Bounce

...to Houston and back, starting very early. Home Saturday.

Annals Of The Bends

"Quite frankly, I don’t believe the activists who have succeeded in getting the polar bear listed under the ESA really believe that the polar bear is threatened. This was just one more tool that will enable a gaggle of lawyers to go after the real object of the environmentalists’ disdain: Big Oil.

And with three presidential candidates who all agree with the environmental activists, the coming months and years are looking pretty bleak for freedom, capitalism, and prosperity. Meanwhile, the polar bears will do just fine, just as they have during previous warm periods in history.

I only hope when global warming ends, and is accepted to be a largely natural phenomenon rather than manmade, that all of the regulatory mistakes we’ve made can somehow be undone."

That's Dr. Roy W. Spencer at National Review Online, commenting on yesterday's government assault on people in the name of polar bears. His first point is obvious to me, and I think he's playing it small. Some of those idiots might actually believe this huggy horseshit about the polar bears. Even so, however, they're nonetheless hateful of human beings or -- at least -- might as well be for all of how they're ready to use force to stand in the way of production: you know; the work that keeps us alive and thriving instead of cold and starving.

The long-range implications of this are incalculable in detail, but easy enough to see in the broad stroke. It almost feels like a warning, now that fuel prices are wreaking market-wide havoc and there is some small clamoring for more production. "Don't even think about it." Whether that's really in the kabuki nature of the thing or not, there can be no doubt that the uphill toward civilized American life just got a lot steeper. This is a long-run deal, ladies and gentlemen. Spencer's "only hope" is set far down the road, if ever. That's your life I'm talking about, if not your kids', too.

Take a good long look at your kids.

Tell me they're not worth more than a polar bear.

That's the fight that will now take place in all kinds of courts for years on end every time someone wants to deliver unto your dainty hands a single new gallon of fuel.

And that's just the start of it. For years now, it's occurred to me that America would bring its characteristic (almost an instinct for) innovation to tyranny. This government would write new chapters in its annals, sprung from a uniquely American ambition and sincerity but bent so far around historic corners that all sight of home was lost. And so it would sink below its nature to something old and sick, but uniquely descended.

Before this boiling polar bear deal is through, it'll be a chapter all by itself.

Fact-Free Politics

"Think about that.  Millions of people in the U.S. are driving with .08% blood-alcohol on a fairly regular basis – and that’s just counting the ones who admit it. Maybe it’s time to recognize certain realities. Rather than dismantling the Constitution and destroying the lives of countless citizens who statistically pose little danger, perhaps we should take a closer look at how the law addresses the problem. Such as recognizing that a .08% blood-alcohol level is an arbitrary figure, failing to recognize individual tolerance to alcohol. The original level, as recommended years ago by the American Medical Association, was .15%. See my post, DUI, MADD and the New Prohibition."

Good luck, Lawrence, at trying to bring blind hysterics within arm's reach of reason. These are not the times for that, and they're going to have us all blowing in our gearshifts to start our cars before they're done.

The Howl

Lawdy, lawd. It's hard to drag the blog along now, even as the election gibberish really sounds more and more like all the violent metaphors that the mandarin/chattering classes like to use in describing it. These peoples' voices in the viddies bang like grapeshot, and their connections to reality and respect for truth might as well have the metaphorical guns mounted on turntables. All bets are off, and have been nearly forever, but it doesn't stop them from aping sounds sort of intended to pay attention to reality and concepts... which they do only to the degree that they require in order to make the grotesque plausible to an average intelligence. Damned Jesus, already. The noise -- not to mention any of the long range implications of the noises -- is just fucking horrible all the time.

Right at the moment, Field Marshal Rodham is rolling in West Virginia like a dog. Bloody Terry McAuliffe has been hollering patently outrageous horseshit at damned Chris Matthews, who wears it like a gout of beer on his bib. The sheer panzer effrontery of Rodham's whole act through so long now is probably going to get her to Colorado. The screaming is becoming nearly indescribable. It's everywhere too much to keep up. There is moaning, even:

"When my conservative friends ask me how I came to like Obama, despite his liberal policies, I really only have one response. On spending, war, debt, torture, executive power, federalism, individual liberty and the size of government: how much worse could it get? Would any far left liberal have done the damage that the Bush Republicans have? And with so little conservative resistance?"

