Sorry, but I cannot resist
This country can’t afford another four years of this failed philosophy.
The philosophy of which he speaks is called Capitalism. Or at least the watered down version of it that we are allowed to practice here in America.
And you know that, of the two directions available to go, he won’t head in the more laissez faire direction.
The governments of the State of Oregon and the City of Portland, OR is doing everything it can to try and win over the ChiComs and get them to put their North American HQ in their downtown Zip Code.
Oregonian politicians, including Governor Ted Kulongoski, have met with BYD Auto representatives in a bid to persuade the Chinese automaker to use Portland, Oregon as a home for its North American headquarters, distribution hub, and possibly even a site for vehicle manufacturing. Eventually. For now, BYD wants to sell its hybrid and electric cars in North America and is casting about for a place to set up shop to accomplish that.
As has been told here before, Chinese cars are death machines, seemingly only created to kill citizens of the west before an invasion at some future date leads to the People’s Army having to use projectile weapons on them.
Our good man, Rivrdog, is laid up in der hoospital, apparently with some ass-ugly nurses to boot.
His guts are not sticking to the agreement of being comfortable inside his body and it may come down to the knife. So if you have any kind thoughts available, please do send them his way.
A No-Prize for you if you can guess what the massive object is behind the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Hint: it’s currently off the coast of Alaska and is one reason why it might actually be important to build a bridge to a sparsely-populated island. No, not the Bridge to Nowhere, the other one. Give up? Click here to find out.
h/t for this and the following post to Instapundit.
Well, that’s as good an explanation as any for this very very VERY strange object in the sky. It appeared, brightened insanely quickly, then DISAPPEARED in 2006. No, it’s NOT a supernova, thanks for asking. Hubble caught it, but humans didn’t spot it in the images until now.
“We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class.”
JESUS EFFING CHRIST. Ya think? Sometimes scientists’ attempts to be masters of dry, clinically detached understatement are just annoying. All I’m sayin’ is I’m glad we’re finally close to operational airborne lasers.
Still, this sort of thing just fascinates me. At one point I contemplated going back to UC Berkeley to get a second degree in Astrophysics because it was so darned interesting. Then I figured out I could save lots of money by just reading the texts in my own time, at my own pace. (Then somehow a decade went by. How’d that happen?) I’m determined to build a Dobsonian telescope one of these days, though. Kinda the definition of “amateur” — given the root Latin “amo” (to love) — an amateur is “one who learns for the love of it.”
Way too much to learn here in the Information Age, but boy it’s fun trying to absorb it all.
Excerpt from this NYTBlogs post by Judith Warner
Fred Thompson had warmed up the crowd, his familiar old district attorney’s voice restored to full bombast, and he’d been in fine form, denouncing – to loud boos from the crowd — the “lawyers and scandal mongers and representatives of cable networks†(boos from the crowd) who were at that very moment descending upon Alaska looking for dirt on their Sarah.
“I hope they brought their own Brie and Chablis with them,†he’d said, to raucous laughter, as I willed myself to disappear, remembering, with a shudder, that my children had demanded Brie for breakfast only that morning.
Take some time and give that link a read. You will see a very liberal woman getting a bit schooled on what makes people who support the McCain-Palin ticket tick.
Included in her post is a link to this report from Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia associate professor of Moral Psychology, titled “What Makes people Vote Republican” which Ms. Warner sums up as thus:
Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,†he told me in a phone interview.
Perhaps that’s why the conservatives can so successfully get under liberals’ skin. And why liberals need to start working harder at breaking through the empathy barrier.
I have read the link Ms. Warner provided and this layman finds it to be more than a bit condescending and claptrap, but worthy of the minor amount of time it will take to read and comprehend.
As Professor Haidt excerpts at the top of his post:
…the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it,” this is the “it” to which they refer.
But despite his “studies”, Professor Haidt himself doesn’t seem to “get it”.
He puts “liberals” only in the Democrat column and “conservatives” only in the Republican column, and proceeds to use these divisive terms to separate people into easily classified groups for his own ends. But he doesn’t “get” that humans are complex creatures who are not easily classified, even at the individual level.
For instance: I am of the “social liberal” type, but am equally “fiscally conservative” as well as “conservative” when it comes to the powers of government. I believe that most, though not all, folks who stop by RNS are also like this, to one degree or another, individually.
We vote Republican because, in general, and though not of recent vintage, that party does not see government as an end all to every problem plaguing individuals and society, as the Democratic Party does. Likewise, we also prefer the ideals of the Republican Party on issues such as personal property, including, but not limited to firearms, as well as their belief that there are not only individual rights, but also responsibilities.
I knew you could.
Now, just keep repeating that word while you read this AP article about the latest report out of the U.N. Development Program and the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. Trust me, it will keep you from having smoke pour out your ears.
The United States leads the world in economic loss from deaths caused by armed crime, according to a global survey released Friday.
The U.S. registered an estimated loss of up to $45.1 billion in terms of economic productivity because of violent crimes, said the report by the U.N. Development Program and the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey.
And if I didn’t know that the UNDP and the Small Arms Surveyors were anti-civil rights, I’d think this was an anti-criminal story.
But I do know that they are bigoted organizations, and I know that it is yet another America bashing study and report that can be handed off to the Brady Bunch and the VPC and added to their list of talking points.
At least 490,000 people are killed in armed crimes each year worldwide, placing a huge economic cost and social burden on nations, the report said.
The report did not give a country-by-country breakdown of the numbers of people killed in armed crimes.
But the report said that Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and South Africa are among the countries with the highest numbers of recorded violent crimes in the world.
More people are killed worldwide in violent crimes every year than in wars, it said, asserting that the phenomenon of armed killings and its economic impact on nations is largely underreported.
