A Careful Misdirection

Lynne Varner writes about writes a lie in the the Seattle Times. She starts out speaking on the rather unfortunate Farm Bill, which for some reason deals more with Food Stamps and School lunches than it does farming, and then moves into taxing foreign manufacturing (because after running the numbers, the Dems realized they needed to increase taxes somewhere in order to meet the bill’s budget).

Varner then slithers right into the upcoming vote on the State Children’s Health Insurance program, and proceeds to lie her ass off.

By the name of the program, one would assume that it is a healthcare program run by the states. But then one notices that it is being debated by the Congress of the United States, and that it is a grant-type program wherein the feds redistribute money out at their whim to states in order to pay for the healthcare for children. Nice gig, if you can get in on it.

Varner states that it is the tax increase on cigarettes that is the major sticking point for, of course, only the Republicans (because no Democrats ever take money from the tabacconists). But if Ms. Varner didn’t have her head in her ass, she’d notice that the main point of contention is that the Dems have removed the provision keeping illegal immigrants from benefitting off US Citizen’s tax money.

Maybe she doesn’t know about the provisions removal and doesn’t read any other paper besides the Times. That is highly unlikely, and it would be a very poor example to set for an official Times Editorial Columnist.

Methinks that she would likely not want to let the readers of The Times know the true reason because it would prove quite popular and cause a large number of people would otherwise call their Congressional Representatives in howling disdain for the poor little children not bother even picking up the phone.

But that is just my opinion of her motives.

Posted in Useful Idiots | Leave a comment

D’oh!

Even if you don’t leave the house every day, and even if you don’t have a television, as a resident of the tri-county area in western Washington, you will be hit with multiple advertisements to promoting mass transit.

All you have to do is turn on a radio and not change channels during commercials. AM or FM, it doesn’t matter. Local stations get a kind of PSA credit (and money, so its a win-win) for running these commercials.

“You can read a book, catch up on some sleep or just relax and let someone else do the driving while cruising in the carpool lane” is the basic line of these ads. Of course, it is all hooey. The buses have to deal with the same traffic snarls as everyone else. The bus routes are rather poorly planned and poorly timed so that they are almost always running late. And when they’re not late, they’re running very early, to make up for problems that will happen later in the day.

All in all, riding the bus is an incredible pain in the ass, even for those not going into Seattle. And if you live in an outlying suburb, fuggetabowdit. If you miss the one bus in your area, you might as well get back in your car and drive in, because if there is a second bus, it’s gonna be by in an hour or so and you’ll be late to work.

And yet, on a daily, even hourly basis, we’re urged to ride mass transit.

Diane Naber of Kingston, WA decided to try and reduce her so-called “carbon footprint”, by not only taking mass transit, but working for the Snohomish County transit provider, Community Transit. Here is her tale from a Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times.

I decided to go back to the workplace, but only if I could reduce my carbon footprint. I found a job listing at Community Transit, applied for it and was asked into an interview. Sounds great so far!

Since I would be interviewing with a transit bus company, I thought, Cool — I can walk aboard the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, and catch a Community Transit bus to the interview at their headquarters. Boy, was I mistaken.

Where it takes only one and a quarter hours to get from the Edmonds ferry to downtown Bellevue on the bus, it takes two hours to go to Paine Field in Everett (about half the mileage as to Bellevue). Not only did it take more than two hours to go there, there were also eight transfers.

So much for looking to reduce my carbon footprint; I would actually spend more time and gas commuting to Community Transit than to downtown Bellevue. It was also suggested by an employee of Community Transit that I drive, since there were so many bus transfers.

What is wrong here?

Yep, sounds like government to me.

Posted in The Global Warming Death Cult | Leave a comment

Not the best way to get your point across

I mean, no one has heard of Fred Phelp’s group gaining membership, now have they?

And yet the pro-illegal immigration jackesses protested in front of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman’s home the day before his father’s funeral.

A few hundred protesters crowded together briefly Sunday afternoon on the sidewalk and in the street in front of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s St. Paul home, shouting for an end to immigration policies and enforcement practices that the demonstrators say unfairly divide families.

The rally — during which participants first gathered at Summit Avenue and North Lexington Parkway and then marched about a mile to Coleman’s house on Osceola Avenue — came a day before today’s burial of Coleman’s father, Norman Coleman Sr., at Arlington National Cemetery. He died Thursday of bladder cancer at 82.

Protest organizers discussed whether to change their plans in reaction to the elder Coleman’s death, said Alondra Espejel, with the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network.

