Monday, May 31, 2010

A word before you go

The brilliant P.J. O'Rourke suggests a revolutionary new journalistic practice: the pre-obituary.
One bright idea isn’t going to solve the problems of the American newspaper industry, but it’s one bright idea more than the American newspaper industry has had in 40 years. What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certain people aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.
H/T: Ed Driscoll

Running the Blockade

The Israeli Navy attempted to head off a pro-Hamas flotilla, and ten people died, as naval commandos found themselves attacked by peace-loving Hamas activists - armed with baseball bats, knives and guns.

Far be it from me to advise the Israeli Navy, but guys, you really ought to put away the paint-ball guns and opt for something like this.



Update: Much, much more at Contentions. Just go over there and keep scrolling.

Tyranny: the liberals’ secret dream

Although perhaps not so secret, these days. Still, it’s fascinating to watch the putative heirs of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr. twist themselves into knots defending dictators, one-party states and egomaniacal nut-jobs abroad, and wannabe komissars and larval-stage strong-men at home. Some recent examples:

Cold Fury vivisects Oliver Stone, mostly by just permitting him to condemn himself out of his own mouth.

Don Surber catches Bill Maher having wet dreams about black men with guns.

Powerline gives Thomas Friedman the floor, where he expresses a desire that “we” could be China for a day.

And those seeking, I presume, to restore the Aztec empire are captured in photographs by Donald Douglas.

Meanwhile, people who fled to this country to escape totalitarian governments are baffled and fearful over our headlong rush to the socialist dystopia.

Honor the Fallen


Let us take time to honor those who have paid the ultimate price in defending our liberty.

Update: The Warrior Song (H/T: friend and commenter, Jeff S.)



Update II: The YouTube embed above doesn't give you the whole screen; here's the link to the original.

Update III: Blackfive has a great petition going.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

I always suspected it

Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post:
As I sat in the fourth row on Thursday, I was struck by the weirdly passive figure before me. He delivered lawyerly phrases and spoke of his anger about the oil spill but showed none in his voice or on his face. He was, presumably, there to show how aggressively he has handled the disaster, but he seemed cool, almost bloodless.
Cool, almost bloodless. Like a zombie.

Obama to name Oil Spill Czar

Paco World News Daily (PWND) - Facing mounting criticism over his response to the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama has decided to name an Oil Spill Czar. The two leading candidates are the little Dutch boy, whose abilities in the hole-plugging field are almost legendary, and Mr. SpongeBob Squarepants, whose absorbent qualities are indisputable.

Recent photos of the two Oil Spill Czar candidates:





Update: Great piece by James Taranto on Obama; it's ok, America, the President is thinking of you!

A profile in courage

Tunku Varadarajan at the Daily Beast has written a fine article about Hirsi Ali and her new book, Nomad. From the article:
The author laments the self-censorship in the West, driven by a well-meaning, but ultimately corrosive and self-defeating politics of multicultural accommodation. There have been numerous honor killings in the United States, in which Muslim fathers or husbands kill daughters or wives who have “sullied” the family name in some way; and yet, Hirsi Ali observes, not once has the achingly non-judgmental American press used the phrase “honor killing” in its reports on the murders. Writing of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Islamist U.S. Army major who gunned down 13 people at Fort Hood last year, she finds it “astonishing” that the media regarded all explanations for the murders plausible “except the one explicitly stated by the killer, namely his religion.” (She will cease to be astonished, I reckon, once she spends a few more years on the East Coast.)

Berlusconi in a variation on Kevin Rudd

Rule 5 Saturday

Alice Faye goes slumming on Park Avenue.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Hey, now that the major problem is fixed, I guess I’ll take responsibility

The AP headline says it all: “On Day 37, Obama claims oil mess as his”.

This is like stepping up to the plate after the game is over, the crowds are leaving and the grounds crew is pulling a tarp over the infield.

Barry, in 2012, yer OUTTA here!

Update: Looks like AP changed the headline; now it just reads "Obama claims oil mess as his job to fix." It also looks like some of the more pungent criticisms have been edited out, too. Way to truckle, guys!

Update II: Try this on for size.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Happy Feet Friday

Time for some finger-bustin’ eight-to-the bar, with Gene Taylor playing his version of “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie”.

The European Parliament

Now, there's a wonderful organization for you.

Fascinating work...



Class...

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Joe Biden, the Republicans' secret weapon

In a speech to veterans earlier this week, Vice President Joe Biden helpfully continued to keep Connecticut Democratic Senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal's Vietnam War whoppers in the public spotlight:
Biden met with veterans visiting his official residence on Tuesday night and tried to joke about Blumenthal's gaffe, for which he apologized last week. The Democratic attorney general is seeking the Senate seat.

Biden said: "I didn't serve in Vietnam. I don't want to make a Blumenthal mistake here. Our attorney general from Connecticut, God love him."

He later added: "I have a bad habit of saying exactly what I think."
Now, the first question that comes to mind is just what, exactly, would Joe Biden think with. Nonetheless, Paco Enterprises salutes Joe for his (accidental) candor.

From the shelves of the Paco library


It’s spring, and that means baseball here in these United States. As with all sports, there are going to be winners and losers, and George Robinson and Charles Salzberg focus on some of the most outstanding historical examples of the latter category in On a Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place: Baseball’s Worst Teams.

I have to admit, I opened this book to the table of contents, with one eye closed and kinda squinting through the other one, hoping that I wouldn’t see my beloved Detroit Tigers listed – and, with a sense of great relief, I discovered that they weren’t there. Having been lured into a false sense of security, I dove into the book, starting with the introduction. And then suddenly, there it was: “In one important sense, we were relieved that it took so long for On a Clear Day to find a new publisher. It meant that we didn’t have to write at length about the 1996 Detroit Tigers. What is there to say about the ’96 Tigers?” Plenty, unfortunately, and the authors bung down six paragraphs discussing the team’s abominable performance. Oh, well.

Robinson and Salzberg have compiled a fascinating and very funny history of some very bad teams, ranging from the 1899 Cleveland Spiders to the 1988 Baltimore Orioles. Here’s an ominous portent from the Mets’ opening season in 1962, as the players arrive at their hotel in St. Louis for their debut:
…a group of road-weary Met players, 16 in all, spiffily attired in their spanking new blue team blazers, moved directly to the front desk, where they received their keys and then made their way to the elevator that would take them to their rooms…

The elevator arrived and all sixteen players pushed their way on. The doors closed. The elevator began to move. Only, it didn’t move quite far enough. Two and a half floors to be exact. And then it stopped. The sixteen players looked at each other. They waited. They listened to a recorder in the elevator that announced that “dinner in the Tenderloin Room is now being served. Charcoal broiled steaks the succulent specialty of the house.” They listened to this announcement once. They listened to it twice. In all they listened to it 67 times…

“It wasn’t so bad for the other guys,” the five-foot-ten inch Hobie Landrith recalled afterward. “I’m not built high enough. I couldn’t get any air down where I was.”

