Busy

Sorry, nothing other than this from me until tomorrow. I’m busy watching the Georgia situation this weekend.

But here’s some links:

Tam has a nearly perfect comment on the damage going on.

Marko Hoare has a very good piece on some of the internals.

The Heartless Libertarian has a couple of ideas on how to slow this thing down. And some advice, as well.

A Stratfor membership comes in handy any time, but now is better later.

And lastly, the lousiest post I have seen as of yet on the situation comes from the leftist FireDogLake blog’s Ian Welsh. His blame-game is disgusting. His idea that people shouldn’t be so hung up about borders is vomit-inducing. His lack of understanding about the local politics is pitiful.

And if indeed there was such a thing as a Blogging License, the fact that he cannot even bother to read up on all the cash that the Russians have been funneling to the anti-Georgian forces in South Ossetia, as well as the Georgian-hating Abkhazians, for years now, as well as the reasons why the Russians have been funneling money to them (this truly is a war for oil), should lead to that fictional blogging license to be revoked for his purposeful ignorance.

My prediction: If something doesn’t happen to stop this, and soon, this thing will move north and west. Causing the Ukranians to arm up in a bad way. The Crimean “militia” types are hot headed, but they have reason to be locking and loading as they currently are.

UPDATE: Dammit. This is one of the times I hate being right.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Story of My Life

No, not Helen Keller’s biography. That’s actually worth reading.

Some of you may have wondered at the lack of comment here on RNS about the John Edwards affair, considering that it’s been floating about the right side of the blogosphere for weeks now despite zero MSM coverage until today. Well, in my case it’s because I don’t really give a rat’s ass.

However, let it not be said that we of RNS don’t go the extra mile for you, our readers. So this past week I was browsing my favorite used bookstore, and found this book in the dollar rack. It’s alleged that the now infamous Rielle Hunter was, in her youth, the inspiration for the vapid, callous wastrel who narrates Mcinerney’s novel.

Here’s a typical bit. I’m not saying this sort of blackmail is what’s going on in the Edwards-Hunter scandal, but it’s fun to think so!

[Narrated by Alison, who needs cash for tuition and is not pregnant.]
I get Skip at his office. He doesn’t sound too thrilled to hear from me. He says he’s in a meeting, can he call me back?
I say no, I have to talk now.
What’s up? he says.
I go, I’m pregnant.
Total silence.
Before he can ask I tell him I haven’t slept with anybody else in six weeks. Which is totally true, almost. Close off that little escape hatch in his mind. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
He goes, you’re sure? He sounds like he’s just swallowed a bunch of sand.
I’m sure, i say.
He’s like, what do you want to do?
The thing about Skip is that even though he’s an asshole, he’s also a gentleman. Actually a lot of the assholes I know are gentlemen. Or vice versa. Dickheads with a family crest and a prep-school code of honor.
When I say I need money he asks how much.
A thousand, I say. I can’t believe I ask him for that much, I was thinking five hundred a minute ago, but hearing his voice pisses me off.
He asks if I want him to go with me and I say no, definitely not. Then he tries to do this number about making out the check directly to the clinic and I say, Skip, don’t give me that shit. I need five hundred in cash to make the appointment, I tell him, and I don’t want to wait six business days for the stupid check to clear, okay? Acting my ass off. My teacher would be proud.
Two hours later a messenger arrives with the money. Cash. I give him a ten-dollar tip.

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T&A Day Three

Without further ado, more of the crazy customs

The truck of unknown model year isn’t really a truck. It’s a coupe with a truck bed slid on the back.

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You can tell from the exhaust scorches that he doesn’t much care abotu anyone’s belief in global warming.

Here’s a 1934 three window ready to slide around the small ovals
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And here’s a 1934 five window raised up to raise hell

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This whackadoodle chop job has one of my favorite Ford engines of all time, the 300ci inline six, mounted between the frame rails.

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Four barrels going in. Four tubes coming out. I don’t know how he sees over it, but damn, I like it.

