Photo image of the day

Have we mentioned we detest the new slimmed-down format of the local rag here in San Diego?

We were assured by the editors that getting less bang for our buck was merely an effort to generate more "focused" news content.

This reminded us of Spinal Tap and their manager assuring Rob Reiner's character that the band's shrinking concert audiences were merely becoming "more selective".

Quickies

A round-up of news articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




Uh-oh. We're being lectured again. First Newsweek, then Katie Couric and the Washington Post and now, Vanity Fair... Vanity Fair! infers just what is proper thought for polite company.

Palin is the only politician whose tweets are regularly reported as news by TV networks. She is the only one who has been able to significantly change the course of debate on a major national issue (health-care reform) with a single Facebook posting (in which she accused the Obama administration, falsely, of wanting to set up a “death panel”).

(emphasis, ours... just in case you were not getting the message that Vanity Fair was telegraphing, you worthless wingnuts)




Again, Democrats are about to have their hats handed to them in November so the only reasonable explanation for this is that it's the result of a temper tantrum.

1994... and now, ladies and gentlemen, Eugene Robinson:

According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an "electoral wave," it's a temper tantrum.

To Robinson's credit, he does make a good point about our collective unwillingness to confront our entitlement programs which are completely unsustainable and apart from current run-away spending have the single-handed ability to break us.





Rich Lowry writing for NRO on the bourgeois revolution:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash.

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

We're hesitant to conflate the tea party with the folks attending the Restoring Faith rally but at the end of the day... there is heavy overlap. Heavy.







Jessie Jackson's hoopdie gets boosted in the Motor City?

Following the embarrassing news that Mayor Dave Bing’s GMC Yukon was hijacked by criminals this week, Detroit’s Channel 7 reports that the Reverend’s Caddy Escalade SUV was stolen and stripped of its wheels while he was in town last weekend with the UAW’s militant President Bob King leading the “Jobs, Justice, and Peace” march promoting government-funded green jobs.

Read that again: Jackson’s Caddy SUV was stripped while he was in town promoting green jobs.

Or just consider it an involuntary act of eco-obedience. Afterall, in Al Gore's world this was merely a servant of Gaia sent to reduce Jessie Jackson's carbon footprint. Rejoice!




And speaking of the Big Three and Big Labor...prospects for Government Motors going public?

The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co [GM.UL] in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

The U.S. Government? We're looking at you, tax payers.

B-Daddy has more, here.




And finally:

Barack, can we, uh, talk for a few minutes?

Oh, nothing. It's just that it just seems we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. I mean, I know we've both been busy for the past year or so. You with your fundraisers and golfing and stuff, and me with all those appointments at the unemployment office. But you know I think it's important in a relationship like ours to keep the lines of communication open.

So anyway, I've been think that... look, this is really hard. God. Do you remember when we met at that big party in Denver back in 08? I mean when I saw you across that crowded convention floor, it was like, Oh My God. I don't think I ever saw anything like you before. I was on the rebound from a bad relationship and you were so tall and articulate and, well hot. And then I couldn't believe that of all the democracies in the room you picked me out!

Yeah I know my some of my friends warned me you were trouble, and that it was the alcohol talking. But I knew that if we gave it a chance we could make it work. You and me, together. And after you moved in, I really think we did for a while. I mean, you've really helped me get over my inhibitions and hangups, and I like to think I've really helped you grow and discover yourself. Like last year when I lent you $800 billion to pay for your demo tape and new rims for the Cadillac.

No worries. Paul Krugman says he's good for it. More here from Iowahawk

Video clip of the day

Quick note: lots going on this beautiful end-of-summer Labor Day weekend so we may sacrifice quantity of posts for quality (lack thereof).


If it's from reason.tv and it involves hooch, you know we're rolling with it, especially if it also entails the question of "Why?"


As in, why is home-distilling of spirits illegal? Look at what's happened to craft brewing in this country since the last vestiges of the Volstead Act were cast off in the late 70s and apply that to what you now think is your favorite gin or Kentucky bourbon.

We hear an awful lot from our black-robed minders about "compelling interests" when it comes to the imposition of law from the state, so what exactly are the compelling interests of the state in continuing to enforce laws going back to, again, the Volstead Act?


No harm, no foul...

Radio KBwD is on the air

Bob Dylan and ear candy are two concepts in direct opposition to one another and which also helps explain the musical genius of these guys.


Ladies and Gentlemen, from Los Angeles, California, one of the standard-bearers for West Coast pop, it's The Byrds covering "All I Really Want To Do".

They get it... they really get it.