Eventually, their screams were heard by someone in the hotel…
For the baseball fan (complete rosters and plenty of stats!), or for anyone who enjoys tales of epic failure described with verve and wit, this book is highly recommended.

Art Linkletter, RIP

Art Linkletter is dead at 97.

I used to love watching the segment on his old TV show, "Kids Say the Darndest Things". Here's a series of clips hosted by Bill Cosby.

I know just how you feel

Rebecca wrote in the comments: "And I've had enough of the Obama news on this bang-up Obama news day. I'm going out to yank weeds out of my garden with extreme prejudice, and I'm giving names to all of them while I'm doing it: Barry The Won, Belgium Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer-hitting-the-fan, John Memory-seared Kerry, traitor Joe Lieberman, etc."

Amen, sis. The idiocies of this administration and its allies just keep multiplying at a dizzying pace. I know we're all getting Obama fatigue, but we need to keep an accurate record. The latest act of imbecility is Obama's nominee for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, a fellow who, as Carol points out, practically dotes on serial killers

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"How long can a people remain a People when its leaders side with its foes?"

An absolutely first-rate question from Andrew McCarthy.
...for the first time in our history, we have a president who would be much more comfortable sitting in a room with Bill Ayers than sitting in a room with me. We have a governing class that is too often comfortable with anti-American radicals, with rogue and dysfunctional governments that blame America for their problems, and with Muslim Brotherhood ideologues who abhor individual liberty, capitalism, freedom of conscience, and, in general, Western enlightenment.
Worst. President. In. History.


(Photo gratefully swiped from Moonbattery)

Monday, May 24, 2010

Sure, after some aggressive prompting

Richard Blumenthal apologizes for lying about Vietnam War service.

As always, we like to take the high road here at Paco Enterprises.


Apology accepted.

Allah Akbar? Oy vey!

Jason Apuzzo at Libertas reviews Infidel, a comic and truly edgy movie about a man brought up as a devout Muslim who discovers, in middle age, that he is actually Jewish. Be sure to click the link to the film trailer.

Hey, who would be crazy enough to defend Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple?

Rebecca Moore, that’s who. Daniel Flynn takes a look at Moore’s bizarre book, Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple, over at City Journal.

So, is Moore just another crackpot peddling a self-published screed? Hardly.
It would be tempting to dismiss Moore, who in addition to her latest apologia has authored such titles as A Sympathetic History of Jonestown and In Defense of Peoples Temple. But like the group whose reputation she seeks to resuscitate, Moore does not operate on the margins, however marginal her views. She chairs the department of religious studies at San Diego State. When the subject of Jonestown arises, as it did recently on the 30th anniversary of the events, media outlets solicit her expertise. Stanley Nelson’s PBS documentary “The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,” for instance, featured Moore as a talking head. And she published this latest book not out of her garage but through Praeger, a respected imprint of a major publishing house. However reassuring it is to believe that all cranks are tinfoil-hatted denizens of the furthest recesses of the Internet, the examples of Jones, the darling of the San Francisco power structure, and of Moore, a tenured, media-designated authority, prove that what’s comforting isn’t always what’s true.
There is virtually no concept, ideology or historical incident that is so insane, asinine and bloodthirsty that you can’t find a well-placed intellectual who is willing to defend it. I sometimes feel as though our society would be far better off if we closed half of the colleges and universities and replaced them with plumbing and carpentry schools.

Assortment

Swampie’s got a terrific video of Ray Stevens’ take on immigration.

Dan Collins says deadbeats of a feather flock together.

Oh, dear. First the Armada disaster, then the calamitous Spanish-American War, then the civil war, now this. As Mr. Bingley points out: Spain, yer doin’ it wrong.

Moonbattery has a new favorite bumper sticker.

Boy on a Bike brings us the news that Obama has appointed a golf czar.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

I'm so glad Boy on a Bike carries his camera around with him

Because he finds road gems like this (be sure to clink-n-large).

The Man Without a Country

President Obama continues to adopt the stance of an outsider looking in whenever it comes to his own country. That is the reason why he has no problem apologizing for the U.S. - most recently to the President of Mexico.

Byron York positively nails Obama's aloofness from his fellow citizens in his latest Washington Examiner piece:
When President Obama discussed the new Arizona immigration law with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House Wednesday, he was doing something he has never done with the governor of Arizona. Although Obama has repeatedly criticized the law, he has not once talked about it with Gov. Jan Brewer, nor is any such discussion in the works.

If they did talk, Brewer might ask Obama why he took a foreign leader's side against a U.S. state on the issue of illegal immigration. In a Rose Garden appearance, Calderon called the Arizona law "discriminatory" and said it will lead to immigrants being "treated as criminals." Obama echoed Calderon's remarks, saying the Arizona law "has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion" and creates the "possibility" that immigrants will be "harassed or arrested."
Mona Charen, also writing for the Washington Examiner, underscores the sheer hypocrisy of Calderon criticizing U.S. immigration policy:
While the administration was fulminating about the horrific human rights violation the Arizona law represents, Amnesty International was issuing a report about Mexico's mistreatment of its own illegal migrants. "Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses," said Rupert Knox, Mexico Researcher at Amnesty International. "Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses carried out against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world."

The migrants, who are usually attempting to make their way through Mexico to the United States, suffer kidnappings for ransom, robbery, and rape. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission reports that nearly 10,000 were abducted over six months in 2009. Almost 50 percent of victims said that public officials were involved in their kidnapping. Amnesty estimates that six out of 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence.
I hope and pray that Obama will be a one-term president; even so, he will probably have done more damage to both our foreign policy and our economy than any one-term (or, for that matter, two-term) president in history. We will be years digging out of this mess.

Meanwhile, the Blogprof points out that there's profiling, and then there's profiling.

Sunday Funny

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Commies continue to get free pass

"Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives?", Claire Berlinski asks at City Journal.

An excellent question, particularly since the archives paint not only a far darker picture of Gorbachev, but uncover the close intellectual affinity between the Soviets and many of those European politicians who were instrumental in creating the European Union.
There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
One of the most persistent lies of contemporary American liberalism is that the liberals really care about human rights. I guess it all depends on who is running the gulag.
And what of Zagladin’s description of his dealings with our own current vice president in 1979?