And lastly, to win the truly oddball piecemeal rod award, you need to beat this guy

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That, my friends, is a 1927 Buick Deluxe Coupe with a GMC 235ci inline six. On the other side, there is a tri-fecta of big Webers. Yes, those are Hot and Cold fawcett knobs on top of the valve cover and yes, the firewall is wood.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s pics. Again, if you see anything you want, I have the original shots in full size stored away.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

The Obligatory RNS Olympics Post

Bejing Welcomes You, You Bastard.

Explanation here.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | Leave a comment

Made in Italy

A sad day in the automotive world. Mr. Andrea Pininfarina died after being struck by a car while riding a two wheeled contraption outside of Turin, Italy.

He was chief executive officer of the family firm Pininfarina, which has designed sports cars for Ferrari, Maserati, Volvo and Fiat.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Ferrari’s Luca Cordero di Montezemolo were among those paying tribute.

Mr Berlusconi labelled him “the representative of a dynasty that helped bring the story of ‘made in Italy’ to the world”.

Mr di Montezemolo, who is also boss of Fiat, said: “Italy, Turin and the Fiat group have lost a business figure who knew how to follow and develop the work of his grandfather Pinin and his father Sergio.”

The driver of the car involved in the collision was admitted to hospital suffering from shock, Ansa news agency reported.

Shock at learning his head will possibly be hunted by thousands of anguished Ferrari and Maserati owners. If you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, just put in his last name and just about any Euro car manufacturer’s name into an image search engine.

A designer of rolling art. Really fast rolling art.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

A stamp is what, $0.42?

So now I’ll add that onto my per gallon cost of fuel and send my gas receipts for the last month or so to Senator James Inhofe.

Info here.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

Oh Please, Oh Please…

Let Obama adopt goatse as his symbol:

Article here.
h/t: Instapundit.

Don’t know what “goatse” is? Click here. The naughty bits are edited out, but it’s probably still NSFW.

Examples of other accidental goatses in popular culture:

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 3 Comments

The Soundboard: T&A Day Two Edition

As you may remember, my original plan for the car show was to bring my video camera and record some of the action for you all to enjoy here this week. Also as you may remember, I forgot to charge the batteries that morning and there was no joy in Hotrodland.

I don’t have a great selection of Rockabilly or Punkabilly style music. The Rev and some RCR is about all I’ve got in that department, so I was looking into something else to put over the video of the mild debauchery that goes on at The Rama. The year previous I witnessed a parade of Gassers taking off for the afternoon, leaving rubber for the Tacoma PD to stare at, and I wanted to put some tunage under the sound of the roar.

My two selections were:

Rocker – AC/DC

Fast and Loose – Motorhead

But, since I screwed up the happiness, which is all well and good as the crew from last year had already skedaddled by the time I was able to arrive, you will just have to settle for listening to the music and scanning through the pics.

And without further ado

1930 Chev truck

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A pre-1927 truck with a GMC 322 Nailhead V8 and one classy paint job
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A low 30 Duce

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An even lower still 28 sedan

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And a pair of crazy customs

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More tomorrow.

Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

So now I’m wondering

Just what was released into the UK water supply this week.

The folks writing in the dailies have gone from silly to stupid.

First, we have pole-smoker, Andrew O’Hagan in The Telegraph pissing on the still warm corpse of Andrew Solzhenitsyn

And so we say goodbye to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the funniest writer since Oscar Wilde. It’s true that Sandy was never one for the green carnation, the waspish remark or pink gins at the Savoy, but he nevertheless played a crucial role in propagating the humorous capacities of teenagers all over the globe.

…..

Other people’s misery might be damnable, but it is never as damnable as one’s own; that’s why people like soap operas and why a certain degree of exposure to the sadness of others can prove quite a tonic.

Solzhenitsyn, of course, never got that: every one of his books should have been called Stalinbad, and for him the undoubted terribleness of Uncle Joe was such that no one should ever have felt relaxed enough to call him Uncle Joe. But it was Sandy’s right to be serious, as he was the one who had to eat the cockroaches and suffer under the old Soviet boot.