The Associated Press and Reuters are probably two of the guiltiest parties in seemingly being shocked, shocked by continual bad economic news by their continual use of "unexpectedly" when reporting out on higher unemployment, lower GDP figures and rising home foreclosure rates.

It begs one to ask: "Have not these guys been paying attention?" and "Just what is it about porkaholic Keynesian gimmickry that would lead them to believe it is going to turn the economy around?"

So we must give credit where credit is due to the multi-colored fishwrap USA TODAY for their headline:

As expected, August auto sales crater

Comparison with last year skewed by cash for clunkers

We were so overcome with emotion upon seeing that headline and sub-headline we almost broke down in tears. Tears of joy, friends, tears of joy.

Car and truck sales dropped sharply in August from a year ago, the result of a massive hangover from last August's cash-for-clunkers federal rebate fiesta that made it the best car sales month of 2009.

Industrywide sales were down 21% from last August, to 997,468, the worst August total since 1983, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. The month's seasonally adjusted annualized sales rate of 11.47 million, however, put it about on par with the sales rate through most of this year.

Toyota was one of the biggest losers, with sales cratering 34%. It had been one of the biggest beneficiaries of last year's stimulus program, with many consumers opting to use their $4,500 rebate on Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Sales of Corolla, one of its top cash-for-clunkers cars, fell by more than half.

Federal rebate fiesta? Somebody at USA TODAY is having too good of a time.

Sales will continue to putter along at an anemic pace for the foreseeable future, several auto executives said on conference calls to discuss August sales. There is little on the horizon to persuade customers to come back to showrooms, they say.

Emily Kolinski Morris, Ford senior U.S. economist, noted there's little to support optimism in economic data on consumer confidence, jobless claims and other indicators: The data show "lower momentum for auto sales the next three to six months."

Recession-battered consumers are saving more, she said, which will hurt sales in the near future.

Don Esmond, Toyota's senior vice president for sales, said the company is continuing its relatively generous incentives program through September to keep customers in showrooms. But Toyota senses customers are more interested these days in saving than buying a new car, he said.

"It's understandable why consumers keep putting off major purchases," he said.

But he doesn't think the government should bring back another major car-buying stimulus program. "I think the best thing for the industry is consistent growth brought from real demand, not stimulus brought into the marketplace," he said.

Unlike the broader main stream media, it would appear that auto execs and the writers at USA TODAY expected Cash for Clunkers to distort the market just as it has.

And perhaps when the rest of the media takes off its "O"-colored glasses, they'll realize that there is nothing unexpected happening to the economy whatsoever.

Thoughts on the speech

Everybody had an opinion on Obama's Iraq speech the other night, including ourselves, but there was one pundit out there for whom we were looking forward to his opinion. As usual, Victor Davis Hanson did not disappoint.

So was Iraq worth the cost? And could Obama have cited anything positive other than banalities? In some sense, that was asked post facto of every war — whether it was the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WWI, Korea, or Vietnam. The truth about Iraq is that, for all the tragedy and the loss, the U.S. military performed a miracle. After nearly seven years, a constitutional government endures in that country. It is too often forgotten that all 23 of the writs for war passed by the Congress in 2002 — from enforcing the Gulf I resolutions and stopping the destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, to preventing the Iraqi state promotion of terrorism, ending suicide bounties on the West Bank, and stopping Iraq from invading or attacking neighbors or trying to acquire WMD — were met and satisfied by the U.S. military. It is also too often forgotten that, as a result, Libya gave up its WMD program; Dr. Khan’s nuclear franchise was shut down; Syria left Lebanon; and American troops in Saudi Arabia, put there as protection against Saddam, were withdrawn. Perhaps a peep about some of that—especially the idea that in an oil-short world, Saddam Hussein might have been more or less free to do what he pleased again in Iraq. (The verdict is out on Iran; playing a genocidal Hussein regime against it was morally bankrupt. Currently, Shiites participating in consensual government could be as destabilizing to Iran in the long run as Iranian terrorists are to Iraq in the short run.)

(italics, ours)

Neo-conservatism... the antidote for realpolitik?

And then this from KT:

In the little bit I heard, I couldn't understand how the speech could ever come to have been written. His words indicated no awareness of the last 21 months. Hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on precisely what he was suggesting and the results were horrible. It was as if he had been living on another planet all that time and just popped in to give this speech. Since no rationale was given for the new spending and policies and we had just seen how badly things like that worked, the speech seemed strange and disconnected from reality.

Yeah, that was a little bizarre. The notion that the money spent fighting wars abroad could now be better spent here after trillions of dollars have been spent by Team O already in an effort to bring us out of the recession speaks to the level of detachment suffered by the President. That or an indefatigable committment to porkaholic Keynesian gimmickry. Either way, bad for all of us.