Unofficially, [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for “human rights.” . . . In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.

Remarkably, the world has shown little interest in the unread Soviet archives. That paragraph about Biden is a good example. Stroilov and Bukovsky coauthored a piece about it for the online magazine FrontPage on October 10, 2008; it passed without remark. Americans considered the episode so uninteresting that even Biden’s political opponents didn’t try to turn it into political capital. Imagine, if you can, what it must feel like to have spent the prime of your life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, to know that Joe Biden is now vice president of the United States, and to know that no one gives a damn.
There is so much solid good sense in this article that I'm reluctant to keep snipping from it; however, I'll include one more short quote:
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism.
The basic ethos of Communism - the notion of the perfectibility of man through the agency of an all-powerful state - has not, by any means, died, and the durability of its appeal, under various names and in even the freest of countries, continues to pose a tremendous threat to those who love liberty and the spirit of individualism. Not only our "former" enemies, but their well-wishers are still making policy, still attempting to shape our world in ways inimical to any real concept of human dignity. That is why, even though the Soviet Union is defunct, its history and mission are still relevant.

Update: See what I mean?

Happy Day!

The Libertas online film magazine is back!

Rule 5 Saturday

Cute-as-a-button Joan Leslie sings “I’m Waiting Too”.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Fair and Balanced

Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory czar, would like to see blogs voluntarily offer access to opposite views (and if they won't do it voluntarily...well, the administration might have to ratchet up the coercion a teensy bit).

Readers of Paco Enterprises expect this blog to be hip, cutting edge, ahead of the curve; therefore, I'm offering the following links as balance:

Communist Party, USA

The Militant

Organizing for America

The Spanish Falangist Party

David Brooks

There ya go! TwoThree Marxist sites, one right-wing site, and one waffling crap weasel.

Happy Feet Friday

Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy with a mid-40’s arrangement of the classic boogie-woogie number, “Roll ‘Em” (sound recording, only).

From the shelves of the Paco library


I first became genuinely interested in horseracing while reading Laura Hillenbrand’s superb book about Seabiscuit. Now, John Christgau explores the dark side of the sport of kings in The Gambler and the Bug Boy, an account of a notorious race-fixing scheme operated by a group of professional gamblers and bookmakers in late 1930s California.

And what a tale it is! Many of the characters in this non-fiction book could have stepped out of a pulp fiction novel. The head of the ring was a flashy operator who called himself Big Mooney (real name, Bernard Einstoss), the son of a grocer who took to gambling from an early age and made it his life’s work. In association with other crooks – his brother Willie, “Doc” Kebo, Irving Sangbush, to name a few – Big Mooney struck upon the idea of paying jockeys to pull horses during races at Hollywood Park and Del Mar in order to improve his percentages. When simple bribery didn’t work, however, he made ominous threats, which he carried out on a number of occasions.
…one night in mid-April [jockey Albert Siler] came out of a bar in South San Francisco, where he had gone with another Tanforan jockey who had refused to pull horses. On the street, the two of them were jumped by figures twice their size. The other jockey chose to stand and fight, but Albert eluded them by running up a hillside into a dark pocket of eucalyptus trees where he hid out. From that safe point, he watched as the thugs, whoever they were, overwhelmed the other jockey and dragged him beneath a streetlight. There, they picked him up by his feet and hammered him repeatedly against the light post. Then they left him lying in a broken heap on the pavement.
The jockeys were easy targets. Most of them were young men – mere boys, really – who had grown up in poverty and had turned to racing in order to support their families. The book focuses on one particular “bug boy”, Albert Siler (apprentice riders had an asterisk by their names in the racing forms, hence the slang expression). He was the son of a hardscrabble farmer who drifted around the western dustbowl, from failure to failure. The one joy of Albert’s life as a boy was riding horses. Graduating from mules and plow-horses to ponies at county fairs and bush league racetracks, Albert finally journeyed to California, where he eventually became a very promising jockey. Young and deferential, he was the natural prey for Big Mooney. Albert didn’t want to pull horses, but he finally succumbed to the threats and began throwing races on Mooney’s orders (not always successfully; some horses were just too good to lose).

The jockeys’ ring eventually came to the attention of sharp-eyed race stewards and the L.A. County District Attorney, Burron Fitts (a colorful character in his own right). Fitts was determined to put the fixers out of business, and worked for months building a case against Mooney and company. Fitts was defeated in an election preceding the trial by John Dockweiler. Dockweiler continued the hot pursuit of Mooney and his gang, however, finally managing to bring them to trial, which, unfortunately, was bungled (Mooney was convicted of some relatively minor offenses and served less than a year in jail).

Christgau has done a fine job in throwing a spotlight on this obscure corner of sports history, and the book is, as well, an interesting window on pre-War America.

Obama and friend


Well, you never hear of rats boarding a sinking ship, do you?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Goreture

Faisal Shahzad, the unsuccessful Times Square bomber, was hustled into a large auditorium by two beefy FBI officers. He had been in a state of complete mystification since early that morning, when his jailers had put him in a police van and carried him to the airport. The plane had taken off and he had been in the air for a couple of hours, but all he could tell was that the aircraft was flying in a southerly direction. When the plane landed, he was finally able to catch a glimpse of his destination: Knoxville, Tennessee. His handlers had then quickly whisked him away in another van to the campus of the University of Tennessee.

The auditorium – dark, save for the brightly-lit stage – was filled to capacity. Standing at the podium was an extraordinarily rotund man dressed in black academic robes, with a wide white collar. Shahzad had not been a close student of American history, but he had a vague recollection of the Mayflower from an illustrated textbook that he remembered studying in elementary school, and the man speaking looked like an enormous pilgrim. Or, perhaps, thought Shahzad (shifting metaphorical gears), like a gigantic black Labrador fitted with an E-collar to prevent him from chewing at an injury.

The man on the stage was droning on, in a lugubrious monotone, about oil spills and coal-fired generators and melting glaciers. The speech had bestowed a somnolent equality on the audience, as not only narcoleptics, but insomniacs, and regular eight-hours-a-night folks all dozed contentedly, the speaker’s words competing with the gentle buzz of mass snoozing, and the occasional hack of sleep apnea.

The horror of his situation dawned on Shahzad, as he saw the two FBI men clap noise-suppression devises on their ears. It wasn’t just any bore standing up there on the stage; it was Al Gore, giving the most depressing commencement speech in history. And Shahzad didn't have the luxury of dropping off to sleep like the graduating students; he now understood why his captors had been filling him up with coffee for the last three hours. He would have to listen to the whole thing!