...not to pick on any given soap-dish nearly as much as it deserves. If you pay attention to what the average bidder ("voter") out there has the time and/or intellect for, it is a picture of un-relieved lies (where oh where is that St. Petersburg Times article, the other day, about Consumer Price Index and other FedGov anti-think?), voodoo, glossed dumbassery, floating-rib shots and "Gimme Dat Ol' Time Religion" at the rate of eight to the show-biz bar.


It was in the second Nixon administration when my father, observing my outrage, told me, "Son, if you think this president is rotten, wait'll you see the next one." The man was never wrong for the rest of his life, and it's just a sight to behold: how peoples' -- Americans' -- politics are now bid down to this creepy fetish. This is high-g democratic facsimileism, in all the ways of faster deeper media whipping it, but also pressed now in the Democrats' hive bloodletting.

John McCain might actually win an election against the survivor on his left, but the noise is going to be tremendous. More howling than ever before, all hearing itself howl itself to pieces.

That's the thing to listen to. It can take some years to get it, but it's howling right there in front of you, madder than ever before.

Which Is It?

"There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always."

Stanley Kurtz analyzes Trumpet Newsmagazine, the publication that Jeremiah Wright set up for his church.

If what he says is true, then there can only be two ways of things: Obama is a stark retard, or he's the smoothest liar to approach the White House since The Audacity of Hope (Arkansas).

(McPhillips linked that)

Der Rodhambunker

"The DNC has thwarted my destiny! That faggot-loving Howard Dean blocked my path at every step!"

"It's over. The voters have stolen my nomination. But if you faggots believe I'm going to endorse Obama, you are seriously mistaken. I'm not leaving this race until they drag me out. God fuck you all."

YouTube.

I cannot imagine a truer picture of that woman short of living with her every minute of every day, in which case only small details would distinguish the scene.

(link: Mike Soja)

"SERVICE ! SERVICE ! SERVICE !"

Yesterday and today: spring cleaning with the John Deere 316 tractor and a chainsaw. That's a workout that I'm not used to. Coming out the back end of a cold, it's been hard. I got a lot done, though, including a pretty damned good fire last night. It finally rained, but I had reduced a large pile of tree limbs and assorted brush rot to nothing before it did.

Toward the end of it last night, I broke a PTO drive belt on the tractor. Dammit. Well, today, I called the local John Deere joint and asked the person on the phone for that belt. He had it in stock and I ran right over to the 'ville to pick it up. I got it installed, and I could describe all the little things that told me that it wasn't right, but just take my word for it: it wasn't right. I called the guy again and described the problem, and he asked, "Has that mower deck been replaced?" Hmm. In fact, it had been about fifteen years ago. "Oh," he said, "well that's it. It needs a different belt."

Believe me when I tell you, dear reader, that it was ever so gently that I suggested to him that it might be helpful to ask about a detail like that with prospective customers in the future. "I know," he said, "but I don't replace a lot of belts for this model and it's not something I think about."

He actually said that.

So, I went out and took the deck apart again to get that goofy belt out and drove back into town. The young man with whom I'd dealt got right to work on setting up the exchange. I also asked him about another part that I had in mind, and we had a small but inconsequential dispute about it, and he pressed on. As he did, I told him, "I could get John Deere parts shipped in from Timbuktu. I come here for two reasons: convenience and expertise. You failed me on both of them this afternoon."

He got himself puffed up and whinnied, "Well, if you'd have told me that it was an updated deck..."

I began to point out to him what he'd said on the telephone, and he started doing a yapping-mouth mime-thing with his right hand, letting me know that he didn't want to hear it. I just looked him in the eye, and he stopped. I asked him whether he was in the habit of running customers out of his shop with this sort of an approach to service, and whether he would be satisfied to know that I would be happy to tell everyone I meet about him. He just shrugged and kept scribbling on an invoice.

His father walked up to the counter to deal with another customer. As he bent over the counter to write something, I asked him, "Did you raise this kid?"

"Absolutely."

"Are you proud of him?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, I guess that's your problem."

"Absolutely."

This all took place in front of maybe a half-dozen people. That man never once looked up at me.

At this point, the kid handed me the canceled receipt and the money for the wrong belt, and said, "Get out of my store. Now."

I laughed on my way out.

I drove over to Polkville, where I was treated like a major stockholder by pros. I would crawl over broken glass twice the distance to that place before I dealt with those hicks in Dryden, ever again.

Mem-O To K-Lo

They richly deserve it.

To hell with them.

At Least They Didn't Burn Him At The Stake

" 'I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, "Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away." I said, "Well Pat, can you explain this to me?" "You've been accused of wizardry." Wizardry?' Piculas said."

Land O' Lakes, Florida

I don't doubt a word of it. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Live And Learn

"I myself was spared the intellectual humiliations of a college education."

(H. L. Mencken, April 3, 1927, Trenton, New Jersey Sunday Times)

Uh-Oh...

I think McPhillips is headed off the reservation.

What You Pay For

"If it was 7.8 million on a revenue stream of 114 million, nobody would say a word. But change 'million' to 'billion' -- the percentage is the same -- and everybody gets upset, because it is a big number."

That's John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil, throwing down some facts of reality in the face of lies and bullshit designed to have you on your way to mo-betta phat Endarkenment by the end of the year. And there's lots of 'em (facts), too. Glenn Beck segment at YouTube. Watch the whole five-minute thing. Wladimir Kraus linked that.

Hofmeister says that we're twelve to fifteen years away from seeing significant domestic production increases at the pump. It should not be difficult to understand that the greatest part of that lag is located in Washington, where prissy little scribblers backed with main force presume to stand in the way of men of action who would get out there and produce in exchange for our production ("division-of-labor economy", kids) denominated in money. There is no telling how much of the cost of end products -- at least half a generation away now -- will have been devoted to "negotiations" and "partnerships" with these slugs: corporate legal departments living cheek by jowl with them for whole careers, accounting departments forced to count their bloated and rotten beans, not a single boot set anywhere without first referring to every sort of creep with a "mandate" and "authority" to make sure that some legislative committee hearing won't sling his ass on an election-year whim. All of that Rube Goldberg effort has to come from somewhere, but at least it's not a "windfall profits tax". You're going to pay for it, though. That's the price of not exterminating parasites.

Still, you'd be a lot happier now if they had let people produce oil for you here in America instead of acting like comic-book dingbats with all the guns in the world for more than a whole generation now, even if people like John Hofmeister had to go them begging with hat in hand for permission to go to work. (The very idea: outrageous.) And now, you're going to wait another half a generation for any of it to get going, if it ever happens at all.

I wonder if anyone here can understand my blazing contempt for anyone who calls any of this a "market".

Criminations, On Point

Oil: $120 a barrel today.

Run over to the Heritage Foundation blog to see what Jay Leno thinks, in general.

How many people actually remember that The Lying Bastard of The Ozark Long March vetoed ANWR development?

I wish that creepy shitbag would wake up with a severed polar bear head in his bed: every single morning for the rest of his life until he got sick & tired of it and just died.

Memo To Karen De Coster

"The Postrel years were awful, but under Welch Reason has become worse than awful..."

(Karen De Coster, remarking on Reason magazine)

Could somebody check me on this? Welch didn't join Reason until this year. Nick Gillespie was the editor-in-chief for seven years before that. Welch has been in the driver's seat for less than six months. I'd like to see someone attempt the argument that Reason has only gone down the shitter in the last six months. Go ahead: try it.

I concluded that Gillespie was a bloody twit a long time ago, and Postrel's blog has been bookmarked in my "Pretensives" category since I first laid eyes on it.

Reason hasn't been seriously worth reading for longer than I can remember, now. To try to lay this at Welch's feet is absurd.

Enough, Already

As I post this, it is thirty-six degrees of Fahrenheit temperature here in Daisy Hollow. May 5. I'm sure that's probably happened before, but I wouldn't know when. In five years of its operation, I have never run the coal-stove so far into the year.

Item:

"On April 24 the World Wildife Fund (WWF), another body keen to keep the warmist flag flying, published a study warning that Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it may soon reach a 'tipping point' where 'irreversible change' takes place. This was based on last September's data, showing ice cover having shrunk over six months from 13 million square kilometres to just 3 million.

What the WWF omitted to mention was that by March the ice had recovered to 14 million sq km (see the website Cryosphere Today), and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska that month was at its highest level ever recorded. (At the same time Antarctic sea ice-cover was also at its highest-ever level, 30 per cent above normal).

The most dramatic evidence, however, emerged last week with an announcement by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that an immense slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly shifted into its cool phase, something which only happens every 30 years or so, ultimately affecting climate all over the globe."

(linked from Samizdata)

I only wonder what it would take to get that unconscionable asshole Al Gore to throw himself off the highest available bridge.