White is a race. Straight is an orientation. Male is a gender. All people are covered under hate crimes categories. Those claiming it is an equal protection issue are lying or stupid or both. Now the "criminalizing thought" argument is another story...

No, Massa.

I remember an old Soviet-era anecdote from the satellite countries.

It seems their farming equipment, especially tractors, would often break down. Or they'd run out of gas and the farmers would have no money to buy more.

Their solution? Hitch a couple of cows to the front of the tractor and keep on plowing.

This struck me as remarkably inefficient. Surely, someone could come up with an adaptor of some sort that would allow the cows to pull the plow directly, without the extra weight of the tractor.

I underestimated the ability of socialism to crush innovation, I guess.

Now, fast-forward a quarter century or so, and we here in the United States have situations such as this, in which a heroic public official will not be thwarted by the range limitations of fuel-cell technology:

[Congressman] Massa [D-N.Y.] drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV
towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to
new fuel cell car. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As
he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC,
the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.

If we HAVE to have caps on greenhouse-gas emissions, I say we start with putting them on dumbass publicity stunts.

The Recession: Cliff's Notes.

Need a concise piece you can assign to non-policy-wonks to read to help them understand why Obama's economic plan will lead to drift and decay?

Print this out and give it to them.

[H/T 2 my friend R.]

For the purposes of this post . . .

. . . forget the fear and lost productivity that this cost New Yorkers.

My question is, how much did this little stunt cost taxpayers? And for what purpose, so Obama could use the picture of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background in campaign ads in 2012?

And if I might ask a follow-up, Mr. Gibbs, why hasn't whoever ultimately authorized this maneuver been fired?

This goes under "How much did this cost taxpayers, Part 2?"

Media crying wolf again, like they did w/ SARS, Hanta virus, flesh-eating bacteria, bird flu & on & on & on.

Crap! I lost my glasses behind the bed where I can't get to them.

Was anyone in the Lincoln administration held accountable afterwards for his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus?

testing...

Oops.

I messed up the date on the Tom Tom Club/Timbuk 3 Cage Match poll. It's now open until June 1.

If you've already voted, you have to vote again.

What was it St. Diddy told us? Oh yeah -- VOTE OR DIE!!!

Fortress USSA.

Obama McCavity.

I had one of those Unified Field moments of synthesis last night.

I was planning what I wanted to post today, and while mulling over Borg Queen Obama a seemingly random memory popped into my head. A quote, I think to my friend Max, in high school or maybe my brief stint at a Government Higher Indoctrination Center.

A simple observation:

"Dogs are glad to see YOU; Cats are glad that YOU see THEM."

I've revisited this once or twice over the decades, and come up with an expansion.

"Dogs are glad for themselves to see you; cats may be genuinely glad for YOU that you see them."

Suddenly, my muse vomited the following on my head.

Obama is a cat. He thinks so highly of himself that he honestly believes he is doing us a favor by letting us bask in his presence. Our President, my friends, is a cat.

Which explains why it took him a lifetime to get a dog.

And why he is so often found sitting on the floor, one leg hiked straight up in the air, cleaning his butt with his tongue.

I just hope he doesn't spray the furniture.

This is belt tightening?/How much did this cost the taxpayers? Part 1.

Only if this is Opposite Day and by "tightening" you mean "loosening."

Remember the hell Nancy Reagan caught for buying some drapes and dinnerware? Borg Queen Obama, against the will of Congress, decides to renovate the Washington mall at a minimum cost of $55 million (They, those monuments to Obama's narcissism, such as the "People's Garden," aren't gonna build themselves), then plans to embark on a self-congratulatory joyride in Air Force One to celebrate his first 100 days in office.

But hey, how do you* complain about THIS frivolous use of taxpayer money when you let him get by with that little jaunt to Denver for a photo-op without so much as a peep?

You want to save money, Mr. President? Then put a boot on one of the tires of that plane, and don't take it off without the permission of the minority party.





* - And by "you," I mean YOU, Lapdog Media!

That'll show them.

My city council raised electric rates by 11%. In response, I've resolved to try to reduce my usage 22%.

Part of that is addressing my 9/11 Cable News Syndrome, which manifests itself in a need to know EVERYthing that's happening THE MOMENT it happens. I've resolved to refrain from turning on the TV (and the VCR, with which I change the channel) until at least 2 PM every day.

Waco.

From From My Cold Dead Fingers: Why America Needs Guns by Sheriff Richard I. Mack:

Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the final assault, knowing at least 25 children were still inside. On April 19, 1993, CEV tanks began pounding holes in the walls and structures at Mount Carmel Center, pumping in CS gas. While armored combat vehicles rammed and rocked entire buildings, spitting nauseating tear gas into rooms containing babies, FBI agent Byron Sage shouted over loudspeakers, "This is not an assault! Do not shoot. We are not entering your compound." Ambulances and local hospitals had been put on alert, and agents continued to call out, "You are responsible for your own actions. Come out now and you will not be harmed." Sheila Martin's husband Wayne called 911 and pleaded, "Call them off -- there are women and children in here!" When the Davidians began firing in self-defense at the building-crunching tanks, federal agents became indiscriminate in spewing clouds of tear gas anywhere they could, irrespective of where women and children might have gathered for safety. Many had gone to a second-story location from which there was no exit.

