Politics

My anarchist nature is loving the transparent collapse of the established order under Mr. Obama:

Nobody likes the bumbling crony capitalists at BP, least of all countermoonbats, considering that they gave more money to Comrade Obama than to any other candidate in the past 20 years and were lobbying to enrich themselves at the price of our country's ruin through the Cap & Tax conspiracy. But the rule of law applies to everyone, even lizards low enough to crawl into bed with Obama and then get knifed by him. Like Congressman Joe Barton, I find it alarming in the extreme that the President of the USA can exploit an accident to shake down a corporation for a $20 billion slush fund.

I missed the current President’s speech last Tuesday. Neo-neocon assigned some mandatory reading from the follow-on commentary. Here are my two highlights from the assigned column:

Let me get this straight: as oil gushes forth, we are to use this disaster as a teachable moment to go the wind and solar route. OK, but fairly or not, the message to the shrimpers and hotel owners of the Gulf is: “Your misery has some didactic value for the rest of us, since after your Gulf is destroyed, we will shut down your rigs to ensure permanent poverty follows your misery.”

From Chicago Boyz:

Neo-neocon poses a question:

Who would have been the best president to handle the oil spill crisis?

Whatever else you may think of her, I think the answer has to be “Sarah Palin.” She’s got the experience dealing with the oil companies, and the requisite gumption to do so.

And, if they were being honest, the left would have to give the same answer: Sarah Palin. And that fact must enrage them no end.

Awesome!

I had forgotten about Palin’s genuine experience in this area:

The Minneapolis Mirror does a little investigating and calculating of a northside neighborhood group:

The cost of having 3 staff for the Hawthorne Community Council is $183,852 or $61,284 each.

$61,284 divided by 1715 (actual working hours total) = $35.73/hr

So what did the residents of Hawthorne receive for their $35.73/hr on June 2^nd 2010?

Using last week’s weak employment data as a launching point, George Will lays out the case against big government: 

Today investors and employers are certain that uncertainties are multiplying.

Forgive me for being hung up on the bird body count. But as I was scanning some more context-free reporting, I thought, “Hey, what about those windmills that are supposed to be part of the Clean Energy Economy. Aren’t those just giant bird grinders? How many of our feathered friends are beaten to death by clean energy every day?

To the Google!

Turns out George Will made some remarks about this over a month ago, when the birdy count was in the single digits. I don’t care what Will said; I am claiming this as an independent thought. But his comment led to some handy research:

The American Bird Conservancy estimated in 2003 that between 10,000 and 40,000 birds were killed each year at wind farms across the country, about 80 percent of which were songbirds and 10 percent birds of prey.

There seems to be more to this story that you probably didn’t hear:

During a serious shoot-out between two rival pirate groups surrounding the sea-jacked MV RIM, leaving 9 Somalis dead, the Syrian crew of the vessel managed to overpower six pirates on board and to sail free.

Servitude is in the mind of death and life
Don't be confused with the terms of left and right
Statism is Statism by any name the same
Apathy is suicide and we won't bear the Blame.

Today is Tank Man’s anniversary. Stand up for yourself.

Quote from Tekno Jihad by Psykosonik.

The Boston Globe has some excellent oily bird pictures that support the Hate BP narrative. And the Google suggests the birdy body count is well over 300:

So far 300 birds, the bulk of them identified as Brown Pelicans and northern gannets have been found along the US Gulf Coast during the first five weeks of the BP oil spill, and 31 have survived. They are currently being counted as casualties because of the proximity in time and location to the spill, but are being tested to confirm results. The mortality rate is expected to rise sharply since this is the middle of breeding season.

With a population of 650,000, this just isn’t that big of a deal. We’re talking about maybe five hundredths of a percent of the pelican stock.

Relatedly, the current President is having shrimp for dinner. Cobb did a little research, and we’re not running out of shrimp, either:

I am surprised that the BP Deepwater blowout has had so much staying power in the headlines, given the dearth of truly ugly images. It’s almost like it is more a fashion/fad to hate BP than to actually care about documented harm.

I see so much hatred, and it strikes me as evidence of the infantile mindset of the U.S. public. People seem to think that if they throw a big-enough tantrum, the oil well will be capped. There’s an underlying assumption that BP isn’t already trying all they can with the knowledge and resources available.

What irony that Obama now represents more value to the Republicans than to the Democrats.

Quoted from: Commenter “Curtis” at Neo-neocon

Remember Iraq?

The current President has been quietly continuing the Bush Administration policy in Iraq. So quietly that it has dropped out of the headlines. No daily body count, no handwringing about unwinnable quagmires, no sensational exposés about the brutality of U.S. forces. It’s almost like a war was won and nobody noticed.

So, what’s really happening?

General Odierno, the top U.S. commander there, says (pdf):

he’s impressed with progress the Iraqi security forces have made, particularly since the new security agreement took effect in January. “Today, they are in charge everywhere in Iraq,” he said. “We no longer conduct large-scale operations in Iraq. They do. We support those operations.”

Barb Davis White has filed as a DFL candidate in CD5:

By filing as a Democrat just moments before the deadline, Davis White set in motion the requirement for a primary election to determine whether or not Ellison will have the opportunity to be on the ballot in the general election this November. The primary, to be held in early August, will give Minnesota’s 5th district a choice of which Democratic candidate will be listed on the ballot, and Davis White’s belief is that it will be hers.

From an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal comes a stark illustration of how Big Media works according to a narrative:

In news reporting, it's not unusual to encounter constructions such as this AP dispatch from the presidential campaign about Sarah Palin: "She has worshipped at a nondenominational Bible church since 2002, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and supports classroom discussions about creationism."

That's fair as far as it goes. Just once, however, wouldn't it be interesting to see a leading newspaper write something like, "Nancy Pelosi, who opposes any restrictions on abortion, even in cases where a pregnant minor is taken across state lines without a parent's permission or where the fetus is halfway out the mother"?

Minneapolis is ten days from launch its bike-sharing program, now branded Nice Ride. I called this to your attention about a year ago, noting that Paris was having some problems pedaling its way to utopia:

As it approaches its second anniversary, the Paris Vélib' bicycle-sharing program is proving as popular with thieves and vandals as it is with commuters.
…
Since the program started in July, 2007, 8,000 of the bicycles have been stolen, and nearly 1,400 people were arrested for Vélib' theft just last year.

A commenter at TJIC reveals the scale of the foiled Hamas resupply flotilla:

The 15,000 tons of humanitarian goods that were (allegedly) aboard the convoy are not much more than the roughly 14,000 tons that crossed the Israel-Gaza border in a typical week in May:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175858

In 2009, Israel sent nearly 740,000 tons into Gaza. Not counting the diesel fuel, the medical supplies and so forth.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175858

From a long comment on Neo-neocon’s post about the terrorist resupply mission foiled by Israel:

I’ve reached the conclusion that Islamic radicalism is a symptom not a cause. Regrettably, I’ve been forced to conclude that the cause is Islam itself.

I base this assessment upon Islam’s holiest and most fundamental theological tenet, which when fully appreciated inexorably leads to the logical conclusion that it is Islam itself, which makes war upon Israel and the West.

A recurring thought which I hope to develop someday…

Americans are trained to worship democracy. But the brilliance behind the U.S. Consititution is not that some most people get a vote. The true political innovation was that the Founders put limits on what government could do. Those limits mean the people do not get to vote on everything.

We’ve all become accumstomed to having our opinions catered to. Although the elected politicians almost universally fail our expectations, they still invoke the rituals of democratic religion. Those who wish to sell us goods ask our opinion both as a method of improving their product and as a sales technique. Once we are engaged, we are open to persuasion.

Non-libertarians want cheap government health care, but they don't want the government to deny them care or euthanize them when their health care threatens to become expensive.

Quoted from: Vox Day