Seeing parallels in the grief felt by Sen. Coleman and that of children who have had parents deported, organizers decided to go ahead.

Ghouls. Plain and simple.

Found at CQ

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Lincolns and Caddys and T-Birds, Oh My!

Alternate post title: Feels like an episode of Perry Mason

All this week I’ll be posting pics from the most excellent Mischief Maker’s Hot Rod-A-Rama I attended this weekend. I have, waay too many pics to post but I’ll get to as many of them as possible. There’ll be features such as “Tudor Tuesday”, “Wagon Wednesday”, “Drove the fenders right off” Thursday and “What do these cars have in common” on Friday.

But this is Perry Mason Monday.

As you’ll recall, Ford provided the vehicles for the Perry Mason series (1957 to 1966). Perry always drove a Lincoln, Paul Drake always drove a Thunderbird and Della was seen driving Fairlanes, Falcons and Mustangs in the later years.

As many cars as they went though on that show, I doubt any of them looked like these.

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I know Della never drove one with a high rise, dual-carb 302.

And while Paul was always ready for a car chase, his Bird never looked like this

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Yes, there were a few T-Bird enthusiasts crying as they walked by

Though this one has an airbagged suspension, it couldn’t have added to Paul’s coolness

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If I were to have enough moolah to burn on a non-untility vehicle project (aka: Grimm), this is exactly the car I’d be messing with and, minus the wheels and covers, exactly what I’d do to it. 62 T-Bird. Flat black, chrome and low, baby. The wife knows this and when she saw this one, she tried to get me away from it and the owner as swiftly as possible, lest I make an offer I shouldn’t. The 390 gets yanked out to make room for a 460, connect up the 4-Speed and stand back.

Perry always rode in style, but he wasn’t quite this laid back

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And just because I’ve got a couple of other led-sleds in the post, I just have to post this one.

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Oh Sweet Jesus! I could get myself in some deep, deep do-do in that.

Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

I got that itchy feeling

Like I’ve had one too many energy drinks.

Actually, I’ve had it since a couple days after the last Potter book hit the shelves. But now two things have got me in full-on Condition Orange.

When David was up here for Boomershoot he left me a copy of James Wesley, Rawles “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”, which I just finished reading. (Rawles points to the Amazon link instead of the publisher, which surprised me) 

Excellent book. Highly recommended to any and all. David’s description of it being a manual or neccessary items list of sorts written in fiction form is dead on target. You will read it once, and then go through it a second time with a highlighter (if you know what’s good for you).

But then on Thursday, Uncle had to go and tell me to “Watch My 6” and link to this report from former Israeli CTIO and author of Staying Safe, Juval Aviv.

Mr. Aviv says 90 Days max until the next large scale attempt.

What they’re going to do is hit six, seven or eight cities simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public. This time, which is the message of the day, it will not only be big cities. They’re going to try to hit rural America. They want to send a message to rural America: “You’re not protected. If you figured out that if you just move out of New York and move to Montana or to Pittsburgh, you’re not immune. We’re going [to] get you wherever we can and it’s easier there than in New York.”

So I guess I’ll just pass the message along. Watch your 6, ladies and gents.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 08/06/07

Day 1, Week 2.

Part 5 of PERC’s Recycling Rubbish

MYTH 5: WE SQUANDER IRREPLACEABLE RESOURCES WHEN WE DON’T RECYCLE

In fact, available stocks of most natural resources are growing rather than shrinking, but the reason is not recycling.

Market prices are the best measure of natural resource scarcity. Rising prices imply that a resource is getting more scarce. Falling prices imply that it is becoming more plentiful. Applying this measure to oil, we find that over the past 125 years, oil has become no more scarce, despite our growing use of it. Reserves of other fossil fuels as well as other natural resources are also growing.

Thanks to innovation, we now produce about twice as much output per unit of energy as we did 50 years ago and five times as much as we did 200 years ago. Optical fiber carries 625 times more calls than the copper wire of 20 years ago, bridges are built with less steel, and automobile and truck engines consume less fuel per unit of work performed. The list goes on and on. Human innovation continues to increase the amount of resources at our command.

Not much to add here. I’ll save my points until Wednesday’s Part 7.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Missed by a hair

The NY Governor was very close to signing the worst piece of pro-welfare boondoggle legislation in a decade.

Luckily for the NY State Taxpayers, he never put pen to paper.

Chiding lawmakers for ignoring “the realities of the marketplace,” Governor Spitzer stunned fellow Democrats yesterday by vetoing a bill that would have reordered the priorities of welfare offices by forcing caseworkers to steer female welfare recipients to higher-wage jobs in male-dominated fields.