The Compound exploded and all but nine inside perished.

I have posted to my blog today . . .

. . . I can expect a call from R telling me what I posted in 3 . . . 2 . . .


:)

Update: Especially this --

Is this the end of hip-hop?

Hip-hop somehow survived the Rappin' Barney Fruity Pebbles commercials (here and here).

But it may not survive the Potty Dance.

What does it mean . . .

. . . when you have a song that you are not particularly fond of stuck in your head for several days straight?

And then the morning you plan to post it on Blogger, you can't remember what it was because you can't think over the ZZ Top playing on the radio?

Poll results!!!

1. They Might Be Giants sucks at streetfighting, at least against the B-52's.

2. Korn sucks at hopskotch and Candy Land, but are pretty good at Chutes & Ladders.

3. Insane Clown Posse kick's hopskotch's ass.

Why I don't eat at Quizno's.

Because a creepy bicurious pizza oven will try to seduce me.

Among Us, There Was A Fungus (Non-humongous).

Or, The Morel of the Story.

A few pieces at a time, I am endeavoring to transfer the one brushpile (a leftover from the Ice-pocalypse) that is still in the backyard to one of the two brushpiles piled by the road in front of the drainage ditch, where at some point in the future I assume the city will make it disappear.

Where it will go, I cannot say. Maybe the city will wish it away into a field somewhere, like that deranged little Opie-esque child/god in the Twilight Zone.

This morning, I was wrestling my daily quota of ten limbs out of the pile and by my feet I noticed a little spongy thing. It was a morel mushroom.

It seems a little early for those, I thought. Don't they come up a little closer to May? But then I realized I was thinking of my childhood.

You see, there is history between us, these little mushrooms and me.

I spent my childhood in Illinois. It's further north, so spring, and hence mushrooms, come later.

We had about an acre of land. It was bordered on one side by the woods and on the back by a neighborhood baseball field.

At the border of the ballfield and the woods, and fifty feet on each side, was prime morel-growing real estate. Late April or early May, somebody would notice one growing somewhere, and my parents and I would gather up some paper grocery bags (this was pre-plastic-grocery bags, but oddly not pre-plastic-garbage bags) and go on a mushroom hunt.

That night, my mom would fry them and it would be enough to feed a family of six, plus whatever hangers-on always seemed to be hanging around the house.

Fast-forward several years and 400 miles south, and I'm in 8th or 9th grade science class under Mr. Prewett. We are discussing the different kingdoms of living things. We get to the fungi.

"Fungi, of course, includes mushrooms. Hase anyone here gone picking mushrooms?" he asked the class.

I raised my hand. Nobody else did.

I lowered my hand, hoping nobody had seen it.

It was embarassing because A. since I was the only one, it set me apart from everyone else and the last thing an 8th or 9th grader wants is to stick out like a sore thumb. The important thing is to fit in by conforming to what everyone else does. And B. I thought it marked me as poor. What, can't you afford to BUY mushrooms, Poory McPoorpoor?

Looking back, we weren't any poorer than most of the people in my school. In fact, we were LESS poor than quite a few. My dad had a Caterpillar retirement check coming in every month.

But we LIVED poor. I used to think my parents spent it all on coffee and cigarettes. But back then, those luxuries were still cheap, so I don't know WHERE all the money went, or why we never had anything to show for it. Maybe it was the livestock. What's the joke -- How does a farmer end up with a small fortune? Start with a large fortune.

But I digress.

My raising, and sheepish lowering, of my hand had not gone unnoticed by Mr. Prewett.

And he couldn't just let it go, oh no.

He launched into a lecture directed specifically at me, in front of the whole class, about how I shouldn't be embarassed about picking mushrooms just because nobody else, certainly no civilized person, does it and how I shouldn't just follow the crowd. This lasted for several minutes.

It was even more embarassing than the thought of everyone thinking I was poor.

That night (too late to be of any help whatsoever) I realized that what I SHOULD have done is told him I misunderstood the question, that I had thought he meant getting mushrooms at the STORE. A lie, yes. But a lie I could bluff my way through and muddy the waters with, enough to run out the clock on the classtime.

That was . . . gawd it must be pushing 25 years ago. And that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the little morel on the ground.

At first, the unpleasant memory was almost enough to make me ignore the mushroom.

But then something clicked in my head -- Hey, that's something I can eat that the government doesn't get a cut of! I don't have to pay an indulgence to Uncle Tom Sam for the privilege of obtaining it!

My first scan of the backyard yielded five of them. Two subsequent scans yielded one each.

They were delicious.

4/2/09 UPDATE: Got five more today. Gonna eat 'em.