In the 90 countries surveyed, the economic cost from people killed by arms each year is estimated to total between $95 billion and $163 billion, according to the report.
“These estimates are based on calculations of the ‘lost product’ that is represented by premature deaths from armed violence,” said Achim Wennmann of the Small Arms Survey.
“These people — had they lived — would have contributed as any other individual as productive members of society. Their deaths represent a loss that can be quantified,” he told The Associated Press.
So basically, while the US isn’t near the top of the violent crimes list, because we are individually so prosperous, we get stuffed to the top of this particular list.
I think I’ll do a study of who spreads the most bullshit. I’ll factor in only anti-civil rights reports that focus on firearms, and only organizations that have budgets in the billions and work out of Geneva. Anyone wanna guess who will be at the top of the list?
The latest attempt by Democrats to use your tax dollars to buy votes in the 2008 election
As the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of recession, Democratic leaders are revisiting an idea born of the Great Depression: gas stamps to help Americans cope with high fuel prices.
The proposal to subsidize fuel costs for lower-income families and individuals would almost certainly be popular with white, working-class voters and could boost Barack Obama’s appeal with that critical voting bloc in this year’s presidential election.
Democratic lawmakers and their leaders say they are serious about including it in a second economic stimulus package expected to move this month. Meanwhile, Republicans ridicule the idea as a return to welfare-state politics, which they say characterized the Democratic Party before Bill Clinton.
“It’s certainly under consideration,†House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told The Hill on Thursday afternoon. “It would be like food stamps for those people who need help.â€
Gas stamps would work like traditional food stamps, which some Americans have collected since the 1930s. They would be used, however, to pay for regular unleaded instead of meat and potatoes.
Under one version of the proposal, a person earning up to $31,200 or a family of four earning up to $63,600 could receive government payments totaling $500 for gas.
Hoyer said he was not ready to discuss details about the proposal because he is focused on passing a comprehensive energy bill Democrats unveiled this week.
They forget, of course, that it was left-wing restrictionist policies that helped bring fuel costs to the $4 per gallon level. That some of them were promoted and signed off by someone with an (R) after their name doesn’t make them less restrictionist or make them right.
When you espouse an ideology that restricts the exploration and exploitation of natural resources used to make energy, you cannot then claim that you want to “help people” by taking from one person’s paycheck and giving it to someone less productive.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is slavery.
Let us hope that they get the same reaction to this idea that Dodge got when they were offering $3 per gallon gas guarantees: No Sale.
You have Castle Doctrine Win!
As of last Monday, Castle Doctrine is law in the State of Ohio.
As can be expected, some people are frightened for the criminals
A homeowner who injures, maims or even kills an intruder is on the right side of the law, starting today in Ohio.
The so-called “castle doctrine” law assumes the owner was acting in self-defense and shifts the burden to police and prosecutors to prove otherwise.
Until today, people who attacked intruders had to prove they were acting in self-defense.
About 20 states have similar laws with all types of variations. Some states do not limit the self-defense presumption to the person’s home but apply it to the workplace or even on the street, if the person is threatened.
In fact, Ohio’s provision extends to inside vehicles. And, as it is elsewhere, Ohio’s castle doctrine — so named for the popular premise that ‘one’s home is one’s castle’ — is steeped in controversy.
Castle Doctrine is only controversial to anti-civil rights bigots. They fear that poor-widdle misunderstood Jackie Lawbreaker might make a poor victim selection decision and get his dumb ass killed, thereby taking away one more potential voter for the Gun Control Party.
The rest of the article consists of the uber-biased Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter not “dealing” so “plainly” as she accuses the writers of the Doctrine law of helping drug dealers stay out of prison as well as bringing up the “shoot first, ask questions later” wild west bullshit scenario.
Found via the Buckeye Firearms Association and GunPundit
Leftists rattle on and on about murderers like the Unitarian Church shooter from a month or so ago, and the guy who killed the Democrat car dealership owner, as being right-wing sycophants who were egged on by the “Eliminationist Rhetoric” that supposedly comes out of the talk radio market.
However, when one of the Indymedia faithful goes off and walks up behind a Sheriff’s Deputy who is fueling his patrol car at a gas station and shoots him in the back of the head, or the ALF/ELF terrorists burn down a house occupied by a University of California research scientist and his family, the leftists say that these are just random acts not inspired by anything anyone on the left may have said.
Hell, they even patent excuses to explain away the SDS murderers.
And now we can add this to the list of attempted murders committed by vocal leftists
A man who threatened to behead two women because they were Christians was attacked in self-defense early Saturday and injured so severely, police say, that his eye was to be removed.
Russell Bowman, who called himself an atheist, showed up with a large knife at the women’s apartment in the 700 block of Tia Juana Street about 3:15 a.m., police said.
Another resident grabbed a shotgun and ordered him to put the knife down. When Bowman refused and began approaching, the person hit him with the butt end of the weapon, police said.
Doctors at Memorial Hospital reportedly told police the eye would have to be removed.
Bowman, who lived in the same building, threatened the women a couple of days before the confrontation, Colorado Springs Police Lt. Pat Rigdon said. Alcohol appeared to play a role, he said.
Police will likely pursue charges of felony menacing against Bowman. The investigation will be forwarded to the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office to see if other charges are merited.
And I’m sure that they guy sees himself as the one who was the victim here. Luckily, it sounds as though no charges will be pressed against the neighbor with the kick-ass butt-stroke skills. However, I’m sure that Bowman will be hauling the guy into civil court for damages.
And I hope beyond all hope that the judge, presented with evidence of Bowman’s drunken, knife-wielding attempt at decapitation, laughs the guy out of court, and then the citizens of Colorado Springs laugh the guy out of town.
Let this jackass take off to Sacramento to hang with his compatriot, Michael Newdow.