With a stroke of his veto pen, Mr. Spitzer swung attention, at least briefly, toward a substantive policy disagreement in a capital consumed recently by personal recrimination and scandal.

The debate pits critics against the champions of a mid-1990s overhaul of welfare laws that many believe led to the sharp drop in welfare rolls in New York and across the nation.

Advocates of the overhaul say much of its success is due to the increased emphasis on getting welfare recipients back to work and on the road to self-sufficiency as soon as possible. Opponents charge that, while employment has increased, the single mothers who make up the bulk of the caseload are too often directed to low-paying clerical or service jobs that leave them mired in poverty. The legislation, they say, is an attempt to help women aim for higher-wage jobs that require more skills and typically employ more men.

It is absolutely not an “attempt to help aim”. It never was. The bill was purely a trial piece of legislation that would have relaxed standards while calling for more federal money and keeping more people on the welfare longer to again create dependancy on the government.

The legislation would have mandated that state welfare offices encourage recipients to seek training for “sustainable wage jobs” and promote employment in “nontraditional” fields. The bill defines “sustainable” as 185% of the poverty level, or $37,000 for a family of four. “Nontraditional” is defined as an industry in which one gender makes up more than 75% of the work force. The bill’s official memo highlights as “nontraditional” jobs for women such occupations as furniture movers, taxi drivers, carpenters, chemists, firefighters, and aerospace engineers.

“Here, take this money to go to school you won’t be able to finish before the federal money runs out, so that you fail to qualify for a job you wouldn’t be able to keep because you have no job retention skills, all of which will cause you to come back to us for more money just so you  can eat.”

That is what this bill was. And if they passed it in NY State, you would have seen this socialist piece of crap land in your homestate in short order.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Its funny cause its true

Saw this editorial cartoon at DANEgerus and laughed my ass off

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Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Whadda Maroon!

As I mentioned last week, Stephan Sharkansy’s I-25 got many thousands of signatures and, provided that Ron Sim’s election office eventually gets around to unneccessarily confirming every single one of the signatures, it will be on the ballot this November.

The local Dems hate this fact. Their only public charge against it is that people were paid to collect the signatures, which must be an anathema to them: You know, people getting paid to work. Anyway, they’re starting to assail the Initiative in the local papers. Starting first in the Letters to the Editor, but once confirmed to the ballot, I’m sure they’ll be given plenty of space in the Editorial Section.

Recently this one hit the Seattle Times LttE:

When I read “Let the people decide who runs their elections” , by King County Councilman Reagan Dunn, R-Bellevue, I was aghast. “The people” have spoken up in the past about their elections, but it hasn’t seemed to matter to the political establishment.

The most recent example of this is that the “people” have spoken (time and time again) about how they want their primary elections to be party-neutral. Yet now Dunn says “the people” need to decide? How does he dare say such a thing?

After dismissing the will of the “people” out of hand over the primary-election issue, suddenly now these same “people” need to be involved? Either we are part of the process or we’re not. Pick one, not both.

I see red flags everywhere when any politician says “Let the people decide.” This may be a very important issue, but, in truth, I have a really hard time trusting any politician who has to invoke “the people.” Ever.

Let the people decide. Indeed.

Stephen Cole, Bellevue

Must be a Kerry voter: First he’s for “The People”, then he’s against “The People” Then he’s for them again? Maybe?

The people will decide, Mr. Cole. They will decide that they do not want some half-crocked King County Executive Office to run the elections department. 

Posted in Count ANY Vote | Leave a comment

Surprised

That was me yesterday at The Mischief Makers’ Hot Rod-A-Rama, when I thought I saw our good man Rivrdog wandering through the crowd. “What the hell is he doing up here from Portland?” I though to myself.

Later, when the guy who I thought was RD walked right on past the Beer Garden, I knew it couldn’t be him.

But I did spy a couple vehicles that I thought he would have liked for his own.

The Perfect Rivrdog Rod

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A Pin-Up gal on the side, his “Bombing Runs” are maked and ammo cans in the back. (yes, I know the big one is a cooler, but the rest of the bed was lined with ammo cans)

Or maybe he’d want something with a little more ground clearance.

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Real steel fenders are hard to come by, I guess. But hey, at least the finish matches. Of course, RD would have dressed down any individual who brought a Busch Lite near his vehicle.

A more full report tomorrow and then pics all week, folks. Including, if I can get my creative bug to a defribrilator, a game.

Posted in Kewel! | 4 Comments