Of pickles, Glen Beck, God and bagpipes

We found out this past week that the Von's grocery market where we shop no longer carries Clausen dill pickles. This is the sort of news that can send one into a downward tailspin for days. In order to avert this fate, check out B-Daddy's excellent post regarding Glen Beck's Restoring Honor rally, here.

His calls for piety and invocation of Judeo-Christian values undermine the premises of the left's political argument which goes something like this. "The world is very complicated, and the average person can't understand it all. In order to improve the lives of all citizens only smart and expert people can properly order society; leaving to the free choice of individuals is too messy, unpredictable and ultimately will result in societal failure. Elect us and we will invoke scientific principles to establish an earthly utopia." Sound familiar?

B-Daddy contends that though it was prima facie, an apolitical event, it was, just the same, very much a political one.

We contend that is was more of a cultural event that reflected the growing discontent and disillusionment Americans have with the people who are at the levers of power in our man-made institutions and the implicit recognition that We the People are ultimately responsible for the fate of our Republic. And because the system is rigged with respect to gerry-mandered districting and campaign finance laws that tilt the playing field toward the incumbent, the cleansing of these institutions that are the framework of this Republic will first require a self-cleansing and then a super-human effort fueled by divine inspiration.

For those conserva-libertarian non-believers that may have been put off by the overtly religious nature of the event, keep this in mind: All of us over here on this side of the aisle believe that, at the end of the day, whether by God or just the natural order of being, we are sentient individuals possessing the absolute capabilities of thinking and acting completely on our own and that we are charged with forging our own destiny holding to the belief of the primacy of the individual over that of the collective. We receive direction from no person, group nor government without our consent.



Side note: And why would it be beyond the realm of possibility for a God-fearing liberal to attend Beck's event? As we've stated many times before in this blog, why wouldn't a good-government liberal, were he being perfectly honest with himself, be appalled at the shocking lack of transparency and atrocious display of unethical behavior borne of condescension and a sense of entitlement in the elected and bureaucratic ruling class? Are not goo-goo liberals our brothers out here in the Country class, as well?

We leave you with this from the rally (via What Make Us Right).

So, this is what the return policy is.

We were not aware of any conditional language or cooling off periods that were built into the original contract but apparently some people have other ideas.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

Let's let one of the Chip Dillers of the bureaucratic ruling class explain this to all you simpletons.

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.

"We were perhaps naive in setting the signs up," he said. "The intention of the signs was to make the public aware that there is potential illegal activity here. But it was interpreted in a different light, and that was not the intent at all."

He said there should be "no sense that we have ceded the land," adding that no BLM lands in Arizona are closed to the public.

"I kind of liken it to if I were visiting a city I were not familiar with and asked a policeman if it were safe to go in a particular area," Mr. Godfrey said.

Translation: "Crap... they figured it out. They've interpreted those signs precisely as they were intended"

So, just consider southern Arizona as that part of the city you wouldn't want to venture into were you visiting from out of town. It's not "ceded" per se, rather a portion of our country where you run the risk of getting shot up by Mexican drug cartels. Big difference.

Or perhaps do consider this a Robert Rodriguez-style slo-motion ceding of a portion of our Union.

As the curator of those signs suggest: It's all a matter of interpretation, so take your pick.

It matters

A couple weeks back, we gave some free campaign strategy to Republicans running for House and Senate seats. There were four things that we thought needed to be hammered on relentlessly and they were:

1) The economy/jobs
2) ObamaCare
3) Federal spending/unsustainable debt
4) Process

The first 3 are pretty obvious and the 4th may be as well, but as the Republican ads we've see thus far are doing the job on the first three (shoot, even some Democratic candidates are following this advise), we're not seeing the process of governance hit up nearly as much as it should.

Right now, the Republicans are the proverbial dude walking around the whorehouse with hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pocket. We like the dude's chances also but why leave the voters wondering - the issue of process needs to be a campaign theme as well and Jay Cost writing in Politico's Horse Race blog agrees with us:

Partisans on both sides tell themselves stories about why they're up, why they're down, and why the other side is where it is. These stories usually contain at least a grain of truth, but they also help encourage ideologues in the face of an impending rejection by the electorate. Democrats ignored the political problem of health care in the fall and winter - arguing that Martha Coakley and Creigh Deeds were bad candidates, that voters had been turned off by the health care bill because of the process, and that they would come around once the many benefits kicked in. Now, they're pointing to the economy as the only significant reason why the party is in trouble.

It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats' fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority - Independent voters - began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President's job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Democrats' meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That's when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.

(itlalics, his)

Cost alludes to the narrative attempting to be established by the liberal-Left that if the economy wasn't in the tank as it is currently, the President's approval numbers would not be upside down as they are now.

Because that premise is not entirely without merit, it then behooves Republicans to remind Independents that whatever state the economy would've been in right now, the reason why they fell out of love with the Obama and the Democrats: the process of the passage of ObamaCare was a spit in the face at them.

Remind Indies that the HopenChange narrative was all about changing the way business was done and how Obama was going to achieve transparent and ethical governance in D.C. And then remind them of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the union carve outs, the Stupak sell-outs and all the rest of the backroom wheeling and dealing that ultimately resulted in a monstrous entitlement program that we cannot pay for and will limit our medical decision freedoms. Process matters.

Process played a big part in 2006 when the Democrats won back the House and Senate by hammering the Republicans on their ethics problems.

It's too late in the election cycle for the economy to be of aid to the Democrats even if it did miraculously spring back to life, but drive a stake through this thing by emphasizing that it wasn't just that Cash for Clunkers and Porkulus did nothing for jobless numbers and the economy as a whole but that Hope and Change are an entirely fraudulent brand.

Process matters.

Quote of the Day

The secret of U.S. success is neither Wall St. nor Silicon Valley, but its long-serving rule law and the system behind it... American system is said to be "designed by genius and for the operation of the stupid."

- General Liu Yazhou

And it is with great pride that we see ourselves among those participating in the business end of the good General's view of the American "system".

H/T: Left Coast Rebel

Questions? We've got answers...

... sort of.

Starting Thursday, the long national nightmare will be over and where the rest of the nation will be hunkering down to take in USC vs. Hawai'i, we accepted KT's challenge to share some thought regarding the epic Buffalo v. Rhode Island tilt going down that same evening.

Count Harvey Weinstein, founder and HMFIC of MiraMax films as well as outspoken child rapist apologist as UofB's most famous alum. And no Wiki check necessary for URI's most famous alum: Lamar Odom of the Los Angeles Lakers.*

The city of Buffalo sets on the southern shore of Lake Erie and is subject to a meteorological phenomena known as Lake Effect.

Lake-effect snow is produced in the winter when cold winds move across long expanses of warmer lake water, providing energy and picking up water vapor which freezes and is deposited on the leeward shores. The same effect over bodies of salt water is called ocean effect snow, sea effect snow, or even bay effect snow. The effect is enhanced when the moving air mass is uplifted by the orographic effect of higher elevations on the downwind shores. This uplifting can produce narrow but very intense bands of precipitation, which deposit at a rate of many inches of snow each hour, often resulting in copious snowfall totals. The areas affected by lake-effect snow are called snowbelts. This effect occurs in many locations throughout the world but is best known in the populated areas of the Great Lakes of North America, and especially Western New York, northwestern and western Michigan and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which can average over 200 inches (5 meters) of snow per year and averages the most snow of any non-mountainous location within the continental US.

And as for Rhode Island, what really can be said about a state so starved for attention and lacking any distinguishing notoriety that they insist on calling themselves an island while they clearly are not?

In fact, Rhode Island is, along with Delaware, home to our Vice President, part of a two-state confederation of Largely Inconsequential Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic States.

This seeming fraternal bound borne of insignificance has not stopped Rhode Island, however, from attempting to push a Chamber of Commerce/Tourism Board-inspired guerrilla campaign for a new state motto: Rhode Island: Not to be confused with Delaware.

And what blue state would not have their share of ridiculous and counter-productive laws?:

Rhode Island recently applied to the US Government to make all the coastal waters of Rhode Island a "No Discharge Zone". The ostensible purpose was to prohibit the discharge of sewage by boats into the state's waters. However, discharge of raw sewage into the state waters was already illegal. What the "No Discharge Zone" actually did was make it illegal to discharge TREATED sewage from a boat into state waters. What now happens is that boats (whose treatment systems far outperform municipal sewage treatment plants) are now required to disable their sewage treatment systems, and carry their sewage to a shore-based facility, which then dumps the partially treated sewage back into Rhode Island's coastal waters.

The ruling class is strong in this one.


But hey, what about that game? Unfortunately, as Buffalo is an FCS (the subdivision formerly known as Division I) member and Rhode Island is a proud member of the Coloniial Athletic Association and the FBS (the subdivision formerly known as Div. I-AA) there is no betting line so we will play bookie ourselves and install Buffalo as a 20 point favorite.

We wish to thank KT for this opportunity and we sincerely hope we've answered the mail in that regard.



* We are aware Lamar didn't actually graduate from Rhode Island but the beauty of these self-indulgent posts is exercising the blogger's form of artistic license.