“No!” he screamed. He instinctively tried to place his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t; his hands were handcuffed behind his back.

“No! Anything but this! Waterboarding! I demand to be waterboarded! Even better- I’ll just tell you everything you want to know right now!” The FBI men stood motionless, each gripping one of Shahzad’s arms, as Gore relentlessly plodded through his prepared remarks.

“Humidity is up four percent…sub-prime mortgage crisis…floods in Nashville…refugees from low-lying island nations…global economic crisis…”

The color drained from Shahzad’s face, and his knees buckled. The FBI agents let him drop to the floor, where he curled up in a fetal position, whimpering.

An hour later Shahzad regained consciousness in the back of the van. The terrible experience of having to listen to Al Gore’s speech came rushing back into his mind. He stifled a scream, and ever so slowly, began to calm down. Then, a smile spread across his face. Suddenly he was chuckling, then laughing uncontrollably. “Infidel fools!” he shouted. “The speech is over! I didn’t tell you anything!”

Agent Kowalski smiled, and held up a video tape, which he waggled in the air. “That’s ok, Faisal. When we get back to New York, you can listen to it all over again. And again. And again…”

Shahzad went limp in defeat. He knew that he would tell all. He turned his face to the side of the van and sobbed.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Man takes last train ride...

...but really gets his money's worth.
A man who boarded a Metro subway train in Montgomery County on Monday morning was found dead in the same train five hours later, the transit system said.

Metro said in a statement that the death was probably the result of natural causes, but no detailed information on a cause could be learned. It was also unclear when the man might have died during a period in which the train traveled much of the Red Line in both directions.

Metro did not give the man's name or any other details about him.

It was also unclear why the man was not spotted when the train was inspected before being taken out of service at one point. Metro said it would review its procedures.
God rest his soul.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Department of Labor Serves Up the Gravy

Hilda Solis brought a half dozen staffers with her when she assumed her new job at the Department of Labor. No AmTrak commuters in this lot; strictly gravy train, baby!

Lights Out!

The Arizona Corporation Commission invites Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to get stuffed:
You explained your support of the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona. Our intent is to use our dollars — or the withholding of our dollars — to send a message.” (emphasis added)

I received your message; please receive mine. As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation.
Heh. Hardball, Mr. Mayor; that's what it's called. It will be interesting to see the strange boycott civil war that's going to break out if more states follow Arizona's lead.

(H/T: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)

Murtha's Legacy

Republican Tim Burns has conceded the election to Democrat Mark Critz in Pennsylvania's special election in district twelve.

Lord Acton is still right. Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this observation applies not only to the one who has power, but to those for whose benefit that power is exercised (and abused). It is hard not to draw the conclusion that a substantial number of voters in PA-12 have become so addicted to Murtha-style pork that they voted for the Democrat in the hope of keeping those federal chuck wagons rolling in on a regular schedule. Or perhaps the gravy is being airlifted now.

Update: At least Specter is gone.

Prime Minister David Cameron, RINO

Or whatever the British equivalent is – Tory in Name Only? TINO? (No, that would imply that the Conservative Party has a, you know, genuinely conservative core, which I'm not sure about; readers well-versed in British politics, feel free to opine).

Marc Thiessen points to a speech Cameron made a few years ago that makes him sound rather like Obama on the subject of foreign policy and the “special relationship”.

Hey, Richard Blumenthal does have his defenders

Democratic senatorial candidate and phony Vietnam War vet, Richard Blumenthal, gets some critical support from other, er, veterans.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Go Scott!

Smitty highlights another outstanding Republican candidate for Congress: Scott Taylor - former Navy S.E.A.L., Iraq war veteran and entrepreneur.

Matters of State

A strategy meeting in the Oval Office. In attendance: David Axelrod, Eric Holder and the President of the United States.

Obama: Hey, what happened to that dish of sugar cookies that my kids made? There’s only one cookie left.

Axelrod [instinctively running a finger across his mustache to eliminate any visible signs of crumbs]: Er…Sugar cookies? I didn’t see any. Did you, Eric?

Holder: Huh? Oh, I thought I saw Da…Ouch!

Axelrod [Muttering through clenched teeth}: Sorry, Eric. Was that your ankle?

Obama: All right, all right. Forget the cookies. Let’s get down to business. David, how can we use this Arizona immigration law as a wedge issue to divide teabaggers and Republicans?

Axelrod: It might not be as easy as it sounds, sir. For example, boycott efforts by Californians may backfire, since San Diego is looking at a counter-boycott from Arizonans.

Obama: Eric, I hear that the Arizona legislation mirrors the federal law that’s been on the books for seventy years. Any truth to that?

Holder: I guess so.

Obama: You have read the Arizona bill, haven’t you?

Holder: Yeah, yeah, sure…well…no, actually. I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t had the time. I’ve been busy dodging subpoenas on that Black Panther voter intimidation case, and researching Roget’s thesaurus for synonyms I can use in lieu of “Islamic terrorism.”

Obama: Eric, the freakin’ thing is just ten pages long.

Holder [brightening]: I did see something about it in the New York Times.

[Obama’s personal secretary knocks on the door.]

Secretary: Mr. President, Senator Specter would like to speak to you.

Obama: What?!? Who took his call? I left clear instructions that nobody was home for that loser.

Secretary: He’s not on the phone, sir; he’s in my office.

Obama [his voice sinking to a whisper]: Bismillah! Listen, go back and tell him I’ve gone out for the evening. And turn the lights off on your way out so he won’t know we’re here. Thanks. [The room is now almost completely dark]

Obama [whispering huskily]: Ok, David. You were saying about Arizona?

Axelrod [also whispering]: There’s another catch with that Arizona statute. Its backers have discovered something in the health care bill that can be used to charge us with hypocrisy.

Obama: Damn! Every time I turn around, some new horror gets discovered in that health care blob. What is it this time?

Axelrod: Well, somewhere around page 487, under “Alternate sources of funding for Medicare”, there’s a clause that gives the federal government the right to harvest the organs of illegal aliens and sell them to hospitals in the aliens’ countries of origin.

Obama: Hmmm. That’s bad.

Axelrod: It’s worse than bad, sir. The clause doesn’t technically even specify that they have to be dead, first.

Obama: Who the hell put that in there?

Axelrod: I’m not positive, but as near as I can figure, it was inserted by Jack Murtha at the suggestion of your science czar.

Obama: That idiot Pelosi! Didn’t she read the thing before it passed? I know, I know; “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”

Holder [in a loud voice]: I can’t hear a word you guys are saying. [He is subjected to vigorous shushing from the President and Axelrod, in unison]

Obama: Wait! If we’re sending the aliens back a kidney or lung at a time, can’t we pass that off as, you know, deportation? That might take the wind out of the sails of those right-wingers who keep accusing us of not taking action.

