Recall petitions coming to Denver?

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Phil Kadath

I know that if I were a resident of Denver, CO. that I would be wanting to recall whomever made this decision

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention has used the city’s gas pumps to fill up and apparently avoided paying state and federal fuel taxes.

The practice, which began four months ago, may have ended hours after its disclosure. An aide to Mayor John Hickenlooper released a statement Tuesday evening saying that Denver 2008 Host Committee members would pay market prices for fuel and would also be liable for all applicable taxes.

However, Public Works spokeswoman Christine Downs told City Council members just hours before that host committee members were fueling up at the city pumps. The city does not pay taxes on the fuel for its fleet, and Downs said the host committee would not either.

The disclosure brought immediate scrutiny. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the practice “would seem” to be illegal and referred the matter to the state Department of Revenue.

Which will hopefully get some restitution of back taxes.

Seeing as how the Democrats are always stating, very publicaly I might add, that any tax break “costs the government money”, they should actually be made to pay double fines.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 2 Comments

Never mind the sharp, pointy things

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Phil Kadath

They mean you no harm.

Last week I posted about the spiking of Seattle’s Green Lake.

I would think the police would want to go and question this Letter to the Editor writer about them

Editor, The Times:

The hysteria surrounding the discovery of metal spikes on the bottom of Green Lake is a classic example of people jumping to conclusions. The “sick puppy” will never be found because nature sharpened those metal rods. I have seen this happen before.

Several years ago, I punctured my dry suit on a very sharp piece of metal while scuba diving. On inspection, I discovered that it was a piece of welding rod that was partially buried in the mud. The lower part of the rod was not corroded, but the end of the rod that was sticking out of the mud was needle sharp. The published photos of the Green Lake spikes show similar corrosion. Those rods were not sharp when they were originally placed there.

Considering the heavy corrosion, the spikes have probably been there for several years. To find the answer to where they came from, look to the past to see what metal rods would have been used for. Perhaps they were used during an algae survey, were markers for a park activity or were remains of a structure.

There was no malice in placing those rods. Stop being paranoid.

Gary Maxwell, Lynnwood

Gary Maxwell of Lynnwood is an idiot. Gary Maxwell of Lynnwood should request that the Seattle Police exactly replace the spikes to their original locations so that he can test how well “nature” has sharpened those rods, because Gary Maxwell of Lynnwood has written the dumbest thing I have read all month.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 3 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 07/23/08

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Phil Kadath

This is how conversations with terrorists are suppose to go

There is an interesting piece of graffiti on a bridge near Basra. A fleeing militiaman has scrawled “We’ll be back”; underneath an Iraqi soldier has scribbled in reply “And we’ll be waiting for you”.

Barney White-Spunner

Unfortunately for us, the Obamessiah has decided that making them feel warm and fuzzy about their murderous ways is “his way” of doing things.

Posted in Quote of the Day | Leave a comment

Just how soon is England’s next election?

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Phil Kadath

Hopefully soon enough to stop this before it gets started

Gordon Brown is to launch the biggest revolution in the way Britons drive since the development of the internal combustion engine. He will meet manufacturers this week to try to persuade them to mass-produce electric cars, and is considering a remarkable plan to sell the cars cheap, together with their fuel, that is modelled on mobile-phone contracts.

The scheme, which has already been taken up by Israel and Denmark, would sell heavily subsidised vehicles – or even give them away – in return for contracts to buy the electricity to charge them. Its inventor, a Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, believes it will at least halve the cost of motoring while dramatically reducing one of the main sources of the pollution that causes global warming.

The Prime Minister – who will reveal some of his thinking at the Motor Show this week – wants all new cars sold in Britain to be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2020, and is trying to enlist leaders of the motor industry because he wants “to see those cars manufactured in Britain”.

The UK government must have gotten all the yobs to stop stabbing every person in sight, since they’re proposing to pay for automobile manufacturers to build cars that will be traded away for a contract to buy electricity to run the car.

Oh hell, I guss I should just be grateful that Brown is willing to just restrict his pie-in-the-sky ideas to cars and give his subjects 12 years to make the change instead of AlGore’s ten.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

Puh-leeze

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Phil Kadath

I was watching the local evening news before going to work yesterday evening and the female teleprompter reader said that “Baghdad” Jim McDermott was proposing a bill that would give “gas stamps” (like food stamps, except these buy gas) to “the poor” (folks he wants to have vote for Democrats).

Even though I had no doubt that McDermott would propose such blatant pandering, especially during an election year, I couldn’t believe it until I read it myself. So I hit the interwebs.

