A new stimulus program?

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Washington is once again following California down Insipid Ordinance Road with their latest mandate: Requiring local municipalities to regulate the water that runs off your car when you wash it in your driveway.

The state, however, isn’t banning car washing. Instead, it is requiring cities to adopt ordinances that prohibit anything other than clean stormwater from entering drains as part of a broader stormwater permit it issues.

While there are no federal regulations dealing specifically with residential car washing and stormwater pollution, local governments may prohibit car wash water if it’s a significant part of the stormwater problem.

The Environmental Protection Agency, along with numerous cities and states, are however urging residents to keep soapy wash water out of storm drains and have launched public education campaigns for more fish-friendly car washing.

Just like seat belt laws, and now hands-free phone laws, they’re starting out all friendly and not-a-primary-offense-like. Give it five years under the Democrats and you’ll be having the kids keep an eye out for Johnny Law coming up the street.

Or maybe they’re just trying to gin up some jobs for high schoolers by forcing folks to go to the drive-thru car wash?

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism | 1 Comment

Talk about being dependant

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Phil Kadath

The American Automobile Association is branching out from emergency roadside assistance of cars, trucks, vans and RV’s.

Into, wait for it…..Bicycles!

Yes, that mode of transport you can carry with you or chain to a lamp post is now rescuable by a, wait for it….truck!

AAA Auto Club is now offering bicycle roadside assistance for its plus members in Oregon and Idaho.

This new bicycle coverage, the first of its kind in the nation, would offer roadside assistance to cyclists if their bicycle is disabled or inoperable.

AAA will pick up cyclists, take them anywhere within a 25-mile radius and drop them off but they won’t repair the bicycles or give cyclists parts, making some cyclists frustrated.

“It sounds a little incomplete in the fact that they will only pick you up and drop you off and not give you the supplies to fix on your own or fix a flat tire,” said Travis Blue, a cyclist.

OK, listen up here, Trav: A new inner tube for your bicycles tire is smaller than my wallet. How about you carry one (or even,gasp, two) for yourself so that when you call a AAA truck to save your wretched primitive mode of transport, all he has to do is bring a silly bicycle pump?

Or is that too complicated for a pedal pushing Portlander?

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 5 Comments

An unsurprising lack of empathy

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Phil Kadath

I’m looking for it.

I know it is around here somewhere. Maybe under that stack of CD’s? Hmmm…nope.

Anyway, apparently multiple individual state governments are in the process of drawing up laws to regulate the practice of Yoga instruction within their jurisdictions.

Yoga instructors, as can be imagined, are up in (very gracefully stretched) arms over the idea that they’re going to have to pay to be certified by, as well as answer to, any government body other than the one which granted them their business license.

Now, my sample may be skewed due to my location, but of the dozen or so Yoga instructors I’ve met or had dealings with, not a single one of them has been what any same person would call “right-leaning”. They seem to like to vote for the more Progressive candidates for Kharmic reasons.

So you can imagine how easy it was to misplace my empathy for them. They’re just getting what they voted for.

Found via Dan Riehl

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 3 Comments

The Soundboard: Still not what I was looking for Edition

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Phil Kadath

So long as you didn’t put the album on the turntable B-Side up, this was the second ZZ Top song you ever heard.

From their 1971 First Album

I’ll find what I want. I just have to keep looking a bit more.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

The Soundboard – Not what I was looking for Edition

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Went looking for something else, but that’ll now have to wait until next week. This kicked my ass.

Nancy Wilson vs. Jerry Cantrell.

Queen of the Les Paul vs. Cap’n Crunch.

How can that be anything but “whoa”?

Posted in Kewel! | 6 Comments

Incentive

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Phil Kadath

I’ve been telling y’all that you should join us in Reno this September for the Gun BLogger Rendezvous. Yet another reason is falling into your laps.

Charlie Brown, the head guy over at MKS Supply/Charter Arms/Hi-Point, has donated a brand new Hi-Point 9mm. carbine to the raffle at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. The below picture is of the YET UN-ANNOUNCED new Hi-Point carbine! Official announcement will be around the end of the month, but Charlie has said that I can blog about it even before it is officially announced to the media.

Hi-Point Firearms Model 995 TS MODEL.jpg

They’re saying that once the 9mm version hits, they’ll be following it with a .40cal version. But the best part is that they’re also getting down to making a .45ACP version as well.

Why yes, I am drooling just a bit. My apologies.

Posted in Kewel! | 4 Comments

Nobody tell Barney Frank

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Phil Kadath

But Congress just figured out that government meddling put us where we are, economically.

The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, creating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses. Government intervention also created “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage.

That is the key paragraph from the Role of Government Affordable Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 report, the pdf of which is here.

Their plan to make sure this never happens again: More government intervention!

I keep hearing the echos of the phrase “Again! Harder, try it harder!” echoing through my head.

Found via Mark J. Perry

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 2 Comments

Fiction

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Cannot be written that is weirder than real life.

A job centre is advertising a “witch” vacancy with tourist site Wookey Hole, in Somerset, for £50,000 a year.

The witch, who has to live in the site’s caves, is expected to teach witchcraft and magic.

Wookey Hole staff say the role is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch and do the things witches do.

The advert for the post, placed in the local press as well as job centres, says applicants must be able to cackle and cannot be allergic to cats.

Of course. Cats. They’ll be your co-workers.

“Wookey Hole wants the appointee to go about her everyday business as a hag, so that people passing through the caves can get a sense of what the place was like in the Dark Ages.

“This was when an old woman lived in the caves with some goats and a dog, causing a variety of social ills, including crop failures and disease.”

I know the Harry Potter series are filmed in the UK, but that someone actually believes a person could cause a crop failure without actually lighting said crops on fire, I find disturbing.

And that isn’t even the silly part!

Due to sexual discrimination law, the job cannot demand that the post is filled by a woman.

Under sexual discrimination law, unless Wookey Hole can provide “documentary proof that the original witch was female it can’t issue a gender-specific job description”.

Of course, dudes will have to dress like a woman, because that’s the character they’ll be playing. But I understand from my many rounds of playing the game “Gay or British”, that many Brit males like to dress in women’s clothes, so that might just work swimmingly for someone.

Found via CCinZ

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 2 Comments

From Switzerland, With Love

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

What was that promise from Candidate Obama about getting other countries to like us more?

A judge ordered the U.S. government to say whether it was prepared to shut Swiss bank UBS AG in the United States as part of a battle to learn the identity of 52,000 secret accounts suspected of being used by Americans to avoid taxes.

U.S. District Judge Alan Gold, set to preside over a hearing Monday of a suit seeking to force UBS to provide the information, asked specifically Wednesday about “receivership and/or seizure of UBS’ assets within the United States.”

Gold said such remedies might be requested of the court if UBS failed to comply, or was prevented from complying by the Swiss government. He gave the U.S. Justice Department until noon (1600 GMT) on Sunday to respond.

Switzerland has vowed to prevent UBS from handing over client information to U.S authorities, in an attempt to defend bank secrecy, and says the tax case targeting its biggest bank is souring diplomatic ties.

The Templar Nation does not fuck around. The Swiss government, as required by Swiss law, will seize the transaction and holdings records of UBS and bury them so deep in a vault that even the IRS army and their Customer Service Shotguns couldn’t find them under a hundred Obama administrations.

Before that, of course, there is the Swiss militia the IRS would have to get through.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 5 Comments

$6 a gallon gas coming soon

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

If the feds get their way

Reacting to the violent swings in oil prices in recent months, federal regulators announced on Tuesday that they were considering new restrictions on “speculative” traders in markets for oil, natural gas and other energy products.

The move is a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades. It also highlights a broader shift toward tougher government oversight under President Obama.

So Jim and Bob and Bill, US based oil speculators, will have a new book of regulations dropped on them, possibly causing them to drop out of the oil speculation market completely.

Conversely, Gerald in the UK, Wilhelm in Germany, Jean Paul in France, Gurpaul in India, Ying in China, Yuri in Russia, and Abdul in Yemen won’t have to follow any of these new regulations, giving them the advantage in manipulating the oil market.

Can’t we just give the folks working in the Obama administration a big box of crayons and a fresh wall to draw on every morning to keep them hapy and their mitts off my fuel bill?

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 1 Comment