Axelrod: Umm…I’ll have to think that one over, sir.

[A muffled voice is heard on the other side of the door]: Miss, I’m sure I heard somebody in there! Well, I’m not leaving until I see the President!

Obama: Ok, guys, total silence. Looks like we might be here a while.

[A few seconds later, a munching noise is heard; Obama stretches his hand out in the dark, and finds the now empty plate]

Obama: All right, which one of you snagged the last cookie?

Axelrod: Mmph…Ah-ont-owe, thur.

Holder [practically shouting]: What?

Specter [Bursting into the room and switching on the lights]: Ah ha!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

A state Dept. of Agriculture race that is actually interesting

Or at least, Republican candidate Dale Peterson's ad sure is. The Other McCain has the video.

Totally unrelated, but funny (and more accurate than the original) is this dubbing over at Ed Driscoll's place of a video featuring GM's government-appointed chairman explaining how the company "repaid" its loans.

News from the World of Blair

Tim Blair, that is, starting with this hilarious polar bear update.

Mr. Bingley has spotted a Republican candidate for office who really should have niche appeal.

Frollicking Mole at Tizona finds that the European Union doesn't seem so united these days.

kae catches a psychologist talking common sense.

Richard McEnroe relates a first-hand account of youthful participation in a boycott. A taste: "Now. Did you ever try to explain to the INS why you need a US passport to travel between Phoenix and New York with a bunch of illegal Guatemalans?"

Original poetry - and damned good, too! - from that wild man of the interwebs, TimT.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Sunday Funnies

Arizona has a message for L.A.

* * * * *

What'll you have?


H/T: Don Surber

Let us honor our Armed Forces

Richard McEnroe's got a good video at Three Beers Later in honor of Armed Forces Day.

You mean Bananas was a blueprint, not a satire?

Woody Allen thinks it would be great if Obama could be a dictator for a few years.

Rule 5 Saturday

Ann Miller says that man is brother to a mule (hey, with moves like that, she can call me anything she wants to).

Friday, May 14, 2010

Go Tim Burns!

Stacy's got your Tim Burns coverage right here.

A Burns victory in PA-12 would be a great pick-up for the Republican Party (and a wonderful "tribute" to the late, unlamented Jack Murtha).

"Most Trusted Man in America"

Isn't that what they used to call Walter Cronkite?

Well, guess again.
Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite allegedly collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even pledging CBS News resources to help pull off events, according to FBI documents obtained by Yahoo! News.

Great role model ya got there, Barack

Victor Davis Hanson enumerates the problems of the European Union, and shows that Obama's desire to turn us into Euroweenies is hopelessly misguided (but, on the upside, potentially damaging to his political career). Here's a taste:
Democratic socialism has been shown to be unsustainable, and this has become the subtext of much of the populist anger at Obamaism. After September 2008, the crack-up of a wild Wall Street was to bring on a referendum on the intrinsic contradictions of capitalism. But at the same time, many wondered why, then, some wiser Europeans were still moving to open up their economies rather than add more government, taxes, and bureaucracies. In truth, the United States, should it remain a free-market open economy, will be able to survive September 2008 far better than the Europeans can survive Greece and what is to follow — largely because, despite Obama, America is still far more entrepreneurial and business-friendly. Our states are integrated in a way that Europe is not. Californians and Arizonans may not like each other right now, but their animosities do not affect the U.S. dollar, the Federal Reserve, and Social Security, in the way that the German-Greek showdown involves basic policies of finance, regulation, and pensions — well aside from linguistic, cultural, and historical differences. Like it or not, Europe, and especially Greece, are the canaries in the American mine: Try Googling “Greece” + “California” for the details from some 60 million results.

The Devastating Mole

Spiegel Online has the fascinating story of Herman Simm, one of the last of the great Russian spies (and by "last", I mean "the last we know of", not by any means the last Russian spy standing).

Conspiracy

Stacy McCain has a lot of good follow-up on the arrests in Massachusetts connected to the attempted Times Square bombing (including the video of Attorney General Eric Holder doing his darnedest to avoid using the words "Islamic terrorism").

Update: Uncle Jimbo weighs in at Black Five on Eric Holder (via Smitty in the comments). CAUTION! Uncle Jimbo does not mince words.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Happy Feet Friday

Victor Young and his orchestra swing out on “Hold That Tiger” (or, to give it its real name, "Tiger Rag").

Whoever wins, the new representative will be easier on the eyes than David Obey

Troglopundit discusses the upcoming beauty contest congressional election in Wisconsin's 7th district.

From the shelves of the Paco library


Not long ago, I wrote a piece celebrating Elmore Leonard’s Old West short stories. Today, I’d like to highlight a couple of his western novels.

The Bounty Hunters was Leonard’s first published novel, and it established him as a writer of gritty, realistic westerns, the protagonists of which are generally hardened men who have survived by keeping their eyes open and very quickly learning from experience. This novel deals with two men –a scout named Dave Flynn and young lieutenant Bowers - who have been ordered to cross the border into Mexico to hunt down a renegade Apache called Soldado Viejo. Not only do the two men have to worry about the Apaches; they are also up against a gang of scalp hunters (who are not particular in distinguishing between Apaches and Mexicans), and the newly established rurales, a rural police force consisting largely of former bandits, and commanded by a corrupt Mexican officer who has a deal with the scalp hunters to split the bounties on the latter’s grisly trophies. And as if all that didn’t constitute a more than sufficient handful of danger, the mission on which Flynn and Bowers have embarked has been ordered by Bowers’ commanding officer, who has a dark secret of his own which he hopes will evade detection if Flynn is killed in Mexico. In addition to the hot action you would expect in a book like this, there is also the interesting story line of the lieutenant’s education in the ways of western warfare – a course of study that, of necessity, must proceed rapidly, if he expects to stay alive.

* * * *

Some 26 years later, in 1979, Leonard published Gunsights, and, once again, we are taken back to the arid southwest, where tracker and scout Dana Moon, and Lieutenant Brendan Early, have crossed into Mexico to fetch an old Apache chief back to the reservation in the U.S. Their way is barred, however, by a stone-cold killer named Sundeen; he and his band are engaged in the lucrative business of scalp hunting. Moon and Early manage to shoot their way out of trouble, leaving most of Sundeen’s men dead, and Sundeen himself apparently mortally wounded. Leonard then jumps us ahead over the next seven years, which are marked by numerous attempts on the lives of Moon and Early by the friends and relatives of Sundeen’s dead gang.