And Sure as shit, there it is, right on his website

Rep. McDermott introduces Gas Stamp legislation to assist vulnerable Americans

Which should be read to say: Baghdad Jim wants to give $5 Billion dollars away in free gas cards to those who don’t work hard enough to buy their own gas.

Remember these two welfare queens?

nunez5401.jpg

Yeah, these two would get a card. You and I wouldn’t.

If you could prove that you live below the poverty level, you will get $500 bucks in free gas to do whatever the fuck someone with so few job skills that they can’t hold down a full time job does with $500 in free gas.

Meanwhile, you and I get to spend out sixty-plus bucks a week going to and from our fifty-some odd hours per week job to pay the bill for this cocksmoker’s ideas.

We already give them bus passes, isn’t that enough? I mean really, just how “Green” is this jackhole of an idea? Yet for some strange reason, I don’t foresee any of the Global Warming Death Cult organizations coming out in opposition to it.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | Leave a comment

Heller v. United Nations

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Phil Kadath

David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy adds to this report from Kenneth Anderson on last week’s Gun Control conference at the UN in NYC which was reported on by the NYT here, blaming the US for the world’s illicit arms trade.

One of the items that Kopel adds is from a paper he co-wrote titled “The Human Right of Self Defense” (pdf) in which one of the topics covered was just how invasive the UN’s activities that seek to put a stop to self defense via civilian gun ownership

1. Providing financial and planning support to the proponents of a gun confiscation referendum in Brazil.

2. Adopting a Special Rapporteur’s report declaring that self-defense is not a right, but is a limited excuse for violating the rights of the criminal.

3. Declaring that insufficient domestic gun control is a violation of current human rights treaties. Under the U.N.’s standards, even the pre-Heller laws of the District of Columbia were so lax as to be international human rights violations, for allowed the possession and use of defensive rifles or shotguns, in business premises, against non-lethal felony attacks such as rape, mayhem, arson, and armed robbery.

That is just some of them.

Make sure you hit each of the links in this post and read the whole things. Whatever you think of the UN now, you’ll probably think even less of them afterwards.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 1 Comment

My tax dollars are not a jobs program

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Phil Kadath

They sound as though they expected to get the work no matter their bid

A group of small, minority-owned Seattle-area trucking companies that had expected to start working on the Brightwater sewage-treatment plant Monday got some bad news at the last minute: Their services won’t be needed.

The Trucker’s Consortium, a group of 10 local owners of 25 trucks, got word Friday that, instead, a big corporation will be hauling dirt excavated from a deep tunnel that will carry treated sewage to Puget Sound from the $1.8 billion plant under construction north of Woodinville.

Consortium members announced their loss of subcontract work to the Metropolitan King County Council on Monday and said it was a blow for small businesses and minority entrepreneurs trying to get a piece of public-works contracts.

Here is a hint: Try going for contracts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and not hope for sub-work on a multi-billion dollar job.

Because I work with them on a daily basis, I can name a half-dozen small contractors who get good contracts from local municipalities that are solid five and six figure jobs (though, because I work with them, I can’t go naming them here). One of them is just a guy and his son and his nephew. They do good work, under budget and on time, every time. They are all building reputations and referrals and will be able to drop out of the muni-bidding racket in the not too distant future.

Of course, I also have to work with contractors that do crappy work, are always late and can’t pay their bills on time if their lives depended on it.

Which is sad, because the life of their business does.

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

Ever so slowly

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Phil Kadath

We are winning

The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.

…..

In the latest survey, a plurality of Democrats—37%– say most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of the campaign. Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe most reporters are trying to help Obama and 21% in Obama’s party think reporters are trying to help the Republican candidate.

Among Republicans, 78% believe reporters are trying to help Obama and 10% see most offering unbiased coverage.

As for unaffiliated voters, 50% see a pro-Obama bias and 21% see unbiased coverage. Just 12% of those not affiliated with either major party believe the reporters are trying to help McCain.

In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to trust campaign information from family and friends than from reporters. Democrats are evenly divided as to who they would trust more.

I may have me some shady re-lates, but overall I trust my family much more than some media mule I’ve never met.

A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.

You don’t say.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 07/22/08

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Phil Kadath

Crunching the numbers that make you want to crunch some skulls

Allow me to lay some mathematics on you: According to the above numbers, San Francisco is spending $29,167 a year on each homeless person in the city, and not only can’t they solve the problem, it’s getting worse.

Duane Lester

There is another very true quotable in that linked post, but I’ll let you find it.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

I Want A Fatwa!

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Phil Kadath

What with the quality of tail that Rushdie keeps getting, I think it has to add some appeal.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment