one and all.

1. Blackballing
This technique is employed to assure that dissenting voices are denied a platform from which to speak their heresy. This is the story of Naturalist David Bellamy, once the darling of the BBC, now a pariah.
FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV.

A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm.

Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists.

His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming.
This is how the blackball works. You simply become an un-person. You are no longer welcome, no longer a member of the club. You're out, and you won't be allowed back in.

2. Denial of funding
This tactic, the favorite of governmental agencies, is the most cynical of the persecution tactics. "Give us the answer we want, or you'll get no more money from us". Most of the "denial of funding" talk is apocryphal, but the other side of that coin - favor the warming premise and you WILL get funded - is much easier to prove.
In fact, if you want to get a study funded today on anything from suicides to butterflies, researchers are finding that they better somehow link the issue to global warming and it will increase your chances of securing funding dramatically.

Meteorologist James Spann suggests scientific objectively is being compromised by the "big cash grab" of money flowing to proponents of man-made climate fears. I previously noted that NASA's James Hansen received a $250,000 award from the Heinz Foundation.

"Billions of dollars of grant money are flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story," Spann wrote on January 18, 2007.
3. Peer pressure
Most of what we view as "science" is information that is published in peer-reviewed journals. By denying scientists the ability to publish their findings, and by deriding their findings in those same lofty publications, scientists who are unbelievers are shouted down and denied a platform to state their case. Here is the experience of Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.
4. Threats of Legal Action
When all else fails, sue. Or worse. The infamous James Hansen proposes the establishment of a special court to prosecute unbelievers.
James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
That's it. Not for crimes like fouling the environment with oil spills, or cartel-like pricing of their products. No, for the high-crime of DENYING!

Another group wants to establish an International Court for the environment.
Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".
And where the limits of its power stops......nobody knows.

Parallels with the Eugenics Movement
Finally, take a gander at this. I won't try to summarize it. Suffice it to say that the AGW crowd is employing the same tactics that were employed by the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Nothing bad happened as a result of that, right? Oh, that Adolph Hitler guy...yeah, I suppose maybe there WAS some harm there.

The bottom line is this: a very real campaign exists to silence critics of AGW. One ignores this at the peril of their personal freedoms.

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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Wiener of the Month - April

April is at an end. So, apparently, is the Supreme Court career of Justice David Souter, the albatross hung 'round the neck of America by King George the Elder way back in 1990. This Trojan Horse was pushed through by old Bush with all of the usual assurances that he would uphold the Constitution.

But did he? Hell no! Souter beat cheeks over to the Liberal end of the court. He joined with the other liberals on the court who believe that they are the seven anointed oracles appointed by...well, not God, certainly, because "you can't mix church and state"...but appointed, nonetheless, to rule according to......whatever they feel like, apparently, because it sure ain't the Constitution of the United States they're using as their guide.

King O is likely to appoint someone even further to the left of Souter as his replacement, so it's not like we can celebrate his departure as an improvement in the Court. But we can celebrate the end of the career of a sanctimonious phony who used the Constitution as toilet paper.

I have one further beef against Souter. He not only didn't understand technology, but openly avoided any contact with it, preferring to use a fountain pen to hand write his legal opinions. So what?, you say. What does that matter? It matters plenty! It shows a man lacking in intellectual curiousity (sound familiar? that was the accusation leveled at King George the Dim by the Left). It shows a man who's made up his mind, who's inflexible, who's refused to explore things he doesn't understand. It shows a man whose head is shoved firmly into the sand (or firmly somewhere else, if you prefer). It is a leading indicator of a lack of intellect.

Ah, hell. Why sugar coat it? The man is an effing idiot.

And he's the Wiener of the Month.

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Saturday, May 2, 2009

Wiener of the Week

This guy may prove to be a WotW regular. His shoes must have to be custom-fitted to allow for easier insertion into his mouth. His latest:

One day after saying he wouldn't travel in tight quarters because of the swine flu scare, Vice President Joe Biden rode a train Friday from Washington to Delaware.
Known for speaking freely, Biden told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday that he had urged family members to avoid airplanes and subways for fear of contracting the H1N1 flu virus.
"I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said.
The comments infuriated the travel industry and triggered several revisions from the Obama administration, whose official advice is less severe.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano commented, "If he could say that over again, he would say if they're feeling sick, they should stay off of public transit or confined spaces."
By Friday night, Biden seemed ready for his own do-over. A longtime rider of Amtrak, he took a train from Union Station to his Delaware home, his office said.
Good old Joe! He's gonna be a LOT of fun.

And he's the Wiener of the Week.

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Friday, May 1, 2009

Vulture Droppings - 100 days

Vulture Droppings is a semi-regular feature of this blog. It's a kind of "Random Thoughts" post in which I try to quickly summarize a particularly large event or series of events. Think of it being sort of like what a vulture leaves behind after devouring a horse. You don't get the whole horse, just highly processed leftovers.


Big Media (the BM for short) is celebrating the 100 day anniversary of their Lord and Savior taking office as ruler of the United States of Amerika. Naturally, the BM'ers were all atwitter at the prospect of writing glowing stories about their icon. I had the audacious idea that I would personally sample and judge each story I could find from any of the BM's main organs of propaganda.

However, some minor health issues have kept me in a somewhat loopy state, so I'm going to shoot lower. I'm going to provide you with the links and let you decide for yourself whether the BM's reportage is (a) fair, (b) biased against the Emperor, or (c) journalistic felatio.

Regarding my health issues. I do NOT have the swine flu....but I have a great swine flu joke that, coincidentally, is in keeping with the theme of this post.

It was once said that there was as much chance that a black man would be elected president as there was of pigs flying. Well, here we are: a black man has been president for 100 days, and...SWINE FLU!!!!

Okay, here are the links I was able to accumulate opining on Obama's 100 days.

From ABCNews.com:
From MSNBCN.com
From CBSNews.com
From CNN.com
From Newsweek:
From The New York Times:
And, finally: What the media are saying (a compilation by CBSNews.com)

Something I find particularly amusing is the way the BM fawns all over Michelle Obama. A sampling from each of the BM heavyweights from the previous section yields these Michelle-themed stories:

ABC
MSNBC
CBS
Newsweek: None related to the first 100 days
CNN
NY Times

So...Vulture...what do YOU think. What is your evalution of King O?

What can I say? I disagree with his policies, his goals, and most of his methods. He has, however, scored points for calling off the Feds from countermanding the States' drug laws. He's scored points for undoing a lot of the Bush torture policies, although flashing previous classified photographs of alleged torture victims was pretty effing stupid.

Basically, he's raw and prone to asshat rookie mistakes. He's an accomplished Fascist, and, by "Fascist", I mean one who is a proponent of the economic system characterized by private-public ownership and control of the means of production as implemented by Mussolini and Franco, NOT, as the Left would use it, as a pejorative to smear those with whom you disagree. See "Motors, General" and "Banks, Most" as examples.

He's been dangerously, dangerously close to matching other aspects of Fascism; he's one to watch in terms of personal liberties.

Overall, his first 100 days grade is about a D. He could sink fast if given enough rope. He probably will.

Next question, Mr. Vulture: would we have been better off with John McCommie? Absolutely NOT! Imagine hothead McCommie trying to deal with the Somali pirates. Horrible! Or trying to work with a hostile Donkey congress to accomplish anything? Not. Happening.

No. As "D" grade as King O has been, he's STILL better than McCommie.

What will the next hundred days bring? Probably more crazy spending, more ridiculous attempts to take over industry, probably an attempt to implement the "Fairness" doctrine. In other words, more drama, more drama, more drama.

Just how I like it.

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