In 1893, Moon has become the Indian agent for the Apache substation in White Tank, and Early, who has retired from the army, has become a successful prospector, selling out to a large mining company in return for a substantial cash offer and a purely nominal position with the company. The two old friends now find themselves on opposite sides of what the newspaper men are calling the Rincon Mountain War, an increasingly violent struggle between the mining company and the Apaches, Mexicans and a group of retired African-American cavalrymen who have established homesteads in the area under Moon’s supervision. The mining company hires gunmen, among whom is none other than Sundeen, who has proved a very hard man to kill.

One of the most fascinating sub-themes in the novel is the role of the press in whipping up rumors and attempting to create a false narrative in which Moon and Early are now being held up as deadly enemies, which turns out to be very far from the truth. The struggle is ultimately resolved after a short, sharp action between Sundeen’s men on the one side, and Moon’s on the other (Early throwing in with Moon). The concluding scenes serve as a kind of final curtain on the old west, as the violent action is temporarily halted when a small army of reporters and cameramen make their way into the fray, accompanied by a Buffalo-Bill-type character who wants to offer Moon and Early a job in his wild west show – assuming, of course, that they survive the battle (Sundeen’s frustration at the interruption is comically underscored, as his angry voice is heard echoing from the rocks: “What in the hell’s going on! Jesus Christ, can you believe this?”)

Both of these books are fine specimens of the Old West genre, enlivened by Leonard’s unique style and his deep insights into human nature.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Wanker-in-Chief invites Rush Limbaugh to join club

Author's effort to get Obama to play golf with Rush Limbaugh elicits administration response: "Limbaugh can play with himself."

Limbaugh replies.

(H/T: Hot Air)

On another topic: Drunken sailors, unite!

That's in the Constitution somewhere, right?


Michelle Obama wants you to eat right.

And if you won't adopt these suggestions voluntarily, there's always Recommendation 2.9: "If voluntary efforts to limit the marketing of less healthy foods and beverages to children do not yield substantial results, the FCC could consider revisiting and modernizing rules on commercial time during children's programming."

Liberals are big on treating people like hapless nitwits, forever needing the intrusion of government in every aspect of their lives. Unfortunately, the totalitarian temptation inherent in modern liberalism creates a very small gap between viewing people as recalcitrant children, and as enemies of the state, with punishments varying accordingly.

The market for ignoramuses remains strong

Ruby Slippers has a video of Chris Matthews blaming the problems of Greece, Spain and Portugal on "right-wing dictatorships" that have been out of business for more than 30 years.

Chris Matthews makes approximately five million dollars a year. The even more imbecilic Keith Olbermann makes over seven million. Hell, give Joe Biden an MSNBC slot and he'd probably rake in eight figures.

Show me? No, let us show you

Missourians are going to have the opportunity to participate in a popular vote to determine whether their state will be exempted from Obama Care. Should be interesting.

A fugitive named, er, Paco

From Jonah Goldberg via Smitty comes this piece on a dog named Paco that Delta Airlines managed to lose.

If he's like most Pacos, he's just off on a ramble, looking for the main chance.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Alan Colmes

"Myth-head".

Well done, Smitty!

Nearer, Barack, to Thee

Benjamin Plotinsky has written an intriguing article at City Journal on the phenomenon of political religions, with emphasis on the most recent false prophet. A sample:
Religion has long been a powerful force in American politics, of course, for good and ill. The difference with the more traditional varieties of religion was the open acknowledgment that they were religious. The First Amendment promised that they could never become established churches; generations’ worth of jurisprudence closely regulated the way they could interact with government. And when a campaigning politician acknowledged forthrightly that he derived a policy from, say, his understanding of the Bible, his potential constituents understood that, however reasonable the policy might be, what underlay it was faith, not reason. The emerging liberal religions are very different: as emotionally captivating for some, at least for a time, as Christianity or Judaism, but untrammeled by any constitutional amendment; as grounded in faith, but pretending to dwell in the realms of reason and science.
(H/T: Ace).

Another reason to dislike Sam Waterston

I never cared for the guy; the affected intensity beaming from those close-set, beady little eyes always suggested "liberal fanatic" from the get-go.

Now he's affording Congress the benefit of his no doubt extraordinarily in-depth knowledge of petroleum technology for the purpose of advocating - what else? - the banning of offshore drilling.

He's doing this, incidentally, as an activist for Oceana, a group founded by actor and unsuccessful blackface comedian Ted Danson.

Monday, May 10, 2010

You know, she's right!

Miss Cellania lists some film conventions that make me smile in recognition of how many times I've seen exactly the same kinds of things.

What I did on my vacation

Well, it ain't even half way over yet, but I imagine the highlight was today, when me and the missus took a trip down to Virginia Arms in Manassas and I picked up a Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum. It's from S&W's Classics Collection, and is a real beauty. My father, Old Paco, carried a .41 back in his lawman days (in addition to his .44 Magnum hog-leg and a Colt snub-nose .38). He always fancied revolvers - probably 'cause the gun he accidentally shot himself in the leg with was a Llama .45 semi-automatic - and I'm partial to 'em, too. Mrs. Paco was eying the Ruger SP 101 .38 special, and started asking questions about Laser grips (which caused me to raise an eyebrow; I wasn't aware she knew what they were). Might make a nice present for her birthday next month.

Here's a photo of the .41 Magnum:

Lena Horne, RIP

Lena Horne has died at age 92. Here is a repost of her singing her big hit, "Stormy Weather".

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Assortment

demotivational posters
see more

As Jack Benny might have said, “Give me a minute! I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”

Steve “Iron Man” Burri is returning for another season.

Mr. Bingley creates major Hollywood controversy.

I continue to be amazed (yet thankful) that Boy on a Bike has thus far avoided being squashed.

What if the leftists capture the institutions and nobody shows up?

Stacy McCain pins another liberal to the dissection board and peels away the layers of b.s.
...you sense the source of liberal Lilla’s frustration. What was the point of the Left’s “long march through the institutions” if, having captured those institutions, they can’t use them to tell everybody else what to do?

My Big Fat Greek Bankruptcy

Theodore Dalrymple points out the unpleasant truth: "Rather than pointing fingers, Greek citizens should look in the mirror."

Wanted: Rich Sugar Daddy


Lucy - the official Australian bearded dragon of Paco Enterprises - appears to be looking for a well-to-do, older mate.

Happy Mother's Day!



Best wishes to all you moms out there.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Sunday Funnies

Via Captain Heinrichs, this fellow leaves no room for doubt where he stands on the Obama administration.