Link found at Samidata

And then there was this jackhole named John Pilger in al-Guardian going on about how we shouldn’t have used atomic weapons to end World War 2, and about how the fact that we did should be seen as a war crime.

He then attempts to tie it into the civilized world’s attempt to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, lying by omission along the way, and then shortly there after I lost the plot of his ramblings and am now under the impression he would prefer to see Tehran firebombed.

I don’t know, you try giving the twat a read.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

I know. Could you feel your IQ dropping as you read that too?

Link found at Counting Cats

Well, whatever it is that they ingested to make themselves that dim got splashed into the water cooler at the WaPo, where Michael Ruse gives way too much respect to someone who would rather see you dead than alive.

Canadians joke that, given their vile winters, they are the only people in the world who welcome global warming. But some things are too serious for humor. The world is in a crisis because of rising temperatures. Climate patterns have been disrupted, with devastating effects on lands near and far. Regions that once produced food in abundance are now arid deserts. Australians, for instance, are starting to realize that their steady succession of droughts may not be a statistical blip but something more serious and permanent. The polar regions north and south are melting and breaking up, leading not just to short-term effects for animals but also to fears of rising ocean levels and the consequent flooding of today’s dry land. Miami could find itself the Venice of the future, a city surrounded by waters.

No one has more authority to write on these matters than the husband-and-wife team of Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich. For decades now they have been documenting and warning of humans’ effects on the environment.

Don’t worry if you don’t recognize the names, though they’ve been featured on these pages before.

The Ehrlichs are certifiable nut jobs who preach population control to the people who make decisions about our lives.

I, for one, would encourage the Ehrlichs to depopulate the world by an extra two people, starting with themselves. Immediately.

Link found at Tim Blair.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 3 Comments

Stupid California Tricks

These tricks are performed by professionals.

DO NOT try these at home (and if your home IS California, well, you know how to remedy that).

Trick #1

California to buy ExxonMobil

Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Sacramento just might be bailed out of their budget standoff by a new initiative that would slap a one-time wealth tax of 55% on Californians rude enough to have $20 million or more in property. The ballot measure wouldn’t come to voters until June 2010 at the earliest, but that might not be a problem, seeing as how the current year’s budget will probably still be stalled.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today that the initiative is entering circulation.

The approach is, on the surface, the same as the Democrats’ plan for closing California’s gaping budget hole — get it from the rich with new tax brackets. But the numbers differ and, when you get to the details you realize that this measure is creative. And by creative, I mean weird.

Most of the revenue would be used to buy Exxon-Mobil. And Chevron. And GM, Ford, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Citigroup. Why? To assure California of an adequate supply of energy, at stable prices, without offshore drilling. And to repatriate off-shore manufacturers.

Oh, and to restore the Hetch-Hetchy Valley, which currently is a reservoir supplying water to the Bay Area, to the way it was at the beginning of the last century.

So, rich folk, you say you’d just take your money and Chevron stock and move to Telluride? Or the Bahamas? These guys are way ahead of you. The wealthy would have to pay to leave the state, whether their mode of exodus is a limousine or a pine box.

And THAT is why we call them The Peoples Republic.

Trick #2

Companies that open large home-improvement stores in Los Angeles would have to set aside space for day laborers under an ordinance unanimously approved today by a City Council committee.The proposed ordinance was passed by the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, but must still be approved by the full council.

If passed, the ordinance would require new home improvement stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger, or any building or structure where 250,000 square feet or more of warehouse floor area is added, to set aside space for day laborers seeking employment from customers.

The shelters would have to be easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating and trash facilities.

Home-improvement stores would also be required to develop a security plan in consultation with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Bethany Leal with the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network, which supports the ordinance, called it an example of “immigration integration.”

I’m really hoping for a big crash and a big burn on this one. It is almost as though they want to attract illegals until there are enough in the state to drive out the citizens. Which, oddly enough, is a part of the reason they have the huge deficit that they are trying to fill with trick #1.

Apparently, stupid goes in circles.

I’m hoping that in November, Washington voters heed my warning to not try these tricks. Seeing as how the various governments here have now, officially, breached the One-In-Five rule.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 4 Comments