Also, there's this story about a claustrophobic "alien".

Finally: Putting the cart before the horse's ass (click to embiggen; you need to study the picture closely in order to get it).


(Photo gratefully swiped from Gateway Pundit).

From the Shelves of the Paco Library



Burke Davis, one of our most distinguished historians of the American Civil War, captures the chaotic, desperate atmosphere of the final weeks of the Confederacy in The Long Surrender.

The time is late March, 1865; the place, Richmond, Virginia. The American Civil War was approaching its fourth anniversary.
It seemed unlikely that the Confederate capital would survive to celebrate the anniversary. A perceptive diarist saw symptoms of approaching crisis in the disintegration of the army defending the capital:

“Desertions from the army were assuming fearful proportions that no legislative or executive rigor could diminish. Every day saw brigades double-quicking back and forth through the suburbs…inadequate to man the vast extent of the lines.”
In addition to the melting away of the army, there were plenty of other signs of the impending collapse.
Inflation ravaged the city and threatened the unfortunate with starvation. Flour sold for $1,500 per barrel, live hens for $50 each, butter for $20 per pound and beef for $15…But there were those who suffered more keenly. Young A.R. Tomlinson, a wounded soldier serving as a hospital guard, though so weak that he could barely stand watch, could not bring himself to eat as his companions did: “The surgeons and matrons ate rats and said they were as good as squirrels, but having seen the rats running over the bodies of dead soldiers, I had no relish for them.”
The author provides comprehensive descriptions of Lee’s last dash for freedom, and the moving surrender at Appomattox, as well as the controversial capture of Jefferson Davis (he was rumored to have disguised himself in his wife’s clothes, a story denied by the Union officers present at his capture, but nonetheless picked up as gospel truth by the Northern press, which began running cartoons of the ex-President of the Confederacy attired in hoop skirts). There is also a harrowing account of the escape of Confederate Treasurer Judah P. Benjamin (who made his way to England where he began a second career as a barrister), and a fine description of General Jo Shelby and his troops, who halted momentarily at the Rio Grande and conducted a brief, but somber ceremony, wrapping their battle flag around a large rock and sinking it in the river, before crossing into Mexico to seek service, variously, with the Emperor Maximilian or the Juaristas, or simply settling down to become farmers and ranchers (many, including Shelby, ultimately returned to the United States).

The Long Surrender draws heavily on diaries, letters and official dispatches from the men and women who lived through the battlefront destruction and civilian privation of this period, thus affording an immediacy that brings the history of the time to life. No library of Civil War history should be without it.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Rule 5 Saturday

The great Hazel Scott tickles the ivories.

Hey, Bozo-in-Chief

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ain't laughin'.

We still need the oil

Little Miss Attila has some shrewd observations on offshore drilling.

Offensive Feminism

Smitty at The Other McCain collars a particularly ridiculous example of sniffishness manifested by an academic feminist, in the meantime devising one of the best metaphors I've seen in a while: "A colon in the title of an academic paper is symbolic of the vampiric puncture wound left upon the neck of the reader, sucking life..."

Headline of the Week

From the Washington Examiner: "Harry Reid carrying Wall Street's love child".
If Republicans are "making love to Wall Street," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., puts it, one wonders if there's a printable description for Reid's torrid affair with the financial sector...

Reid has raised more money from Wall Street than any Republican House or Senate candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In fact, among senators seeking re-election, Reid has raised more than the top three Republicans combined. As far as the parties go, it's not even close -- Wall Street has given 60 percent of its cash this year to Democrats, and seven of the top 10 recipients of Wall Street political action committee money are Democrats.
Which gives the lie both to Harry Reid, and to the left's claims that Big Business is the natural ally of the Republican Party.

Update - Haw! From Jeff S. in the comments: "Somehow, I doubt that Reid knows who the father is."

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Happy Feet Friday

The Berry Brothers in a stylish, swingin’ dance number.

Stephen Hawking, Behind the Curve

Hawking suggests that time travel is possible.

Of course it is, professor. Wronwright's not using the Tardis as a tool shed, you know.

Update: Dang! Didn't have time to do my book report today. Will try to do it tomorrow. Couldn't be helped, I'm afraid. Mrs. Paco had me outside planting and watering and just generally slaving away in the yard.

Nashville: Wet But Defiant

Confederate Yankee has a nice tribute to Nashville, and some reflections on the disgracefully under-reported floods.

Michelle Malkin shows how you can help.

Turning the tables on the nanny-staters

Professor Donald Boudreaux of George Mason University, in response to a suggestion by Professor Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina that pizza should be taxed, offers a modest proposal.

What is it about San Francisco?

From Gateway Pundit, “[f]our students in the San Francisco area were sent home from school yesterday for wearing American flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo.”

Here’s a news flash for you hyper-sensitive diversity types: Cinco de Mayo is not celebrated as a national holiday in Mexico. It commemorates an 1862 military victory of the Mexicans over the freakin’ French, for crying out loud, and it was only a temporary setback for French forces, which went on to occupy Mexico City anyway. It is only in the United States that this day is widely taken notice of, and it has been artificially puffed up to celebrate the Mexican heritage, primarily among immigrants (legal and otherwise).

In any event, there’s something very definitely wrong about compelling students to suppress their displays of the American flag for fear of offending their Hispanic schoolmates. We are one nation, not two overlapping nations contesting the same geographical area (or rather, increasingly we do seem to be the latter, but we need to find a way of reversing the process).

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Vacation!

And high time, too. A bit of yard work in store, if Mrs. Paco has her way, although mostly just some new planting (I hope).

Spring is the prettiest time of year here at the Paco Command Center. These young dogwoods are looking healthier since I thinned out some overgrown cedars.



A neighbor gave us some iris bulbs last year, and this aristocratic flower is strutting its stuff.



I've always liked orange azaleas, but never had any luck with them until this year.

Enjoy your retirement, Dave!

Anne Leary of Backyard Conservative sheds tears over the announcement by Rep. David Obey that he will not seek reelection. Tears of joy, that is.

Hooray!

Good news (sorta)! One of my short-stories won in a writing competition (kinda).

Well, it didn’t win, in the sense of coming in first, but it did take third place in the short-story category of the American Gem Literary Festival. Actually, two of my stories made it to the semi-finals, but only one hung in until the end - not, in my opinion, the better one, but I’ll take what I can get.

Hey, some pretty famous people support gun control



Courtesy of friend and commenter Jeff S.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Been there (plenty of times)

The wonderful essayist, Joseph Epstein, has an article at the Weekly Standard on the curse of typos. From the essay:
Such typos in my own writing as have been called to my attention have thus far been neither comical nor decisive in blocking my meaning. And for that I am grateful. I once heard a story—apocryphal or not, I do not know—that the poet and critic Delmore Schwartz wrote an elaborate interpretation of a T. S. Eliot poem based on a typo in the poem. A writer I know once sent me an email in which he recounted answering an annoying copy editor who queried the meaning of the word chapeau by drawing a line out into the margin of his proof and, in parentheses, noting, “(It’s a hat stupid),” only to find his correction appear in the finished text of his book: “ . . .  chapeau (it’s a hat stupid).”

Terror update

Hey, just speculating (like Mayor Bloomberg), but it would be kind of interesting if the fertilizer used by this Faisal Shahzad schmuck turned out to have been non-explosive because it was Miracle-Gro liquid lawn feeder or something.

Stacy McCain has a couple of excellent roundups of reporting on the failed attempt to bomb Times Square, including this sweet Tweet from Andy Levy to Bloomberg.

Update - From Swampie in the comments: "If I were to detonate a fertilizer bomb made from products readily available at my place, there'd be a sheep shit cloud visible for miles. And the one made from duck droppings? You don't even wanna know."

What's a global warmmonger to do?

It’s enough to make a Cli-Fi magnate spew his herbal tea all over the balcony of that new house in Montecito. Robert Bryce’s book, Power Hungry, details the multiple idiocies embedded in the assumptions underlying the green energy cult. Trevor Butterworth has posted a review at the WSJ. Herewith, a taste:
"Power Hungry" unfolds as a brutal, brilliant exploration of this profoundly deluded quest, from fingers-in-the-ears "la-la-la-ing" at the mention of nuclear power to the illusion that we are rapidly running out of oil or that we can turn to biomass for salvation: Since it takes 10,000 tons of wood to produce one megawatt of electricity, for instance, the U.S. will be chopping down forests faster than it can grow them.
But…but…what about wind energy?
So you want to build a wind farm? OK, Mr. Bryce says, to start you'll need 45 times the land mass of a nuclear power station to produce a comparable amount of power; and because you are in the middle of nowhere you'll also need hundreds of miles of high-voltage lines to get the energy to your customers. This "energy sprawl" of giant turbines and pylons will require far greater amounts of concrete and steel than conventional power plants—figure on anywhere from 870 to 956 cubic feet of concrete per megawatt of electricity and 460 tons of steel (32 times more concrete and 139 times as much steel as a gas-fired plant).

Once you've carpeted your tract of wilderness with turbines and gotten over any guilt you might feel about the thousands of birds you're about to kill, prepare to be underwhelmed and underpowered. Look at Texas, Mr. Bryce says: It ranks sixth in the world in total wind-power production capacity, and it has been hailed as a model for renewable energy and green jobs by Republicans and Democrats alike. And yet, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the state's electricity grid, just "8.7 percent of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period." The wind may blow in Texas, but, sadly, it doesn't blow much when it is most needed—in summer. The net result is that just 1% of the state's reliable energy needs comes from wind.
Looks like a great read.

Monday, May 3, 2010

The Anti-Frum

In his latest Washington Post article, Marc Thiessen discusses Jim DeMint's attempts to get genuine conservatives elected:
Critics say DeMint is hurting the party's chances in November by backing ideologically pure candidates when moderates would stand a better chance of winning. But virtually all of DeMint's conservatives are leading their Democratic opponents in the polls. In Florida, Rubio is running ahead of both Crist and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek in a three-way race. In Pennsylvania, Toomey is a solid 10 points ahead of Specter. In Colorado, Buck leads Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, and in Indiana Stutzman is running ahead of Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth. Even in California, where the race is an uphill battle for all the Republicans, DeVore runs better against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer than the NRSC's anointed candidate, Carly Fiorina. While DeMint is willing to take risks, he is not interested in kamikaze missions. His goal is not to purify the GOP; it is to elect conservatives who will work with him for change in the Senate. "I don't pick anyone who doesn't have a chance in the general election," he told me.
Sticking to principle while deploying your resources in winnable races. Sounds good to me.

Or maybe it was a Bloomberg voter who came down with a really bad case of buyer's remorse



Inspector Clouseau Bloomberg zeros in on a likely suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing.

"I theenk ze bum was planted by an opponent of ze health care bill. Look, here in ze back seat...No, Kato, you fule! Not now!!"

Update: Suspect arrested; not, apparently, a tea-partier.

Legacy media finds May Day riots…undisturbing

Anarchists and opponents of Arizona’s new illegal aliens law (just a reminder: it’s the same as the federal law that’s been on the books for 70 years) ran amok in Santa Cruz, Asheville and San Francisco, yet it seems to be only in blogdom that one hears much in the way of news about the violence.

I’m not sure why anarchists turned out on May Day, unless they fancy themselves anarcho-syndicalists, and even then I wonder why a Communist tradition should appeal to people whose historical predecessors were annihilated by Communists during the one struggle in which anarchists actually displayed some political and military strength (i.e., the Spanish Civil War). Could it be that today’s anarchists are simply immature and unstable sociopaths who are too stupid and lazy to hold gainful employment, and for whom any kind of anti-establishment violence helps to maintain their illusion that they are meaningfully involved in the larger affairs of life? Where, really, is the consistency? They show up at meetings of multilateral organizations to protest international business, or global warming. They’re now showing up to protest border security and to parade their solidarity with ethnically chauvinistic organizations like La Raza.

I guess, for today’s anarchists, that any cause will do, as long as it holds out the prospect for lawless expressions of anti-social behavior. They’re not radicals. They’re fadicals.

Moronocracy

I think we now live in one. The Democrats’ health care bill, it seems, may impose fines on the very institution that passed, but whose members did not read, the fine print. From the Daily Caller:
A just-released memo from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) raises fresh constitutional concerns about a provision in President Obama’s health-care law that could impose tens of millions of dollars in fines on Congress, state and local governments.

As reported by The Daily Caller, Congress could be fined up to $50 million annually by its own health-care law if low-level aides apply for government subsidies to help pay their health-care costs.

The new memo from Congress’s research arm states that state and local governments would be on the hook for such fines as well – but argues those fines may be unconstitutional under Supreme Court precedents on federalism.
Haw! Well played, geniuses.

Titan of capitalism gets an earful

J. Packington Paco III was approached by the Obama administration in an effort to get him to lend his not inconsiderable weight to the Democrat-sponsored financial regulatory reform bill. Dismissing the administration’s request out of hand – “I’m not in the business of selling rope to Bolsheviks” – he was subjected to an intemperate tirade by Rahm Emanuel. Our cameras were there…